THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
all sure that the new administration owed me some big position for the services I had rendered, and that, besides, I could also do much for my friends, as the administration could not properly refuse me anything, etc., etc. I could not dispose of these requests as I had done in Wisconsin three years before. The question what I should do was now much more serious and perplexing.
My general observations had indeed convinced me of the absurdity and mischievousness of the “clean sweep” following every change of party in power. But I had not yet gained a deep enough insight into all the demoralizing influences of the “spoils system” to enable me fully to appreciate the significance of the spectacle I was then witnessing. Moreover, many of the men engaged in the anti-slavery contest, myself among the number, were so profoundly impressed with the absolute righteousness of our cause from the moral point of view, that we could hardly understand how any sensible human being could advocate the other side without being subject to some dangerous delusion, or guilty of some obliquity of moral vision that would gravely affect the fitness of a person for public trust. This was not so extravagant a notion, as it ordinarily would have been, at a time when the existence of the Republic was at stake and might depend upon the absolute fidelity of those in official position; when it was well known that all the departments of the government were stocked with “rebel sympathizers,” and when some of the leading secessionists openly boasted that they were always supplied with the earliest and best inside information about what was going on in government circles. It was fair to conclude that, if ever, something like a “clean sweep” of the offices was justifiable, if not even necessary, at that particular crisis. I was, therefore, not as much shocked at the rush for patronage as I should have been
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