The Writings of Carl Schurz/To Alfred T. White, October 12th, 1885
TO ALFRED T. WHITE
I have read the resolutions of the Brooklyn Independent Republican Committee with great pleasure, and from the expression of my views on the present situation, for which you ask me, you will see that we are in substantial accord.
The coming election presents itself in two aspects. In the first place, it is an election of State officers. We have therefore to select among the candidates those whose character, whose past career and whose known opinions furnish the best evidence of their fitness for the positions they are to occupy if elected. We have to choose between Mr. Davenport and Mr. Hill for the governorship. Both have been in conspicuous positions which tested their qualities. Mr. Davenport has proved himself a man of ability and high character, thoroughly devoted to his public duties, and in sincere sympathy with those reform movements which aim at the improvement of the public service and the elevation of our whole political life. Mr. Hill has on many occasions proved that he looks upon official power as a means of party service and of personal advancement, regardless of the public interest, and that he is in thorough accord with that class of politicians who do all in their power to obstruct and defeat a healthy reformation of our public concerns, and thus to keep alive those demoralizing practices which for so long a period have degraded our political life and endangered the public welfare. They are both partisans, but Mr. Davenport represents the best tendencies, not only in his own, but in both political parties, and Mr. Hill the worst.
These are well-known facts, which might be regarded as sufficient to induce us as citizens of New York, whose duty it is to look to the good of the State, to prefer Mr. Davenport to Mr. Hill. The candidates for the other State offices should be treated, respectively, according to the same principle.
In the second place, we have to consider how the result of our State election may affect the general interests of the country. We have a President who is honestly and earnestly endeavoring to carry out certain reforms of the highest importance. In this endeavor he is embarrassed and obstructed by a very active element in his own party, which insists upon the distribution of the public offices as spoils, upon the organization of the public service as a party machine and upon breaking down whatever stands in the way in the shape of laws or regulations or adopted methods and practices. Of this element Mr. Hill is a recognized representative. Now, it is clear that, if Mr. Hill, as a representative anti-reform man, is this year defeated in this important State of New York, in which last year another Democratic candidate was victorious as a representative reformer, the anti-reform element which seeks to baffle the President's efforts will thereby be materially weakened, and the cause of reform will gain new strength. Mr. Hill ought, therefore, to be defeated.
But we are told that President Cleveland himself is going to vote for the Democratic candidates, Mr. Hill included. This does not change the nature of the case in the least. That he is in a very difficult situation we all know. It is his privilege to regulate his relations with his party in his own way, and it is our business as friends of reform to do our duty to our cause in our way.
It is a gratifying and a significant fact that the Independents in this State, who last year cut loose from their party connections to support Mr. Cleveland for the Presidency, this year, without any previous consultation, simply obeying a common impulse, recognize their duty upon the same principles to support Mr. Davenport for the governorship. But in order to secure to their endeavors, which, it is hoped, will be as successful this year as last, their full effect upon the political situation, it is important that the Independents should not permit their conduct to be misinterpreted.
There has already been much foolish talk in the newspapers about what they call our “change of sides,” our “returning to the fold” and so on. It should be generally understood that there is on our part no change at all, that we are acting upon exactly the same principles this year as last; that upon these principles we should support Mr. Davenport if he were a Democrat and oppose Mr. Hill if he were a Republican; that there is no “returning to the fold” this year, as there was no going into a fold last year, and that we shall be found ready, in the future as in the present and the past, to support the Davenports as against the Hills under whatever party names they may appear.
It should further be understood that while the Independents will support Mr. Davenport for the governorship, they protest most emphatically against the unjust attacks made upon President Cleveland in the Republican platform, as well as against those declarations which are designed to make party capital by a revival of sectional prejudice and ill-feeling between the North and the South. That President Cleveland has made mistakes no candid man will deny; but, on the other hand, no candid man can deny that he has rendered the cause of reform very great service. The professions of Republican politicians in favor of civil service reform would deserve and receive much more confidence if, while censuring real mistakes or violations of correct principle, they proved themselves at the same time willing to encourage with just recognition all the good that is done and all the honest efforts that are made in the right direction, no matter under what party auspices. And as to the Southern question, everybody knows that there has been of late years an immense change for the better in the South; that the disunion feeling of old times has entirely yielded to a new National spirit; that the condition of the colored people as to their prosperity and the protection of their rights, as well as the relations between the two races, is now much more satisfactory than it ever has been; that meetings of colored men in the South themselves protest against the demagogic clamor in the North about their wrongs; that the existence of the evils denounced by Republican politicians would only prove the failure of the Republican party during its long possession of power to remedy them, and that if restored to power it would let things go just as they are going. Their denunciatory talk about the South is, therefore, more than idle—it is as an incentive to sectional animosities for the benefit of a party, vicious and unpatriotic clap-trap. And the Independents do not desire their support of Mr. Davenport to be construed as approving anything of the sort.
In defining the position of the Independents as every one of them would define it, I do not mean to say that they renounce forever all more permanent party attachments. On the contrary, they look forward to the time when such attachments may be again advisable. But at present we are passing through a period of transition. There are no clearly defined differences of principle or policy between the two great parties. Their platforms, except in their mutual denunciations, read remarkably alike. The question between them which most concerns the public interest is mainly that of good administration. The issue between them in this respect is not made up by their platform declarations, but practically, by their nominations of candidates. These nominations have been on either side sometimes good and sometimes bad, which indicates that they are not made according to a fixed standard. As long as this condition of things prevails we shall render the best service to the public interest by supporting in each case the best men representing the best methods, regardless of party. The more a party identifies itself with the reforms aimed at, the steadier the Independents will be in the support of its candidates. A party, old or new, making itself in its organization, as well as its professed principles, a trustworthy champion of these reforms, would count them among its most faithful members. And when at last these reforms shall have become so firmly rooted in the laws of the Republic and the practices of our political life that they cease to be an issue in our elections, differences of opinion on other subjects will form the dividing line and the Independents no doubt will attach themselves to this or that party according to the opinions they hold on the questions then most important. Much will be done, I apprehend, toward bringing on so auspicious a condition of things by practically demonstrating to the satisfaction of both political parties that on either side the Davenports can and the Hills can not be elected to high office.