The Writings of Carl Schurz/To President Cleveland, January 16th, 1886
TO PRESIDENT CLEVELAND
The relations between the Administration and the Senate concerning the matter of suspensions from office are attracting general attention. A few days ago I was asked by a newspaper man for a statement of my views on that subject, but I prefer, if you will permit me, first to say to you what I should have said to him. It is as follows:
The law as it now stands does not oblige the President to communicate to the Senate his reasons for the removals or suspensions he has made. He may therefore decline to give such reasons. But, while the law does not command, it does not prohibit. The President is at liberty to give his reasons if he chooses. Should he, under existing circumstances, avail himself of that permission?
Your letter of December 25, 1884, addressed to Mr. Curtis, was generally understood as a distinct pledge that under your Administration no good officer, who had not made himself an offensive partisan, would be removed before the expiration of his term. It would have been an insult to you had your pledge at that time not been taken as seriously meant. It would be disrespectful to you to treat it now as a trifling matter. I, therefore, do not at all agree with those who say that, when you remove one man and appoint another, the only important thing is the quality of the man appointed, and not the reasons for the removal. On the contrary, it seems to me that the public pledge of the President makes his reasons for making removals a matter of first importance. If our public life is to be saved from its demoralization it is essential that the promises of political parties and of public men should again count for something. It is of the highest consequence to the American people that the public pledge of a President should be regarded as a moral obligation of the very first order, which nobody would dare to make light of. It is impossible to overestimate the value of a conspicuous example of the strictest fidelity in this respect.
Your reasons for making removals are, therefore, of the greatest public interest, for upon their character depends the answer to the question whether the pledge has been kept or not.
What, then, should be done when those reasons are inquired into by persons entitled to respect? All should be done that can be done to sustain the belief of the people in the good faith of the President. How does the case stand at present? Those reasons are questioned by Senators who, whatever their motives may be, are entitled to consideration as members of the highest legislative body. But—as the truth should be told—the questioning is not confined to the Senate. It is very generally believed among the people that removals have been made in violation of the President's pledge. Whether this popular belief be well founded or not, it certainly exists. It is also very widely believed that President Cleveland has honestly meant to keep his pledge but that he has been misled by men upon the good faith and discernment of whose advice he depended in making removals and appointments, the responsibility for all of this falling upon him.
Under such circumstances a mere refusal to communicate, or to permit the heads of Departments to communicate to the Senate the information that may be asked for, would, however some newspapers might applaud such a step, be regarded by candid and soberly thinking men as an evasion. It would be thought that if the President's pledge had been well kept, the Administration would find very little difficulty in announcing that fact. It would be useless to speak of the law not providing for such communications, or of encroachments by the Senate upon the rights of the Executive, when every well informed man knows that the President might make such communication to the Senate as a voluntary act of courtesy, expressly reserving all the legal rights of the Executive. It would be equally useless to say that the information had been asked for by Senators from factious motives and for hostile purposes, when everybody knows that nothing would more utterly confound the factionists than a clear showing of strict fidelity to the President's pledge. A flat refusal, or a mere general answer that the removals had been made for the good of the service, would therefore be quite generally taken as equivalent to a confession that the President s pledge had not been kept. If in examining the cases in the light in which they are now coming to your attention, you find that in point of fact your pledge has been violated, no evasion, no shifting of the issue, will avail to conceal that fact. It would only aggravate the difficulty. It seems to me, therefore, that those who advise such a course, fail to keep the honor of the President and the moral effect of the whole proceeding sufficiently in view.
If the Administration should not be able to make a clear showing, the frankest and most courageous course would, as usual, still be the safest refuge. The President, while letting the world know what had happened and how it happened, would be able to retrieve his moral standing before the people by doing all in his power to redress the wrongs which the violation of his pledge had brought with it. Those wrongs are of a very grave character. Evidently, whenever the rule has been proclaimed that no officer shall be removed except for cause, a removal will mean much more than it otherwise would. It will reflect seriously upon the character or business ability of the person removed. Any officer, therefore, removed without good cause, has been most unjustly injured in his character and reputation, and thus grossly wronged. It will scarcely do to say that under present circumstances removals are not so interpreted; for that would be equivalent to saying that President Cleveland's pledge not to remove any officer except for cause, including offensive partisanship, was a sham and entitled to no more credit than the shallow pretenses of any ordinary politician. Now, if the President in some cases, in which he had convinced himself that, in violation of his pledge, gross wrong had been done, would use his power to redress that wrong by reappointing the person wronged, his moral prestige would be retrieved and the dignity of a Presidential pledge saved, in spite of all that had happened.
But another wrong done to the President himself calls for equal attention. No man can do anything more injurious to the President, nay, more insulting to him, than to induce him either by false information or misleading advice to dishonor an important public promise given to the people, and thus to make him responsible for a thing which he would never have thought of doing of his own motion. The President, I think, would do justice to himself and to his high trust, only by holding to the severest account any officer under him guilty of such scandalous disloyalty. And now the reasons for removals being asked for, there is an excellent opportunity for ascertaining who among the officers of the Government has so betrayed him.
These may look like heroic remedies, but if it is true that a public pledge of the President has been violated, and a pledge, too, that had been believed in more than any other similar one for many years, then no remedy can be too heroic to avert the demoralization which such an event, unredressed, would inevitably bring in its train. A case in which with the public good, also a question of honor is involved, would seem to make heroic remedies appear the most natural ones.
I think I fully appreciate the difficulties of your position. In one of my first letters to you I endeavored to point out that the greatest danger to a reform Administration consisted not in general attacks upon its system, but in insinuating requests from apparently friendly quarters for this and that little concession, and in the disposition of the Administration to yield one little thing after another, until it finally woke up to the fact that it had yielded its whole character, and further, that however firm might be your own resolution to carry out your promises and purposes, your honor and good faith would be in a great measure at the mercy of those wielding authority under you, and that disappointment and failure were almost certain unless your subordinates were in hearty accord with your principles and objects or kept in the strictest discipline. I venture to say that if the Administration is now embarrassed, it is from these causes, and then none but heroic remedies will avail. The consequences of a lack of that accord or discipline are illustrated by the following letter in which an internal revenue collector in Virginia makes wanton and insolent sport of the President's reform policy, plainly defying his displeasure:
| U. S. Internal Revenue Deputy Collector's Office, | |
| Richmond, Sept. 5, 1885. |
H. S. Nichols,
Norfolk, Va.
Dear Sir: It affords me pleasure to say that your duties
as stamp collector at Norfolk for the period from 15th of
June to 31st August, 1885, were entirely satisfactory. Your
removal from office was not from any delinquency of duty or
inefficiency but entirely upon the principle that “to the victor
belong the spoils”—you being an appointee of the Mahone
Republican party. I wish you health and prosperity in the
future, which I think you deserve.
Very truly yours,
That collector's name is now before the Senate. If the Administration chose to put up with so defiant a demonstration of offensive partisanship and of contempt for its reform principles, I should, were I a member of the Senate, certainly vote for his rejection, from respect for the President.
I have of late had occasion carefully to study the debates in Congress on the power of appointment and removal, from the first Congress to the present time, and I have come to the conclusion that a law making it the duty of the Executive to communicate the reasons for removals made to the Senate and to put them on record accessible to the public would not only be Constitutional, but a very great help to a reform Administration. What a blessing it would have been to you and to your Cabinet officers had you and they, whenever a removal was urged by politicians, been able to say that no removal could be made except for reasons publicly to be avowed and answered for upon the responsibility of the Executive! It is indeed said that sometimes removals have to be made, the reasons for which cannot be disclosed. I answer that in my four years experience at the head of one of the most difficult Departments, I have never known such a case. I then believed, as I do now, that such a law, or in the absence of it, such an established practice, would prevent a vast deal of trouble and mischief and that its benefits would far outweigh any inconvenience.
Pardon the length and straightforwardness of this letter. I feel very strongly on the subject of it. Standing by you with full confidence in the integrity and earnestness of your purpose and with warm personal attachment, I could not well be silent at a crisis the result of which may seriously affect your success and even more.