The Writings of Carl Schurz/To Silas W. Burt, June 21st, 1886
TO SILAS W. BURT[1]
I am glad to learn that you are going to Washington to see the President. You may have occasion to invite his attention to a very significant fact. President Cleveland has grown remarkably in popularity within a few weeks past. And what has been the cause of it? Nothing else than that his reform policy was attacked in Congress by members of his own party, and that he was presented to the country by the very men who assailed his course, as a President faithful to his pledges even against the opposition of his own party friends.
As you will remember, in judging of the situation it has always been my central idea that the President could render no greater service to the country, to his party and to himself than by being strictly, conspicuously, even punctiliously, faithful to his word in spirit and letter. It will be the greatest service to the country, because nothing is more necessary for the elevation of our political morals and the promotion of reform than to eradicate the abominable popular notion that there is nothing like good faith or a sense of honorable obligation in politics, and that the pledges of a public man are made only for temporary effect. That notion he can eradicate by proving that a public pledge can be sacred to a man in high position above any other consideration and that it can be practically kept.
He will thus render the greatest service to his own party, because the popular approval, which his honest firmness cannot fail to command, will force his party up to a more elevated sense of duty and thus infuse into it new vitality.
And it will be the greatest service to himself, because it will secure to him a most enviable place in American history as a benefactor of his people not to speak of his impregnable and commanding position as the necessary man of his time.
The effect produced in the public mind by the attacks in Congress upon his reform policy shows clearly, I think, that I have not been mistaken as to the source of President Cleveland's strength.
It is for this reason that I have always been so anxious for a strict observance of his pledges, and that I have so earnestly deplored every real or apparent departure from them—such cases for instance as that of General Salomon and those brought out in the Senate debate. It is for this reason also that I advised a different course when the Senate asked for the reasons for the suspensions made, and when the President, as I thought, had such a splendid opportunity to confirm the popular belief in his good faith by taking the people into his confidence. It is for this reason, too, that I am so anxious he should make a warning example of some one of his subordinates who in all sorts of ways try to circumvent the law, and thus trifle with the President's honor. If such an example were conspicuously made, it would prevent ever so much mischief, save the President a world of trouble and raise him higher than ever before in public estimation.
In this respect the participation of officeholders in party conventions to which the enclosed article of the Evening Post refers, deserves especial attention. The President has now an opportunity to nip that abuse in the bud by disciplining some of the offenders. If he does not, the evil will inevitably grow until it becomes unmanageable, and we shall have the scandals of an officeholders' party machine and of postmasters conventions again.
The President will inevitably discover, if he has not already done so, that the Congressmen who have been most pampered with patronage, remain the most persistent and insidious enemies of the reform policy; and that the districts in which the most appointments are made in accordance with the recommendations of such Congressmen will be the first to build up the old-fashioned officeholders party machine again.
It is quite evident that the President's fidelity to his pledges will be the principal point of attack on the part of the opposition. The movement in the Senate last winter and the resolutions of inquiry concerning the classified service recently introduced by Mr. Ingalls leave no doubt of this. That is the point, therefore, where the President should be strongest. He should be so unassailable that all fair-minded men even in the opposition must feel impelled to admit the fact. Of course, charges will always be made by unscrupulous politicians; but they will be harmless unless founded on truth. If, however, there should be many and important charges founded on truth, they might produce a reaction in public sentiment, all the greater as they would create the impression that the Administration was not what it pretended to be—a matter on which the American mind is very sensitive.
But the President can avoid all this by simply following the true impulses of his nature and by discarding the counsels of small political cunning. Thus he will win and maintain a grand and unconquerable position.
- ↑ Colonel Burt was then Naval Officer of the port of New York and a close friend of President Cleveland. He was one of the most successful of the leaders and practical workers in civil service reform.