Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning

“ And even yet the thought had not dawned in the minds of the pestering politicians, that if a reformer is both sincere and intelligent, he does not forget that the only time he can ever put his ideas and himself to a test is when he obtains responsible official position. Schurz was ambitious for distinction; his whole nature craved it as a woman's does affection. ”

“ This will preclude anything and everything like a personal policy looking to ulterior ends. Ever since I have been in official life I have adhered to the rule of regarding the official position occupied by me at the time, as the last one ever to be held by me, and as decisive of my reputation as a public man. We can only perform a duty well when we perform it for its own sake. ”

“ Schurz at every step in his efforts to improve the administration's Indian policy.
The chief problems inherited from the Grant régime were connected with the disturbances in the plains and mountains of the far West. Railway building, mine opening, and the rapid progress of settlement by the whites had completely transformed the conditions of Indian life. All the tribes, even the largest and most far-ranging, were forced to be content with relatively narrow reservations, and to look to the government for supplies with which to eke out the ever-diminishing product of the chase. ”

“ It reminds both parties that neither of them can venture upon mischief without seriously impairing its prospects for the future. Between them stands an element which is not controlled by the discipline of party organization, but acts upon its own judgment for the public interest. It is the Independent element; which, in its best sense and shape, may be defined as consisting of men who consider it more important that the government be well administered than that this or that set of men administer it. This Independent element is not very popular with party politicians in ordinary times ”

“ The action of the government was violently attacked on the floor of the Senate by Blaine, who represented Schurz's measures as a harsh and oppressive application of European methods, by an official of Prussian birth, to high-spirited and freedom-loving American citizens. From the Grant section of the party, also, came a particularly violent onslaught in March of 1878, through Senator Howe, of Wisconsin, though in this the offensiveness of Schurz's German nativity was reduced to the minimum, in view of the large foreign-born element in Wisconsin's population. ”

“ Under President Grant religious and philanthropic societies and individuals had been formally endowed with consultative and advisory functions in the management of Indian affairs, with the idea of promoting civilization on the reservations. The “peace policy” represented by this system was now declared by many to be a hopeless failure, and it was urged that the management of the Indians should be taken entirely out of the hands of the Department of the Interior and given to the War Department. ”

“ It was one of the queer coincidences that often give interest to public life that just when Mr. Schurz was so effectively promoting a rational Indian policy he became the object of unmeasured abuse by many good persons who professed aims like his. In the summer of 1879 arose the agitation about the Poncas, which continued both to vex and to amuse the Secretary while he remained in office. The Poncas were a small, peaceable tribe of Indians who had long lived in quiet upon their reservation in southeastern Dakota. ”

“ In the autumn and winter of 1877 a joint committee of Congress investigated at length the feasibility of transferring the Indians to the War Department. Mr. Schurz appeared on December 6th, and presented a statement which summed up in his most effective manner the case for the status quo. He announced his conviction that the proper policy in dealing with the Indians was that of guiding them to the practice of agriculture or grazing on their reservations, as a first step toward self-support and toward the occupation of the land in severalty. ”

“ Yet, as candidate, Garfield manifested disquieting tendencies in respect both to persons and to principles. His generous and enthusiastic impulses led him, in the development of a hot and doubtful campaign, to yield to influences that compromised his intellectual consistency. His attitude toward civil-service reform gave special distress to Mr. Schurz. In the Republican convention a resolution favoring the reform and demanding its promotion was rejected by the committee on resolutions, but was moved in the convention by the Massachusetts delegation. ”

“ Politicians took up the matter from motives that would hardly stand investigation. Such high-minded men as Governor Long of Massachusetts and Representative Dawes each found occasion during 1880 to attack Mr. Schurz, and each of them received a sharp retort. The Rev. Mr. Tibbles, though he raised considerable money for the purpose of testing the rights of the Poncas, never brought the issue into court; indeed the decision of Judge Dundy, being in favor of Standing Bear and being accepted without appeal by the government, left no way open for further litigation. ”

“ The agent on the reservation of one branch of this tribe, Mr. Meeker, was killed, and the women of his family were carried into captivity; later a detachment of troops hurrying to the defense of the whites was defeated with the loss of its commander. When the people and the government of Colorado displayed a purpose to take the Utes in hand and revenge all wrongs by practically exterminating the tribe, a very high degree of tact combined with vigor was shown by the Secretary. ”

“ It is pleasant to reflect that there is one man at least among us who even under such threatening circumstances will not despair of the Republic.”
In the State and Congressional campaigns of 1878 the Republicans, especially in Ohio and Massachusetts, urgently appealed to Schurz for assistance. In these States the greenback movement, blending at this time with the rising silver issue, was seriously alarming the Republican leaders. Schurz was counted as a veteran champion of sound money, and he now repeated in Cincinnati his oratorical triumph there in 1875. ”

“ To keep the restless and unruly tribesmen on their reservations and the no less unruly white men off, was a task frequently beyond the powers of the agents, and the army had to be appealed to. In view of repeated bloody conflicts, culminating in the slaughter of Custer and his command by the Sioux in the summer of 1876, a feeling had gained wide prevalence that a total change of policy was necessary. ”

“ Here he spoke with frankness of the Hayes administration and also formally renewed his confession of faith as an Independent. “Our National Government has, I think, succeeded in proving once more the falsity of the old assertion, that corruption is an inevitable concomitant of democratic institutions. Whatever mistakes may have been made by the late administration,—and I frankly admit that they were not a few,—it is generally conceded that it has demonstrated the possibility of honest, business-like, and morally-respectable government in this republic ”

“ Schurz confessed he himself held when he entered the Interior Department. But additional study changed his opinion. From the good and wise men of various religious denominations whom Grant's policy had brought into co-operation with the Indian Bureau, notably William Welsh of Philadelphia, the Secretary soon learned how much of hope and of achievement was bound up in the peace policy. He became the supporter and the efficient leader of those who wished to maintain and develop the old system. ”

“ At the same time he set forth simply, dispassionately, but with a force that no intelligent and fair-minded reader of to-day can resist, his reasons for believing that the welfare of the country would be best promoted by the election of Garfield. That the value of Schurz's method was not ignored by the practical politicians at headquarters, is indicated by the statement of the secretary of the National Committee that about half a million copies of his speech at Indianapolis had been circulated, including the English and the German versions. ”

“ The underlying support of this proposition was the conviction that the Indian could never be civilized and that the only possible solution of the problem which he embodied was to confine him, under strict military supervision, on reservations from which all uplifting contact with white men was barred, till he should become extinct by virtue of his own incurable barbarism. ”

“ Education should begin, with the other instrumentalities of civilization. Such a policy, he contended, would be the most conducive to peace and the most economical. It ought to be retained and developed ”

“ Military men and methods were indispensable for emergencies; the long, slow process of raising the red men out of barbarism, however, required qualities in those who guided it that the army could not supply. ”

“ Schurz had to endure in connection with the management of his own special department, a rather disproportionate number of those that originated in hostility to the administration in general were directed primarily at him. The thorough-going politicians instinctively felt that he was a thorn in their path. Throughout Hayes' term factional feeling was very strong in the Republican party. The President's policy in the South was bitterly resented by the section of the organization that had sustained the Grant régime, and Mr. ”

“ Schurz was subjected to violent abuse. Well-meaning but hysterical women and men, with more sentiment than common sense, joined heartily in the attacks on the Secretary. Tibbles found himself a national character, and reveled in his greatness. Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, a true philanthropist, who wished to be to the Indian what Harriet Beecher Stowe was to the slave, took up the cause of the Poncas, and earnestly sought to enlist the Secretary's energies in their behalf. Schurz found in Mrs. ”