spoils-loving, domineering partisans. A number of causes had by the end of 1870 brought the President much under the influence of the men of this kind. Schurz's chivalrous and independent course in Missouri politics was not the only occasion of his being out of favor with Grant. Not a little had been contributed to this result by the Senator's course in connection with the President's famous attempt to annex Santo Domingo.
A protocol providing for the annexation of this petty republic was negotiated by the President's private secretary, General Babcock, when in Santo Domingo on other business in the summer of 1869. Babcock's proceedings were of a grossly irregular character. The Cabinet, when it learned that annexation had been arranged for, refused to indicate even tolerance for the project, and Mr. Fish, the Secretary of State, offered his resignation. Nevertheless Grant, with fearlessness not born of wisdom, took up the heavy task of compelling annexation. While otherwise ignoring the attitude of his Cabinet, he induced Secretary Fish, by cogent personal appeals, to remain in office and to take the necessary steps for giving formal regularity to Babcock's negotiation. As a result, a treaty was signed just before Congress met in December, 1869. The President then undertook to insure ratification by the Senate. One unique feature of Babcock's diplomacy had been a pledge in the original protocol that the President would privately use all his influence to make the idea of annexation "popular" among the members of Congress and thus secure its accomplishment. In the spirit of this pledge, a series of urgent interviews with Senators was promptly begun and continued until the Dominican question was decided.
At this session Fessenden, an important member of the committee on foreign relations, died, and Sumner, the chairman of this committee, promptly brought about the succession of Schurz to the vacant place. The intimate friendship between Sumner and Schurz made this closer association highly agreeable, while the cosmopolitan character of Schurz's experience and philosophy insured valuable help in dealing with international problems. On no other regular committees did Schurz continue to serve to the end of his senatorial term. For short periods he was a member of the committees on military affairs, on pensions and on territories, but he apparently found nothing in the duties involved to warrant an effort to retain his membership in any one of them.
Mr. Schurz has above described the President's appeal to him in behalf of the Santo Domingo enterprise. Grant called on Sumner at his house about New Year's day, 1870, and requested his support for the ratification of the treaty with Santo Domingo. The experienced Senator was thrown off his balance by this surprising and unprecedented method. Evading a direct answer, he proclaimed himself at the same time "an administration man." Grant probably heard or remembered nothing of the reply save this phrase; for he always afterwards asserted that Sumner had promised his support. But Sumner soon made up his mind that annexation was quite undesirable. Schurz had from the earliest intimation of the project strongly antagonized it, and he now became Sumner's most ardent and industrious coadjutor in preventing ratification. One night many years later, as he was leaving the Arlington Hotel, in Washington, Mr. Schurz stopped in front of the Sumner house, now the east side of the Arlington "Annex," and pointing up to the second story said to his companion: "Ah, how many long evenings I have passed with Sumner up there in his library! It was there that we planned the defeat of Grant's scheme to annex Santo Domingo." Though Sumner's great reputation and his violent personal quarrel with Grant made him the most conspicuous figure in the opposition to annexation, it was in fact Schurz who did most of the careful planning through which the President was defeated.
The task would have been an easy one if the ratification of the treaty had depended solely on the merits of the case. At first very few Senators manifested any positive desire for annexation, and the mass of the Republicans were indifferent, with a leaning toward opposition. Yet upon this indifferentism a deep impression was made by the terrible earnestness with which the President continued to press his policy. It was but a year since Andrew Johnson had left the White House, and many Republicans recoiled with terror from the idea of another breach with the Executive. They dreaded less the peril of annexing Santo Domingo than that of dividing the Republican party from its official chief. Thus party considerations finally prevailed with most of the Republican Senators. Against such considerations Schurz was peculiarly unfitted to make headway; for his whole intellectual habit precluded him from properly estimating the idea of party per se. However, with the aid of the Democrats, he and Sumner were victorious: ratification was refused by the Senate, June 29, 1870, by a vote of 28 to 28, two-thirds being required to ratify.
Grant, though intensely irritated by this outcome, was far from convinced that he was defeated. At the next session of Congress, in December, 1870, his annual message contained an elaborate plea for annexation and suggested the method of joint resolution, as in the case of Texas, or of a commission to negotiate a new treaty. During the summer the President had in various ways strengthened his hold on those who had supported him, and at the same time had manifested an intense personal bitterness toward Sumner, whom he held chiefly responsible for the failure of the treaty. Sumner had conceived pari passu a cordial contempt for Grant, which, though not publicly proclaimed, was none the less a matter of general knowledge. When, therefore, the question of annexation was again brought forward by the annual message of 1870, a resounding clash between the Senator and the administration was expected, and it duly came.
Morton, one of the leaders of the President's supporters, introduced in the Senate a resolution providing for a commission to visit Santo Domingo and report upon conditions there. This was intended, so Morton assured Sumner, merely as a means of dropping the whole matter in a manner that would show some respect for the President. Sumner, however, spurned the suggestion that it be allowed to pass unopposed, and by a tirade beginning, "The resolution before the Senate commits Congress to a dance of blood," made public and irreparable the breach with the President. This speech, crammed as it was with the most offensive imputations upon Grant and his advisers, grieved the more judicious of Sumner's friends. It diverted attention from the issue of annexation, on which public opinion favored the opposition, to that of the personal animosity between Grant and Sumner, on which no arts of malignant rhetoric could win the sympathy of the people from their silent military hero. The debate on the resolution turned largely upon Sumner's personal motives and methods, and he was very roughly handled by the friends of the President, especially Zachariah Chandler and Roscoe Conkling.
To Schurz the turn given to the affair by this war of personalities was in the highest degree distressing. In temper and self-control he was thoroughly unlike the Massachusetts Senator. He feared for the effect upon Sumner personally, and for the effect upon the main question. In a frank conference with the President while the treaty of annexation was before the Senate, Schurz had learned how tenacious Grant was of his purpose to acquire Santo Domingo. The ostentatious repudiation of the Missouri liberals during the State campaign of 1870 had been public notice that the presidential favor would be withdrawn from Senators who, like Schurz, refused to support the Dominican policy. In a number of States there was a promising opportunity to constrain senatorial votes by administration pressure through the party machine. Under such circumstances Schurz was seriously alarmed lest, despite the contrary professions of Morton, a scheme to present anew the direct question of acquisition might suddenly reveal itself. The surest way of meeting this danger was to get public opinion back to the main issue. This he undertook to do in a very serious address to the Senate, on January 11, 1871. He studiously avoided all the extraneous topics that Sumner's invective had brought into the discussion, and confined himself practically to the single question of annexation. It was typical of Schurz's superior methods of developing and leading public opinion.
The argument of the speech was made to turn chiefly on the undesirability of tropical expansion. At the first suggestion of the annexation of Santo Domingo, Schurz had felt instinctively that, apart from the question whether any increase of territory was desirable, the direction of this proposed increase should condemn the project. This thought was elaborated in a broad philosophical review of human history showing that the tropics are ill-adapted to the development of a high civilization—that they produce social and political systems in which the extremes of slavery and despotism are sure to prevail. All the troubles of the United States about slavery had been due, he argued, to the tendencies in the South toward tropical
