[Footnote 1343: _Congressional Globe_, January 30, 1872, p. 699.]

The South had expected the President to develop a liberal policy. The
spirit displayed at Appomattox, his "Let us have peace" letter of
acceptance, and his intervention in Virginia and Mississippi soon
after his inauguration, encouraged the belief that he would conciliate
rather than harass it. His approval of the Ku-Klux law, therefore,
intensified a feeling already strained to bitterness, and although he
administered the law with prudence, a physical contest occurred in the
South and a political rupture in the North. The hostility of the
American people to the use of troops at elections had once before
proved a source of angry contention, and the criticism which now
rained upon the Republican party afforded new evidence of the public's
animosity.

These strictures would have awakened no unusual solicitude in the
minds of Republicans had their inspiration been confined to political
opponents, but suddenly there came to the aid of the Democrats a
formidable array of Republicans. Although the entering wedge was a
difference of policy growing out of conditions in the Southern States,
other reasons contributed to the rupture. The removal of Motley as
minister to England, coming so soon after Sumner's successful
resistance to the San Domingo scheme, was treated as an attempt to
punish a senator for the just exercise of his right and the honest
performance of his duty. Nine months later Sumner was discontinued as
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. If doubt existed as to
the ground of Motley's removal, not a shadow clouded the reason for
Sumner's deposition. The cause assigned was that he no longer
maintained personal and social relations with the President and
Secretary of State, but when Schurz stigmatised it as "a flimsy
pretext" he voiced the opinion of a part of the press which accepted
it as a display of pure vindictiveness. "The indignation over your
removal," telegraphed John W. Forney, "extends to men of all parties.
I have not heard one Republican approve it."[1344] Among Sumner's
correspondents Ira Harris noted the popular disapproval and
indignation in New York. "Another term of such arrogant assumption of
power and wanton acquiescence," said Schurz, "may furnish the flunkies
with a store of precedents until people cease to look for ordinary
means of relief."[1345]

[Footnote 1344: Pierce, _Life of Sumner_, Vol. 4, p. 477.]

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