Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [53]
Preetorius was opposed to a second term for Pulitzer. In a private letter to Grosvenor, he explained his reasoning. “It was that, not in spite, but rather in consequences of my good wishes for Mr. Pulitzer, I could not recommend his reappointment,” he wrote. His opposition stemmed from Pulitzer’s confessions to him during his first year on the commission in which he “earnestly declared by himself, as wholly at variance with his qualifications as well as his own taste and liking.”
On March 4, a month after Pulitzer’s term legally expired, the governor finally broke his silence. Pulitzer, he announced, would be replaced with a former Confederate and loyal Democrat. Woodson’s selection left the police commission devoid of any Germans. It took only a few hours for the news to reach St. Louis. Pulitzer was infuriated. He put pencil to paper and angrily scrawled out a letter to Senator Benecke, his old ally in the state senate.
Woodson’s appointments were so unthinkable that Pulitzer said he couldn’t find anyone who believed the report. Hurriedly he continued, impetuously scratching out unsatisfactory words as he wrote, “Nobody held it possible that the highest officer of our state evinced such a lack of all feelings of justice and propriety because it was supposed Mr. Woodson knew what everybody else knew, namely that since the existence of the Police Commission the German element always had one and for the greatest part of the time even two representatives in said Commission.
“If Mr. Woodson should insist upon these appointments and put himself on the record as an ‘ignoramus’ and ‘knownothing,’” concluded Pulitzer, “then we hope that at least the Senate will prove that it knows its duty. We have a right to expect from the Senate the prompt rejection of such ridiculous appointments.” The senate did not share Pulitzer’s sentiments, and the nominees were promptly approved. With this loss, it seemed as if Pulitzer’s political career was at an end. He had been voted out of his House seat; the promising Liberal Republican movement had ingloriously died; and now, even with one of his best friends serving as lieutenant governor, he could not win reappointment to the police board. Pulitzer the politician was out in the cold.
Pulitzer’s career in journalism was also imperiled. Schurz’s and Preetorius’s ardor for their young protégé had cooled. The editorial office had grown too small for all three men. Preetorius’s opposition to Pulitzer’s reappointment to the police commission strained their relationship. Schurz, who was now a pariah in his party and knew that his reelection to the U.S. Senate was doomed, resented having to share the last bit of the public stage he held. To readers, the Westliche Post had become almost as closely identified with Pulitzer as with the mostly absent Schurz. Schurz and Preetorius offered to buy Pulitzer out. The price they proposed was commensurate with their desire to be free of him. On March 19, 1873, the men concluded a deal. After paying off his notes to Preetorius and others, Pulitzer walked away from the Westliche Post with about $30,000, three to six times his original investment.
Pulitzer immediately sought out Theodore Welge, who had assisted him in his defense after he shot Augustine. He was at a loss as to what to do with his vast sum of money. “This money he wanted me to deposit for him, which I declined to do,” Welge said. Instead, he introduced Pulitzer to an entrepreneur who had created a shipping empire of riverboats operating out of St. Louis. The man persuaded Pulitzer to entrust the money to the nineteen-year-old State Savings Institution, which paid 3 percent interest.
Freed from the necessity of work for a while, Pulitzer left Missouri’s journalism and politics behind and headed for Europe. That he would return to St. Louis, however, was certain. Before leaving, he paid a year’s rent on a room adjoining Johnson’s law offices. He had the