Title: Pine to Potomac : Life of James G. Blaine: his boyhood, youth, manhood, and public services; with a sketch of the life of Gen. John A. Logan
Author: Cressey, E. K.
Language: English
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[Illustration: _James G. Blaine_]



  _“LOG CABIN TO WHITE HOUSE” SERIES._

  PINE TO
  POTOMAC

  _LIFE OF_
  JAMES G. BLAINE

  _HIS BOYHOOD, YOUTH, MANHOOD, AND
  PUBLIC SERVICES_.

  WITH A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF
  GEN. JOHN A. LOGAN

  BY E. K. CRESSEY

  BOSTON:
  JAMES H. EARLE, PUBLISHER,
  178 WASHINGTON STREET.
  1884.



  _Copyright, 1884._
  BY JAMES H. EARLE.



  To All,
  Young and Old,
  _THE WHOLE WORLD OVER_,
  WHO LOVE THE NAME
  America,
  IS THIS LIFE OF
  JAMES G. BLAINE,
  The Typical American,
  DEDICATED,
  BY THE AUTHOR.



[Illustration]

INTRODUCTION.

[Illustration]


Mountains are the homes of giants,--giants in brawn and giants in
brain. The giants of brawn may be the more numerous, and in the sense
of muscle and fisticuffs, more powerful; but not in the sense of
manhood and power that achieves results that are far-reaching and
that endure,--results that thrill a nation’s heart and command the
admiration of the world.

Whoever makes you proud that you are a man,--that you are an American
citizen,--makes you feel that life is not only worth living, but that
to live is joy and glory,--such an one lifts you up toward those higher
regions from which man has evidently fallen, and gives some glimmer and
hint of the old image and likeness in which we were created. That man
who comes from nearest to the nation’s heart and gets nearest to the
world’s heart, brings with him lessons of wisdom, goodness, and love
which shall work like leaven with transforming power.

Great not only in brains, but great in heart, also, are the giant men
of true greatness, who come down from the mountains into the arena of
the world’s activities. They need no introduction. The world awaits
them, recognizes, and hails them. They know and are known; they love
and are beloved. Place awaits them, and they enter; fitness fits; life
is a triumph, and they are happy. Such men, fresh from nature’s mint,
bring consciences with them,--consciences unseared, into the battle of
life.

These are not only the germ of character and the source of joy, but
chief among the elements of that stupendous strength which makes
victory their birthright, and victory is the birthright of every good,
true soul that will work to win. Only the false and the indolent are
sure to fail; the true and industrious are ever succeeding.

Especially great in powers of will are the men who come forth from the
nation’s strength and give themselves back in exalted service to a
nation’s life. The great streams that flow into the ocean, went forth
of the ocean in mists and clouds of rain. The great men of Rome were
the products of Rome. The great men of Germany and France are the
products of those respective countries. And so the great men of America
are the products of America. It took generations to produce the heroes
of the Revolution, but when the hour struck, they came forth, full
armed with a purpose that blood could not weaken, clad in a panoply
that no host could destroy. Washington blazed forth as an orb of
greater magnitude in the chair of state, in time of peace, than in the
saddle in time of war. As a warrior he cut out the work, as statesman
he made it. Statesmanship is more the work of the whole man and of a
life-time. Garfield was splendid upon the field of battle, but while
there he shone as a star among suns, while in the halls of state he
shone as a sun among stars. There was a steady grandeur of purpose, a
magnificence of character, a wealth of intellect, a power of thought,
a loftiness of courage, of that high, heroic type which moral stamina
alone can produce, which created a greater demand for him in the
councils of the nation than in the battle-front when warriors were the
nation’s sorest need. Others could take his place in Tennessee, but not
in Washington.

Among the nation’s great productions, born midway between the war of
the Revolution and the war of the Rebellion; born in times of peace,
for times of direst carnage and divinest peace again, a very prince
of the land; born to lead, and born to rule; springing at once with
the bound of youthful blood into the foremost ranks of the nation’s
monarchs of forces, and emperors of kingly powers, is he who leads
to-day the giant forces of the great nation’s conquering host, the Hon.
JAMES G. BLAINE, not of Maine, or of Massachusetts; not of Minnesota,
or the Golden Gate, but of America. He is a man of the nation’s heart,
a man of the nation’s brain, a man of conscience, and a man of will;
large, vivid, and powerful in his consciousness, wherein he realizes,
in most brilliant conceptions, both the power and glory of men and
things. He came forth from the mountains of the Alleghanies, a giant
from the nation’s side.

Never since the nation’s youth was there such demand for any man. He
is emphatically the typical American, and the yeomanry would have
him. They caught his spirit, and would not shake off the spell of his
genius. They forget not to-day that he was Garfield’s first choice, and
sat at Garfield’s right hand. They remember, as only they who think
with the heart can remember, that as his pride and confidant, he was
by Garfield’s side in that awful hour of holy martyrdom, thrusting
back the terrible assassin with one hand, and with the other catching
the falling chief. Garfield knew him, Garfield loved him, Garfield
sanctioned, honored, trusted, and exalted him. And the sentiments of
that great heart which beat out its life-blood for the nation’s glory
then, it is firmly believed, are the sentiments of the nation’s heart
to-day.



CONTENTS.


  I.

  THE BOY.

  Old Hickory--National Highway--Indian Hill Farm--The
    Alleghanies--Daniel Boone and the Wetzells--Scotland
    of America--Birth-Place--Ancestors--Mother--Valley
    Forge--The Old Covenanters--Dickinson College--Cradle
    Songs--Stories of Monmouth and Brandywine--Old
    United States Spelling-Book--Country School-House--Cut
    Jackets--Uncle Will--Grandfather’s Ferry--Too
    Much Spurt--Capt. Henry Shreve--First Steamboat from
    Pittsburgh--Life of Napoleon--Average Boys’ Ability--
    Working on the Farm--Revolutionary Soldiers--Home
    Training--Books--Spelling School--Sleigh-Ride--Victory       Page 21

  II.

  PREPARATION.

  Inheritance--Bullion’s Latin Grammar--Campaign of General
    Harrison--Political Meetings--Jackson’s Methods--
    Newspapers--An American Boy--Plutarch’s Lives--Seeing
    General Harrison--Teachers--Homely People--Grandpa’s
    Explanation--Grandfather Gillespie’s Death--His
    Father’s Library--Swimming the River--Nutting--Marvel
    of Industry--School in Lancaster, Ohio--Two
    Boys by the Name of James--Hon. Thomas Ewing--The
    Problem of Presidents--Getting Ready for College--Contrast
    with Garfield                                                     41

  III.

  IN COLLEGE.

  Doctor McConahy--Young Ladies’ Seminary--Entering College--
    Habits--Good Teachers--Professor Murray--New
    Testament in Greek--No Book-Worm--An Old
    Class-Mate--College Honors--Henry Clay--“Rights
    and Duties of American Citizenship”--Who Reads an
    American Book                                                     60

  IV.

  TEACHING IN KENTUCKY.

  A Triumph--Blue Licks Military Academy--Five Hundred
    Dollars--Trip to Kentucky--Stage-Coach--A Young
    Lady Companion--Great Country for Quail--Georgetown--“I
    am Mr. Blaine”--At Tea--Monday Morning--Hard,
    Quick Work--Lexington and Frankfort--Annual
    Picnic--Met his Friend--Enamored--The Future--Southern
    Trip--Two Winters in New Orleans--Col.
    Thorndike F. Johnson--Bushrod Johnson--Visits
    Home--Richard Henry Lee--Professor Blaine                         71

  V.

  A NEW FIELD.

  President Polk--One Old Bachelor--Reading Law--Institution
    for the Blind--Pine Tree State--_Kennebec Journal_--Franklin
    Pierce--Colby University and Bowdoin College--Getting
    Ready for Work--Editor’s Chair                                    95

  VI.

  JOURNALISM.

  Master of the Situation--Henry Ward Beecher--Abolitionists--
    Attack on Sumner and Greeley--Senator Fessenden--John
    L. Stevens--Fifty Days--Blaine’s Old Foreman,
    Howard Owen--Slave Trade--Philadelphia--Jefferson’s
    Remark--Seward’s Great Speech--Momentous Period                  103

  VII.

  IN THE LEGISLATURE.

  Great Year of Republicanism--Frémont and Dayton--First
    Public Effort--Editorials--Henry Wilson--_Richmond Enquirer_--
    Dred Scott Case--Sells Out--Coal Lands--_Portland
    Daily Advertiser_--No Vacation--Business Success--God’s
    Storm--Six Times a Week--Armed to the
    Teeth--Right Ways--Political Weather--Earl of Warwick--The
    Aggressor--At a Stand-Still--Speaker of the
    House--“Gentlemen of the House of Representatives”--Old
    Wigwam at Chicago--A Firm Lincoln Man--Solid
    Front--Send us Blaine--Hullo!--Gold-Bowed
    Spectacles--Advancing Backward--Can a Southern State
    Secede?--Glow of the Contest--Whittier’s Poem                    122

  VIII.

  SPEAKER OF THE MAINE LEGISLATURE.

  Latest from Charleston--Governor Morrill--What Did they
    See?--Short-Cut Words--Ten Thousand from Maine--Will
    Mr. Blaine go?--North’s History of Augusta--Colonel
    Ellsworth--General Lyon--Israel Washburne, Jr.--Bloody
    Work--Regiments Born in a Day--In Washington--Senate
    and House Honored--All the Material
    for the Campaign--This Sort of Thing--The New Year               155

  IX.

  SECOND TERM AS SPEAKER.

  Demand for Legislation--Blockade-Runners--Fort Knox--Hog
    Island--Resolutions--Hon. A. P. Gould, of Thomaston--
    Opportunity for Forensic Effort--Domestic War--Great
    Triumph of the Winter--Will the Negro Fight?--Only
    Half a Negro--Nominated for Congress--Visits
    the Old Home--Loud Calls for Mr. Blaine--Maine What?--
    Republican before there was a Party--Miles Standish--Open
    Letter--Love of Men                                              176

  X.

  ENTERING CONGRESS.

  Life in Washington--Cliques--Passports--First Resolve--First
    Bill--Test of Ability--Great Speech--Working
    Members--A Slight Rebuff--Penitentiary Bill--Convention
    of Governors--A Little Episode--Boutwell’s
    Courtesy--New York City--After Him from all Sides--Union
    National Republican Convention at Baltimore--Frémont
    and Cochrane--Delegates--Dr. Robert J.
    Breckenridge--Idol of the Army--Million Men in Arms--“War
    a Failure”--Sixty Day’s Work in other States--No
    Mountain or Sea-shore--Squirm or Cheer--His
    Speeches--“Never Settled until it is Settled Right”--“Give
    Me Gold”--Power with an Audience--Mr. Lincoln’s
    Real Triumph                                                     201

  XI.

  SECOND TERM IN CONGRESS.

  Kittery to Houlton--Re-elected to Congress--Evolution--
    Greenbackism--Pay in Coin--Intuition--Long Years of Study--
    “I feel” and “I Know”--Befriending a Cadet--A
    Civil Question--Iron Clads that Will Not Float--The
    “Jeannette”--“A Cruel Mockery”--Bludgeon of
    Hard, Solid Fact--“Paper Credits”--Keen Eye for
    Fraud--Flag Again Flying on Fort Sumter--Unshackle
    Humanity--“A Little Grievance”--Amending the Constitution--
    Closing Speech--Thoroughness and Mastery                         236

  XII.

  CONTINUED WORK IN CONGRESS.

  Not McClellan, but Lincoln--Religious Character of Abraham
    Lincoln--War Closed--Lincoln Murdered--Great
    Review--Basis of Representation--History of Finance--A
    Lively Tilt--Consistency--Amnesty--At Home
    in Congress--Political Re-action--Brass--No Red-Tape--
    Volunteers in the Regular Army--Fair Play--Thad.
    Stevens--Strong Friendships                                      262

  XIII.

  CONGRESSIONAL CAREER CONTINUED.

  On their Way Up--The Place to Look for Presidents--Drivers
    of the Quill--Seed-Corn--Blaine and Logan
    Then--Little Things--Cornstalks--Not Hot-Headed--Newspapers--
    Europe--England’s Trade--Parliament--Home of his Ancestors--
    Knowledge of French--The Rhine and Florence--Malaria in the
    Bones--Studied from Life--Italy a Joy--Return--In his Seat--
    Five-Twenties--Power of Analysis--National Debt--Two
    Days to Reply--“Payment Suspended”--The President’s
    Impeachment--Field-Work--Hard or Soft Money--Wrings
    the Neck of a Heresy--New President of the Right Stamp           277

  XIV.

  SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN
  CONGRESS.

  No Clouds--Manhood’s Prime--Vacancy in the Speaker’s Chair--How
    to Win--Trio of Leaders--Right-Hand Man--Chosen Chief--Tennyson’s
    Words--A Proud Day--National Reputation--Drawing a Resolution--
    Growth of Congress--Third Election to the Speakership--
    Statesmanship--Political Assassination--Brigadiers by the
    Score--Credit of the Fourteenth Amendment--Invite Him up--
    Betrayed--Reads the Letters--Cablegram Suppressed--Eye-Witness--
    Proctor Knott--Honored by Governor Connor, of Maine--Vindicated
    and Endorsed by the State Legislature--Answer, ye who Can!       298

  XV.

  UNITED STATES SENATOR.

  Sabbath Morning--Ill and Weary Time--Gail Hamilton--Colleague
    of Hannibal Hamlin--One Inning Then--Galaxies by the Score--Old
    Spirit of Freeness--Statue of William King--Hard Money--Commodore
    Vanderbilt--Weight of the Silver Dollar--“Order”--Honoring the
    Aged Soldier--Magnanimity, not Intolerance--Pensioning Jeff.
    Davis--Negro Practically Disfranchised--Groups of States--
    Resolutions--Contrasts and Comparisons--Peroration--White Man’s
    Vote North and South                                             318

  XVI.

  BLAINE AND GARFIELD.

  Forever Linked Together--Lincoln and Seward--Young Men
    Together--Dark Days--Iron Chest--Breath of Battle Blew
    Hottest--Beautiful Plants--Massive Heads--Future Candidates--A
    Matter of Honor--Great Speech--They Crowned Him--“Command My
    Services”--Political Lying--Dead Upon the Field--True as
    Steel--His First, Best Friend--Clean as Well as Competent--At
    His Right Hand--Love Lights the Path                             337

  XVII.

  SECRETARY OF STATE.

  Foreign Policy of the Garfield Administration--War in South
    America--General Hurlbut--Chilian Authorities--The Three
    Republics--Object of the Peace Congress--William Henry
    Trescot--Received a Vindication--A Beautiful Prophecy--Lincoln
    and Blaine--Clayton-Bulwer Treaty--Servant of his Genius--The
    Assassin’s Bullet                                                351

  XVIII.

  HOME LIFE OF MR. BLAINE.

  “Letters to the Joneses”--Home a Republic--Why Not Shine on?--
    Brown House on Green Street--Come and See Me--Pound of Steak--
    “James! James!”--“Must not Work so Hard”--Every Vote in
    America--A Baby-Boy--Sorrow--Six Children--“Owen, Have You a
    Quarter?”--A Good Joke--The Family Pew--Bible-Class Teacher--His
    Old Pastors--More Copy--The Man, Not the Clothes--Stranger to
    Storms--State-street Home--Press-Excursions--Bright Side of
    Things--No Liquors--Home-Life at its Zenith--Photographs--The
    Hammock--The Coolest of the Company                              362

  XIX.

  CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. BLAINE.

  A Business Man’s Estimate--Incident Showing Versatility--
    Curiosity--Humor--Coolness and Self-Possession--Retentive
    Memory--Genuineness and Simplicity--Scene with a Malicious
    Reporter--Great-Heartedness--Lover of Fair Play--Sense of
    Honor--Industry--Sympathy for Misfortune--Caution--A Singular
    Habit--Vigorous Exercise--Punctuality--General Resume            384

  XX.

  NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT.

  A Steady March Upward--Campaigns of 1876 and 1880--His Loyalty
    under Defeat--The Great Convention of 1884--Organization and
    Preliminaries--Maine’s Favorite Son Presented--Twelve Thousand
    People Cheering--Exciting Scenes--The First Ballot--Gains for
    Blaine--The People’s Choice--A Whirlwind of Vociferous
    Applause--Blaine’s Nomination Made Unanimous--The Evening
    Session--Gen. John A. Logan for Vice-President                   402

  XXI.

  GEN. JOHN A. LOGAN.

  His Birth--Parentage--Youth--Slight Educational Opportunities--
    Shiloh Academy--Enlistment for the Mexican War--Fearlessness--
    Promotion--Additional Studies--Enters on the Profession of
    Law--Clerk of Jackson County--Prosecuting Attorney--In the
    Legislature--Presidential Elector--On the Stump--A False
    Allegation--Surrounded by Rebel Sympathizers--Lincoln’s
    Election--In Congress--Raises a Regiment--Brilliant Career in
    the Army--Rapid Elevation--Major-General within a Year--“I Have
    Entered the Field to Die, if Need be”--At the Head of the
    Fifteenth Army Corps--“Atlanta to the Sea”--Lincoln’s Second
    Election--Johnston’s Surrender--The Grand Review--Resignation
    from the Service--Declines Mission to Mexico--Repeated Elections
    to Congress--On the Impeachment Committee--Chosen United States
    Senator--His Eloquence--Helps Found the Grand Army of the
    Republic--First National Commander--Action on Financial
    Measures--His Modest Mode of Life--A Noble Wife--His Children--
    Stalwart Supporter of General Grant--Nominated for the
    Vice-Presidency--Conclusion                                      409



[Illustration: “OLD HICKORY IS COMING”]



[Illustration]

PINE TO POTOMAC

[Illustration]

I.

THE BOY.


“Old Hickory is coming! He will be along in his great coach to-morrow,
before noon,” rang out the cheery voice of Uncle Will Blaine, who
seemed glad all over at the prospect of once more seeing the Hero of
New Orleans and the man of iron will.

“Well, let him come,” said the Prothonotary. “I would not walk up to
the cross-roads to see him,” and the face of the old Whig grew stern
with determination.

“You will let me take Jimmy, will you not, to see the old General?”

“O, yes, you can take him,” the politic use of General instead of
President having relaxed, somewhat, the stern features of the sturdy
Scottish face.

“He’s coming! He’s coming! Hurrah! Hurrah! Here he comes,” shouted
voice after voice of the great crowd assembled on the morrow, from
valley and mountain, Uncle Will leading off at last, with the regular
old-fashioned continental “Hip, Hip, Hurrah,” with three-times-three.

Martial music, of the old revolutionary sort, rang out, with fife and
drum, as President Jackson, who had just been succeeded by Martin Van
Buren, after serving from 1829 to 1837, stepped from his carriage, and
after a hearty greeting, spoke a few incisive words, as only the old
hero could.

A boy seven years old was held above the crowd, just before him, by the
strong arms of Uncle Will. The General saw the large, wondering eyes,
and the eager face, patted him on the head, saying, “I am glad to see
you, my noble lad.”

The boy was James G. Blaine.

The impression of that moment remains to this hour. Little did General
Jackson think he was looking into the face of a future candidate for
the presidency.

The National Road over which the congressmen and presidents, and the
great tide of travel from the west and south, passed to and from
Washington, was near his father’s door.

This National highway, built by the government before the days of
railroads and steam-boats, was a strong band of union between remote
sections of the country. It was a highway of commerce as well as of
travel, and formed one of the chief features in the country, so rapidly
filling up after the fearful storms of war were over and the settled
years of peace had come.

It is a remarkable fact, that inspired penmen have sketched the
infancy of most of the great men whose lives they have portrayed. This
is beautifully true of Moses, the great emancipator and leader, a
law-giver of the ancient Hebrew people. How they glorify the childhood
of this great man, and make us love him at the start! So, also, are the
infancy and childhood of Samuel, great among the prophets of Israel,
disclosed. The voice of his heroic mother is heard as she gives him to
the Lord. The infancy of John, the mighty man at the Jordan, and of
Jesus, are most impressively revealed. No lovelier pictures hang on the
walls of memory; no sweeter sunshine fills the home than the little
ones with their joy and prattle, and with the sublime possibilities to
be unfolded as they fill up the ranks in humanity’s march, or take the
lead of the myriad host.

As we go back to study the beginnings of a world, so may we well look
back to behold the dawning of that life, great in the nation’s love and
purpose to-day.

We shall find there a child of nature, born in no mansion or city, but
on “Indian farm,” upon the Washington side of the Monongahela River,
opposite the village of Brownsville, and about sixty miles below
Pittsburgh, in the old Quaker State of Pennsylvania.

It was at the foot-hills of the Alleghanies, a region wild, romantic,
and grand, well fitted to photograph omnipotence upon the fresh young
mind, and impress it with the greatness of the world. It was a section
of country whose early history is marked with all that is thrilling in
the details of Indian warfare, which constituted the chief staple of
childhood stories.

Daniel Boone and the Wetzells had been there. The startled air had
echoed with the crack of their rifles; the artillery of the nation
had resounded through these mountains; the black clouds of war had
blown across the skies, and the smoke of battle had drifted down those
valleys.

All that is terrible in nature had its birth and home in that section
of our country, which is most like the great ocean petrified in its
angriest mood and mightiest upheavals. The bears and wolves, in their
numbers, ferocity, and might commanded in early days the respect even
of savages, while elk and deer, antelope and fowl, and fish in endless
variety, birds and flowers of every hue, and foliage of countless
species, won the admiration of these rude children of nature.

Here in this Scotland of America, born of a sturdy ancestry whose
muscle and brain, courage and mighty wills, had made them masters of
mountain and glen,--here in the heart of the continent,--James G.
Blaine was born. Eternal vigilance had not only been the price of
liberty in that bold mountain home for generations, but the price of
life itself.

It was in a large stone house, built by his great-grandfather
Gillespie, that James Gillespie Blaine was born, January 31, 1830, one
of eight strong, robust, and hearty children, five of whom survive.
It was midway between the war of 1812 and the Mexican war of 1848,
and in a country settled nearly fifty years before by soldiers of the
Revolution. Few are born in circumstances of better promise for the
full unfolding of the faculties of body and mind than was this child
of four and fifty years ago, cradled in the old stone house on the
ancestral farm. The house itself tells of the Old World; and those
mountains whose heights are in the blue, tell of Scottish and Irish
clans that never lose the old fire and the old love, and that marched
from the conquest of the Old to the conquering of the New World.

The father, Ephraim Lyon Blaine, was of Scottish origin, and
Presbyterian of truest blood, with sign and seal and signet stamp of
the old Scotch Covenanters upon life and character. His ancestors came
to this country in 1720,--one hundred and ten years before the birth of
James.

His mother, Maria Gillespie, was of an Irish-Catholic family from
Donegal in Ireland. They belonged to the Clan Campbell, Scotch-Irish
Catholics, and descended from the Argyles of Scotland. They came to
America in 1764, and were Catholics through and through. They were
large land-owners in America, and resided wholly in old colonial
Pennsylvania.

The great-grandfather of Ephraim Lyon Blaine, father of James G.,
was born in 1741, and died at Carlisle, Penn., in March, 1804. He
was a colonel in the Revolutionary war from its commencement, and
the last four years of the war was the Commissary General. He was
with Washington amid the most trying scenes, and enjoyed his entire
confidence. During the dark winter at Valley Forge, he was by the side
of the Commander-in-Chief, and it is a matter of history that the army
was saved from starvation by his vigilant and tireless activity. It is
not difficult to see how stupendous was the task of subsisting broken
and shattered forces in the dead of an awful winter, upon an exhausted
country. It required skill and courage, tact and force of personal
power, not surpassed even in the daring march of Napoleon across the
Alps. But he did it, brave, determined spirit that he was. Others might
falter, but not he; others might break down from sheer exhaustion or
dismay, but not General Blaine, so long as the fires of the unbroken
spirit of the old Covenanters heated the furnace of his heart, and
their high resolve for liberty was enthroned in his affections.

From such parent stock what shall the bloom and blossom be? What the
fruitage and harvesting of other years from the seed-sowing of such
splendid living? Not what the height of stature, but what the stature
of soul,--not what the breadth of back, nor bigness of brawn, but what
the breadth of mind and bigness of brain?

Let the history of our day and generation make reply.

Eight years before the old patriot General died, at Carlisle, his
grandson, Ephraim Lyon Blaine, the father of James, was born in the
same quaint old Scottish town. At Dickinson College he received his
education, and settled as a lawyer in Washington County, Penn., where
for years he lived an honored and useful life as Prothonotary of the
Courts; and here, amid the lull in the storm of battle-years, the boy,
James G. Blaine, was born.

His cradle-songs were the old songs of the New Republic. It is pleasant
to think of such a personage coming to consciousness, clear and strong,
among such hallowed scenes of a land redeemed, a nation born, a people
free. All about our youthful hero were the scarred faces and shattered
forms of those who had come back from the fields of strife.

The stories of Monmouth and Brandywine, of Concord and Lexington, of
New Orleans and Yorktown, were lived over and dreamed about. Living
epistles, walking histories, were all about him. Instead of reading
about them, they read to him, poured out the dearly-bought treasures of
a life, painted scenes that were forever impressed upon their minds;
with all the shades of life and death, unrolled the panorama of the
great campaigns, through those long, dread battle-years. What education
this, in home and street, in shop and store, on farm and everywhere,
for patriot youth! It gave a love and zest for historic reading,
which must be traced when we enter more largely upon his literary and
educational career.

At five years of age the systematic work of an education began by
sending James to a common country school near by. The old United States
spelling-book was the chief textbook. Webster’s spelling-book was not
then in vogue. Nothing remarkable transpired, except to note the
proficiency and steady progress he made in mastering the language he
has learned so well to use.

The intensity of his life was that within, rather than the outer life.
He was observing, drinking in with eyes and ears. Robinson Crusoe was
his first book, as it has been with many another boy, and from this
beginning he became a most omnivorous reader.

His first two teachers were ladies, and are still living. The first, a
Quakeress, Miss Mary Ann Graves, now Mrs. Johnson, living near Canton,
Ohio, eighty-four years of age; the other was Mrs. Matilda Dorsey,
still living at Brownsville, just across the Monongahela River from
Washington County, where Mr. Blaine was born. While speaking in Ohio,
five years ago, during Governor Foster’s campaign, his old teacher,
Mrs. Johnson, came forward at the close of his speech to congratulate
her old scholar. How little these two women dreamed of the splendid
future of the young mind they helped start up the hill of knowledge;
how little they thought of the tremendous power with which he would
one day use the words, great and small, he spelled out of that old
book; the great occasions upon which he would marshal them, as a
general marshals his men for effective warfare; of the great speeches,
orations, debates, papers, pamphlets, and books into which he would put
a power of thought that would move nations.

It was merely a country school-house, and the old frame-building has
been torn down, and a new and more modern brick house substituted. It
was not simply to spell words, but also to read and write, and, indeed,
gain the rudiments of a thorough English education.

As a learner, he exhibited the same quick, energetic traits of mind he
has since shown in the use of the knowledge gained.

It was upon the hardest kind of high, rough seats his first lessons
were learned, with none of the splendid appliances of the graded
school of to-day. Then was the time of the rod and fool’s cap, which
many remember so distinctly. Boys that fought were compelled to “cut
jackets,” as it was called. The stoutest boy in school was sent with
an old-fashioned jack-knife to cut three long switches, stiff, and
strong, and lithe. The offending boys were called upon the floor
before the whole school, and each one given a rod, while the teacher
reserved the third. They were commanded to go at it, and at it they
went, to the uproarious delight of the whole school. Nothing could be
more ludicrous, as stroke after stroke thicker and faster fell, on
shoulders, back, and legs, while the blood flew through their veins
hot and tingling. The contest ended only when the switches gave out.
When one was broken and cast away, the teacher stepped up and laid his
switch on the back of the boy whose switch was whole, while the other
fellow had to stand and take it from the boy whose switch was yet
sound. So they kept at it, stroke after stroke.

The demoralizing effect for the moment had a great moralizing power
afterward. No boy ever wanted to take the place of one of these boys.

Master James was seldom punished at school, except to have his knuckles
rapped with the ruler, or ears boxed for some slight offence; but he
never failed to take full notes of the fracas, when other boys received
their just deserts. His observations have always been very minute, and
his remembrances distinct. Among his earliest recollections is one
in 1834, when he was but four years of age, the building of a bridge
across the Monongahela River to Brownsville, by the company that
constructed the National Road. His Uncle Will took him by the hand and
led him out upon the big timbers, between which he could look down and
see the waters below. The building of this bridge was a great event to
the people, and one of special interest in the Gillespie family, as his
grandfather owned the ferry, which of course the bridge superseded,
and which had been a source of revenue to the extent of five thousand
dollars a year to him. But in the march of progress ferries give way
to bridges, as boyhood does to manhood, and by a sort of mute prophecy
that bridge made and proclaimed the way to Washington more easy. It was
to him the bridge over that dark river of oblivion from the unknown of
childhood to the consciousness of youth and manhood. This same uncle,
William L. Gillespie, who held him by the hand while on the bridge,
was often with his favorite nephew, and exerted a strong influence for
good upon him. He was a fine scholar, a splendid gentleman, and a man
of infinite jest. The impressions received from one so accomplished,
and yet so genial, loving, and tender, during these walks and talks, of
almost constant and daily intercourse, are seen and felt to-day in the
character of the nephew of whom we write.

The first outbreak in the nature of young James, and which shows
latent barbarism so common to human nature, was a little escapade
which happened when about five years old. A Welshman, by the name of
Stephen Westley, was digging a well in the neighborhood; in some way
he had injured the boy and greatly enraged him. The man at the top of
the well had gone away, and Master James, who never failed to see an
opportunity, or to estimate it at its proper value and improve it
promptly, stepped upon the scene.

He found his man just where he wanted him, and without reflection as
to consequences, began immediately to throw clods and stones upon
him, which of course was no source of amusement to the man below. He
screamed lustily, and on being rescued went to the house and complained
of the young offender, saying,--

“He has too much _spurt_” (spirit).

It cost James a good thrashing, but the Welshman is not the only one
who has had just cause to feel that “_he had too much spirit_.” Indeed
it is the same great, determined spirit, trained, tempered, and toned
by the stern conflict of life, which is the law of fullest development,
and brought under complete control, that has given Mr. Blaine his
national prominence, and filled the American mind with the proud dream
of his leadership.

His grandfather Gillespie was the great man of that region. His Indian
Hill farm, with its several large houses and barns, was a prominent
feature of the country. He was a man of large wealth for his time;
built mills and engaged in various enterprises, damming the river for
milling purposes, which was a herculean task. In 1811, in company with
Capt. Henry Shreve, later of Shreveport, he sent the first steamer
from Pittsburgh. It was not until the year following that Fulton and
Livingston began building steamers in that city.

This grandfather, Neal Gillespie, was five years old when the war of
the Revolution began, and as a boy received the full impression of
those scenes from the very midst of the fray in his Pennsylvania home.
It doubtless helped to produce and awaken in him that great energy
of character, and force of personality which enabled him to amass
a fortune in that western wild, and in every way help forward the
country’s development.

It was the good fortune of James to spend the first nine years of
his life in the closest relations of grandson to grandsire, with
this remarkable man; and doubtless much of that magnetism and rich
personality for which Mr. Blaine is so justly noted, may be traced to
this strong-natured and powerful ancestor upon the side of his mother,
as well as to Gen. Ephraim Blaine, on the side of his father. He
inherits the combined traits of character which gave them prominence
and success in life.

The little country school and its slow, monotonous processes, were
not rapid enough for the swift, eager mind of the boy. He had learned
to read, and a new world opened to him. He caught its charm and
inspiration. He had read Scott’s Life of Napoleon before he was
eight years old,--a little fellow of seven, on a farm in an almost
wilderness, devouring with his eager mind such a work! Half of our
public men have never even heard of it yet. But what is perfectly
amazing, before he was nine years old he had gone over all of
Plutarch’s Lives, reciting the histories to his grandfather Gillespie,
who died when he was nine years of age.

He acquired all that Isocrates and Alcibiades tell of, before he was
ten years old, and it is a conviction with Mr. Blaine that the common
ideas of the average boy’s ability need to be greatly enlarged. Certain
it was, that he inherited a hardy mental and physical constitution.
Life on that great farm kept him engaged and associated constantly with
men who both enjoyed and appreciated learning, and who loved him and
saw in him at least a remarkably bright boy.

Especially did his father, who was a college-graduate and member of
the bar, see that he was steadily and persistently drilled, and to his
father Mr. Blaine freely gives the credit so largely and justly due.
His reading was not the careless, hap-hazard doing of a big-brained
boy, who read from curiosity simply to while away time, but there was
method in it,--a quieting hand was on him,--it was all done under
intelligent, wise, and loving direction.

There was none of the hard, rough, and bitter experiences in his
boyhood days or early manhood, to which so many of our nation’s great
men were subjected. He had none of the long and desperate struggle with
poverty and adversity which hung on Mr. Garfield’s early years. He knew
nothing by experience of the privations and hardships through which Mr.
Lincoln came to the high honors of the nation and the world; but sprang
from the second generation after the Revolutionary War, and from a long
line of ancestors who had been large land-owners and gentlemen in the
sense of wealth and education, as well as in that finely cultivated
sense, of which Mr. Blaine is himself so excellent an exponent.

James worked on the farm, carried water to the men, and carried the
sheaves of grain together for the shockers, and did just as any
school-boy on a farm would do;--hunt the eggs, frolic with the calves,
feed the pigs, drive up the cows, run on errands, pet the lambs, bring
in wood, and split the kindlings. He loved the sports in which boys
still delight; went fishing, played ball, rowed his boat on the river,
and would laugh, and jump, and tumble, and run equal to any boy.
All the boys about him were sons or grandsons of old Revolutionary
soldiers. They had a lesson which this day does not enjoy, to talk over
and keep full of the old theme. The nation was then young, and new,
and fresh. The Fourth of July was celebrated as it is not now; when
old soldiers passed away, their deeds and worth were all talked over.
The result was an intense Americanism, for which he has since become
noted, and which has made him an American through and through, of the
most pronounced loyalty and patriotic type, as to deem a stain upon his
country’s honor an individual disgrace.

Empty sleeves and nothing to fill them, limbs gone and no substitute
for them, were as common then comparatively as they are now, only now
there is an artificial substitute.

James enjoyed the benefits and blessings of a large family home. It was
the practice of his father to read aloud to his family, and thus the
evening-hours were utilized in the early education of his children.
Home training, so often neglected now, was in vogue then, and the
legal, scholarly mind of Mr. Blaine could well choose in his fatherly
love and pride, just what was best suited to the young minds about him,
while he was amply competent to give intelligent and suitable answers
to the numerous questions called forth by the narration in hand. That
great National Road to the cities of the Union, and its larger towns,
was a highway of intelligence. Not only did it bring the mail and all
the news, but many a book, magazine, or other periodical they were
pleased to order.

Beside, the direct communication by steamer with Pittsburgh and points
above, which had been the case eighteen years before the birth of
James, supplied abundant means for travel and correspondence with
other quarters. Living where the steamers passed the highway, they
were more highly favored with facilities of commerce and the news than
perhaps any other portion of the land. They could get all there was
going. There was no telegraph, and none of the swifter means of travel
so common now; canal-boats were a luxury then. But all was life and
energy. The enthusiasm of manhood was on the nation. Then, indeed, it
was in manhood’s glory. It had grown to be its own ruler and governor;
was truly of age, and did its own voting. British interference had
learned its lesson of modest withdrawal, and for the same period of
eighteen years no unnaturalized Englishman had been found on American
soil with a uniform on and a gun in his hand.

There was a fine piano in the home of Mr. Blaine, and the good wife and
mother was an excellent player, and frequently delighted the household
with music. Songs abounded; a harpsichord was in the home, and it
added its quaint music to the melody of the circle.

But James could not leave books alone, especially history. The history
of the country was read by him over and over again. The books he had
read, and that had been carefully read to him by the time he was ten
years of age, would surpass in number, size, and literary value, the
libraries of many a professional man, outside his purely professional
works, and not only had the principal ones been read, but studied
and recited. Seldom is any boy so highly favored with the interested
personal efforts of such a trio of educators as were the father, uncle,
and grandfather of Mr. Blaine.

It is frequently said by college-graduates, that they learn more
outside of the recitation-room, from association with teachers and
students from libraries and in the societies, than in the room for
instruction. It was in associating with these relatives, cultured and
gentlemanly, able and instructive, that he was encouraged and inspired
to his task of learning. James mastered the spelling-book; in fact, he
was the best speller in the school, and was called out far and near
to spelling-matches, and every time “that boy of Mr. Blaine’s” would
stand alone and at the head, when all the neighborhood of schools was
“spelled down.”

One night the word was “Enfeoff.” It came toward the last, and was
one of the test words. The sides were badly thinned as “independency,
chamois, circumnavigation,” and a host of other difficult words
had been given out. But the hour was growing late; some of the
young fellows began to think of going home with the girls, of a big
sleigh-ride down the mountain and through the valleys, and one big,
merry load belonged over the river at Brownsville, and they began to be
a little restless. But still there was good interest as this favorite
triumphed, and that one went down. Finally the word was given, all
missed it and sat down but James. Every eye was on him as the president
of the evening said “Next,” and our little master of the situation
spelt “En-feoff.”

No effort was made to restrain the cheers. The triumph was complete.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

II.

PREPARATION.


At the death of his grandfather Gillespie, who was worth about one
hundred thousand dollars,--a large sum for that early time,--Mrs.
Blaine inherited, among other things, one-third of the great Indian
Hill Farm, comprising about five hundred acres, with great houses,
orchards, and barns,--a small village of itself.

This, with his father’s office in the courts, and other property,
placed the family in good circumstances, and it was decided to give
James a thorough education. He was now nine years old, with a mind as
fully trained and richly stored as could be found for one of his years.
He was a ready talker, and loved discussion, and so frequently showed
what there was in him by the lively debates and conversations into
which he was drawn.

Thus his ability to express himself tersely and to the point, was early
developed. He came to be, almost unconsciously, growing up as he did
among them, the admiration and delight of the large circle of friends
and loved ones, whose interest centered on and about the farm, as well
as among neighbors and acquaintances.

Bullion’s Latin Grammar was called into requisition, and mastered so
well that he can conjugate Latin verbs as readily now as can his sons
who are recent graduates, the one of Yale, and the other of Harvard.

The thoroughness with which he did his work is a delightful feature of
his career. One is not compelled to feel that here is sham, and there
is shoddy; that this is sheer pretense, and that is bold assumption, or
a threadbare piece of flimsy patch-work.

One word expresses the history of the man, and that one word is
_mastery_. It fits the man. Mastery of self; mastery of books; mastery
of men; mastery of subjects and of the situation; mastery of principles
and details. He goes to the top, every time and everywhere, sooner or
later. And it is largely because he has been to the bottom first, and
mastered the rudiments, one and all, and then risen to the heights, not
by a single bound, but “climbing the ladder, round by round.”

The amazing power of dispatch in the man, as well as thoroughness, are
only the larger development of his youthful habit and character.

It was not so much an infinite curiosity as an infinite love of
knowledge that made his young mind drink so deeply. His was a thirsty
soul, and only by drinking deeply and long could the demand be met.

When ten years old, the great campaign of General Harrison came
on. He was ready for it, and soon filled up with the subject. His
impulsiveness was powerful and intelligent, vastly beyond his years.

Few men were fresher or fuller of the history of the colonies and
states than this boy. He was, in fact, a little library on foot,
filled with incidents, names, and dates, familiar with the exploits
of a thousand men and a score of battles, posted as to the great
enterprises and measures of the day, by reason of his distinguished
relations and his abundant facilities and sources of information.
Perhaps, too, no campaign was ever more intense and popular, or
entered more into the heart and home-life of young and old, than that
of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” “Log Cabin and Free Cider.” The great
gatherings, barbecues, and speeches, and multiplied discussions and
talk everywhere in house and street, in office and shop, would fire any
heart that could ignite, or rouse anyone not lost in lethargy. James
was not troubled that way, but was always on hand; he would sit in the
chimney-corner, or out on the great porch, while the old-line Whigs
gathered to read, and hear, and digest aloud the news.

The political world had dawned upon him. He was in it for sure, and
in earnest. His historical mind was gathering history ripe from the
boughs. It was luscious to his taste. He was somewhere in every
procession that wended its way with music and banners and mottoes
innumerable to the place of speaking, and absorbed the whole thing.

Few could have voted more intelligently than he when election day came,
for few had taken a livelier interest in the whole campaign, or taken
the matter in more completely.

In three years he was admitted to college, so this was no spurt
of mental power, but a steady growth, and but marked an era of
intellectual unfolding.

It was a genuine and profitable source of most practical education,
for all through the great and exciting campaign he did nothing else
but attend the monster demonstrations. Dr. William Elder and Joseph
Lawrence, the father of Hon. George B. Lawrence, now in Congress, were
particularly powerful in impressions upon him.

Among the prominent speakers going through, who stopped to address
meetings, was Wm. C. Rivers, of Virginia, who is particularly
remembered by Mr. Blaine.

Hon. Thomas M. T. McKenna, father of the present Judge McKenna, was
a distinguished personage in that portion of the state, and took an
active and influential part in the contest,--a contest full of vim,
as it was the first Whig victory on a national scale, but as full of
good nature. Jackson’s severe methods and measures, throttling the
Nullifiers, sweeping out of existence the great United States Bank
at Philadelphia, with its $150,000,000 of capital, and sundry other
measures, had filled the people with consternation, and a great change
was imperatively demanded.

Newspapers were numerous in the home of Mr. Blaine, and never escaped
the vigilant eye of the young and growing journalist and statesman.
The Washington _Reporter_ made a large impression upon him, as did
also the old Pittsburgh _Gazette_, a semi-weekly paper, and the
_Tri-weekly National Intelligencer_ (Gales and Seaton, editors) was of
the strongest and most vigorous character; also, the _United States
Gazette_ (semi-weekly), published at Philadelphia, and edited by Joseph
R. Chandler, of that city, and later on Joseph C. Neal’s _Saturday
Gazette_. Surely the incoming of these nine or ten papers into the home
every week, counting the semi- and tri-weekly issues, would furnish
mental pabulum of the political sort in sufficient quantity to satisfy
the longing of any young mind. No wonder his growth was strong and
hardy. We have heard of an American boy of ten or twelve, who followed
the Tichborne Claim case at its original trial through the English
courts, but he was a bright high-school boy, who had every advantage
of the best graded schools, and improved them steadily, and yet it was
greatly to his credit. Graded schools were unknown in 1840, yet James,
who had finished reciting Plutarch’s Lives the year before to his
Grandfather Gillespie, watched eagerly for the heavily loaded sheets as
they came by post or steam-boat, and posted himself on their contents.
Besides these numerous papers, two magazines were taken and steadily
read by the boy. They were both published in Philadelphia,--_Graham’s
Magazine_ and _Godey’s Lady’s Book_. The one was dinner, and the other
dessert, to the ever hungry mind.

The magazines will be remembered as among the very best the country
afforded at that time. But things that do not grow with the country’s
growth are soon outgrown in the day of steam and lightning.

The boy who read those periodicals then has not been outgrown, but
he has outgrown much that then caused him to grow. They constituted
the chief part of polite literature, as it was called, of that form,
and helped in the culturing process which has resulted in harvests so
abundant.

Can we imagine the deep joy and satisfaction of that mere boy of ten
years at the election of General Harrison, for whom he had cheered a
hundred times? And when he came through on his way to Washington, to be
inaugurated president, he stayed over night at Brownsville, just across
the bridge over the river, and James was presented to him.

No camera obscura ever photographed a face so distinctly, and no
curious eyes ever took in the details of the scene more perfectly.

In addition to the two lady teachers who bore a part in the early
education of James Blaine, there are four men who held a conspicuous
place as instructors in the neighboring country school he attended, and
who are remembered with gratitude to-day. These are Albert G. Booth,
Joshua V. Gibbons, Solomon Phillips, and Campbell Beall. Mr. Booth is
still living, and has doubtless rejoiced many times that he did his
foundation work so well.

Mr. Booth was one of those patient, careful, devoted workers who do
good, honest work.

Joshua V. Gibbons bore a striking likeness to Abraham Lincoln. When
an old man, he visited Mr. Blaine in Congress, at the time he was
Speaker of the House. Mr. Blaine invited him to a seat beside him, in
the Speaker’s desk. It was a worthy honor to a noble teacher, a moment
of thrilling interest to the great national assembly, and attracted
universal attention.

Mr. Gibbons was a man of heavy, strong mind, and forceful personality,
and made himself deeply and strongly felt in the progress of young
Blaine’s mental growth. He did solid, accurate, and enduring work.

Homely people, as a general thing, have quite a fund of native
goodness, a sort of genial love and sympathy, to atone for physical
defects. Such seemed to be the case with the man who so resembled Mr.
Lincoln, and it drew all hearts to him. There was no rod or ruler
in school so long as he taught, and no need of any. Such things are
generally used in the school-room or family to supply deficiencies
of wisdom, tact, and genuine ability. He simply won their love and
respect, and it was their joy to give it. He taught them, also, things
outside of the books, and told them plenty of good, wholesome stories.
One day, in speaking about the heathen being away round on the other
side of the world, he simply remarked,--“Of course you know the world
is round,” but of course they did not.

The great eyes of James dilated, but he said nothing. He could not
help thinking and taking a child’s view of it when school was out. It
did not hurt much to fall down four or five times as he went home that
night, with his eyes upturned toward the Heavens, and the great thought
revolving in his brain. The first question his mother heard was,--

“Is this world round, anyhow, and how is it round?”

“Yes, my child,” and the old story of the ship was told, and he was
examining the picture in the atlas when his father came in, and _he_
was sounded and agreed with the assured fact of science; and that night
when he went up the hill to grandfather’s house to recite Plutarch,
first of all he asked,--

“Grandpa, did you know this world was round?”

Grandpa took him up in his great arms, and told him all about it, and
showing him through the window the great round haystack, on whose top
and sides there was room for twenty boys like him without falling off,
and how “the earth keeps turning around and around all the time, and a
great power holds people on, just as the roots hold the trees, so no
one can fall off,--and the fact is, it is so big, and large, and round,
and wide, they cannot fall off,” Jimmy thought he saw it and felt that
it must be so.

But the next week when he went to Pittsburgh with Uncle Will, on the
steamer, he was looking all the way for proof that the world was round.

But what puzzled the boy fully as much, was the grave assertion, made
without proof, that the sun does not move, when he knew that it did
rise and set. Grandpa, and his parents, and Uncle Will, had to hold
court every day until these questions were all settled, the testimony
all in, and the dreams of the young learner reflected other scenes.

His youth had a great sorrow. No grandson was ever loved and petted and
cared for and helped in a thousand ways as his Grandfather Gillespie
had helped and loved and cared for him. Though a man of affairs, and
carrying on business operations on a large scale and in distant parts,
he loved his home and all about him, and took special pride in this
boy. The heart of James was truly won. It was his special joy to be
up at grandfather’s. It was not the big red apple-tree, nor the great
clock on the stairs, nor the old rusty sabre and flint-lock musket, and
the many relics of the Revolution that attracted him, but grandfather
himself.

But grandfather did not get up, one morning, and the doctor was there,
and nobody went to work, and there was general alarm. The delirium of
fever was on him, but his strong constitution resisted its ravages of
inward fire for days and weeks. Now he went there oftener, walked more
softly, asked more eagerly. It all seemed so very strange. There was
his great chair vacant, and the hand that had so often lain on his head
seemed void of touch and power now. Everything seemed to stop. Books
had nothing in them now; papers were unopened. The world grew darker
and darker, until one black night, amid a terrific storm, word came
that grandfather had just died, and father and mother would not be home
for some time. The sun seemed to set to James, and he cried himself to
sleep, while the other children bewailed their loss.

The morrow was bright and clear, but full of sadness, and as he looked
upon the dear old man lying there, and felt his cold face and hand,--he
had never seen death before,--he was filled with wonder. The loss,
indeed, was great to him. But his memory was an inspiration, and
knowing what grandpa would have him do, he returned to his study with
renewed energy and to feel more than ever the worth and power of books
the departed one had prized so highly.

Solomon Phillips was a Quaker and a farmer, but a man of strong,
powerful intellect, honest as the day was long, painstaking and
persevering. Mathematics were his special delight. It is a triumph
of skill in teaching to love a hard, difficult science so as to get
others to love it, also. In this he succeeded. He felt its worth and
power. He would divide 0 by 1 (zero by one), and get infinity, and sit
and gaze out into its clear, white depths; and reversing the process he
would divide one by zero, and get the same result, and again gaze upon
the white depths of a world most beautiful to thought, in its clear,
unclouded, not nothingness, but somethingness, and that something
infinity. He seemed almost to worship at the shrine of this kingly
science, and would tell again and again how brilliant and beautiful,
and with what delightful accuracy, the labyrinths of the most gnarled
and vexed problems opened to him.

This was the man to give Master James his great lift in preparation for
college.

He followed promptly wherever the Quaker master led the way. Week after
week, and month after month, and term after term, the drill went on.
There were no bounds or limits then, as in academies now, so these
were passed as ships pass the equator, or railroad trains pass state
or county lines. Hard study was the work of the hour, but hard study
made work easy, and this was the secret, of all his progress,--constant
study brought constant victory.

When his Grandfather Gillespie died, his father took up the drill in
history, and Hume’s England was gone over carefully, beside Marshall’s
Life of Washington and a volume of Macaulay’s Essays which he got hold
of as a young boy.

His father had a fine, large library, in which he delved by day and
night, and aroused his son not only by example to constant application,
but also by persistent pressure. Here is the real key to that early
career of youthful days so thoroughly utilized,--the father’s
intelligent watchfulness, and careful method, and constant direction.
Only gauge the wheel to the stream, and the grist to the wheel, and
there will be no danger.

The father determined his son should be educated to the utmost, and
planned and wrought accordingly. No time was lost, and no undue haste
made; it was the persistency of constant pressure that won the day.

His boyhood was a happy, healthy period. He could swim across to
Brownsville, discarding both ferry and bridge.

He went nutting with the boys, as is their wont when autumn days are
on the woods, and Nature, glorified with a thousand tints of foliage,
is, in the poet’s sombre language, “in the sere and yellow leaf.” Black
walnuts, butternuts, shellbarks, hickory nuts, and chestnuts rewarded
their search, and gladdened winter evenings with their cheer.

There was nothing unnatural about young Blaine. He was no prodigy; no
marvel, except of industry and constant training. He was simply a fair
exhibition of what a good average boy, well endowed with pluck and
brains may become in the hands of good teachers, and under the guidance
of intelligent love and the unyielding pressure of a strong paternal
will. What his Eulogy says of Garfield is equally true of himself:--“He
came of good stock on both sides;--none better, none braver, none
truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manhood, and of
imperishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle.”

Mr. Blaine could also speak of himself as “fifth in descent from those
who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts,” and had fought
under Prince Charles in the affair of 1715 and 1723.

So satisfactory had been his progress thus far in the school, that the
plan of his education involved, in 1841, sending him to Lancaster,
Ohio, where for one term he was in a school taught by a younger brother
of Lord Lyons, so long our Minister from England, who according to
English law inherited nothing from his father’s estates, the eldest
brother receiving all; and so he made his home in the New World, and
worthily engaged in training future presidents of the great Republic.

During his term in Lancaster his home was in the family of Hon. Thos.
Ewing, his mother’s cousin. Mr. Ewing was a United States Senator when
James was born, and entered the Cabinet of President Harrison the
year before James’s appearance there as student, as Secretary of the
Treasury, and in 1849 in Taylor’s Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior,
both of whom died soon after their inauguration. In 1849 Governor Ford
appointed him to the Senate in the place of Hon. Thomas Corwin, who
entered Fillmore’s Cabinet.

This first and only term of school away from home and out of that
little country school-house in preparation for college, under the
broadening influences of such a home and the inspiration of such a
teacher, was a long stride forward toward the desired goal. It was
a great journey in those days for a boy only eleven years old to
make, but it added another large chapter to his already wide range of
knowledge and experience.

The other James, only a year younger, was living with his mother in
the woods of Orange, in the same state of Ohio, improving the modest
privileges of school, and maturing slowly, the winter James G. Blaine
spent at Lancaster in the spacious home of that distant relative
who had enjoyed all the high honors of the government, next to the
presidency.

These boys were probably not over one hundred miles apart that winter,
and both at school,--investing more largely in themselves than in all
besides, using themselves as capital, their own powers and endowments.
Surely no course is wiser, as their careers amply prove. It is
gathering what is outside that one may get out what is inside, that is
the process of education; not getting what is outside regardless of
what is within, that may be developed into treasures of transcendent
worth, more valuable than the contents of forest and mine.

American history furnishes few examples of the practical value of
cultivated brain more illustrious and potent than James A. Garfield and
James G. Blaine, and each the opposite in temperament and opportunity,
but both brought up on a farm, and both getting their first start up
the hill of knowledge in a country school.

Where are the two boys who, forty or fifty years from now, will take
the helm of state and guide the ponderous ship farther on her tireless
voyage?

No ever-recurring problem for the nation’s wisdom and the nation’s
choice, is greater than this one problem of presidents. It is the
nation’s offer of greatness and renown to any boy who, through long
years of patient and persistent endeavor, will seek full and honorable
preparation for the prize she proffers.

The brief stay at Lancaster was soon over, and James once more
harnessed into the old régime at home, with Campbell Beall for teacher,
in the same old house that seven years before he entered, a boy of five
years old.

In one year he is to pass his examination to enter Washington and
Jefferson College, in the village of Washington, their shire-town of
three thousand inhabitants, twenty-four miles away. Will he be ready?
Much depends on Campbell Beall, much on his father, and much on himself.

The common English branches are well wrought over, languages and
mathematics have come to be a delight, and in the old atmosphere, and
the old ways, with the old inspiration on him, progress comes anew.
Lines of reading from the library are kept up; the papers and magazines
are not neglected; political matters are settled; bad news comes in
from every quarter; Tyler is at the head of affairs; Ewing has sent
in his scathing letter of resignation as Secretary of the Treasury,
charging him with violating every promise the Whig party made to the
people; but there is no campaign, no voting to be done, so the thing is
settled.

Mr. Beall proves a good teacher. The Latin begun at Lancaster is
renewed at home, and so the winter goes by. Time seems literally to
be alive and drifts like the snow as it goes rushing by. As Benj. F.
Taylor has it:--

  “How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow,
    And the summers, like buds between;
  And the year, in its sheaf, so they come and they go
  On the river’s breast, with its ebb and its flow,
    As it glides thro’ the shadow and sheen.”

Father, mother, teacher, Uncle Will, all seem convinced that James can
pass and enter college; so, though only thirteen years of age, his
father takes him in the carriage, and they drive over to Washington.

It is a great experience for older heads, but for one so young, a
veritable epoch in his history.

It does not take long to convince the president that he has drawn a
prize, and he is entered with about forty other bright, smart boys, for
the Freshman class in the autumn. After three months of vacation, the
great work is to begin in real earnest, and the stuff those boys are
made of is to be thoroughly tried and tested.

There was none of the hard, rough, and bitter experience in his boyhood
days and early manhood to which so many of our nation’s great men
were subjected. He had none of the long and desperate struggles with
poverty and adversity which hung on Mr. Garfield’s early years. He knew
nothing, by experience, of the privations and hardships through which
Mr. Lincoln came to the high honors of the nation and the world, but
sprang from the second generation after the Revolutionary war, and from
a long line of ancestors who had been large land-owners and gentlemen,
in the sense of wealth and education, as well as in that finely
cultivated.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

III.

IN COLLEGE.


The summer of 1843 was bright with the anticipations of college life to
the eager boy. Manhood seemed dawning upon him, in all its glory. Since
his examinations, the great Dr. McConaughy had grasped his hand so
kindly and drawn him to his side; then putting his arm around him had
said, as he brushed the long, light hair from his forehead,--

“You are a brave boy; I am glad to see you and know you. We shall have
a good place ready for you September third, and I shall be glad to see
you in my home.”

The president of Washington and Jefferson College could appreciate to
the full the fact before him, that this boy, without the aid of high
school or academy, was more than ready for the studies and honors of
college.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE]

The three months of summer were not lost. A general review was had,
and particular attention paid to toning him up physically. He would
plunge into the river and swim to his heart’s content; dash away on
horse-back for a good ride; go over to Brownsville, where they all did
their trading, on errands, and regularly for the papers and magazines;
go on excursions up and down the river, and, withal, help in the field,
especially at harvest-time, and fill up regular hours with his best
endeavors at study. So that he was not rusty and broken in habit,
when September came; and it came very soon. His going to college was
quite an event for the community. The neighbors took pride in it, for
James was greatly beloved. His exploits with books were known to all.
Teachers had reported his progress and rejoiced in it.

It took a long while to say all the good-byes, but early Monday morning
he was off, and soon nicely settled in a good boarding-place, and when
the great bell rang out the beginning of new school-year, James G.
Blaine was in his place taking in the situation in all its magnitude
and interest.

There were one hundred and seventy-five scholars present, all boys and
young men. There was a young ladies’ school, or seminary, in another
part of the town, but they were entirely separated, and boys and girls
were not mingled together, as now in some of our colleges.

James devoted himself strictly to study, and retired promptly at ten
o’clock each night. He found himself in a large class of bright,
energetic students, full of pranks, jokes, and fun, but still boys of
nerve, and pluck, and ample brain; boys who had been well fitted for
the task before them, many of them in the preparatory department of the
institution itself, so that they were familiar with the place, and had
known each other for several years. They were not long in finding that
the new boy, who came from down near the big bridge, knew about Greek
and Latin grammars, and could read without difficulty when his turn
came.

He did not have the town-boy sort of look that many of the others
had, but his good manners, and kind, easy ways made them feel and
acknowledge that he was a little gentleman, anyhow. His mother had
never neglected her boy, and his father, being a professional man,
knew the joy and worth of being a gentleman; and, if they had done but
little, his grandfather had planted seeds of kindness in him enough to
produce a bountiful harvest. He moulded and shaped his ways and manners
to the clear, strong model that was never wanting in the old Scottish
clans and seems to remain in the very blood and very atmosphere of life
and character.

There was nothing brusque or acrid about him. He took on and wore the
air and atmosphere of the enlightened, quiet, and cultured home-life
in which he was brought up. He was modest and retiring, there for
a purpose, and devoted to its accomplishment. It was not hard,
distasteful work to him, but a loved and longed-for opportunity. He
had no ills or aches to nurse, or trouble him. He felt greatly the
absence from home. But he was not off in Ohio now, only four and twenty
miles from old, familiar Indian Hill farm. But his books absorbed him;
study roused and cheered him; competition electrified and nerved him.
Nothing would sting him like missing a question, or any petty failure.
But these were few and simple. He took first rank at once, and held it
steadily to the end.

His life at college was a comparatively quiet one. He never appeared
upon a public exhibition, although he entered the societies, and took
part in debates, read essays, contributed to the college paper, and
delivered orations.

He was rather retiring in his disposition, and sought rather to be a
worshiper at the shrine of knowledge, than as is so often the case, be
worshiped.

The quiet reticence and reserve referred to may strike some, owing to
their knowledge of his dashing brilliancy of later years. But as a
surprise, the modest, unobtrusive habit was happily conducive to study,
and served as a guard against many of the intrusions of a student’s
life. While kind and affable, he was not of the hail-fellow-well-met
order. But he was not a recluse,--no monk with monkish ways. He was a
student, through and through, and he loved study; it satisfied him and
served his aspirations.

He was a boy no longer; he had come to himself, to self-consciousness;
a consciousness of his powers, to a recognition of his own personal
identity. Manhood was fast coming on him; he was out of childhood. It
was a new world in thought to him, and life at college a new world
in fact. He was respected and honored and trusted now, in a sense
different from being loved and petted and cared for at home. There
was not so much praise, but more power in it. He was on his own
responsibility now, and must rely largely upon his own resources.
Manliness was the needful quality. It was everywhere in demand. At
study it was the prelude to victory; in the recitation-room it was
the well-poised harbinger of success, and in association with others
it always won. This was just the quality that those who loved him had
sought to develop in him, and they had not failed. He would take hold
of the hardest task with a marvelous energy of resolve. His will was
a strong feature of his personality. It was an element of power that
served him now. He had reached a long-sought height and was pushing on.

Good teachers are not long in finding good scholars in a new class.
They look for them as a miner watches for gold, and prize them as
highly. There was such a teacher in the faculty at Washington, and to
Professor Murray Mr. Blaine feels a deep and lasting debt of gratitude.

Like all good teachers, he felt the dignity and power of his
profession. He could help the weakest into strength, and put a window
in the darkest mind by his varied questionings, illustrations,
suggestions, and explanations. He was quiet, but forceful, genial, but
severe if laziness or wanton disregard showed its hydra head. In his
own peculiar way, by virtue of an immense personality, he would light
up and enthuse a whole class-room.

The Professor found in young Blaine a pupil to his mind, and James
found in the teacher just the man of his heart. He learned to love
him. A genuine teacher can incarnate himself in his pupils, just as
Napoleon seemed to reproduce himself in his armies, firing them with
his spirit, arming them with his purpose, so that they would move with
the solid impetuosity of his own daring, scaling the Alps, triumphing
at Austerlitz, until they came to look, and breathe, and act him out
long after; but Professor Murray was training men and citizens of the
great Republic. His was a solemn, sacred work, of grave responsibility.
It was worthy of life and manhood’s strength and prime, as the great
ideals which burned in the heat of his glowing life fully assured him.

To sit in such a light, to dwell in such a presence, was to be lead
over the fields of conquest by the hand of Alexander after he had
conquered the world. No wonder this man is loved and honored, and his
memory cherished sacredly.

Outside of the regular college course, Mr. Blaine read through the New
Testament in Greek with him three times. This was a Sunday Bible-class
exercise, and shows how deeply his mind became imbued with the truths
of the Christian religion, which have since made him a devoted member
of the Congregational Church in Augusta, Maine.

James was no book-worm in college. He was a severe, close student. This
was his chief business there. He was on his honor, and loved his work,
and so did it well.

Prof. E. B. Neely, superintendent of schools in St. Joseph, Mo., an old
class-mate, says of him:--

“James G. Blaine was always looked up to as a leader, by his
class-mates, being universally recognized as such. While a close
student, he was genial in his habits, and decidedly popular with all,
being the very reverse of what is known as a book-worm.”

This is just what those who know him now have reason to expect was
the case, and yet it is very remarkable, from the fact that he was
seventeen and a half years of age when he graduated, and in a large
class of thirty-three, seventeen of whom entered the Christian ministry.

At the end he was one of those to divide the honors of his class, and
here again we are indebted to Professor Neely.

“Third, by reference to my class-book you will see that at the time
he graduated Mr. Blaine was given the second of the three honors of
the occasion. The first, the Latin salutatory, was delivered by Jno.
C. Hervey, of Virginia; the second, English salutatory, by James G.
Blaine, of Pennsylvania; and the third, Greek salutatory, by T. W.
Porter, of Pennsylvania.”

When Mr. Blaine graduated he delivered a masterly oration, most of
which he can speak to-day, after a lapse of thirty-seven years. The
subject was,--“The Rights and Duties of American Citizens.” How fitting
such a theme for such a man, and how admirably it shows his trend of
mind!

During his course at college, in 1844, occurred the great campaign of
Henry Clay. It had been Mr. Blaine’s privilege to meet Mr. Clay, and
he took the liveliest interest conceivable in the contest. He was a
very positive man, decided and aggressive, especially in his political
opinions. Of course the great question of the day was debated in the
college-society, and Mr. Blaine was on hand. He usually was on such
occasions, and had a large part in the discussion. He was so well read
in the history of the country and of parties, had entered so into the
merits of the campaign of General Harrison, four years before, that
with all his growth and acquisitions since, he was well qualified to
take his position and maintain it against all who chose a tilt with
him. His was the force of accumulated strength, the weight of reserved
power. He was so full of his subject, that it seemed to require no
effort to bring out the facts and figures and formulate the arguments
that demolished his antagonist. He joined, as if by instinct, the fresh
young Whig party of progress and of power. Clay was their idol, and
this was the hour of his destiny. No young life was ever given with
more ardent devotion to any cause than did the young collegian give
heart and thought, sympathy and endeavor, to the star so surely rising.
He lead in the fight among the boys, and won the day; and wherever
voice or influence could reach, he energized others with the wholesome
truths of political equity, justice, and common sense that filled
his soul. No wonder his theme on Commencement day was so near the
nation’s life. It was near his heart, and so his first great triumph
was celebrated by considering, back in those times of the slave-power,
_Rights and Duties of American Citizenship_.

Washington and Jefferson College was famous in those days for sending
forth great men. It was a great institution of the times. Indeed,
it was two colleges united. Jefferson College had been located at
Connersburgh, some four miles distant, and was merged into Washington
College at Washington.

This gave increased advantage in picked teachers, fuller endowment,
larger classes, and better appliances. To go to such an institution, a
mere boy and a total stranger, and take the lead and keep it through
his entire course, argues for the mental power and furnishing of the
boy, as well as his other qualities of heart and character. He led his
class in mathematics, as a fellow-student testifies, and thus showed
the unabated influence of his old Quaker teacher, Solomon Phillips.

The college-library was a great resort for him, a sort of second home.
Here he could delve, with no thought of time or weariness. It was his
delight and joy. Books seemed a part of him; he was seldom without
them, and yet he utilized, by good mental digestion and strong powers
of assimilation, the substance of what he read. He ranged over a wide
field, principally of English works then, as works of American authors
were comparatively few. Indeed, it is only within the last quarter of a
century the sneer, “Who reads an American book?” has ceased to sting.
Vacation was his busiest time with books. He was never empty, but
always full.

But all his study and meditation; all his reading, thought, and
observation; all he had gleaned, gathered, and garnered from books,
teachings, and associations; all that had come to him from newspapers,
periodicals, travel, great men, found their fitting and powerful
culmination in the great oration he delivered on Commencement day,
in June, 1847. It was sound and convincing, patriotic and manly, and
would do credit to any graduate to-day, though twice his age. It was
the key-note of a life-long career, which has ever since been urging in
a most potent way the rights, and discharging the duties of American
citizenship.



[Illustration]

IV.

TEACHING IN KENTUCKY.


The world opened grandly to young Blaine at his graduation. His college
course had been a triumph, his reception home an ovation. The heart of
the great class beat with his; their hopes were justly high, and high
especially for him whom they had learned to love and honor. His power
to make friends and hold them was remarkable. Those who knew him best
loved him most.

One who knew so much of the world must see some of it, and as yet he
had traveled but little; but a good rest is taken, and the summer spent
at home. Old, familiar scenes are viewed through larger eyes. Books are
reviewed, fresh volumes read; the news, home and foreign, is seized
with a new avidity by one whose business of life is just beginning. As
yet, though, he has not been earning money, he has gained something he
can never lose, and that can never be stolen or borrowed from him. It
is his fortune; his father’s wise plan has been carried out, and he
is ready for business now. A call comes for a teacher in Blue Licks
Military Academy, at Georgetown, Kentucky, and he is selected and
recommended by the faculty for the place. He has never taught an hour.
Shall he go? He knows enough, has good command of himself, and from
careful observation, a fair knowledge of methods. He believes he can do
it, for, as yet, he has never failed, and has always been able to make
himself understood, whether in private conversations and discussions,
or society debates in college.

The question is decided. He is to receive a salary of five hundred
dollars a year, while boys of his age are working for eight and ten
dollars a month. It is a man’s work. He is to start September first,
and he will not be eighteen years old until January. There is not a
hair on his face. But there is a man within, strong in manly powers,
and rich in stores of knowledge.

He had a fine address, clear and strong of speech, large lustrous eyes,
fine conversational powers, and in all respects, of good appearance.
His youth was in his favor, since it made his accomplishments all the
more marvelous. He had been well written up and highly recommended
before going, so that anticipations were high on both sides.

It was harder than ever to say good-bye, especially for mother and
son, but it must be done. They recalled the time when their ancestors
left native land across the seas, to come to this country, and were
reconciled. His father and Uncle Will tried the name of Professor
on him before he started, and it seemed to fit, though at first it
startled him. It weighed him down with the gravity of his position, and
drove the last remnant of pedantry from him. He declined a tall hat and
discarded a cane. He was simple, genuine, and true, and went for just
what he was worth.

The trip to Pittsburgh, and down the river to Louisville, and out to
Georgetown by public conveyance, was full of interest to him, because
it was his country he was seeing. A steam-boat explosion, and talk of
an insurrection among the negroes, made him a little nervous. But the
fact that he was going to the state of Henry Clay, gave him a sort of
home feeling, and made him feel they were his sort of folks, and then
some of the students were from down that way, and he had met several of
the public men from Kentucky, besides Mr. Clay.

There happened to be an old Jacksonian Democrat in the stage-coach,
who had been attracted to the young professor by his manly bearing,
his quiet urbanity, which cost him no effort, and especially by his
politeness in giving a lady from the Blue Grass region a back seat,
insisting “that she take it” in a most gentlemanly manner, while he
took a far less comfortable one, riding backward. This brought him face
to face with a full-blooded Kentuckian of the old type.

“You are a native of the soil, I take it, sir?”

“Yes, sir, but not of this state.”

“Of what state, may I ask?”

“The Keystone state of Pennsylvania, sir,” with a suppressed air of
pride.

“Indeed, then you are from the North?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Clay has a good many friends up there, has he not?”

“Yes, sir, a great many.”

“Well, it was an awful whipping he got.”

“Yes, and he did not deserve it.”

“Didn’t deserve it?”

“I think not; he is a royal man, and would have made an excellent
president, in my judgment.”

“If he had not been a Whig; that spoils him. Strange how much good and
smartness a man may have, and not have good sense.”

“But he has good sense, in my judgment, if you will pardon me.”

“Young man, slavery is a Divine institution. That is fixed; the Bible
decides that!”

These words were said with great emphasis.

“Then what of the Declaration of Independence; does that conflict with
the Bible? Is that a Divine institution?”

The man was puzzled, but finally said,--

“Well, the Bible don’t have to agree with everything.”

James had just finished the study of the Constitution, of Political
Economy, of Moral Science, was thoroughly posted regarding political
parties and all the great questions of the day, and slavery had a
black, villanous look to him. Some of the sights he had witnessed had
roused his blood, and taking it altogether he was ready for quite a
campaign.

He had never been placed under any particular restraint, but had
talked right out the best he knew how, and so followed the person
up who encountered him pretty closely, until the questions were all
answered to their satisfaction, and a few difficult ones asked to
his satisfaction. But when the identical lady whom he had favored
with a seat, asked right out,--“Would you marry a nigger?” he seemed
lifted from his moorings all at once, and replied almost instantly,
without inspecting his words,--“No, ma’am, would you?” A fair amount
of indignation was in the air, without any perceptible delay, and
sundry epithets, so common in those days, such as “nigger-lover,”
“nigger-stealer,” and “black abolitionist,” found expression. James’
only apology was,--

“Madame, I only asked you the very respectful and lady-like question
you had so kindly asked me.”

“I admire your courage and independence of character, sir,” said a
young lady opposite, with some warmth, who, though rather large, and
with a look of rare intelligence, and a voice of peculiar sweetness and
volume, was evidently still in her teens,--possibly sweet sixteen, in
its fullest glory.

The driver stopped at the foot of a big hill, and, as was their
privilege, several passengers got out to walk up the hill. James was
among their number. It was a real relief to be in the open air.

“Give us your hand, young man,” said a fellow-passenger, as the stage
passed on. “I like yer pluck; brains is good, but it ain’t much without
pluck. I tell you, you sot the truth right home that time. You are
a right smart kind of a boy. Do they raise meny sich up in the old
Keystone or Yellowstone--What did you call it? I reckon that that
Missis was right down put out when you axed her what she axed you.
But, then, they do say a heap of jokers don’t like to be joked. But my
rule is, tit-for-tat. I tell you, a little nip and tuck now and then
is a mighty edicating sort of thing, and I guess you’ve been educated,
haven’t you?”

James shook hands and followed up the conversation until the top of the
hill was reached.

All had a good dinner, and felt better.

It was a simple act of courtesy which the occasion demanded, to help
the young lady of sixteen, more or less, from the coach, as she was
ready to step out after James had alighted, and as she thanked him very
graciously he could but offer to escort her to the table, and with rare
good grace she assented.

James had done such things before, and done them very handsomely, in
connection with their college-exhibitions and socials in the town, to
which he occasionally went.

Kentucky is a great country for quail, and the colored cook had broiled
and buttered them that day exactly to the taste of an epicurean. They
were simply delicious, and just in season. They enjoyed them hugely,
and chatted with the cheer and gusto of old friends, mostly speaking
of the glories of the North, in which they perfectly agreed, and upon
their homes. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin” may be
true or not, but that little touch of nature in the stage-coach had
made them kin.

Another fresh brace of the savory quails had just been placed before
them, when the coach dashed around to the door, and the lusty voice of
the driver crying “All aboard!” resounded through the hall and open
door of the dining-room.

There was no alternative, so without delay they resumed their old
seats, and conversation was discontinued.

The political status of the company had been pretty well defined, and
James had made two friends, the names of neither of whom, however, he
had learned.

There was a lull in the conversation, and James was going over his
scheme of study and recitations for the twentieth time, when at three
o’clock Georgetown was announced. He bade his two friends good-bye, and
expressed the hope that all would enjoy their journey.

The stage had but just started, when the old Jacksonian said, “I dunno
but the boy is more n’r half right, anyhow.” The young lady knew he
was, but the lady number one did not know about it.

“Well, it’s mighty sartin the Declaration is agin’ Slavery, and the
Bible can’t stand up for both, nohow,” said the man who walked up the
hill with James.

James was now in his lodgings, and liked the looks of things. He had
just brushed and dusted up when he heard the tap of a drum, and looking
out he saw a line of cadets forming, and ascertaining that that was
the academy, he walked over and saw one hundred and fifty fine-looking
young men, handsomely uniformed, each with a musket, marching to music
of fife and drum. They stood erect and stepped together. It was a fine
sight to him. They went through the evolutions, marked time, marched,
and countermarched.

The entire faculty were present. He ventured in, and soon heard a
messenger announce that Mr. Blaine had come, but he had missed him.
He simply said, “I am Mr. Blaine,” and the Principal grasped his hand
with evident delight, placing his left hand upon his shoulder and
saying, “I am glad to see you, Mr. Blaine,” and introduced him to the
other teachers, and then turning to the students he said, “Battalion,
permit me to present to you our new professor, James G. Blaine, of
Washington, Pennsylvania; you will please receive him at present
arms”; instinctively Mr. Blaine removed his hat in recognition of his
reception. “Perhaps you have a word for the boys,” said the Principal,
and the battalion was brought to a “shoulder arms,” an “order arms,”
and then to a “parade rest,” when, stepping forward, he said,--“I
am glad to see you, gentlemen, in such fine form and spirit, and so
accomplished at your drill, for I watched you several moments yonder,
unobserved. We had nothing of this kind where I studied, but I think
it must be a fine thing for you. I hope you will never be needed in
your country’s service, though it does begin to look a little as though
there might possibly be war with Mexico. But as I have been nearly two
weeks on my journey, and as we shall have ample time to get acquainted,
I will not detain you longer.”

Three cheers were proposed for Professor Blaine, and given with a will.
The Professor was the lion of the hour.

The Principal said, “You will take tea with me, Professor Blaine?”

“With great pleasure.”

And to the other professors, “You will please take tea with Professor
Blaine, at my house.”

The hour spent in the study with the Principal was not without a
purpose on his part. It confirmed all that Doctor McConaughy and
Professor Murray had written about him, and afforded certain knowledge
that they had drawn a prize. By an adroit, yet careless method of
conversation, introducing a general discussion of the textbooks of
the day, with their general contents, their defects and excellences,
the great knowledge of the new man was made evident, and it was not
restricted to the mere curriculum of studies.

“Surely,” thought he, “I am in for it now in earnest,” as he was left
alone for a few moments while his host went down to receive his other
guests.

There was not a soul within three hundred miles who would think of
calling him Jim Blaine, or Jimmy, nor dare to, if by some strange,
unnatural process it did occur to him.

He was treated, respected, and honored as a man and a scholar. The
world had opened to him, and he had entered. It was well there was no
show or shoddy about him, and he knew it. The stamp of the mint was on
him, and he passed at par, with the ring of honest coin.

There is a power in some men to meet any emergency when it is fairly
on them. They rise with the tide, become a part of the occasion, and
adjust themselves to it with a quiet dignity. He had this power, and
felt it on him now. As he was going down-stairs to be presented to the
ladies, he said to himself, as he threw back his hair with a quick,
decided toss, “No politics to-night”; and this prolific subject was
mentally abjured.

They received him as an equal, spoke of the favorable opinion they all
entertained of him, and the joy his coming had given them.

He thanked them, and spoke of the pleasure he experienced in coming to
a state so great in the nation’s life.

It was a matter of conscience with Professor Blaine to know where he
was going and where he had been, so that he had made his own state
as well as that of Ohio where he had spent the term at school, and
the state of Kentucky, a special study; so that when they were fairly
seated at table, and after repeated questions had been asked, he fairly
eclipsed all his former attempts at conversation, by the brilliancy of
his historical allusions, extending far back into colonial days.

He had learned, by his early drill in Plutarch’s Lives, where a brief
biography of a Roman and a Greek are alternately given, and then
comparisons and contrasts between them introduced, so to deal with
states and individuals. He had thus dealt with political parties and
their leaders, but not to-night. This method helped him greatly.

Events, dates, names, places, fell into line and were marshalled like
troops just when the drum tapped, or the word of command was given.
They all seemed amazed; an hour passed by; material sufficient for
a half-dozen Fourth of July orations had been given. A veritable
panorama of those three great states, three of the greatest in the
Union, seemed to march before them in sections and decades.

The members of the faculty, who understood very well what it was to
know and to talk, had some very complimentary things to say. He had won
them all, so unobtrusive was he, and entirely at his ease, withal.

Monday morning, at nine o’clock, twenty-eight young men marched into
the school-room and faced him as their teacher, twelve of them older
than himself. They had taken his measure when on drill, and felt
honored to call him teacher.

They were from the best families of the state, were clad in bright
uniforms, and sat erect. Mathematics was the first recitation. He
looked around almost instinctively for Solomon Phillips or Professor
Murray, but they were not there. He was on the platform, not in the
seats. He must lead off. A list of names had been furnished him. As he
read them over, calling each name by itself, the scholar came forward
and received a hearty shake of the hand, and was photographed at once
in the mind of the teacher. This was the work of but a few minutes,
yet it recognized each one of them, and made them feel acquainted. No
other teacher had done this, but it was something they could tell of,
write home about, and made them say,--“He is a fine man; I like him.”

He then told them many things about mathematics as a science, its power
in intellectual development, and its great value in the practical
business of life; its place in astronomy and engineering, in naval and
military operations, and the certainty with which it assures the mind.

It was a simple, quiet talk, illustrated in various ways by references
to the book and the sciences spoken of. He thus drew them nearer to
himself, and removed the dread with which so many approach the vexed
subject of mathematics. This class was in algebra, on at cube root,
doing pretty solid work. The ground was familiar to him. Problem after
problem had been performed; the whole class seemed roused to a new
interest, and in stepped the Principal, but the work went on. Every
blackboard was in use; it was a busy scene; there were no idlers there.

“Never touch a problem hereafter,” he said, “unless you are certain you
have the rule fixed in your minds. Do not forget this, and if you have
that clear, then ask yourself, in case of difficulty, ‘What axiom shall
I use next?’ for you must keep using them, as you do the letters of the
alphabet, over and over again.

“One thing more: we are going to have hard, quick work done in this
room, and be sure now that every one gets ready for it, and we will
have a splendid time.”

Mr. Blaine’s resources had never been drawn on before in any real,
business-like way. But it was an experience he was ready for, and he
liked it. He next had a class in Latin, and then in United States
history. He could not have been better suited in studies. They were
just the ones that delighted him. Christmas seemed to come that year on
wings, and soon the spring-time was on them, and the picnic season.

He had shut himself up closely to his work. Visitors had abounded,
but he accepted but few of the invitations that were given. He did
not even accept any one of several invitations to spend the holidays
with students at their homes. A short trip to Lexington and Frankfort
satisfied, and he was back at work.

The literature of every subject connected with his recitations must he
read up carefully, and every spare hour was devoted to these lines of
study.

But he did go to the annual picnic. He was part of the school, and he
must go. Everybody went, seemingly. It was a sectional affair; other
schools were there. He met a familiar face: it was a lady’s; who could
it be?

She recognized him, and bowed. He returned it. He awoke as from a
revery, he had so lived in his work; and being worried with the
question, “Where have I seen that face,” traced it at once to the
stage-coach. They were introduced.

It was Miss Hattie Stanwood, of Augusta, Maine. She also was teaching
school, not far away. It was quite the thing in that day for
well-educated New England girls or young ladies to go South and teach
school.

They had remembered each other through the winter, but neither knew the
other’s name, address, or occupation. Now all was clear. Thoughts and
dreams were actualized. It was a marvel, almost a miracle, that they
should meet.

The picnic had no further charms for them. They quietly strolled away
together over the hills after the lunch was served, and for three full
hours they lived in each other’s lives. They seemed strangely near to
each other, and a peculiar peaceful joy seemed living in their hearts.
It had evidently come to stay. None other ever seemed to be so needful
to life itself. No formal words were spoken, only cards exchanged and
carefully preserved. In two weeks her school would close, and she
would spend the summer northward at her home, and he would take a long
trip southward through various states, and see what could be seen as
far down as New Orleans. They spent two afternoons in each other’s
company before the time of departure came; correspondence was agreed
upon, and in the autumn they would meet and renew acquaintance in the
old posts of duty. Some slight tokens were exchanged, and as they must
they nerved brave hearts for a long and perilous separation.

When the time for their departure came they were found seated side by
side in the same old coach, for Louisville. The ride was much shorter
and far more pleasant in that rich and beauteous spring-time than in
the ripe and luscious autumn before.

Politics was a barren subject now. Homes were admired as they passed
along; bits of sentiment indulged; snatches of song and lines of
poetry; much sober, sensible talk filled in the hours which served as a
needed respite to minds kept hard at thought throughout the year.

The future loomed up, real and grand. Their lives took on a glow of
interest and earnestness of hope they never had known. There seemed to
be a reason in them now, before unseen. They felt their worth and knew
their joy, as it was never felt or known before.

Mr. Blaine took his southern trip, and made business of it. He knew the
history of all that country, every state and town.

It had a vastly different look to him from any region of the North
which he had visited. Slavery was the hideous monstrosity of evil
that met him everywhere. It was to him the great contradiction and
condemnation of the South.

He had heard and heard, but determined to see for himself, and see
he did. There was much that seemed pleasant in plantation-life,
but when he went to the slave-pens and the slave-auctions, and saw
families broken and sold asunder, and heard their cries, and saw the
blows,--their only recognition,--his patriot-blood boiled fiercely in
his veins. It was enough. He sought his old home, and spent a happy
month or more with its loved ones, those who rejoiced with him greatly
over the achievements of the year.

Miss Stanwood made her journey northward amid all the loveliness of
Nature, and arrived home far more the woman than when she left. Life
was more real and earnest now, and filled with larger hopes. She was
charmed with the South, and had strange longings to return. But letters
are tell-tale things, for men, without any special reason, will write a
great, bold hand.

James was able to lay two hundred dollars on the table on his return,
and entertained them by the hour with stories of the South. He had seen
much gambling and drinking, many bowie knives and revolvers, and seen
many splendid specimens of men.

He was filled with its beauties and glories, and with its generous,
kindly hospitalities. It was a region so historic, so immense in
possibilities, so alive and magnificent with the old ante-bellum
greatness, and splendor of cities and homes; so many graduates from
Yale and Harvard, which had been a dream of fame and greatness ever to
him; so many men of leisure, and, withal, so much to see; so much of
pleasing, thrilling interest; so much stir and life, that weeks passed
by.

He spent parts of two winters in New Orleans. He was, in fact, a
southern man for the time. His business was in the South, and his great
social powers gave him friends and entrance everywhere.

The kind letters of his fellow-teachers,--Colonel Thorndike F. Johnson,
the principal of the Academy, and Colonel Bushrod Johnson, after of
the Confederate army,--gave him many pleasing acquaintances. This was
twelve or fourteen years before the war. The political business and
educational interests of the country were a unit. There was no talk of
rebels or of treason. The prominent men of the country, politically,
were largely from the South. The presidents had been selected largely
from that section, and the political contests throughout were carried
on by parties whose strongholds were North and South. Only the summer
before, President Polk had made a tour through the Middle and Eastern
states, going eastward as far as Portland, Maine, and was received with
every demonstration of respect. Nathan Clifford, of Maine, was his
Attorney-general, and Mr. Bancroft, his Minister to England.

Mr. Blaine’s father had moved to Washington, as he was prothonotary of
the courts, during his term at college, so that he had made his home
with them during some of these years, and the remainder of the time
with a Mrs. Acheson. He had ample opportunity to renew acquaintance
with old friends; with Prof. Wm. P. Aldrich, who had drilled him so
faithfully in mathematics: with Prof. Richard Henry Lee, grandson of
Richard Henry Lee, of the Revolutionary war, who was his professor of
rhetoric and belle-lettres; with his firm friend, Professor Murray,
who so inspired him in the study of the languages, and gave Mr. Blaine
a regular theological drill in the study of Greek, that most perfect
receptacle of human thought, in all its shades and vastness, even
now,--a language which took up Christ, his kingdom, and his mission,
thoughts and doctrines, and perpetuated them for the world.

No drill is more highly intellectual, more conducive of fine taste,
good judgment, and accuracy, than the study of the Greek; and this he
had under the master-hand.

To Prof. Richard Henry Lee may be traced the training of power so
brilliantly displayed in Mr. Blaine’s forensic efforts and on the stump.

To renew acquaintance with these men, and a multitude of other friends,
was a part of his great pleasure. He was fresh and full as ever, taller
by an inch, and larger every way. He no longer seemed to them a boy,
but had the air and manners of a man, and yet his laugh was as merry
and hearty, his shake of the hand as vigorous and friendly as ever.

The sunny South shone full upon them in the fresh report he brought. It
was a goodly land, and he had made it a study, bringing to bear all his
power of close observation.

He had taken his course at college principally for the sake of study,
simply, and the knowledge he gained; but the prominent thought in his
mind had been journalism. This had not been his purpose in education,
but simply a chief idea in his mind rather than a chosen aim in
life. So that with this thought within him, and the habit of seeing
everything on him, but little escaped the wide range of his vision
during his southern journeyings.

Of course when home he did not ignore the old college-library. It was a
resort so greatly loved, and almost sacred.

But when the hour struck he was eager to be off for his post of
duty,--Kentucky. Promptness and despatch were ever elements of power
with him. He reached Georgetown ahead of time, and was rested and in
readiness when the new year of work began, and it was a year of hard,
steady, constant work with him. He not only had now a reputation to
sustain, but to be greatly advanced. That a man stops growing when he
is satisfied, was a thing perfectly understood by him. A man without
ambition is dead while he lives, and the one content to live with his
head over his shoulder may as well be turned into a pillar of salt.
It is the men who look ahead, and who look up who have a future. A
backward look is a downward look to them.

Competition was strong at the academy. Enthusiasm was great. Professor
Blaine had done much to arouse it, but all unconsciously. He had
held steadily to his fixed habits of study, preparing carefully for
each recitation himself, permitting no shams in his class-room. The
military discipline at the institution aided greatly its matter of
discipline. Life and energy were everywhere manifest.

And so the year passed with nothing special worthy of note, except
the amount of real work performed, and the large measure of success
achieved.

Acquaintance with his lady friend was early renewed and pleasantly
continued. It had much to do with the inspiration of the present and
in shaping his future. Of course it was kept a profound secret, and no
one in Kentucky permitted to know that they were aught to each other
except chance friends, and indeed in point of formal fact they were not
until near the close of the year, when the crisis came; but the young
professor was a gallant knight, and had occasion required might readily
have performed some thrilling act of knighthood that would have set
the neighborhood agog, for none can doubt he had it in him even then.
Milder methods have ever been his rule, except emergency arise, and
then he arises with it.

It is this ability of abilities, this almost perfection of powers,
that has made him equal to every occasion, however dire or desperate
opposition may have been; that has given him his great prominence in
journalism, in halls of legislature, both of state and nation, and
in the field of politics. But he has had this mountain-peak of power
because beneath and back of it lay a long mountain-range of endeavor,
capacity, and growth.

The patient, hard, honest toil of years has ever and anon had its
culmination in hours of splendid victory.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

V.

A NEW FIELD.


The years at Georgetown reviewed and solidified the work of his student
scholarly life thus far, beside carrying him forward to new fields of
conquest. Courtship could not interfere with study and with work, and
it did not.

This new relationship had changed somewhat the plan of life. Other
years could be but a repetition of the two now nearly passed, so that
while he was in the line of promotion and in a place to grow, it was
not just the thing, so he relinquished his professorship and went
northward.

These years had been eventful in the history of the country. The
Mexican war had been fought, and General Taylor, its hero, elected and
inaugurated president. Both were triumphs of the Slave-Power.

President Polk had taken part in the ceremonies attendant upon the
inauguration of General Taylor, and gone to his home in Tennessee by
way of Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans, only to die on the 15th
of June, 1849, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

The cholera was raging in the South “like a desolating blast. It swept
over the valley of the Mississippi, carrying off thousands with the
suddenness of the plagues of the old world.” The South was surely no
place for northerners at such a time.

The great gold-fever of California was on the country, and scores
were hurrying to the Pacific coast. But Mr. Blaine had no taste for
adventure,--no thirst for gold. He was a man of books and a man of
affairs, profoundly interested in all that pertained to the country,
but too young as yet either to hold office or vote.

He took his last winter’s journey to the South, and returned home to
find his father near his end, at the age of fifty-five years.

James was now twenty years old, and the pressure of new
responsibilities was on him. His attention is turned to business
matters, and he displays the same capacity and aptitude which in fuller
power have characterized him.

He early became impressed with the extent and richness of the great
coal-fields of Pennsylvania, and before he was thirty years of age made
those investments which have so enriched him in later years.

It is the part of wisdom and sagacity in men to make the most of their
first years, or the first half of life. This is an eminent feature in
the career of Mr. Blaine. There are no wasted years in his life; no
baneful habits to destroy his energies or dry up the fountain of his
joys. He is a clean, strong, vigorous man, and is able to celebrate the
year of his majority with a more extensive preparation and experience
as scholar, teacher, traveler, and man of business, and a brighter
outlook for life, than falls to the lot of many young Americans.

In this year of 1851 transpired the event more propitious than any
other. It was his marriage, at Pittsburgh, to Miss Hattie Stanwood, the
present Mrs. Blaine, a lady of fine culture and rare good sense, who
loves her home with the devotion of a true wife and noble mother.

It would require the sagacity of a sage to have predicted the future of
Mr. Blaine, had it not been his kindly fortune to have his life crowned
with so much of goodness, wisdom, intelligence, and love, as is found
in the companion of his honors and joys.

Six children, now living, have come in these years to honor their
wedded life;--a goodly family indeed.

It is perhaps not unworthy of remark that during an entire century of
the nation’s life, but one old bachelor was ever elected president, and
he the last resort of an expiring Democracy.

From 1852 to 1854 Mr. Blaine was principal teacher in the Institution
for the Blind at Philadelphia, meanwhile reading law in the office
of Theodore Cuyler, who became a leading lawyer in that famed city,
eminent for the greatness of the members of its bar.

These quiet years of reading and study and teaching in a great degree
fitted Mr. Blaine for his career as a statesman.

He fitted himself for admission to the bar, but never committed himself
to the practice of the profession by assuming its functions. The love
of journalism would not die. It was in his heart. The time had come to
give it light and opportunity. Often had the attractions of the Pine
Tree state been presented to him by Mrs. Blaine in all the glowing
colors with which youth is accustomed to paint the scenes that lie near
its heart. No state had the charms for her possessed by the state of
Maine. Here she was born, and here those dearest to her resided.

As yet they had not settled down for life. The time had come for their
decision. Her powers of argument, and its very eloquence of oratory,
without aught of noise and gesture, but of simple and quiet way, were
brought into requisition, and it was decided not to go west and grow up
with the country, but go east and grow where greatness has its models.

Maine has never wanted for great men; she had them then, she has them
to-day.

In 1854 Mr. Blaine removed with his family to Augusta, the capital city
of Maine, where he has since resided.

He purchased, with Joseph Baker, the _Kennebec Journal_, founded in
1823.

Now, the political field could be reviewed and studied at will; the
political arena was entered. The paper had been first started by a
meeting of the principal citizens to found a Republican paper, and such
it was in real earnest. No longer the secluded life of the student, or
the quiet life of the teacher.

Embarking in journalism at such a time was like embarking on the sea,
where storms and collisions abound; where icebergs show themselves, and
rocks and reefs are found. No country has more political storms and
commotions, perhaps, than America. They are of all kinds and sizes,
from city, town, county, up to state and national storms, and blows,
hurricanes, and tempests. In those times of the slave oligarchy, they
beat with a fury unknown to-day. Sometimes they were fierce in their
cruelty. It was a fight of great learning and profound convictions on
both sides, a fight of dearest principle and of Christian faith.

President Taylor had died on the 9th of July, 1850, and Millard
Fillmore served out his term of office. March 4, 1853, Franklin Pierce,
of New Hampshire, who, in 1846, had declined to be Attorney-general in
President Polk’s cabinet; also an appointment of United States Senator
by Governor Steele, and the Democratic nomination for Governor, but had
plunged into the Mexican war and won his honors there, and who stood at
the head of the New Hampshire bar, was inaugurated President, and ruled
the nation when Mr. Blaine became an editor. He had a powerful cabinet,
who, of course, were among the prominent public men of the time.

When Mr. Blaine entered political life, though not of his ilk, there
were William L. Marcy, of New York, Secretary of State; Robert
M’Clelland, of Michigan, Secretary of the Interior; James Guthrie, of
Kentucky, Secretary of the Treasury; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi,
Secretary of War; James Dobbins, of North Carolina, Secretary of the
Navy; Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, Attorney-general, and James
Campbell, of Pennsylvania, Postmaster-general. Webster, Corwin, Stuart,
Conrad, Graham, Crittenden, and Hall had been in Mr. Fillmore’s
cabinet. The time for Republican victory was drawing nigh, and the
young editor was in position to help bring it on.

It was the centennial of the city’s history. The celebration was very
beautiful, an account of which appeared in Mr. Blaine’s paper, the
_Kennebec Journal_, of July 6, 1854, and seemed auspicious of his
arrival in the city, and the inauguration of his work.

Augusta is about midway between towns that boast two of the leading
institutions of learning in the state, Colby University at Waterville,
and Bowdoin College at Brunswick, where Longfellow graduated, and his
class-mate, Hon. James W. Bradbury, who was, about this time, United
States Senator from Maine, when the great men of the nation,--Webster,
Clay, Calhoun, Douglas, Cass, and others,--were discussing in the
senate the constitutional and slavery questions involved in the
compromise measures.

It was a time and place where great historic interests centered. It
had been the scene of grave military operations, a fort and outposts
on the nation’s frontier, less than a hundred years before, had been
conspicuous in the French and Indian wars.

The mind of Blaine was not long, with his practical methods of historic
research, in threading out lines of history, entering the labyrinths
of knowledge of a mighty past, and a great and wondrous present,
boxing the compass historically, as it were, until he knew the past and
present of his adopted state, and of New England, as he had known his
native state.

He came with no beat of drum and blare of trumpet, but quietly, with
no parade or display, and went to work with good grace and strong
determination. He brought his capital with him. It had not been
embezzled, nor squandered, nor stolen. It was in a portable bank
in which he had been depositing his investments, or investing his
deposits, steadily for nearly twenty years. Already he had drawn
compound interest, and yet, unlike air, water or money, the more
he drew, the more there was on deposit, bright and clear with the
polish of the mint. He had invested in solid, reliable knowledge and
education. He had taken stock in James G. Blaine, taught and trained
him to think, to know, to talk, to write, and act. There is always a
demand for just such men. Communities want them, the state and nation
wants them. From the distant South, explored and carefully surveyed and
estimated, he had come to the farthermost North and East, and here for
life his home is to be.



[Illustration]

VI.

JOURNALISM.


It was not the policy of Mr. Blaine to undertake a work for which he
was not specially fitted. General adaptation and preparation were not
enough; he must be master of the situation or not at all, so he did not
sit down in the editorial chair at once. He was among a new people.
He must know them. His paper was published at the state capital. He
must know the state. He must know it politically, socially, morally,
educationally, religiously. This required extensive travel. He must
understand the demands of the people, their character and temperament.

The _Kennebec Journal_ had not yet risen to that standard of
circulation and of excellence, its position warranted and required. In
the words of one thoroughly conversant with its affairs, “The paper was
badly run down.” It was the opposition paper, and had long been what,
in common parlance is known as “the under dog in the fight.” There
was the largest opportunity for the display of the new editor’s push
and tact in business matters. To these two things, therefore,--public
acquaintance and business affairs,--he gave himself until November,
1854.

About this time a turn came in the political tide, and William Pitt
Fessenden, “that good Whig,” was elected to the United States senate,
routing the Pillsbury Democracy. Governor Crosby and his council were
also Whigs.

Everything of a political character seemed highly favorable for the
best editorial work, just as after the war the highest statesmanship
was requisite to garner and perpetuate its results, crystalize its
victories, and thus secure their glory untarnished.

So now conservatism, power, and radical might,--the one to hold, and
the other to defend what had been gained,--were needful. It did not
take long to catch the spirit of the hour. Mr. Blaine had been familiar
with the fight from boyhood, and in the great campaign of General
Harrison had seen, upon a grander scale, a similar victory. Now he was
on the stage of action, in the responsibilities of life.

He had really entered the state in one of the happiest years,
politically, of her history. It was not until several years later that
the legislature of his old state of Pennsylvania defeated the express
wish of President Buchanan upon this same issue, and sent Gen. Simon
Cameron to the senate in place of Mr. Buchanan’s selected candidate,
John W. Forney. This, at the time, was said to be one of the most
severe blows his administration could receive.

In Maine it was the voice of the people against the nefarious attempt
to fasten slavery upon the territories, and against the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise. Then the opponents of slavery were not
all abolitionists. They were rather restrictionists. In an address
delivered by Henry Ward Beecher about this time, he makes these two
points,--

First.--“We must hedge in slavery as far as possible.”

Second.--“Ameliorate the condition of the blacks to the extent of our
ability.”

There were, indeed, abolitionists then, red hot, just as there are
prohibitionists now, and as events have proved, they were the vanguard
of Vicksburg and Gettysburgh, where there were no compromises of the
Missouri, or any other kind, and no Mason and Dixon’s line, but lines
of battle. And in the one case the words “surrender of slaves,” written
with bayonets dipped in blood, and in the other, resounding from cannon
and battle charge, the only alternative, “give in or go under.”

But the great political battles were being fought now, not to kill
men, but to save them, and to avert, if possible, the dread arbitrament
of civil war with its consequences, more dire than pen could write
or tongue could tell. It was a time for greatest wisdom and loftiest
courage.

Political life was the life of a soldier, and the political field a
field of battle, as the assault upon Charles Sumner and Horace Greeley,
at the nation’s capital testify.

No wonder the wise and prudent Pennsylvanian surveyed the field with
great deliberation, and gained the fullest possible knowledge of the
situation ere he balanced his spear for its first lunge. It was but the
putting on of his full armor ere the soldier enters the fray. It was no
business venture or financial investment merely, but rather the solemn
dedication of himself to the nation’s weal.

Then and there the public career begins that has brought him to this
hour. It is a career of alternate wildest storm and serenest sunshine.
There were at this time, practically, four parties in Maine, and two
great questions, both of them moral in character, namely: Temperance
and Slavery. The Democratic party was split into two most radical
sections, with slavery for their dividing line. Beside these were the
Whigs and Liberalists.

The birth-hour of the Republican party was near at hand. The elements
were in existence demanding organization. Already men in sympathy with
each other upon the great questions of the day in the different parties
and divisions had acted together upon occasions of great political
importance, as in the election of Mr. Fessenden, an ardent Whig, to
the senate. Anti-slavery men, of the Democratic party, could and did
vote for him. The nation demanded the man, somewhat as to-day she
demands another son of Maine. The _New York Tribune_, in an issue prior
to his election, said,--“The nation wants him.” Not party names, but
principles, ruled the hour.

Less than ninety days after Mr. Blaine, quill in hand, made his bow
on the 10th of November, 1854, to the people of Augusta and to the
state of Maine, the Republican party was in existence, a full-fledged
organization. Conventions had met a little earlier in Wisconsin and in
one of the counties of Maine for a similar purpose. Mr. Blaine was with
the movement, heart and soul. He was present at its birth, and rejoiced
in its existence. It had come into existence full of life and power, as
it had taken nearly all the life and power out of the other parties.

It had taken a minority of the Democrats, a majority of the Whigs, and
all of the Anti-slavery or Liberty party. “Liberty national, Slavery
sectional,” was upon its shield. No one, of course, stopped to ask, in
the rejoicing of the hour, how in the name of reason liberty could be
national and slavery sectional. But they were organized for victory,
as right against wrong. How auspicious and full of promise that Mr.
Blaine should celebrate the twenty-fifth year of his remarkable life by
entrance with this party of progress and of power upon its marvelous
career, himself an integral part of it, and a power within it.

About this time John L. Stevens, a man of great good sense, takes
Mr. Baker’s place, a large law-practice demanding his attention, as
co-editor of the _Journal_. But Mr. Stevens is so occupied with the
details of party organization, that most of the editorial work at this
time falls to Mr. Blaine, and it shows great vigor and ability.

One who was associated with him intimately at this time, in
professional life, speaks of him as “a man of great natural and
acquired ability, and of adaptation, familiar with all questions of
government, with a remarkable facility for getting at the core of a
question, a man of genius and talent to a striking degree”; and as we
went over year after year of editorials, some of them very striking
and forceful in their headings, about the time the young party of great
men was fairly on its feet, and had become the target for rifle shots
from the enemy, the old man turned, and with that peculiar emphasis
which always comes with conviction of the truth, said, “He always
calculated to draw blood, if there was a tender spot.”

He invariably struck to demolish when fighting his great political
battles. There was no play about it, and none could doubt the moral
earnestness of the man. It was a battle of great moral ideas with him
all the way through.

But his work was more largely literary in conducting the paper. It
would be difficult to find more solid or instructive reading in any
paper during those years. Mr. Blaine was himself a great reader of the
best journals and reviews, and with a high standard ever before him,
not only in his own ideals, but also in the great papers of the nation
at his command, and having high aims and a mind whose rich stores were
constantly increased, and with all his varied powers of expression,
books were reviewed, the substance of lectures given, and the best
lecturers of the day entertained Augusta audiences, and a multitude of
articles upon various subjects abounded.

Within fifty days after he became editor, the legislature met, and
it devolved on him to gather in the substance of their speeches
and addresses, and record the principal part of their doings. This
brought him into immediate and extensive acquaintance with members of
the senate, whose hall he chose to visit chiefly. They soon became
acquainted with him, and saw and felt his power.

His life was stirring and active, and upon a scale quite in contrast
with the life of a recluse teaching in the Blind Institute in
Philadelphia, and quietly reading law only a year before.

Though a man of strong impulse at times, it is intelligent, purposeful,
and under such control that upon such occasions he has won his highest
praise for brilliancy. He has made mistakes and blunders, and has had
his share of regrets and misgivings, giving ample proof that he is a
member of the human family.

Mr. Blaine’s old foreman, who was afterwards proprietor of the paper,
Howard Owen, says that he wrote most of his editorials at home, and
came down to the office to see his numerous friends, and that they
would have great times pounding for “copy” while he was entertaining
hosts of friends in the office below. One who knows him well has
written of him as a conversationalist.

Mr. Blame has few equals. He has a keen appreciation of fun, and can
tell a story with a wonderful simplicity. There is no dragging prelude,
no verbose details preceding a stupid finale; the story is presented
always dramatically, and fired almost as from a gun, when the point is
reached.

The dinner-table in the Blaine house is the place where the gayest of
good-natured pleasantry rules. From six to eight the dinner speeds
under cover of running talk upon the incidents of the day.

Mr. Owen says that “when they came to ‘making up the form’ Mr. Blaine
would stand over him and attend to every detail, decide the location
of every article, and give just that prominence that would produce the
best effect.” It showed the interest he took in the children of his own
brain, and the great activity of the man.

His force of intellect, strength of constitution, and great endurance
have been a marvel to many.

He has lived his life on a rising tide, amid immense prosperity, and
the great cheerfulness of temper thus produced has made life less a
drag and more a joy to him.

He struck the current at the start, caught at its flood that “tide in
the affairs of men that leads on to fortune.”

He got into the national drift of the new party and has kept it ever
since. It was like a splendid ship, all staunch and strong, launched
at his hand; he sprang aboard, was soon at the helm, and has steadily
passed along the line of honorable promotion.

There have been storms whose fury has been terrific; and there have
been triumphs whose brightness has reflected the nation’s glory.

The paper improved in every way. They procured the state printing, and
an increased circulation.

Mr. Blaine’s pleasant home on Green Street, where most of his children
were born, was one of comfort and happiness.

He soon became a favorite in Augusta, and among the public men of the
state. People love to hear good things said well, and he never failed
in this.

He soon appears on the Republican Central Committee. The party is
victorious from the start, and elects Anson P. Morrill Governor. Mr.
Morrill is still living in Augusta, hale and hearty at eighty-one, a
great reader, and soon after his nomination called upon Mr. Blaine to
congratulate him. The name of J. G. Blaine appears as chairman of the
Republican Central Committee soon after its organization, and the
following year he is presented as a candidate for the legislature.

[Illustration: Residence of JAMES G. BLAINE, Augusta, Maine.]

He enters a city seventy-five years older than himself, rich with
numbers of strong men, but is taken up and speedily honored with a
place in the councils of the state.

It was an era of great and almost constant political conventions. The
remnants of the Whig party and the Know-nothings kept up a struggle for
existence, but they were doomed, and failed to submit gracefully to the
inevitable. They must be watched and won, if possible, to the new party
of the future, whose substantial, steadfast principles,--as expressed
by Mr. Blaine and his editorial colleague, Joseph Baker, in their
inaugural,--were freedom, temperance, river and harbor improvement
within constitutional limits, homesteads for freemen, and a just
administration of the public lands of the state and nation; and the
present testifies how well those principles, embracing all that were
needful then in a political party, have been carried out.

The words “Liberty” and “Freedom,” in Mr. Blaine’s paper always began
with capital letters.

The religious tone and character of the paper is worthy of note. It
furnished a column of “Religious Intelligence” each week. Many of its
selected articles, notices of books, its correspondence, and even
editorials, were deeply religious. The work of that time was solemn,
serious business. There was much of the Puritan and Pilgrim in the
people then. There was a reliance upon God, a demand for his wisdom
expressed in prayer and song and sermon, that told that the importance
and magnitude of the great principles at stake were fully appreciated.
There had been so much failure in the past, so many parties had been
organized and proved inadequate, and still the encroachments of
slavery, the nation’s foe, continued with an audacity unparalleled.
Already Kansas was conceded to the slave-power; secession was already
in the air. The great war was only seven years in the future. A
Charleston paper had stated the issue distinctly, “We must give up
slavery or secede,” as it viewed the first contests and sweeping
victories of the new party. And Mr. Blaine, in a ringing editorial of
caustic power, quoting the entire paragraph, said, “This is the exact
issue, squarely stated.”

His life in Kentucky and extensive winter trips through the South had
been a revelation to him, and were now an inspiration. He knew what
was in the South, and he knew what was in the North, and he knew that
they could not keep house together for centuries, with slaves in the
country, without quarreling. And, moreover, he knew that the destinies
of the country could not be divided. She could not remain half slave
and half free. The South itself was not satisfied with this, as all
their measures of legislation at their various state capitals, and in
Washington clearly indicated. Slavery must conquer or be conquered.
Blaine saw it at that early day, as anyone may in the light of more
recent events.

But this was not the position or demand of the Republican party then.
Anti-slavery did not mean abolition. In 1855 the Free Democratic party,
as it was called, was achieving victories in the state of New York,
and various phases of the great question were championed in different
states and sections, until the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
And it was not until about two years of the war were gone, and it was
imperatively demanded as a war-measure; not until it had been held
back for months by the sagacious Lincoln, after it was written, that
the emancipation of the slave was proclaimed in states then in armed
rebellion. But it was a fact fated and decreed, signed, sealed, and
delivered in a higher than earthly tribunal, long years before.

There are always high-wrought souls, keenly alive and sensitive to
issues of the hour, who seem ordained to catch the foreshadowing of
events and report to others of duller and heavier mould. Mr. Blaine
had projected himself upon the future with the use of his princely
personal power, and with an eagle eye had read out the doom and destiny
of that “peculiar institution” which violated the fundamental principle
of the government, the great end for which it was established,--a doom
which nothing could avert. God’s time for liberty had come, and chosen
men far out upon the frontier of human thought had watched its dawn and
seen it mount the heavens.

But first, the shining of this same sun must produce a similar harvest
of ideas, where the mists of a false and sophistical political
philosophy, and the fogs of a wrong and vicious science of government,
and an unnatural and cruel selfishness and monopoly of liberty prevent
the cleanest vision, the fullest knowledge, and the most righteous
thought.

At this time Mr. Blaine was closely and sharply following the course of
the Pro-slavery party. We give a single extract from his paper in 1855,
as showing what facts the party had to stir its thought and fire its
heart,--facts that read strangely in the light of to-day, and which had
a strange, ominous look even then.

  “SLAVE TRADE--It is said that the business of fitting out slavers
  is carried on extensively in New York. The _Commercial Advertiser_
  believes the practice to be ‘alarmingly and disgracefully prevalent,’
  and the _Tribune_ states, on good authority, that thirty vessels are
  annually fitted out there, for the purpose of procuring slaves upon
  the west coast of Africa.

  “This is no more than following out the political creed of the
  more advanced wing of the progressive pro-slavery Democracy. The
  Charleston papers, which support President Pierce’s administration,
  boldly advocate the re-opening of the African Slave Trade, with the
  view of making ‘niggers’ cheaper. The ‘party’ in New England are not
  as yet up to the work, but another Presidential election will _fetch_
  them. _Progress_ is the distinct feature of the age.”

Some are ready now with their verdict of principle, despite the mists
and fogs and storms; yet not all. The party of Freedom organized in
counties and states all over the country, must be brought together,
unified and organized as a great national party; a convention must be
held and all must be invited who can be induced to affiliate. It is a
preliminary meeting, as it precedes the great organization. They want
to get acquainted and see their strength. It is to be a time of great
argument and powerful speeches. Where so appropriate to hold it as in
the goodly city of Philadelphia? Whigs, Know-nothings, Free-soilers,
are to be there; anti-slavery Democrats, and staunch Republicans.

Mr. Blaine was there. It continued for eight days. Its value lay in the
full and free discussion of the absorbing questions of the day, by
people widely separated and subjected to varied local influences. Men
were influenced by mercantile and commercial, by social and domestic
interests; by educational and religious interests, and it is almost
impossible for many minds of most excellent, though conservative
quality, to rise above fixed orders of things to the clear apprehension
and vigorous grasp of a great principle.

Early education or neglect, also, may have dwarfed or blunted
perceptions and capabilities; but, however, they came largely to see,
eye to eye, and great progress was made. There was a lengthening of
cords and strengthening of stakes, and on the 22d of February, 1856,
the Republicans met in Pittsburgh and appointed its national committee,
and arranged for its first nominating convention. The aim of the party,
according to Mr. Blaine’s voluminous report, had been declared to be
“the restoration of the government to the policy of its founders; its
ideal of patriotism, the character of Washington; its vital philosophy,
that of Jefferson; its watchwords, American enterprise and industry,
Slavery sectional, Freedom national.”

The delegates of twelve Northern states withdrew from the Philadelphia
convention, and left the New York and Southern delegates to their fate.

Mr. Blaine’s work is principally at home, within the boundaries of his
adopted state. But fiercer than ever, the fires of the great conflict
are raging.

Jefferson has remarked, that “in the unequal contest between freedom
and oppression, the Almighty had no attribute that could take part with
the oppressor.” And yet the Democratic party, in violation of its name
and prestige could invoke the shades of this great man; could continue
its warfare upon the life of the nation, and its encroachments upon the
constitution, and violation of a plighted faith wherever slavery made
its frightful demands.

At the head of his editorial column, Mr. Blaine kept these words,
printed in capitals, from the last great speech delivered by Henry Clay
in the United States senate, “I repeat it, sir, I never can and I never
will, and no earthly power can make me vote, directly or indirectly,
to spread slavery over territory where it does not exist. Never, while
reason holds its seat in my brain; never, while my heart sends its
vital fluid through my veins, NEVER!”

Wm. H. Seward was battling against “the fall of constitutional liberty”
in the senate. The Fugitive Slave Act had passed in 1850, and the
Missouri Compromise abrogated in 1854, and now an extreme measure is
pending to protect United States officers in the arrest of fugitive
slaves. Mr. Blaine prints the great speech in full. It had the true
Republican ring.

Mr. Blaine’s final editorial for 1855, prior to the Republican
convention, and first presidential campaign, is every way so fine a
summary of the situation, and affords so clear a view of the man in
all the moral earnestness of his powers and wide comprehension of
the subject, that we give two or three extracts from his editorial
in the _Kennebec Journal_ of Dec. 28, 1855, on the “Condition of the
Country”:--

  “It is the settled judgment of our ablest and best statesmen, that
  the present is a more momentous period than any through which the
  country has passed since the Revolution. The issue is fairly before
  the American people, whether Democracy or Aristocracy, Liberty or
  Despotism, shall control the government of this Republic.... The
  contest enlists on one side the intelligence, the conscience, the
  patriotism, and the best energies of the American people. On the
  other are engaged the avarice, the servility, the ignorance, and the
  lust of dominion which characterize human depravity in every age and
  nation.

  “There are in reality but two sides to this great question. There is
  no ground of neutrality. As true now is it as it was in the days of
  the Great Teacher of liberty and salvation, that men cannot serve
  opposite principles at the same time.... The deepening cry from
  all quarters is that the White House must be cleansed, and all the
  channels to and from the same thoroughly renovated. The march of
  slavery must be stopped or the nation is lost. Only by the firm and
  practical union of all true men in the nation can its most valuable
  interests be preserved.

  ... “We are, then, for a common union against the National
  Administration, on the basis of restoring the Missouri Prohibition
  against slavery in the territories, forgetting past distinctions and
  priority in the combination. Who shall be the standard-bearer of this
  patriotic and conservative Opposition in the great struggle of ’56?
  Whoever the right man may be,--whether he has his home in the East or
  the West, in the North or the South, we care not, if he is but the
  statesman to comprehend the hour, and is equal to the necessities of
  the country, we hope to see him triumphantly elected. We only ask
  that he be loyal to Liberty, a sworn defender of the Union on its
  constitutional basis, in favor of bringing back our government to
  the principles and policy of its founders, and pledged to undo the
  giant wrong of 1854. To enlist in such an opposition, patriotism, the
  memory of our Revolutionary sires, everything sacred in our history,
  the welfare of posterity, invoke us. In such a ‘union for the sake of
  the Union’ we shall all be Republicans, all Whigs, all Democrats, all
  Americans.”



[Illustration]

VII.

IN THE LEGISLATURE.


The great year of Republicanism dawns, in which its friends are to
meet, and its foes are to feel its power. Men had been hearing the
voice of conscience on the moral questions of the nation. Money had
stiffled it with some; for others the climate and location were
not propitious; blight and mildew had struck some,--darkness to
them was light, black was white. Some, perchance, held the truth in
unrighteousness; trimmers and time-servers abounded. But the press and
the pulpit had been great educators. God was in the contest, and it was
beginning to be apparent. There were light and glory all about the sky,
but reformations that reform, and revolutions that revolutionize have
in them not only forceful, but voluntary powers. There are always those
who will not be persuaded or won, on all grave questions. They must be
passed by or overpowered.

To get men into position upon all questions of the nation’s life
and destiny, it is needful to first get the questions into position.
Republicans had undertaken a herculean task. It was not the
emancipation of slaves, but of the nation itself. The thraldom of a
mighty woe was on her.

Mr. Blaine entered the year with the same great purpose, and the same
bold enunciation of principles. He was a true knight. His pen was
mightier than the sword. It was never idle, never cold. From home to
office, and office to senate, and back to office and home he went, day
by day, wherever truth and right could be served.

Washington’s birthday came soon, and with it the Republican gathering
at Pittsburgh, and then the great convention that nominated Frémont
and Dayton at Philadelphia, in the summer of 1856;--Blaine was there;
it was on his native heather. Never had men listened so intently since
the farewell address of Washington; rarely had they thought, and felt,
and resolved so deeply. Conscience and will, intelligence and love,
were in all they thought, and said, and did. They chose their men for
standard-bearers, and fought out the hard, bitter fight. It was a good
fight, and they kept the faith.

It was on his return from the convention in Philadelphia that he was
selected, of all who went, to report to the citizens at home. It was
his first oratorical effort in Augusta, if not his first since leaving
college. His pen had done the work. There had been no demand for
oratory. He surprised himself and astonished his hearers, and from that
hour the door was open for him to enter the state legislature.

An old friend and neighbor of Mr. Blaine has, since his nomination,
given the following sketch of the speech:--

“This was his first public effort. He was then twenty-six years of
age. Although remarkably ready and easy of speech and holding a
practiced and powerful pen, he had an almost unconquerable repugnance
to letting his voice be heard, except in familiar conversation, where
his brilliant powers of statement and argument, his marvelous memory
of dates and events in political history, and his acquaintance with,
and keen estimate of the public men and parties of the day, were the
delight and wonder of all who listened to him. The writer well recalls
the trepidation, at once painful and ludicrous, with which he rose to
address the meeting. In confronting the sea of faces, almost every
one of which was known to him, he seemed to be struggling to master
the terror that possessed him. He turned pale and red by turns, and
almost tottering to the front, he stood trembling until the generous
applause which welcomed him had died away, when, by a supreme effort,
he broke the spell, at first by the utterance of some hesitating words
of greeting and thanks, and then gathering confidence, he went on with
a speech which stirred the audience as with the sound of a trumpet, and
held all present in breathless interest and attention to its close.
From that moment Mr. Blaine took rank among the most effective popular
speakers of the day; but it may be doubted if among the many maturer
efforts of his genius and eloquence upon the political platform or
the legislative tribune, he has ever excited an audience to a more
passionate enthusiasm, or left a profounder impression upon the minds
and hearts of his hearers.”

His editorials of this year would fill a large volume, and all bold,
trenchant, and uncompromising in tone. His experience of the year
before had just fitted him for this hard, strong work. The temptation
is exceedingly great to make copious extracts, for it is our single
effort to cause the man to appear in all the just and worthy splendor
of his enduring manhood, and if a scar is found in all of wide
research, no hand shall cover it.

Not alone the great cause, but the great men who embodied it, were to
him an inspiration. Next to books, men were his study. He studied the
nation in them, and all the questions they incarnated. Henry Wilson
was to him an inspiration. “All praise to the cold and lofty bearing
of Henry Wilson at the Philadelphia convention,” he writes of him in
his issue of June 22, 1854. And all the great, strong men of the party
loomed up before him at full stature, and had a large place in his
affections. They were the apostles of liberty to him.

The last year of Mr. Blaine’s journalistic career in Augusta was tame
compared with other years, and yet the paper continued a splendid
specimen of what the leading paper at the state capital ought to
be,--rich in every department, and justly noted for the courage and
acumen of its editorial writings.

The great presidential campaign had resulted in the election of James
Buchanan, to whom the _Richmond Enquirer_ immediately gave this
friendly word of caution: “The president elect will commit a fatal
folly if he thinks to organize his administration upon any other
principle than that of an avowed and inflexible support of the rights
and institutions of the slave-holding states. He who is not with us is
against us, and the South cannot attach itself to an administration
which occupies a _neutral_ ground, without descending from its own
lofty and impregnable position.”

In announcing the cabinet of Mr. Buchanan and the Dred Scott decision
in the same issue, Mr. Blaine says,--“The conquest of slavery is
complete. President, cabinet, congress, judiciary, treasury, army,
navy, the common territory of the union are all in its hands to be
directed as its whims shall direct.” The five great acts in the drama
of national shame and degradation he mentions as, “the Fugitive Slave
Act, repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the raid on Kansas, election of
James Buchanan, and the supreme court decision in the Dred Scott case.”

It was a great deal for the nation to endure, but it was the thing to
arouse the nation to the iniquity to be overthrown by the Republican
party in the next election. Five of the nine judges were from the
South, and two of the others, Nelson and Grier, were selected with
special regard to their fidelity to the slave-holding interests of the
South.

But there was some honor and joy in the fact that Hannibal Hamlin was
Governor of Maine, and United States senator elect. His inaugural
address Mr. Blaine heads,--“A Paralytic Stroke.”

It was, indeed, a time for great men to speak out, and this Mr. Hamlin
did with power. So greatly had the _Journal_ prospered under the
firm management of Stevens and Blaine, that they removed from the
office at the corner of Oak and Water Streets, which it had occupied
for twenty-four years, and at great expense, added new and improved
machinery. This had scarcely been done a month when Mr. Blaine’s name
disappears from its management. He had sold his interest in the paper
for “a good, handsome price,” and invested it all, beside money loaned
from a brother-in-law, in coal lands in Pennsylvania.

He urged his partner, Mr. Stevens, to sell out his interest and do
the same. This investment, says Mr. Stevens, was very fortunate, and
has yielded him handsome returns. But Mr. Blaine was wanted on the
_Portland Daily Advertiser_. John M. Wood, a man of wealth, owned it,
and was looking around for an able editor. Mr. Blaine had acquired a
reputation as editor, and was offered the position, which he accepted
at three thousand dollars a year salary, but never removed to Portland.

This year of 1857 is remembered as the year of the great financial
crash. It was anything but a crash to Mr. Blaine. He had sold
his paper, which he had brought into a leading position in state
journalism, at a large advance, made a profitable investment of his
funds, gone on a salary of the first-class, for the time, and also been
nominated and elected a member of the state legislature, as one of the
two representatives of the city of Augusta.

His popularity is seen in the fact that at the time of this seeming
break-up, when if he had been a machine man with insatiable political
aspirations he would certainly have held on to his paper, and parted
with it at no price, he artlessly sells out and enters business about
eighty miles from home. But the people wanted him. He would not leave
their midst. He had served the cause of his espousal with ability and
fidelity for three years, and the time had come to honor him.

It is not often that a man so young comes into an old established
state, and in a time so brief makes for himself a name and a place so
large.

It is only needful to read over the files of that paper from the first
hour his pen touched it to see that he had made for himself a place so
large. He had put himself into its columns, and so into the life both
of the state and the nation. He lived, and thought, and wrought for
that paper. That was the instrument of his power. The bold thunder of
artillery is heard along its columns; the charge of cavalry and the
sweep of infantry are seen and felt upon its pages. There is push, and
dash, and rush, and swing, and hurrah along the whole battle-line
where he stood and fought through those years. It was a manly fight.
He stood squarely to the line. It was all upon the broad scale of the
nation’s existence and welfare. He spoke the truth as such; he had no
dreams to tell.

He took no vacation, but summer and winter was at his post. In July and
August there is no relaxation, but the same dash of breakers on the
shore. No wonder he was in demand elsewhere, and the fee was large.
He was a business success, and had made a success of politics thus
far. The first Republicans of Maine had gone into office mid the glow
of his genius, and now his turn had come. It was a weekly before, but
now it was a daily, and a seat in the legislature to fill beside. But
he was abreast of the times, a full man, a large man, with immense
capabilities of work, and a strong, tenacious memory, or he could never
have done the work of two men steadily, and four men much of the time,
and a man destined for leadership. He took to Portland all his powers,
and soon was felt as fire is felt, or the rising sun, for foes and
friends learned speedily of his presence. Every day was a field-day in
politics then. It was a political revival all the year round. No ponds
or pools were visible. There were currents in every stream. There was
a mighty flood to the tides. The states were raising men and building
characters. They were mining gold and minting it. Life then was a
Bessemer steel-process; the heat was intense, and hydraulic pressure
drove out all impurities. The great columbiads that did the execution
were cast before the war; they were large of calibre and deep of bore,
and thoroughly rifled, for it was the men who manned the guns in war
times who made the guns man the rebellion.

The clouds are drawing water and marshaling forces for the sweep of a
mighty storm,--the storm of a righteous judgment, of a holy justice. It
was God’s storm and must come. Already the lightning played furiously
along the sky, and mutterings of thunder could be distinctly heard.
The air grew thick, and heavy, and dark. All signs were ominous. From
throne to cloud, and cloud to brain, and brain to pen, the electric
current flew. Men were thinking the thoughts of God. They were being
filled with his vision and armed with his purpose. No times were
grander since men had pledged their lives, and fortunes, and sacred
honor at the shrine of Liberty, for its perpetuation; and now their
sons from heights of manhood just as lofty, were breathing the same
spirit and plighting the same faith. How men stretch upward to a kingly
height when such grand occasions come, or wither and waste like froth
on the billows that charge along the shore!

It was promotion to rank of greater influence when Mr. Blaine took
his sceptre of power in Portland. Six times a week instead of once,
he went out in teeming editorials to the people. Every department of
the paper was enriched and felt the thrill of his presence. He was a
graduate in journalism now. Its ways were all familiar. His study of
it and experience had brought him the ability of hard, rapid work. It
was the testimony of his old associate at Augusta, that he would go at
once to the core of a subject, and get the wheat out of the chaff. The
beginning and ending of an article, he said, were its heavy parts, and
Mr. Blaine knew just where to look, whether in newspaper, review, or
book.

He always found what he wanted, and so was always armed to the teeth
with fact and incident, with argument and illustration. He had the eye
and ear and pen of the true journalist.

Some men have a peculiar faculty for getting at what is going on. They
seem to know by instinct. It is not always told them, but they are good
listeners, as all great men are. They are men of great industry; search
and research are ever the order with them.

Some men are sound asleep when the decisive hours of life are passing,
others seem ever awake It is this ability to see, and hear, and feel,
to catch and ever know, that has made Mr. Blaine a living centre of
the political intelligence of his time. As a student of history he had
learned the ways of men and nations, the policies of governments, and
the methods of their execution, their meteorology, mineralogy, and
ways of navigation,--for nations have all of these, political weather,
materials of construction, together with tides and currents in their
affairs, besides rocks and reefs and coasts of danger. The right ways
are always the great ways, the light the best ways.

All the light of any subject comes from the truth it holds within,
and the man of mastery is the man of light and life and energy. It is
unfilled capacity that makes of so many the sounding brass and tinkling
cymbal. Unfed, untrained, and unworked minds have filled the world with
wrecks.

Mr. Blaine is climbing the ladder now. Coming up out of the ranks, as
some must come, with worth or worthlessness.

  “Heaven is not reached by a single bound,
  But we climb the ladder by which we rise.”

It was General Taylor’s great difficulty in Mexico to bring on a
battle. This at times requires the ablest generalship; but this he
finally succeeded in doing at Buena Vista, and so created the occasion
of his greatest victory. This was a power in the tactics of Mr. Blaine.
He was never afraid to attack, and never out of ammunition, however
long the siege or strong the foe.

Soon after he entered the legislature Mr. Blaine encountered Ephraim
K. Smart, one of the greatest men of his party, a man who had been in
congress, and afterward was twice their candidate for governor. While
in congress he had opposed the extension of slavery in Kansas, and the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise which limited slavery to the Southern
states; but now, during the Buchanan régime, when the party seemed
hopelessly sold to slavery, he went back on his record, swore by the
party, and stood by its record, regardless of his own.

Mr. Blaine was thoroughly posted, and when the time came turned it
against him in debate. It was a time of danger at the nation’s capital;
assaults were frequent, thrilling scenes were enacted everywhere.
Each hour brought the country nearer the verge of war. Our man was
fearless and he was strong,--strong in the right, strong in his
knowledge of the situation, strong in the command of his powers; so
with his ever aggressive spirit of true progress, he hurled his lance.
With a merciless skill he unfolded the history of the man, with all
of its inconsistencies, sophistry, and contradiction, and reaching
the climax he held it up to view, and advancing towards him (his name
was Ephraim), he said, with great dramatic power, “Ephraim is a cake
unturned, and we propose to turn him.”

Imagine if you can the bewildered consternation of the man! It was one
of Mr. Blaine’s first triumphs in the house, and a stride toward the
speaker’s chair.

With this same spirit and power he did his work at Portland. His
position afforded him the best opportunity for news of every sort, and
his legislative work was largely in the line of his editorial, so that
preparation for the one was fitness for the other. Yet life was full to
the brim. He was a man of immense vitality, and is to-day, as almost
daily intercourse with him can testify.

The first day of his duties in the legislature he is appointed chairman
of a committee of five to inform the newly-elected governor, Lot M.
Morrill, of his election. Thus he is recognized and honored as the
chief one, worthy to represent the body in the presence of the governor.

A few days after, he presented a long, well-worded resolution that the
house, in concurrence with the senate, according to certain forms of
law indicated, proceed, upon the following Tuesday, at twelve o’clock,
to elect a United States senator to succeed Hon. Wm. Pitt Fessenden,
whose term expired on the fourth of March, of that year. Also an
important resolution submitting an amendment of a legal character
to their consideration, thus showing that his knowledge of law was
utilized by him as a law-maker.

As one of the chairmen of the State Prison committee of the house he
delivers a long speech upon the 17th and 18th of March in reply to one
delivered by the same Hon. E. R. Smart, who had opposed resolutions
presented by Mr. Blaine’s committee upon improving the present prison
and building another.

Mr. Smart was evidently the aggressor, and very much his senior in age,
but Mr. Blaine sharply tells him that large portions of his speech were
irrelevant, having been delivered the night before in a democratic
meeting downtown; calls him the Earl of Warwick to the Democratic
Plantagenets; compares him, with great vigor, to a character in Gil
Blas, who had written a book in support of certain remedies sure to
cure, and which, though utterly futile, he argued with a friend he must
continue to practice, because he had written the book, and so Mr. Smart
must inflict his speech because he had written it.

Blaine was well-armed; had a wide array of statistics; had, indeed,
been over the ground thoroughly the year before with the governor, and
written it up for his paper, and showed himself competent to take care
of his committee.

A short time before this he had made a handsome little speech in favor
of a resolve introduced by this same leader of the Democracy, in which
he desired a new county formed, and his own town of Camden made the
shire-town, and yet Mr. Blaine’s measure, a necessity, and for the
public good, is violently assailed.

A careful examination of the proceedings of the legislature prove this
to be a fact, that Mr. Blaine was a devoted, constant, and faithful
member; that about every motion he made was carried; and that he ranked
in ability as a speaker, both in matter and method, with the best of
them. His three years’ work as an editor had made him well acquainted
with its members, and thoroughly conversant with the ways of the house,
so that he was thoroughly at home in their midst, with none of the
nervous diffidence which a new member from the country, however good
and honest he might be, would be very likely to have. He spoke about as
he wrote. He had written about five hundred good, solid editorials in
the previous years, as they issued a tri-weekly during the session of
the legislature, and in reporting its doings had caught the drift of
its operations.

Moreover, he had a good business preparation for his work. He had been
largely upon his own resources for ten years, and in the business
management of his paper, and in studying up the business interests of
the city and of the state, he had acquired experience and knowledge.
No one, it would seem, can read the record of his speeches, short
and long, or the motions he made, resolves he offered, without being
impressed that he had a clear, strong way of looking at questions. He
could tell the husk from the corn at a glance, and if he had anything
to do with a member’s speech would tear off the husk without any
ceremony and make quick search for the corn.

But the affairs of the country were in a bad way as Mr. Blaine was
daily recording them. There had been over nine thousand business
failures in the country in 1857 and 1858; or, to be exact, there were
four thousand nine hundred and thirty-two in 1857, and four thousand
two hundred and twenty-five in 1858, with a loss of three hundred and
eighty-seven million four hundred and ninety-nine thousand six hundred
and sixty-two dollars, a sum in those days of enormous proportion.
Slave-holders, who had the power then, were urging the purchase of
Cuba, at a cost of two hundred million dollars, for the purposes of
slavery.

The country seemed to be at a stand-still, or going backwards. The
state of Vermont had increased in population but one thousand six
hundred and fifty-seven in ten years, from 1850 to 1860.

Senators Crittenden, of Kentucky, and Seward, of New York, had a
passage of words in the senate, and apologized.

Fessenden had been re-elected to the United States Senate, and New
Hampshire had gone Republican.

But Stephen A. Douglas had beaten Abraham Lincoln for the senate
from Illinois by a vote of fifty-eight to forty-four, and Seward had
introduced his famous bill for the repression of the slave trade, just
to bring the Southern senators into position on that subject, and this
only a year before Lincoln was nominated. It provided for ten steamers,
as a part of the navy, to cruise along the coast of Africa, as the
president might direct.

About this time Oregon is admitted as the second state on the Pacific
coast.

Mr. Blaine deals with all the questions of the day with skill and
effectiveness. A municipal election is going on in Portland, and
Mr. Blaine does his part by tongue and pen to aid in achieving a
Republican victory, which is triumphantly accomplished just as the
legislature is closing. But Mr. Blaine has time to deliver his best
speech of the session, on Friday before final adjournment on Tuesday,
April 5th, after a session of ninety days. Now he has nearly nine
solid months of straight editorial work. The one great object is
ever prominent,--slavery must go, or it must be restricted and kept
out of the territories. The country is in great commotion; state
after state fights out its battles and wheels into line. In border
states, especially, political revolutions are taking place. The
gospel of Liberty is taking the place of the hard political doctrines
of pro-slavery Democracy. Mr. Blaine has to fire at long range, so
efficiently has the work been done at home, but it is cheering to see
the beacons lighted along the coast of Maine, and to know that the
bonfires are lighted all over the state. Men have already been trained
and gone forth to do yeoman service in other states. The Washburns are
in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, while Israel Washburn, Jr., has
just been elected governor of the home state.

In 1860 Mr. Blaine is elected speaker of the House, although his
colleague, William T. Johnson, of Augusta, was speaker the year before.
The singular popularity of the man is thus demonstrated, as he takes
the chair, escorted to it by his defeated competitor; his words are
few but in the best of taste. Mr. Blaine said,--

  “GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

  “I accept the position you assign me with a due appreciation, I
  trust, of the honor it confers and the responsibility it imposes. In
  presiding over your deliberations it shall be my faithful endeavor to
  administer the parliamentary rules in such manner that the rights of
  minorities shall be protected, the constitutional will of majorities
  enforced, and the common weal effectively promoted. In this labor
  I am sure I shall not look in vain for your forbearance as well as
  your cordial co-operation. I am ready, gentlemen, to proceed with the
  business of the House.”

He is in a position of power and influence now; he is in the third
office of the state. His ability will be tested; great presence of
mind, quickness of decision, tact, and skill are needful. But he is
ready and at his ease. He has the knowledge requisite, and experience
seems born of the man. He fits wherever placed. He must know each
member, and he knows them; he must be just, and fair, and honorable,
and he is all of these by virtue of a broad, generous nature.

Mr. Blaine is speaker of the House of Representatives of the state of
Maine, not because of any one good quality,--he is excelled in single
qualities by many another,--but because of a large combination of good
qualities, and these, cultivated to a high degree. This it is that
wins; many a face is beautiful in some one or more of its features, but
so distorted in others that the effect is bad, and beauty, which is
the harmonious blending of many lines upon the canvas or features on
the face, is lost. Character is the restoration of moral order in the
individual; let this be broken by some defect, omission, or failure,
some secret or overt act, and the harmony is lost, and a once fair
character is marred.

Thus it is not so much the symmetry as the large and splendid
combination of talents and genius which make him what he is. He
simply does his best, and keeps himself at his best all the time. He
anticipates every occasion, and has forces in reserve all the time,
and they are brought forward, if his tactics are not known, very
unexpectedly. The most telling points in all his earlier speeches are
not brought out at first, and when they do appear you wonder why he did
not produce them before, and this very wonder increases its power on
you. This is rather a necessity, it would seem, because there is point
and pith, and power all through.

A great year of destiny is before the nation; a mighty, conquering
battle-year. Slavery refuses any concessions, and Liberty loves itself
too well to be compromised. The great convention of Republicans in the
old wigwam in Chicago is an event of so great importance that all minor
events dwindle before it. James G. Blaine is there.

Excitement is at the highest pitch. The tone and temper of the North
is felt and feared. The old Democratic party is shattered into
fragments. It has several wings, but no body. The Union seems on the
verge of dissolution. But strong men, tried and true, who cannot be
brow-beaten and crushed; men who have not been deceived or intimidated,
or despoiled of their convictions since the Whig party sold out to
Slavery in 1852; men who have waited eighteen long, eventful years for
the iron to get hot enough to strike, are there; there in their power;
there, not to become demoralized, and drop their guns and run, but to
stand firm and strong in a mighty phalanx, and do tremendous battle for
tremendous right against tremendous wrong.

William H. Seward is the choice of men, but Abraham Lincoln is the
choice of God. He has been fitting and training him for half a century,
much as he trained Moses, the great leader and emancipator of his
ancient people. They try in vain to elect their man. The way is hedged
up; ballot after ballot is taken, but it cannot be done. Finally,
the moment comes, and “honest old Abe” is crowned by the hand of a
remarkable Providence, and God’s will is done.

Men shake their heads, but high yonder on his throne the King does his
thinking. All is clear to him. Well-nigh a century of prayer is to be
answered.

Mr. Blaine’s description of the sessions and impressions at Chicago,
make the great, inspiring scenes live before the imagination, and show
how his broad, eager mind took it all in.

Ten of the Maine delegation were for Seward, and six for Lincoln. A
meeting was called, and an effort made by the Seward men to win the
Lincoln delegates to their side. Wm. H. Evarts was then in his prime,
and was called in to make the speech. He spoke for forty-five minutes,
and his speech, it was said, was “a string of pearls.” Mr. Blaine stood
just behind him, and though greatly delighted with the beauty and
brilliancy of the address, remained a firm Lincoln man to the end.

He had no vote then, but he had a voice and a pen. From that time he
was a great admirer and friend of Mr. Evarts. This convention greatly
enlarged Mr. Blaine’s knowledge of men and acquaintance with them.

The party in the four years since Frémont and Dayton had been nominated
at Philadelphia, under the goading provocations of Buchanan’s
administration, the frequent exhibition of the horns and hoofs of
Slavery, and the unwearied agitation in congress, and in every state,
county, and town of the North, the East, and the West, had made a
sturdy, constant, determined growth, a development of back-bone, and a
kindling of nerve that imparted courage and sent joy to the heart.

It brought into the life of Mr. Blaine, more than ever, the life and
grandeur, the power and greatness of the party to which he had wedded
his destiny, giving his hand and his heart. He was in complete sympathy
with every principle and every measure. No man living more fully, and
clearly, and strongly, represents the ideas and purposes of the men
then at the front,--the leading men to whom was entrusted the guidance
and responsibility, for he himself was then at the front,--than does he.

He is, and has been, right through, the defender and conservator of
all that was dear, and precious, and grand, then. Few men did more to
help elect Mr. Lincoln, or to make his administration a power in the
North. He was under fire constantly, but then he was firing constantly
himself, and doing execution that told every hour for the nation’s good.

The North was surely aroused as never before, on fire with a great and
mighty excitement that rolled in waves and billows from ocean to lake,
and lake to gulf. There was no general on the side of Slavery that
could command all the forces. It had come to be in fact a house divided
against itself. Their convention at Charleston was broken up, and Mr.
Douglas nominated at Baltimore, and two other candidates, Breckenridge
and Bell, elsewhere. The serpent seemed stinging itself to death. But
in the great party of the North there is a solid front, no waver along
the entire line. They simply fight their great political battle after
the true American style of the Fathers, in a most just and righteous
manner, and for a cause most just and righteous.

Mr. Blaine was on the stump, as he had been the year before, making
speeches that the people loved to hear. The campaign usually closed in
Maine in September, when the state officers were elected, and as the
convention in Chicago was held in May, they had but three months to do
the work that other states did in five months. Owing to the illness of
his old friend and business partner, he edited the _Kennebec Journal_
for five or six months during the summer and autumn of 1860, so that he
was back upon his old ground during the great campaign, sitting at the
same desk.

The people loved him, and he loved them. “Send us Blaine,” would come
from all over the state. “We must have him, we will have him.” And he
would go. It seemed as if he would go farther, do more, and get back
quicker than any other man, and seemingly remember everybody.

Ex-Gov. Anson P. Morrill, his old political friend and neighbor
says, “I would go out and address perhaps an acre of people, and be
introduced to a lot of them, and like enough, in six months or a year,
along would come a man and say, ‘How are you? Don’t you know me?’ and
I would say ‘No,’ and then the man would turn and go off; but Blaine
would know him as soon as he saw him coming, and say, ‘Hello,’ and call
him by name right off.

“There,” he said, and he laid his gold-bowed spectacles on the table,
and continued, “a little better than a year ago he was in here, and we
sat at this table, and the spectacles laid there, and he took them up
and said, as he looked at them closely, ‘If those are not the very same
gold-bowed spectacles you bought in Philadelphia in 1856.’

“‘Why, how do you know?’ I asked in surprise.

“‘Why I was with you, and you bought them at such a place on such a
street.’

“And that,” said the governor, “was twenty-six years before. Now did
you ever hear of anything like that? I didn’t. Why, I’d even forgotten
that he was there. I tell you that beat me; and I asked him ‘what made
you think of it now?’

“‘O, I don’t know,’ said Mr. Blaine, ‘I just happened to see them lying
there, and thought of it.’

“Well, it must be a good thing for you to remember things that way.”

“And he simply replied, without any boasting, or in a way to make his
honored friend feel that he felt his superior faculty in the least,--

“‘O, yes, it is, at times.’”

Gov. A. P. Morrill is a fine sample of a real down-east Yankee, of the
old style; a man of sterling worth and integrity, and of the hardest of
common sense, and takes a special pride in Mr. Blaine, as he was at one
time of great assistance to him in a political way.

“The first time I saw Blaine,” he said, “was the night before my
inauguration; he called at my hotel and wanted a copy of my address.
He was simply a young man then, very pleasant in his manner. But how
he has grown. Yes, that is the secret of it; he has been a growing man
ever since, and so he has come right up and gone right along.”

His own re-election to the legislature is a minor matter in the
campaign of ’60, in comparison with the election of Mr. Lincoln
president. As this state votes earlier than many of the others, the
effort is to roll up a large majority, and have great gains, so as to
carry moral power with it, and thus encourage other states who are
standing with them in the contest.

It is interesting to note the position of parties or presidential
candidates at this time. Mr. Lincoln would prohibit by law the
extension of slavery. This was exactly the position of the candidate
with him for vice-president, the Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, a strong friend
of Mr. Blaine.

Mr. Hamlin had originally been a Democrat of the Andrew Jackson type,
but when the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited the extension
of slavery, was repealed, he entered the Republican party at its
formation, and as candidate for governor in Maine in 1856, was a
powerful factor in breaking down the Democratic party.

Mr. Breckenridge would extend slavery by law, and was of course the
slave-holders candidate. Douglas, the candidate of the Northern
Democrats, would not interfere; simply do nothing to procure for
slavery other portions of the fair domain of Liberty to despoil. This,
of course made him unpopular in the South, where the demand was for
more states to conquer for our “peculiar institution.” The cry of the
Douglas Democrats,--and they counted their wide-awakes by the thousand,
who marched with torch and drum,--“The Constitution as it is, and the
Union as it was.” The Bell and Everett faction were simply for saving
the Union without telling how.

What a field these four great armies, each with its chosen leader,
occupied, and each conducting a hot, fierce campaign, determined to
win, and determined to believe they would win. Slavery was the great
disturbing element. It was all a question of how to deal with this
monster.

Mr. Lincoln was elected, and Blaine was again on the winning side.

But Mr. Blaine had another great interest in the political campaign
of this year. A Mr. Morse, of Bath, had been in congress from another
part of the third Maine district, in which Augusta is located, and
it was thought time for a change, and Gov. A. P. Morrill wanted
Blaine to run, but Morse was a strong man and Blaine was young, and
a new man comparatively, and though he was speaker of the House of
Representatives, he thought it not prudent at that time to subject
himself to such a test. “Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.”

Mr. Blaine was in a good position, and growing rapidly, and so he urged
the strong and sagacious governor to try it himself, and Blaine went
into the campaign and helped achieve the victory,--for victory it was
by seven thousand majority.

Mr. Blaine, it would seem, who possessed an instinct for journalism so
wonderful and fine, possessed one equally well-developed for politics.
He well-knew that his rapid promotion would awaken jealousies,
prejudice, and envy, and also that he needed and must have time to
grow. There was one at least in the state legislature who had been in
congress, and he did not wish to “advance backward,” as the colored
servant of the rebel General Buckner called it.

Mr. Blaine is a man of caution and carefulness, because he is a man of
great thoughtfulness and deliberation. When he has thought a subject
through, and it is settled, and he feels just right, he is ready, and
his courage rises, and so he moves with great power and determination.
If the action seems rash to any, it is because they are not informed
upon a subject upon which he is conversant.

Mr. Blaine had seen his man nominated at Chicago, and triumphantly
elected over a stupendous, well-organized, and desperate opposition.
He himself is returned to the legislature. His friend, Ex-Gov. A. P.
Morrill, is secured for congress, and Israel Washburn, Jr., a grand
Republican, elected governor over the man who felt and learned to fear
the power of Mr. Blaine in the legislature the year before, Ephraim K.
Smart. But, notwithstanding all of these triumphs, and the prospective
cleansing and regeneration of the country, the present condition is
most appalling.

Secession is the chief topic throughout the South, and in every
debating society in every college, and in every lyceum in every town or
city, the question is being discussed with the greatest warmth, “Can a
Southern state secede?” or “Can the government coerce a state?” The old
doctrine of state rights and state sovereignty is the form of the topic
in other quarters.

With many the question was clear on the asking of it; with others the
constitutional powers of self-preservation, of self-existence, and
self-perpetuation had to be presented with the arguments and the acumen
of a statesman. Perhaps Mr. Blaine, as an editor, never dealt with
a question in a more masterly way. It was the question of the hour
continually forcing itself upon attention.

It was the constant assertion of the Southern press that they would.
They believed all sorts of unkind things about the great and kindly
Lincoln. The fact is, the South had never before been defeated in a
contest for the presidency when slavery was involved in the issue. This
was their pet and idol. They would guard it at all hazards. Fanaticism
they regarded as the animus of the anti-slavery movement, and an
abolitionist to them was a malefactor.

A grave responsibility now was on those who “broke down the adjustments
of 1820, and of 1850.” But the year was closing, and the glare of a
contest more fierce than that through which we had passed, was on the
nation. It seemed inevitable. They had grown so narrow, intolerant, and
cruel, that the light of present political truth did not penetrate them.

“Southern statesmen of the highest rank,” said Mr. Blaine, “looked
upon British emancipation in the West Indies as designedly hostile
to the prosperity and safety of their own section, and as a plot for
the ultimate destruction of the Republic.” They were suspicious, and
filled with alarm; and it was needless, as the action of Mr. Lincoln in
proclaiming emancipation was only when, in the second year of the war,
it was necessary.

The era of peace seems breaking with the hand of cruel war. It was
night to them, but a glorious day to us.

We close this chapter with this fresh, new poem of the time, by
Whittier.

At a time when it was rumored that armed men were drilling by the
thousands in Virginia and Maryland, for the invasion of Washington
before February, so as to prevent the announcement in congress of
Lincoln’s election, in the same issue of the _Kennebec Journal_, was a
poem by John G. Whittier, closing with these lines:--

  “The crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,
  With solemn lips of question, like the sphinx in Egypt’s sands!
  This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
  This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
  Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal’s cloudy crown,
  We call the dews of blessing, or the bolts of cursing down.

  “By all for which the Martyrs bore their agony and shame;
  By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came;
  By the future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast
  Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the Past;
  And in the awful name of Him who for earth’s freedom died;
  Oh, ye people! Oh, my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.

  “So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way,
  To wed Penobscot’s waters to San Francisco’s bay;
  To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales of grain,
  And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train;
  The mighty West shall bless the earth, and sea shall answer sea,
  A mountain unto mountain calls, ‘_Praise God, for we are free!_’”

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

VIII.

SPEAKER OF THE MAINE LEGISLATURE.


No one read the signs of the times with a clearer understanding of
their significance, all through the winter and spring of 1861, than
the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Legislature of
Maine. The great duties that devolved upon him filled his mind with
every important matter, but the overshadowing interests were all
national,--the present and future of the country. They had become
accustomed to threats and fears; this had grown to be the normal
condition of the public mind. But the short, sharp question “What is
the latest from Charleston, Richmond” and other points of prominence
and activity in the South, showed how squarely up to the times people
of the North were living; how loyal and zealous for the nation the
masses were.

It was a higher compliment, in times so great in their demands for the
profoundest deliberations of the best minds, to be put at the head, as
the leader in positions of greatest power in the House.

Known and acknowledged worth could have been the only argument for
an action so personal to the honor of the state and its power in the
Union, and helpfulness to the nation in an emergency imminent with
danger.

This man of one and thirty is lifted over the heads of old and
respected citizens of soundest integrity. Is it an experiment, or do
they know their man? The state has called to the helm a man who has
been ten years in the congress of the United States; a man of largest
experience and profoundest wisdom, nearly twice the age of the young
speaker. But no mistake is made. He read in his youth books that
Governor Morrill is reading to-day at the age of eighty-one; he has
been a college-graduate for nearly fourteen years, and has won his
present distinction upon the floor of the house where he now presides.

His duties are manifold. He must preside over the deliberations of
the House, be a good parliamentarian, prompt and accurate in his
decisions, as well as fair and impartial. He is dealing with freemen
and citizens, and representatives of the people of the entire state.
He must know every member, not by name, and face, and location in
the House, but in characteristics and accomplishments, all the great
interests of the state, as a whole, of its different sections, and in
its Federal relations, so that he may wisely appoint the twenty-one
important committees. He must know the business, education, experience,
residence, and political principles of every member, so that he
may know just who to appoint on banks and banking, on agriculture,
military, pensions, manufactures, library, the judiciary, the militia,
education, etc.

There are one hundred and forty-four members, twenty-three of whom
are Democrats, and he must use them all. He must select two chairmen
for each committee, and choose six or eight others to act with them,
putting some of the more valuable men on several committees,--all must
be treated with honor and fairness.

What did those one hundred and forty-four men see in James G. Blaine,
away back in the stormy, perilous times of 1861, that led them to
select him for that high and honorable position? He had not been a
citizen of Maine six years, and had been in political life, officially,
only two years. It was the man they saw, strong and splendid, just the
man for the hour. They felt, instinctively, they could trust him; they
knew him to be loyal and true, and capable, by the testimony of all
their senses. He was quick and keen, and life itself in all of energy
and endeavor; a born leader of men.

He had no wealthy and influential friend by his side, no one to say I
have known him from childhood, and can recommend him as worthy of all
honor, and all praise. He brought with him simply the name his mother
gave him, with no prefix and no affix. He lived in no mansion, rode in
no carriage, was attended by no courtiers in livery; he had no returns
to make, no promises to give. The whole of him sat before them,--a
refined and courteous gentleman, an elegant gentleman.

They could not mistake the powerful combination. They saw and felt its
worth, and so the great party which had just come into power in the
nation by electing its first president, honors itself by honoring him.

His short-cut words of acceptance are uttered. The senate and the
new governor, Israel Washburn, Jr., are informed that the House is
organized, and they proceed to business with energy and despatch.

But the great war for the Union is coming. The peace convention
called by Virginia amounts to nothing. Mr. Crittenden’s resolutions
are futile, though most conventions adopt them in Philadelphia and
elsewhere. Southern states are actually seceding.

Mr. Lincoln is choosing and announcing his cabinet, with Seward as his
Premier, but treason is rampant in the South, holding high carnival in
state capitals, and even in the halls of congress. Mr. Lincoln is on
his way to Washington. He reaches Philadelphia on Feb. 22d, at seven
o’clock; is escorted to Independence Hall, where Theodore Cuyler, in
whose office Mr. Blaine read law, receives him with an address of
welcome, to which Mr. Lincoln replied, and “raised the national flag
which had been adjusted in true man-of-war style, amid the cheers of a
great multitude, and the cheers were repeated until men were hoarse.”

While these patriotic cheers were resounding through the old halls of
Independence, the traitorous secretaries of the navy and of war were
sending vessels to southern ports and forts. Thirty-three officers,
among whom was Albert Sidney Johnson, abandon their regiments of the
regular army in Texas, and join the rebels. But Lincoln is inaugurated,
and the most pacific measures employed, but all of no avail;
determined, desperate men are ruling the destiny of the South.

The South was in no condition of want at this time, but rather in a
condition of prosperity, and its proud, haughty spirit seemed rather
born of luxury and extravagance.

Mr. Blaine has shown that she had increased in ten years before the war
three thousand millions of dollars, and this not from over-valuation of
slaves, but from cultivation of the land by new and valuable appliances
of agriculture. One state alone,--Georgia,--had increased in wealth
three hundred millions of dollars. But South Carolina had commenced
in October,--before Mr. Lincoln’s election even,--her correspondence
upon the subject of secession. No wonder she was ready in the April
following to inaugurate the war of the Rebellion.

Mr. Blaine’s life could not be put into the nation, nor the life of any
strong, true man, at a time when it would be more valuable than now.
Men were men in earnest. They rose to par, and some, by a mathematical
process which redoubles energy and intensifies life, are cubed or
squared or lifted to the hundredth power; a premium is on them; they
are invaluable.

The governor issues his call for ten thousand men from Maine. Will Mr.
Blaine go? Mr. Garfield is in the state senate of Ohio, and president
of a college, but he drops all at once, and is soon at the front with
his regiment. His stay is short, however. Elected to congress, by
advice of President Lincoln he lays aside the dress of a major-general
on Saturday to enter the national House of Representatives, a
congressman in citizen’s dress, the following Monday.

What will Mr. Blaine do? He is speaker of the House, and that gives
his name a power in the state. He is wielding a powerful pen as editor
of the leading daily paper at Portland. Few men in the state have more
influence; some must stay; the state must be aroused and electrified;
an immense work of organization is to be done. It is a less
conspicuous, more quiet home-work, but it is of the utmost importance.

He stays, while many, like Garfield, go to return to do the statesman’s
work and make available the resources of the nation, and strengthen the
hands of the brave men at the front.

This was a work of vast importance in the conduct of the war. It was
power that was felt by both governor and president, by army and navy.
Mr. Blaine was on terms of intimacy with the governor of his state,--a
firm supporter of a faithful man. Very soon he was instrumental in
raising two regiments, and rallied thousands more to the standard of
the Union.

He became at this time chairman of the Republican State Central
Committee, and continued in this position for twenty years. He planned
every campaign, selected the speakers, fixed dates and places for
them, and so arranged all details, that no man of his ever disappointed
an audience. He knows the time of departure and arrival of every train.
He must do his part to see that the legislature continues Republican,
that the governor and his council are Republican, that congressmen and
senators of the United States are Republican, and that the war-power of
the state is not broken.

The great question for him to aid largely in settling is the worth of
the state of Maine to the nation. She must have governors that are in
full sympathy with the president; congressmen and senators that uphold
his administration.

In North’s History of Augusta, a valuable work of nearly a thousand
pages, it is recorded of Mr. Blaine that “probably no man in Maine
exerted a more powerful influence on the patriotic course pursued
than he. Ever active, always watchful, never faltering, he inspired
confidence in the cause of the Union in its darkest days.”

At the close of the first session of the legislature over which Mr.
Blaine presided, the leading Democrat in the House, a Mr. Gould, from
Thomaston, arose after remarks of great pathos and tenderness, and
presented this resolution:--

  “_Resolved_, That the thanks of this House are presented to the
  Hon. James G. Blaine, for the marked ability, the urbanity and
  impartiality with which he has presided over its deliberations, and
  for the uniform amenity of his personal intercourse with its members.”

He bore testimony to the “marvelous despatch with which the formal
parts of the business had been done, and so the session greatly
shortened.”

The resolution was adopted by a unanimous vote, and Mr. Blaine said,--

  “GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

  “You will accept my most grateful acknowledgments for the very
  cordial manner in which you have signified your approbation of my
  course as your presiding officer. I beg in return to witness to the
  dignity, the diligence, and the ability with which you have severally
  discharged your representative trusts. We met, many of us, as
  strangers; may I not hope that we all part as friends, and parting,
  may we bear to our homes the recollection of duties faithfully
  performed, and the consciousness of having done something to promote
  the prosperity and welfare of our honored state. I bid you farewell.”

This was on the 18th of March, and on the 22d of April, the war having
broken out, they were assembled again in extra session, Mr. Blaine
in the chair. In three days and a half provisions were made for
raising troops and money for the war, and legislation pertaining to
militia-laws was enacted, etc. The wildest rumors filled the air. The
country seemed transformed at once into a turbulent sea, but men did
not lose their reckoning. Latitude and longitude were things too deeply
fixed and broadly marked to be unseen or ignored. The storm blew from
a single quarter. Its long gathering had made it black and fierce. It
struck the gallant ship of state. She was reeling with the shock of war.

Never did the beauty and worth of federal states appear to better
advantage than when the impoverished and plundered government called on
them for aid. It was the parent’s call upon her children for defence
against their own misguided sisters. Never was mechanism more finely
adjusted, or power more equally balanced, than in the Republic. Very
distinct and separate are head and feet and hands, eyes and ears, yet
nothing is more perfect in its unity.

It is much the same with the great union of states. They are separated
far, and quite distinct in varied interests, but one in powerful unity.
But the time had come to show the strength of that unity. All there was
of the great mind and heart and life of Mr. Blaine was given to the
nation in holiest exercise of all his powers.

While eighty thousand of the foe are opposing thirty-five thousand of
our troops at Manassas Junction, and Colonel Ellsworth is losing his
life at Alexandria; while Stephen A. Douglas is delivering in early
June his last eloquent words, straight and heroic for the nation;
while the bankers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia are casting
one hundred and fifty millions of dollars into the national treasury
at Washington, and the brave General Lyon with eight thousand men is
routing twenty-three thousand of the enemy in Missouri, at the cost of
his life,--while all the activities of that first summer of war are
going on, Mr. Blaine is facing a political storm of great severity,
as general-in-chief in the campaign that places Israel Washburn, Jr.,
again in the gubernatorial chair of the state, and keeps the reins of
government in Republican hands.

It has been a question often debated whether the nation is most
indebted to her warriors or her statesmen. There can be no hesitation
in deciding, where the mere question of life is considered, or the
hardships of camp and march and field are included in the account. And
yet Lincoln, nor Garfield wore a uniform when the bullet struck.

No one thinks their patriotism less intense, or that of cabinet, or
senators and members of the house, or governors and council, or members
of legislatures less ardent in their love of country, and zeal for the
honor of her imperilled cause. At such times all true hearts are one,
and the blood that throbs in hands and heart and feet is all the same.

Mr. Blaine was re-elected to his accustomed place in the legislature
of the state. The terrific war rages on. The demand for troops
increases,--is indeed quadrupled,--and the state must be brought up
to her quota by methods the wisest and best. And again and again the
clarion voice of the speaker of the House rings over the state with no
uncertain sound. Companies and regiments are formed, and these must
be filled. The fires burning so brightly, must burn brighter. Intense
love must be intensified. The news of terrible battles thrills over the
state almost daily. The romance of war is over. Its gilt edge is gone.
It is hard, desperate, bloody work. Their sons and brothers and fathers
are falling by the score and hundred at the front. The bloody work has
been done at Ball’s Bluff and Port Royal. Sons of Maine are in Libby
Prison and at Belle Isle.

The hard, serious question is discussed in every home. It fills the
dreams of yeomanry,--“Shall I go?” “Can I go?” All that is sacred
in business and religion in home and country is the question. Men
are lifted by appeals almost divine in eloquence, above any petty
consideration, to the grave question of the nation’s life and destiny.
Their names go down by scores and hundreds. Regiments and brigades
seem born in a day. They come from all ranks and conditions,--from
pulpit and press, from farm and shop, from bank and office, and store
and halls of state,--and are transformed in an hour from citizens to
soldiers, and march away to the front. Steamer and car swarm with them.

The music dies away down the river, and they are gone,--gone perhaps
forever. Good-byes are cherished in heart of hearts, and kisses from
mother, father, lover, friend, are carried away like cameos of thought,
the sacred things of memory.

In the autumn we find Mr. Blaine in Washington, probably for the first
time, but not in official relations to the government. He must have a
nearer view of the great scenes being enacted. He must know the men who
are wielding the nation’s power, and put his finger on the pulse of
war, and gather material for the more intense activity his work at home
assumes. He must see the great-hearted Lincoln, and shake his hand, and
give him cheer.

Fessenden, Hamlin, and Morrill are there, for congress is in session in
a city fortified, and its streets patrolled by soldiers. Andrew Johnson
is the only senator present from eleven seceded states. Breckenridge,
mortified by the vote of his state, and the rebuke and the castigation
the dead Douglas had given him in the early spring, was present from
Kentucky; and Lane and Pomeroy were in their seats from the new, free
state of Kansas, as her first senators. And the two Union senators
were there,--Messrs. Willy and Carlisle,--from the western portion
of seceded Virginia. Only five free states had other than Republican
senators. Bright, Breckenridge, and Polk were expelled.

Chase, and Cameron, and Seward had entered the cabinet, but an
impressive array of talent remained in the senate, to be studied by
our rising young statesman to best advantage. Charles Sumner and Henry
Wilson were there from Massachusetts; Zachariah Chandler, and Bingham,
of Michigan; Wilkinson of Minnesota; John P. Hale and Daniel Clark,
of New Hampshire; Benjamin F. Wade and John Sherman, of Ohio; Wilmot
and Cowan, of Pennsylvania; James R. Doolittle and Timothy O. Hone,
of Wisconsin. Jacob Collamore, formerly in General Taylor’s cabinet,
a ripe, scholarly man, was a senator from Vermont, and Simmons and
Anthony, from Rhode Island.

On his first visit to the National Capital, Mr. Blaine could not fail
to visit the House where he himself was destined to have a career so
famous and honorable alike to himself, his state, and the nation.
There was his friend, Anson P. Morrill, who had desired him to take
the nomination to congress the present session, rather than himself,
and Galusha A. Grow, from his native state, a member of the convention
which has just nominated him for the presidency, and of the committee
notifying of the same, was then in the chair to be reserved for
him as speaker of that house. Thaddeus Stevens, fearless, able, of
intrepid spirit and strong character, the best hater of slavery on
the continent, hating even those who did not hate it, was the natural
leader of the House, assuming his place by common consent. He attracted
Mr. Blaine’s special attention.

John Hickman and Edward McPherson were with him from Pennsylvania;
and from New York there were Reuben E. Fenton, experienced and strong
in public affairs, Elbridge G. Spaulding, the financier, William A.
Wheeler, since vice-president, secretary Seward’s friend and confidant,
Theodore Pomeroy.

“The ablest and most brilliant man of the delegation,” says Mr. Blaine,
“was Roscoe Conkling. He had been elected to the preceding congress
when but twenty-nine years of age, and had exhibited a readiness and
elegance in debate that placed him at once in the front rank. His
command of language was remarkable. In affluent and exhuberant diction
Mr. Conkling was never surpassed in either branch of congress, unless,
perhaps, by Rufus Choate.”

Massachusetts had a strong delegation, headed by Henry L. Dawes,
and with him were A. H. Rice, since governor of the state, Elliott,
Alley, and William Appleton. Missouri sent Blair and Rollins, from
the battle-field. Crittenden, who had been six times elected to the
senate, in two cabinets, appointed to the supreme bench, was then in
the house, seeking with Charles A. Wickliffe, to save Kentucky to the
Union, against the treasonable conspiracies of Breckenridge. With
Crittenden and Wickliffe strong for the Union, were Robert Mallory,
James S. Jackson, and William H. Wadsworth, keeping up the almost even
balance of power in their state. Gilman Marston was there from New
Hampshire, soon to become conspicuous in the field. Justin S. Morrill
from Vermont, Frederick A. Pike, and the brother of senator Fessenden
from Maine, in company with Ex-Gov. Anson P. Morrill. Illinois, Ohio,
and Indiana had strong men there also, as did Iowa and Minnesota.

Elihu B. Washburn, Owen Lovejoy, William A. Richardson, and John A.
Logan, represented the state of Lincoln and Grant; Schuyler Colfax,
George W. Julian, Albert G. Porter, Wm. McKee Dunn, and Daniel W.
Voorhees, were there from Indiana; and from the state of Garfield,
Bingham, Shellabarger, Horton, and Ashley. Pendleton, Vallandigham, and
S. S. Cox were on the Democratic side.

It must have been the dawn of an era of new inspirations and of fresh
aspirations, to look in upon such a body of men, only a few of the
leaders of whom we have mentioned.

Anson P. Morrill had written him, six months before he let anyone
else into the secret, that he should not run again for congress. His
business required his attention, having extensive woolen mills some
twelve miles from Augusta, and he did not enjoy life at Washington, and
away from home.

He desired Mr. Blaine, as he had before desired, to take his place,
and hence gave him a note of warning, and special opportunity for
preparation. This surely betokened Mr. Merrill’s large confidence in
Mr. Blaine, which is certainly remarkable, when we remember that Mr.
Blaine was twenty-seven years younger than Mr. Morrill, who was then
in his prime, about sixty years of age; and yet he looks down upon a
young man of thirty-one, and asks him to come up and take his place
in the councils of the nation. Why this confidence, this unquestioned
assurance of power, this high compliment of age and experience, of
wealth, and extraordinary business ability of the old governor of Maine
to the young and dauntless Speaker of the House at home?

First of all, because he had abundantly found him as speaker of the
House winning golden opinions from those over whose deliberations he
had presided.

Second, because he had just conducted, as chairman of the State
Central Committee of the Republican party, a campaign, re-electing
Governor Washburn, and himself to the legislature, and thus fighting
unto victory the home-battle of the Union, meanwhile pushing hard and
successfully the editorial work of the _Daily Advertiser_ at Portland.

But more than either of these events or considerations, the
presidential campaign of 1860 had endeared him to Mr. Morrill.
Then he had stumped the state with the Hon. Anson Burlingame of
Massachusetts,--he discussing the state issues while Mr. Burlingame
discussed the national issues.

An old citizen high in state office to-day, who heard him frequently,
says “he won the people by the skill and comprehensiveness with which
he analyzed and argued the great questions of the time.”

He also said “that his editorials in the _Journal_ of that summer and
autumn, when Mr. Stevens, his old partner, was sick, furnished all the
material for the campaign.” He gathered up and crowded in all there was.

It was that total exemption from indolence, his marked degree of
energy, and priceless abilities, that charmed the old governor and
warmed his great heart toward him. And then it was upon that same tidal
wave of influence, sweeping out from the depths of that fresh, young
life, that Mr. Morrill himself was swept into his seat in congress.

The Democrats had up for governor their strong man that year, Ephraim
K. Smart, who had been several terms in congress, and made the biggest
possible fight that lay in their power, but all to no purpose. The
speeches of Mr. Blaine fixed the attention of the state upon him,
as coming from a man away beyond his years. He could, we are told,
“marshal statistics with great facility”; facts, figures, faces, he
knew them all, and impressed the people, even the old campaigners,
with a boundlessness of political and historical knowledge that is
distinctly remembered to this day.

They have gotten use to this sort of thing up in Maine, and talk like
men who reached their conclusions years ago. Their minds were made up
as to the man in Augusta, at least over a quarter of a century ago,
away back in 1856, some of them when, fresh from the Philadelphia
convention, he made his Frémont and Dayton speech, twenty-eight years
ago, and he has simply been expanding, and enlarging, filling up, and
growing ever since. He has been watched with eager pride and rejoiced
in with the devotion of brothers and friends, as wave after wave of his
majestic influence has dashed across the boundary lines of the state,
and broken over the nation.

It would have been something unaccountable if every round of the ladder
had not been touched at last by him, and yet there is no fatality about
it. He was no child of destiny, but of industry; no creature of chance,
but of choice; not of luck, but of pluck; not of fortune, but of
fortitude; not of circumstance, but of courage and consecrated energy.

He returned home from his first view of Washington with larger views of
the nation’s greatness, and the fierceness of the contests that were
testing her strength, and a holier ambition to make every power tell
for Liberty’s victory, and the nation’s emancipation from wrong, and
her projection upon a loftier career of service among the nations of
the earth.

The state could not hold him long after the revelation of these
few brief days and weeks. But he could wait his time, meanwhile
reorganizing all the forces at his command for victory of a larger
kind, and in a larger field than had fallen to his lot. And why not? He
was fast outgrowing the places filled thus far, and others were opening
to him without the asking.

The plans for the new year are all laid before the old year dies. Then
he shall stand nearer the seat of war; then he shall study questions
and characters, plans and persons, opinions, policies, and principles,
all the great states and machinery of government. His home shall be
in the great city and centre of the land, where authority, wisdom,
and power reside, and where no excellence but is in demand, no great,
shining quality but shall shine amid a thousand reflections, and name
and place shall but increase each power to serve and save the nation’s
life.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

IX.

SECOND TERM AS SPEAKER.


On Jan. 1, 1862, Mr. Blaine was re-nominated by acclamation, and
re-elected by an almost unanimous vote, Speaker of the Maine House of
Representatives. The war was enlarging the demand for legislation. All
great national issues must be discussed by the state legislatures, and
the demand for their adoption sprung from the people, a knowledge of
whose will could be best gained in this way. Resolutions were discussed
as regards confiscating the slaves, and arming them in the nation’s
defence, and so the representatives in congress were instructed and
encouraged, and their actions brought up as legislative measures and
endorsed.

Grave suspicions existed at this time in the minds of many in the state
of Maine, in view of the attitude of the British nation towards the
United States, and the feeling of a portion of the British people, as
developed by the Mason and Slidell affair, and the blockade-runners
fitted out in British ports. The exposed condition of the coast and
boundary line of Maine, had caused national alarm upon this subject to
center largely in the state.

“For more than four hundred miles,” said the governor, Israel Washburn,
Jr., in his inaugural address of January, 1862, “this state is
separated from the British Provinces of New Brunswick and Canada by a
merely imaginary line. Of the deep and bitter hostility to this country
of large numbers of the people, we have now, unhappily,” he goes on to
say, “the most indubitable proofs.

“Upon the coast of Maine there are more deep, accessible harbors,
capable of being entered by the largest ships of war, than can be found
on the entire coast-line of the slave-holding states; and yet since she
entered the federal Union in 1820, less than half has been expended for
her coast protection and improvement than was expended within ten years
for the building of a custom-house in the single city of Charleston.”

The old adage, “In time of peace prepare for war,” had not been
followed, and now commissioners are sent to Washington to present
the facts regarding Maine’s defenseless condition, and the engineer
department was directed, by order of Simon Cameron, Secretary of War,
to send a competent officer to examine and report upon the subject.

This is one of the topics filling the mind of Maine statesmen of this
time, and its importance is so presented and impressed, that on Jan.
17, one hundred thousand dollars was appropriated for Fort Knox on the
Penobscot River, Maine, one hundred thousand dollars for the fort on
Hog Island, Portland Harbor, and fifty thousand dollars each for these
two forts the following year.

Seldom were there so many bills of great importance to the state and
nation before the legislature, as at this and subsequent sessions. But
most of the time the speaker sat quietly in his chair, exercising the
functions of his office. Men seemed to be growing into greatness at
a single session; speeches of great effectiveness, and eloquent with
patriotic ardor, came to be a daily occurrence.

Union victories began to cheer the nation. General Thomas at Mill
Springs, Ky., had fought and won a glorious day. Forts Henry and
Donelson had fallen, and hordes of rebels had surrendered. Nashville
was occupied by Union troops, and Andrew Johnson was appointed governor
of Tennessee. Indeed, he was descending the steps of the Capitol at
Washington with a bevy of his friends, and just starting for the
capital of Tennessee, the very afternoon of March 7th, to which we are
about to call special attention.

No scene more brilliant graces the early history of Mr. Blaine, than
his reply to Hon. A. P. Gould, a distinguished lawyer of Thomaston,
and a member of the lower House, in vindication of the war-power of
congress. The hearty support of every Northern state was a necessity.

The following resolutions were passed by the Senate of Maine, on the
7th of February, 1862, by yeas twenty-four, nays four:--

  “STATE OF MAINE.

  “RESOLUTIONS RELATING TO NATIONAL AFFAIRS.

  “_Resolved_, That we cordially endorse the administration of Abraham
  Lincoln in the conduct of the war against the wicked and unnatural
  enemies of the Republic, and that in all its measures calculated to
  crush this rebellion speedily and finally, the administration is
  entitled to and will receive the unwavering support of the loyal
  people of Maine.

  “_Resolved_, That it is the duty of congress, by such means as
  will not jeopardize the rights and safety of the loyal people of
  the South, to provide for the confiscation of estates, real and
  personal, of rebels, and for the forfeiture and liberation of every
  slave claimed by any person who shall continue in arms against the
  authority of the United States, or who shall in any manner aid and
  abet the present wicked and unjustifiable rebellion.

  “_Resolved_, That in this perilous crisis of the country, it is
  the duty of congress, in the exercise of its constitutional power,
  to ‘raise and support armies,’ to provide by law for accepting the
  services of all able-bodied men of whatever status, and to employ
  these men in such manner as military necessity and the safety of the
  Republic may demand.

  “_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the senators
  and representatives in congress from this state, and that they be
  respectfully requested to use all honorable means to secure the
  passage of acts embodying their spirit and substance.”

The resolutions were sent to the House for concurrence, and were there
referred to the committee of the whole. On the 6th and 7th of March,
Mr. Gould, of Thomaston, made an elaborate argument against them. At
the conclusion of his remarks he was replied to by Mr. Blaine, Speaker
of the House. The resolutions were subsequently adopted by the House
in concurrence with the Senate, by yeas one hundred and four, nays
twenty-six.

Mr. Gould had spoken for seven hours against the resolutions. The House
had gone into committee of the whole, with Mr. Frye, the present United
States senator, in the chair. The senate was present in a body, on one
side, the governor and his council on the other, and as many as could
enter, filled the galleries and vacant spaces, when Mr. Blaine, then
but thirty-two years of age, took up the gage of battle, and spoke for
two hours, and so utterly demolished the premises and conclusions of
his powerful antagonist as to carry the resolution through the House
with but few dissenting voices.

Mr. Blaine had been re-elected Speaker of the House by a vote of one
hundred and thirty-five out of one hundred and forty, at the present
session. All eyes were turned to him as the man for the occasion.

His old paper, the _Kennebec Journal_, with which he had had no
official connection for three years, says of the speech:--

“Never, in the legislative history of Maine, has there been such an
opportunity for a forensic effort as was presented in the House of
Representatives on Friday afternoon, at the close of the seven hours’
speech of Hon. A. P. Gould on the national resolutions. The expectation
of the legislature was that Hon. James G. Blaine would speak in defense
of the principles and the measures by which the Federal government will
be able to crush the Rebellion and restore the Republic to that true
and certain basis on which it was originally established. Mr. Blaine’s
speech occupied two hours, and was fully equal to the anticipations
of the unconditional friends of the government. From beginning to
close it was crowded with arguments and salient facts, interspersed
with due proportion of wit, satire, invective and telling hits against
the doctrines and positions of his opponent. It showed, with great
clearness and strength, that the power of confiscating the slaves of
rebels belongs to congress, and to no other power. It adhered firmly
to the long-recognized principle that _the safety of the Republic is
the supreme law_, before which every pecuniary interest must give way,
and advancing in this broad highway, so clearly defined by the highest
authorities of international law, and so luminous with the best light
of history, the speaker made a complete overthrow of the sophistry and
disloyalty of those who plead the defences of the constitution for the
security of traitors, as against the necessities of the Republic. The
speech was brilliantly eloquent, conclusive in argument, and in all
essential particulars was a success which cannot fail to add to the
reputation of the author.”

We give some extracts from the speech of Mr. Blaine:--

  “The first hour of the seven which the gentleman from Thomaston has
  consumed I shall pass over with scarcely a comment. It was addressed
  almost exclusively, and in violation of parliamentary rules, to
  personal matters between himself and a distinguished citizen
  from the same section, lately the gubernatorial candidate of the
  Democratic party, and now representing the county of Knox in the
  other branch of the legislature....

  “I shall best make myself understood, and perhaps most intelligibly
  respond to the argument of the gentleman from Thomaston, by
  discussing the question in its two phases: _first_, as to the
  power of congress to adopt the measures conceived in the pending
  resolutions; and, _secondly_, as to the expediency of adopting them.
  And, at the very outset, I find between the gentleman from Thomaston
  and myself a most radical difference as to the ‘war-power’ of the
  constitution; its origin, its extent, and the authority which shall
  determine its actions, direct its operation, and fix its limit. He
  contends, and he spent some four or five hours in attempting to
  prove, that the war-power in this Government is lodged wholly in the
  executive, and in describing his almost endless authority, he piled
  Ossa on Pelion until he had made the president, under the war-power,
  perfectly despotic, with all prerogatives and privileges concentrated
  in his own person, and then to end the tragedy with a farce, with
  uplifted hands he reverently thanked God that Abraham Lincoln was not
  an ambitious villain (like some of his Democratic predecessors, I
  presume), to use this power, trample on the liberties of the nation,
  erect a throne for himself, and thus add another to the list of
  usurpers that have disfigured the world’s history.

  “I dissent from these conclusions of the gentleman. I read the
  Federal constitution differently. I read in the most frequent and
  suggestive section of that immortal chart, that certain ‘powers’ are
  declared to belong to congress. I read therein that ‘congress shall
  have power’ among other large grants of authority, ‘to provide for
  the common defence’; that it shall have power ‘to declare war, grant
  letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures
  on land and water’; that it shall have power ‘to raise and support
  armies’; to ‘provide and maintain a navy’; and ‘to make rules for
  the government of the land and naval forces.’ And as though these
  were not sufficiently broad and general, the section concludes in its
  eighteenth subdivision by declaring that congress shall have power
  ‘to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
  into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by
  this constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any
  department or officer thereof.’ Mark that,--‘in any department or
  officer thereof!’...

  “At the origin of our government, Mr. Chairman, the people were
  jealous of their liberties; they gave power guardedly and grudgingly
  to their rulers; they were hostile above all things to what is termed
  the _one-man_ power; and you cannot but observe with what peculiar
  care they provided against the abuse of the ‘war-power.’ For, after
  giving to congress the power ‘to declare war,’ and ‘to raise and
  support armies,’ they added in the constitution these remarkable and
  emphatic words,--‘_but no appropriation of money to that use shall
  be for a longer term than two years_,’ which is precisely the period
  for which the representatives in the popular branch are chosen. Thus,
  sir, this power was not given to congress simply, but in effect it
  was given to the house of representatives; the people placing it
  where they could lay their hands directly upon it at every biennial
  election, and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the principle or policy of any
  war....

  “The other point at issue has reference to the relations that now
  exist between the Government of the United States and the so-called
  Confederate States. The gentleman from Thomaston has quoted the
  treason clause of the constitution, and has elaborately argued that
  the armed rebels in the South have still the full right to the
  protection of property guaranteed therein, and that any confiscation
  of their property or estates by any other process than is there
  laid down would be unconstitutional. I am endeavoring to state the
  position of the gentleman with entire candor, as I desire to meet his
  argument throughout in that spirit. I maintain, sir, in opposition
  to this view, that we derive the right to confiscate the property
  and liberate the slaves of rebels from a totally different source.
  I maintain that to-day we are in a state of civil war,--civil
  war, too, of the most gigantic proportions. And I think it will
  strike this House as a singular and most significant confession of
  the unsoundness of the gentleman’s argument, that to sustain his
  positions, he had to deny that we are engaged in civil war at all.
  He stated, much to the amusement of the House, I think, that it was
  not a civil war because Jeff. Davis was not seeking to wrest the
  presidential chair from Abraham Lincoln, but simply to carry off a
  portion of the Union, in order to form a separate government. Pray,
  sir, is not Abraham Lincoln the rightful president of the whole
  country and of all the states, and is it not interfering as much with
  his constitutional prerogative to dispute his authority in Georgia or
  Louisiana as it would be to dispute it in Maine or Pennsylvania?

  “To assume the ground of the gentleman from Thomaston, with its
  legitimate sequences, is practically to give up the contest. Yet
  he tells you, and he certainly repeated it a score of times, that
  you cannot deprive these rebels of their property, except ‘by due
  process of law,’ and at the same time he confesses that within the
  rebel territory it is impossible to serve any precept or enforce any
  verdict. He at the same time declares that we have not belligerent
  rights because the contest is not a civil war. Pray, what kind of a
  war is it? The gentleman acknowledges that the rebels are traitors,
  and if so, that they must be engaged in some kind of war, because the
  constitution declares that ‘treason against the United States shall
  consist only in levying war against them.’ It is therefore war on
  their side. It must also be war on ours, and if so, what kind of war?”

  [Mr. Gould rose and said that he would define it as domestic war.]

  [Mr. Blaine, resuming.] “Domestic war! That’s it! Well, Mr.
  Chairman, we shall learn something before this discussion is over.
  Domestic war! I have heard of domestic woolens, domestic sheetings,
  and domestic felicity, but a ‘domestic war’ is something entirely new
  under the sun. All the writers of international law that I have ever
  read, speak of two kinds of war,--foreign and civil. Vattel will,
  I suppose, have a new edition, with annotations by Gould, in which
  ‘domestic war’ will be defined and illustrated as a contest not quite
  foreign, not quite civil, but one in which the rebellious party has
  at one and the same time all the rights of peaceful citizens and
  all the immunities of alien enemies--for that is precisely what the
  gentleman by his argument claims for the Southern secessionists.”

The stormy and brilliant session was drawing to a close. The speaker
had achieved the great triumph of the winter. Others had made grand
and effective speeches. It could scarcely be otherwise. Soldiers were
encamped about the city; camp-fires were burning; martial music was
filling the air; Colonel Nickerson had marched his Fourteenth Regiment
of Maine Volunteers through Augusta, and had come to a “parade rest”
on Water Street; troops were coming and troops were going; the papers
were filled with news from every quarter, containing even Jeff. Davis’
message to the rebel congress. All was life and animation. Events
were hastening to the emancipation of the slave. It was the demand
of the hour. From soldier in the field, citizen in the home and place
of business, and from resolute, far-seeing statesmen in congressional
halls, came the imperative call to “free and arm the slaves!”

Will the negro fight? was a question gravely discussed over the North.
Fred. Douglas, the colored orator of that time, was asked it by the
president of Rochester University, and the keen-eyed man replied,

“I am only half a negro, and I know I’d fight.”

“Well,” said the genial and scholarly president, Martin B. Anderson,
with a merry twinkle in his eye, “if half a negro would fight, Mr.
Douglas, what would a whole one do?”

After a session of seventy-eight days, in which “the public business
had been completed with all possible promptness,” the legislature
adjourned. “During the past two years,” the record says, “with the same
presiding officers in the senate and House,--Hon. John H. Goodenow, of
Alfred, in the senate, and Hon. James G. Blaine, of Augusta, in the
House,--there has not been a single appeal from their decisions.”

It is also said that the high character of the legislature of 1862
stands unrivalled in Maine, in members of legislative experience, men
of practical business talent, men learned and ready in debate, men
wise in political action and patriotic in purpose. Surely it were an
honor to stand at the head of such a body of men.

Very soon the Third Congressional Convention would be held to nominate
the successor to A. P. Morrill. The three counties embraced in the
district,--Kennebec, Somerset, and Lincoln,--sent to the legislature
six senators and twenty-eight representatives.

The district is an extensive one, embracing seventy-five towns, and
extending from the Atlantic to the Canada line, inhabited by an
intelligent and influential body of freemen, deeply interested in the
welfare of the country, and devoted to the principles and purposes of
the administration of Abraham Lincoln. The unqualified and emphatic
declination of Mr. Morrill to be a candidate for re-election, rendered
it necessary to take a new man for the position.

“The superior ability and high qualifications of Hon. James G. Blaine
drew toward him the spontaneous and almost unanimous support of the
friends of the national administration in the district.”

At two o’clock on Friday afternoon of July 11, 1862, the ballot was
taken, and only one was needed. Whole number of votes, one hundred and
eighty-one; Hon. James G. Blaine had one hundred and seventy-four; W.
R. Flint, five; scattering, two.

This is the simple record, and Mr. Blaine was declared nominated,
and “the result was made unanimous with enthusiasm and mutual
congratulations.” He was brought in, and with something of sober
diction, evidently feeling the greatness of the honor and the
responsibility upon him, he only pledged his best intentions and most
earnest efforts to serve the constituency of the district to the best
of his ability, should he be elected.

“If so, I shall go with a determination to stand heartily and
unreservedly by the administration of Abraham Lincoln. In the success
of that administration, in the good providence of God, rests, I
solemnly believe, the fate of the Union.

“Perish all things else,” he exclaims, “the nation’s life must be
saved. If slavery or any other institution stands in the way, it must
be removed. I think the loyal masses are rapidly adopting the idea that
to smite the rebellion, its malignant cause must be smitten. Perhaps
we are slow in coming to it, and it may be even now we are receiving
our severe chastisement for not more readily accepting the teachings of
Providence.

“It was the tenth plague which softened the heart of Pharaoh and caused
him to let the oppressed go free. That plague was the sacrificing
of the first-born in every household, and with the sanguinary
battle-fields, whose records of death we are just reading, I ask you
in the language of another, how far off are we from the day when our
households will have paid that penalty to offended heaven?”

After his nomination Mr. Blaine went on a short visit to his old home
in Washington, Penn. His mother was still living; many friends and
relatives, beside business interests, demanding attention. He had been
gone but eight years, and four of them he had spent in the legislature,
and now was nominated for congress, with a certainty of election. He
had come on a visit to the old scenes of childhood, and early manhood,
and could present himself to them as he soon did to the nation, covered
with honor.

He returned just in time to attend a great mass-meeting in Augusta.
The two calls for troops, each for three hundred thousand, were out.
Senator Lot M. Morrill, a brother of the ex-governor, had just made a
strong speech, saying “we have been playing at arms before, but now
we are going to fight,” etc., and closed, when there were loud calls
for Blaine, and he appeared, burning with enthusiasm, and kindled all
hearts with his presence and patriotic appeals.

On Monday, Sept. 8, 1862, Mr. Blaine was first elected to congress.
Although it was a state campaign in which he was elected, conducted by
Mr. Blaine in person, aided by able lieutenants and a governor,--five
congressmen and a host of minor officials were to be elected,--the work
was prosecuted with vigor.

A draft is threatened. Maine’s quota must be filled, and it was during
this same month of September the Emancipation Proclamation appeared,
and two months later General McClellan was relieved, and General
Burnside put in command of the army of the Potomac.

The great events of national importance would of course over-shadow
all state matters of minor importance, comparatively, and to which
the public mind was accustomed. Beside, the mind and heart of the new
congressman were full of the nation’s interest. Women were going to the
front as nurses,--more than forty had gone from one town in Maine; the
Mississippi was open now clear to the Gulf; General Butler was in New
Orleans. Volumes of history were made in a day, much of it unwritten
history, traced only in saddened faces, swollen, tearful eyes, in
nights of watchings, in sobs and sighs, and long farewells, in fields
billowed with mounds, and in the dark shadows that even now will not
be chased away from many a heart, from many a hearth-stone. How little
is ever heard or known of the dark dreamings still of a multitude all
silent and alone, when night is on the earth.

Mr. Blaine encountered one of the hard-headed men, yet men of harder
hearts, during his campaign up in Clinton township, a hard, Democratic
hold. General Logan used to call them copperheads down in southern
Illinois during the war. They have mostly emigrated since then. At the
close of the speech one of them arose up and said,--a fellow of grizzly
beard,

“Well, young man, you’ve made a right smart speech, but if it is a sin
to hold slaves, how about Gineral Washington?”

This was one of Mr. Blaine’s strong points, to answer questions, and so
keep up a running fire through his speech. He has lately told us how he
enjoyed, not so much to turn the tables on the questioner, as to get at
the minds of the people, and then turn on the light just where it is
needed. But to this brave fellow up in Clinton, he quietly replied,

“Yes, but General Washington manumitted his slaves before he died.”

“Manu, what?”

“Manumitted them, set them free, gave them their liberty.”

“O yes,” and the man sat down.

In his stump speeches effectiveness is his chief object, and he strives
with all the power in him to conquer his foe, and is fully determined
to do it. He ascertains his weak point, and assaults him there. He does
not apply his battering-ram all over the wall, but on that particular
place of weakness. He sees the strong points, and has been noted for
his ability to see almost at a glance, the strong and weak points of
a bill. This has served him when canvassing for large majorities. He
would study the enemy thoroughly, know him without mistake, beyond the
possibility of ambush or surprise, and then enlist his own forces, and
enough of them without fail for certain victory, organize them for
something more than simple victory, plan the battle, and then call no
halt until the work was done. None can be more elegant or choice and
beautiful in the use of language when occasion requires, but in the
canvas the great elements of style are plainness, great plainness, and
force, tremendous force.

Mr. Blaine was a Republican before there was a party, and has fought,
and written, and argued, and plead for all the great interests its
existence has subserved, and of which it is the conservator to-day.
That eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty, is not to be kept
up on picket posts or parapets, but where laws are made and judged
and executed. He learned his tactics in the war times, and up to the
last experience in the House, he fought those he felt were traitors
still and tried to crush him; and who shall not say that in point and
fact the South has ruled the South the past fifteen years, as truly as
though they were a separate people,--solid, separate, and distinct.

When elected to congress a great work opened up before Mr. Blaine.
It was the work of preparation. His old methods of thoroughness
must prevail; mastery must be his watchword still. Augusta was not
Washington; Kennebec county was not the District of Columbia; Maine was
not the nation, nor the state legislature the congress of the nation.
The resources that gave him prominence and power in one sphere, would
be but a small fortune in the other. This history of congress must be
deeply studied, the history of men and of measures. He must know all.
There may be dark spots on the sun, but must be none in his mind. They
may be necessary there, but not here. The charge of ignorance must not
be his. The craving to know devours all before it. Just over there
in New Hampshire is the warning of Franklin Pierce, great in his own
state, but little out in the nation. This is before him; but this is
not the incentive. It is rather the habit of his life to touch bottom,
and sides, and top.

This was sacred honor to him, to carry into a place or position to
which he is called, what will fill it, or not to enter. So now he
gives the winter largely to this work. It is sacred work to him.
Manliness demands it; self-respect makes it imperative. But he loves
it. It is opportunity to him. And surely with all his former years of
conquest, no one ever came to such task with more of fitness for the
task.

And yet, though flushed with victory from other fields, the echo of the
people’s cheers still ringing in his heart, and their laurels unfaded
on his brow, he feels, he knows there is a lack of that strength and
fulness which have ever been to him the harbingers of victory.

How many have run through congress much as they ran for congress,
because they took it for granted that preparation for a law office
or a stump speech was preparation for congress; just as many a
deluded theorist has drifted from college out into life, dreaming
that preparation for a senior examination was preparation for the
competition of life.

There was ever a charm to Mr. Blaine about the study of character.
Gov. Abner Coburn was Mr. Blaine’s ideal of a business man. He loved
anything large and grand in human nature, and anybody good and true,
and Abner Coburn,--as a man of great ability, of great wealth and
liberality, giving away fifty thousand dollars at a time, and withal a
noble Christian gentleman,--was to him among the best and worthiest.

He loved characters if at all remarkable for hard common sense, and
so he loved to meet and talk with one Miles Standish, from way up in
Somerset county, at Flagstaff Plantation. Plantations abound in the
state of Maine. There are twenty-five of them in Aroostook county,
which is said to be as large as the state of Massachusetts. These
plantations are a mild form of government, rather below the usual
township organization, and yet covering a township of land six miles
square.

This Mr. Standish used frequently to come to Augusta, and it was a
pleasant hour for Mr. Blaine to meet him. He was human nature in crude
state, or in the original package. Unspoiled by art, or science, or
philosophy, and yet full of quaint, original ideas, and quainter forms
of expression. He was never in a hurry when he met him, and yet it
was not for sport or fun at his expense, but for the boldness of his
personality, and the rocky-like substance of his character.

This was a great part of his effort in life to understand men, to know
them, and a high authority has defined just this as common sense. To
know a man, says the distinguished scholar referred to, is knowledge,
but to know men, that is common sense. It lets one out of a thousand
blunders and into a thousand secrets; it gives one the science of
character-building, as one may have the science of architecture. It
is a study of the higher sciences, such as moral and mental, in their
original sources.

Right here is the open letter of Mr. Blaine’s career. First, he knows
the strong points, and then he knows the weak points, and he has his
man every time, for he certainly has a key that will unlock him, only
let him know what one to use. And it is not a matter of artful, politic
chicanery, and legerdemain. He simply studies the individual, and then
with ease of manner and a wise, discriminating grace of diction, adapts
or adjusts himself to them. Thomas Carlyle would use a hurricane, it is
said, to waft a feather; Mr. Blaine would never.

And again Carlyle employed the weight of his mighty genius to emphasize
the sumless worth of a man, and yet he did not have common sense
sufficient to treat half who called upon him with common civility. What
avails this solemn prating, impoverishing the lexicon and wearying
genius to express a cynical, over-wrought view of man in his high-born
greatness, if, when Ralph Waldo Emerson crosses the Atlantic and calls
upon him with compliments of the highest order, he receives only
replies that sting, and burn, and rankle?

Exactly the reverse of Carlyle has been the method of Mr. Blaine. Men
have been his glory, his study, and delight. This was his first work
in Augusta, his first work in the state legislature, his first work in
congress. And not their names alone, but their political history, their
pedigree,--all about them. They must all be weighed and measured, sized
and classified. And he must know himself as well, and how far he can
reach, and how firm he can grasp, and how much he can lift. He uses
only the powers of his personality, and these must all be toned and
tempered anew.

He has gone to congress to stay, and not to experiment, but for the
work of life. He carries with him just the power to get the power which
he shall need,--the seed-corn for the large, abundant harvest. But he
must work and cultivate, and this he knows right well how to do, and so
he does and will. It is his purpose, and that purpose is fixed.

Right well he knows that there is no power that causes growth
like contact with strong, determined personalities,--intelligent,
conscientious, affectionate, purposeful. It is mind that makes mind
grow, that plants the seeds and brings on the harvest by the shining of
its light; and so heart by getting into heart, expands it and causes
growth, and conscience rouses conscience, and will awakens will, and
all cause growth. He has not forgotten those lifts out of childhood
almost into manhood, when the great faces of Jackson, Harrison,
and Clay shone upon him, and now he is the friend and confident of
the great Lincoln, and they are to be within an evening’s call,
and the great men of the nation are there and will soon be etched,
photographed, or painted, and hung up within the gallery of his large
soul.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

X.

ENTERING CONGRESS.


It is said that life in Washington is a liberal education, social
life in particular, but public life as well. The great interests of
the nation center there, and all nations are represented there. Life
is intense in all respects. Victors gather there from all fields of
contest. They are at their best, and have multitudes to cheer them on,
or cry them down, if they fail or falter. The door of prosperity to
the country hinges there; defective legislation closes it, and mars
the delicately balanced confidence in the business world. It is the
nation’s higher school of politics, or rather university, with all its
great departments. Graduates from all the state academies are there,
taking observations of the nation and the world, discussing all live
questions, following out great lines of thought, fixing policies,
framing laws and enacting them. The arts and sciences flourish there,
scholars congregate from all parts of the land. To them it is a place
of mighty interests; institutions and libraries abound, history is
manufactured day by day. Strong men in pride and power are in their
glory there.

Society is like a myriad-sided palace, with many a gate of entrance and
of exit, but all most deftly closed except to bearer of the keys,--a
palace filled with light of knowledge, and resplendent with beauty;
the goal of every clique and clan the nation over, where all the
aristocracies of the Republic may glow and shine and shine and glow,
and all the courtiers of all the nations mingle in magnificent and
pompous array. Guards are at every door. Passports are in demand.

At twelve o’clock, the 7th of December, 1863, Mr. Blaine was in his
seat. His heart beat high, his hopes were great. Earnest faces of
determined men were all about him. The administration had a clear
working majority, but there could scarcely have been seventeen
Democrats from New York to fourteen Union Republicans, had not one
hundred and fifty thousand men been at the front from that state,
and not permitted to vote until the presidential election. And so
with Lincoln’s own state of Illinois, which just before the war gave
him such a great majority, now sends nine Democrats to five Union
Republicans to congress, and has over one hundred thousand men in the
field.

In the Pennsylvania delegation the result is similar, though the
administration is endorsed by six thousand two hundred and thirty-one
majority,--which would have been vastly increased if her one hundred
thousand soldiers had been permitted to vote, as they were a year or
two later.

Out of figures sent from the field then were shown to be five thousand
two hundred and sixty-seven Republican votes in a total ballot of seven
thousand one hundred and twenty-two, in over thirty organizations; but
most of these were from Iowa, a state with such Republican majorities
that when Mr. Blaine was urged to speak there during the campaign of
1876, replied,

“What is the use of burnishing gold?”

But there had been a vast amount of political light spread over that
state during the years that intervened from 1862 and ’63 to 1876.

Mr. Blaine had spent a year as a quiet observer and a deep and diligent
student since his election in September, 1862.

No course could have been wiser than the one adopted by Mr. Blaine.
None from the state was more popular, and so none had a heavier
correspondence. It related to all departments of the government, and he
must at once gain influence in all. And this he did, with the greatest
certainty of results. He was most obliging. It was soon found out, and
all parties, without respect to politics, wrote him for favors of
various characters, and they never appealed in vain.

A Democrat of the deepest dye, a malignant enemy of Mr. Blaine
politically, had a son in the army who had deserted, was tried by a
court-martial, found guilty, and condemned to be shot, according to the
army law in such cases. The father appealed to Mr. Blaine to use his
good offices with the great-hearted president in behalf of his son’s
release.

True to his instincts as a man, and his fidelity in all matters of
public trust, utterly destitute of a prejudice, and without a particle
of enmity to curdle the milk of human kindness by its lightning-stroke,
to poison his motive or weaken his purpose to truly represent the
people, he went at once to Mr. Lincoln, and so presented the facts, and
plead for the life of the young man, that the pardon was granted, and
he was transferred from the guard-house to his place in the regiment at
the front.

And it is a simple fact that a brother of that same young man hooted
the nomination of Mr. Blaine recently upon the streets of Augusta. So
little does gratitude hold sway in the breasts of some!

It is a singular coincidence that Mr. Blaine and Mr. Garfield had
entered so nearly together, and both so nearly of an age; but they
were both great students, and ready for the service required at their
hands.

Some have said that Mr. Blaine spent his first term in congress in
quiet observation, without being read, seen, or heard. This would
not be his nature. He would not be there if he was to be simply an
onlooker. This he could be from the galleries. Such a course would be
crucifixion, and an acknowledgment of inefficiency and incompetency.
Within two weeks after entrance we find him participating in debate.

The secretary of war had sent a note to the Committee on Ways and
Means, requesting an immediate appropriation of twenty million dollars
for bounties, to encourage more rapid enlistment. The chairman had
reported the item at once, and there was no delay in calling it up, and
in its discussion he took part. His first resolution related to the
prompt payment of prize-money to the officers and seamen of the navy,
and was offered Jan. 6, 1864.

Six days after he rose to oppose the views of the chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee in appropriating seven hundred thousand
dollars to pay a Pennsylvania claim only six months old, when claims
filed eighteen months before by the state of Maine were unpaid. It
was a claim for enlisting, arming, and organizing troops to guard the
navy-yard and coast at Kittery and Portsmouth when cruisers endangered
them.

On April 21st Mr. Blaine presented his first bill, having reference to
this same subject of war-claims of the state against the nation, the
subject having remained in an unsettled condition. His bill is a model
of excellence, providing for a commission of three, appointed by the
president, to receive, examine, and endorse state claims, etc., against
the general government, and order the payment of the same, after a
specified time fixed in the future, so heavy were the drafts then upon
the national treasury. He supported the measure with a speech of great
breadth of view and comprehensiveness of statement, occupying ten
columns of the _Congressional Globe_. Mr. Hamilton’s refunding measure,
after the war of the Revolution, was used in argument, and also the
adoption of similar measures after the war with England in 1812 to ’15,
and also the Mexican war.

He was replied to by Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, and a general debate
ensued. He had now fairly entered upon his congressional career, and
seems to have come with a bound into a position that numbered him
at once with the leading members. He was easily at the head of his
delegation; he commanded the attention of the House, which some members
never do. He was recognized, assented to, opposed in person and
particulars, co-operated with, and in various ways was it manifest that
he had gained in a session what never comes to many members.

We find his resolutions and amendments passing; his points of order
sustained. He is referred to on over fifty pages of the _Congressional
Globe_, in remarks, resolutions, amendments, bills, etc. He has
something to say on all great measures of importance that come before
the House. He shows himself at home upon all the questions receiving
attention, and watches the drift of proceedings with close and careful
eye, and shows an abiding interest in all that is going on. The matter
in hand seems ever to be just the matter in his mind. He is from the
start a “working-member.” There are members who are not classed as
working-members. They listen and look on; work does not agree with
them; they do not like it. They have an equal chance with all the
others, but they are afraid to speak out; to take a position and defend
it.

Intelligence is an important factor in such a man, and it is hardly
wise or best for a man, although he is a member, to “speak out in
meeting” unless he surely has something to say and knows how to say it,
and can really get it off, and to the point. Men may go into battle
by regiments, brigades, corps, and divisions, and no man flinch; but
they do not act that way on the floor of congress. It is worse than
a battle-field in some respects; takes courage of a different type.
They must go in alone, and fire away, with several hundred keen eyes
upon them. They will quale and tremble, falter and trip in a little
sentence, and stand there, pale and blanched with fear, while the same
one might mount a horse and charge into hottest battle, midst fearful
carnage, with the tinge of highest courage mantling cheek and brow.

In his eloquent eulogy of Mr. Garfield, Mr. Blaine says: “There is no
test of a man’s ability in any department of public life more severe
than service in the House of Representatives. There is no place where
so little deference is paid to reputation previously acquired, or to
eminence won outside; no place where so little consideration is shown
for the feelings or failures of beginners. What a man gains in the
House, he gains by sheer force of his own character, and if he loses
and falls back he must expect no mercy, and will receive no sympathy.
It is a field in which the survival of the strongest is the recognized
rule, and where no pretense can deceive, and no glamour can mislead.
The real man is discovered, his worth is impartially weighed, and his
rank is irreversibly decreed.”

A long and strong experience had convinced him of the deep, historic
truth of this utterance. The challenge seemed constantly to be, “What
are you doing here?” The waves dashed high, and the undertow was
dreadful. One can easily read between the lines the battle Mr. Blaine
had with himself at his first rising in the House, which was simply to
read in evidence on the pending discussion a few sentences from the
report of the secretary of the treasury, he was met by a slight rebuff
from old General Schenk of Ohio, to the effect that the matter was
irrelevant.

He was not Mr. Speaker any more, and felt the newness of his situation,
but he belonged there, and he proposed to whip and win, and so he sets
himself to work to draft a bill, and works, and watches his opportunity
for four months, and not until December 21st is lost in April 21st does
just his opportunity come; but when it came he showed by a speech of
nearly two hours in length, full of hard, solid facts, arguments forged
with something of the weight and power of thunderbolts, bristling
with statistics, and fairly boiling with his richest and most fervid
eloquence, that he knew his rights, and knowing, dared maintain them.
And it was in discussing this same bill on which he and Schenk had
spoken, and which had kept afloat, or anchored in the House in various
forms of bill, resolve, or amendment, that he won his spurs in this
splendid speech. He did not let it come to final passage until he had
shown his power of relevancy, and convinced the General from Ohio that
men were not elected speakers up in Maine until they could fairly
discriminate between tweedle de and tweedle dum.

Meantime, what he said of Garfield is true of him: “He stepped to the
front with the confidence of one who belonged there.”

Nineteen of those who sat with Mr. Blaine when he first took his place
in the House, have been chosen United States senators since then.
Many served well as governors, and many in the foreign service of
their country. “But among them all, none grew more rapidly; none more
firmly,” are his words of that other one, but they are just as true of
himself. His early course in congress was marked by great courage and
persistency.

Two others had failed to secure the adoption of an amendment to the
bill for the establishment of national banks, to the effect that
interest should be uniform when not fixed by state law, and though
it had been voted on and defeated before; though its form had been
changed, yet seeing the wisdom of it, and having the courage of his
conviction, he moved it again, and made a short, ringing speech of not
over fifteen minutes, and it was carried by a vote of sixty-nine to
thirty-one. Such power to control legislation so soon after entering
congress, clearly reveals the influence already gained.

Shortly after this, when the committee on the penitentiary in the
District of Columbia reported a bill appropriating two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for the purpose, he was ready to oppose. He
had been one of the chairmen of the prison committee in the Maine
legislature, had been on a committee or commission appointed by
the governor to visit prisons elsewhere and gain full information
concerning them, having, with his customary energy and thoroughness,
visited seventeen, and found they were being run at great expense to
the several states, and so he opposed the bill, as prisoners were
being kept safely in prisons already established, and, as he said,
the proposed amount would only start the work and make many hundred
thousands a necessity.

Whatever the question of national or state importance that came before
the House, he had made himself familiar with it. And so we find him
speaking on the revenue, conscription, and currency bills; legislative
appropriation and tariff bills; the Fugitive Slave Law and the civil
appropriation bills, beside the bill relating to Pennsylvania
war-expenses. The terrible battle of Gettysburgh had been fought the
summer before, and the state heavily involved, and the effort was to
have her re-imbursed.

Mr. Blaine was heartily on the side of the administration and the war,
supporting the various measures of prosecution and relief as against
the opposition, with all the power in him. But it was not a blind
support. It must be wise, intelligent, and discriminating, to put
him in the fullest action, and bring on what might so soon be termed
accustomed triumph.

But there came a day on the twenty-first of June, and during the first
session of his first congress,--the thirty-eighth,--that a bill came
into the House embodying a report from James B. Fry provost-marshal
general, endorsed definitely by Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of war,
and concurred in by Abraham Lincoln, proclaiming the conscription act
a failure. The bill had come from the committee on military affairs,
through their chairman. The exact point in the bill that had proved
objectionable, and which they desired expunged, was what is known
as the three hundred dollar clause, enabling any drafted man by the
payment of the above sum to procure a substitute, and so be relieved
himself. This very feature of the bill Mr. Blaine had incorporated as
his first amendment offered in congress, and enforced by a vigorous
speech, which carried it through, and now a repeal of it would compel
any business man in the country, if drafted, to go at once, provided
only he was fit for military service. This would take the best
physician, with the largest practice, in the greatest city of the Union.

“Such a conscription,” said Mr. Blaine, “was never resorted to but
once, even in the French Empire, under the absolutism of the First
Napoleon; and for the congress of the United States to attempt its
enforcement upon their constituents is to ignore the best principles of
republican representative government.”

Remarkable as it may seem, and specially so in view of the fact that he
had but fifteen minutes granted him to speak, his motion prevailed by
a vote of one hundred to fifty. Such men as Boutwell, Brooks, Dawes,
McDowell, Edward H. Rollins, Schofield, Wadsworth, and Wheeler, stood
with him. Mr. Stanton’s idea was that by forcing into the field a great
army of soldiers the war might be speedily terminated. But freemen
cannot be dealt with as slaves. There is a vast difference between the
purely military and the truly civil view of a question.

A few days after the same bill was up again, for further repairs, when
we get a fine view of Mr. Blaine. It was Saturday afternoon, June 25,
1864. Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky, was making a long speech against the
feature of the bill that provided for enlisting the negro, when he
observed Mr. Blaine watching him. He said,--

“My friend from Maine (Mr. Blaine), who seems to be listening so
attentively, lived in Kentucky once, and knows the negro and his
attributes, and he knows, if he will tell you what he knows, that they
won’t fight.”

Mr. Blaine: “From a residence of five years in Kentucky, I came to the
conclusion from what I saw of the negroes, that there was a good deal
of fight in them.”

After a pleasant colloquy, he went on to state that during the Crimean
war Egypt furnished Turkey fifteen regiments of negroes of pure blood,
unmixed from the foundation of the world, and as good troops as ever
marched upon European soil. And so the debate went on. One thing
seems quite evident: Mr. Blaine had come to feel perfectly at home
on the floor of the House. His quiet ways and quick-witted replies;
the conversational character of the proceedings at times, in which
he participates; his familiarity with men and their almost constant
recognition of him; the fluent and undisturbed character of his
sentences; the general ease and pleasure of the man, and the home-like
air that seems constantly to surround him, show that he is in his
element. But he is always there, and very attentive, keeping up with
the great debates as they are carried on day after day. Nothing seems
to escape him, and every move is a cautious one. Even then he must have
been the pride of his state.

He had not listened so attentively to the speech of the Kentuckian,
Mr. Mallory, for naught, in which it was asserted that Mr. Lincoln
issued the Emancipation Proclamation in consequence of pressure brought
to bear upon him by a meeting of governors of the loyal states,
at Altoona, Penn., the autumn of 1862. Having armed himself with
documentary proof, so that he might be doubly sure, though his memory
told him he was right, he thus corners the gentleman in the neatest
manner possible.

“I understood the gentleman (Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky) to assert,”
said Mr. Blaine, “and to reiterate with great emphasis, that the
Emancipation Proclamation was issued in consequence of the pressure
brought to bear upon the president by the meeting of the governors at
Altoona, in the autumn of 1862.”

Mr. Mallory. “I said it was issued in consequence of the pressure
brought to bear by these governors.”

Mr. Blaine. “Will the gentleman state at what date the president’s
proclamation was issued?”

Mr. Mallory. “On the 22d of September.”

Mr. Blaine. “Will the gentleman state further at what date the meeting
of the governors took place at Altoona?”

Mr. Mallory. “Some days before.”

Mr. Blaine. “Not at all, sir. That meeting was on the 24th of
September, two days after the proclamation was issued.”

Mr. Mallory. “Oh, no.”

Mr. Blaine. “Yes, sir; I am correct. I had a personal recollection of
the date, and I have further certified it by documentary evidence,
which I sent for and now hold in my hand.”

Of course the man squirmed and tried to escape, but he was held by
a firm hand to the grave discrepancy of which he had been guilty,
involving the governors of all the loyal states in an instigation of
which they were guiltless as a body of men, in convention assembled.
Then he tried to escape by asserting that the governors were on at
Washington, laboring with the president to secure the same end. But he
was assured most emphatically, that such was not the case, as they all
were extremely busy, and no time for a week’s excursion to Washington.

Governor Washburn, of Maine, had invited Mr. Blaine to accompany him
to this meeting of the governors, but pressure of duties forbade.

Mr. Blaine closed the little contest for supremacy, with the Kentucky
gentleman, with this single sentence: “The anachronism into which my
friend has been led, and which I have thus pointed out, is quite as
conclusive in the premises as Mr. Weller hoped the alibi would prove in
the celebrated Pickwickian trial.”

A pleasant thing about the episode is that Mr. Boutwell, of
Massachusetts, afterwards President Grant’s secretary of the treasury,
yielded his own time upon the floor to Mr. Blaine, for the friendly
tilt in the interest of the Union, and the pending war-measure.

It proved conclusively that congress is no place for a Fourth of July
oration, but for clear heads, well-managed tongues, and brave hearts,
such as Mr. Blaine seems never to be without.

A long session of congress was being held on into the middle of summer,
and many of the old laws relating to slavery were being abolished,
among them one that related to the coastwise slave trade, which was
interlaced with the coastwise trade of rightful commerce. It comprised
thirty-two sections, so bound up together as to make a sort of a
code on the subject. It, of course, bore directly upon the shipping
interests of Maine, and brought Mr. Blaine to his feet more than
once during the discussion. The effort was made to revise them in the
interest of New York city, and so discriminate sharply against New
England ports. The condition of that city, at this time, was very bad
politically. It was about the time of the draft-riots, when Tilden
addressed the mob, calling the rioters “My friends.” Of course Mr.
Blaine was thoroughly informed, and he made a strong point against the
measure of the New York member, Mr. Brooks. “To-day,” he said, “in New
York city, the sentiment is anti-American, and were it submitted to
voters of the city of New York now, whether they would have Jeff Davis
president, or a loyal Republican Union man, North, Jeff Davis would
have thirty thousand votes ahead,” and a voice said, “What of that?”
And Mr. Brooks, the gentleman from New York, admitted that there were
fifty thousand majority now in New York city opposed to Abraham Lincoln.

This was six months and seven days after the Proclamation of
Emancipation, and showed that, though the great heart of that noble
state beat true, and, as was a fact, had sent about two hundred
thousand troops to the war, yet the mass in the city, left behind, were
weakening largely the Union cause. It was a feature of the struggle
with slavery continually felt, not only in congress, but in the
execution of laws for the strengthening of the cause.

In reply to “What of that?”--that is, what of it if Jeff Davis could
receive thirty thousand majority in New York city--he said: “Just this:
if gentlemen suppose that the whole country will contribute to the
prosperity and growth of the city under such circumstances, they are
under a perfect delusion,” and then he went for the man who said “What
of that?” in his own princely style.

He encounters first “Sunset” Cox, then of Ohio, now of New York, the
wit of the House, and there is a perfect fusilade of questionings and
replies, sharp retorts and pertinent sallies, and though they are after
him from all sides, Cox, Randall, Arnold, Brooks, yet he holds his
position with a fearless hand, standing firm as an admiral on the deck
of his flag-ship in the squadron, amid the boom and smoke, the thunder,
and flash, and roar of a naval engagement; just as intrepid, just as
grand; no twitching of nerve, or faltering of muscle; he is commander
of the situation, and never strikes his flag.

Nearly a month before the adjournment of congress the Union National
Republican Convention met at Baltimore (June 7), to nominate a
president.

Mr. Lincoln had been regarded as too conservative by the extreme
radical wing of the party, notwithstanding the slaves were free, and
armed, and organized by the thousands in defence of the Union; and
Grant had been so successful in the West, he had been brought East
and made lieutenant-general, having fought his way from Fort Henry to
Pittsburgh Landing, to Vicksburg, and to Chattanooga. But the war had
been prolonged beyond the expectation of the people. Rebels were still
on the banks of the Rappahannock and the Tennessee. A few defeats, loss
of men, great expenditures of money, and a rather dormant campaign
during the winter, had produced some despondency and doubt.

Secretary Chase, with his powerful position in the cabinet and at the
head of the treasury, was known to be seeking the presidency, and so he
became the centre around which clustered various elements of discontent
and opposition. He was the head, it is said, of the radical forces in
the cabinet, as Mr. Seward was of the conservative forces. But though
a man of great prominence, and of great power, a man with a splendid
record as a political chief of the Free-soil party that had battled
slavery before the war, his legislature of Ohio pronounced for Mr.
Lincoln, and Mr. Chase at once withdrew.

But everything was at fever-heat. The “radical men of the nation” were
invited to meet at Cleveland on the 31st of May, eight days before
the Republican Convention met at Baltimore. “It was simply a mass
convention of one hundred and fifty persons, claiming to come from
fifteen states.” General Frémont was put forward as candidate for
president, and Gen. John Cochrane, of New York, for vice-president, and
all in violent opposition to Mr. Lincoln, as the call indicated, and
General Frémont’s letter of acceptance confirmed. If anybody else was
nominated, he would not be a candidate.

This was the state of affairs when Mr. Blaine went with his delegation
to Baltimore, where Union troops were first fired upon less than three
years before.

It seems exceeding strange as we look back upon it now, that anyone
could be found in all the North, and especially among his party,
men who could oppose a man so great and worthy as Abraham Lincoln,
and even attack the wisdom of his administration and the rectitude
of his intentions, just as some were found to attack Washington,
notwithstanding the magnitude of his service, the splendor of his life,
and the magnificence of his character.

Mr. Blaine was among the staunchest friends of the president, and
cannot look, even from this distance of years, with any respect, upon
the actions of those who sought to undermine him. He regarded it as
unwise, cruel, and next to disloyalty. But it availed not,--he was too
proudly enthroned amid the affections of the people, so that every
effort of opposition but increased their love and zeal for him, and
made his nomination, which came in due time, doubly sure.

This convention, in which Mr. Blaine bore so signal a part, was
full of interest, not only for the sake of Mr. Lincoln, but also of
Vice-president Hannibal Hamlin, of his own state.

Many eminent men were included in its roll of delegates. Not less
than five of the leading war-governors were chosen to participate
in its councils. Vermont sent Solomon Foote, who had stood faithful
in the senate during the struggle before the war. Massachusetts had
commissioned her eloquent governor, John A. Andrew. Henry J. Raymond,
Daniel S. Dickinson, and Lyman Tremaine were there from New York. New
Jersey and Ohio each sent two ex-governors,--Marcus L. Ward and William
A. Newell from the former, and William Dennison and David Tod from
the latter. Simon Cameron, Thaddeus Stevens, and Ex-Speaker Grow, of
Pennsylvania; Governor Blair and Omer D. Conger, of Michigan; Angus
Cameron, of Wisconsin, and George W. McCrary, of Iowa, were among the
other delegates.

Governor Morgan, of New York, called the convention to order, and Dr.
Robert J. Breckenridge was chosen temporary chairman, who, on taking
the chair, delivered the great speech of the convention, as Mr. Blaine
thinks. It impressed him deeply, and he refers to it with emotions of
admiration to-day.

He was a tall, sturdy man, of Scotch extraction and advanced in years,
which, with his history, inspired reverence. His speech was “sharp,
sinewy, and defiant.” He had been reared amidst Slavery, but was for
the Union. “The nation shall not be destroyed,” he said. “We shall
change the Constitution if it suits us to do so. The only enduring,
the only imperishable cement of all free institutions, has been the
blood of traitors,” he said with thrilling effect; and added regarding
Slavery, “Use all power to exterminate and extinguish it.”

“Next to the official platform itself,” said Mr. Blaine, “the speech
of Doctor Breckenridge was the most inspiring utterance of the
convention.” Every vote in the convention was cast for Mr. Lincoln
on the first ballot, except twenty-two from Missouri, which, by
instruction, were cast for General Grant.

When congress adjourned, July 4th, the great campaign opened, and into
it plunged Mr. Blaine with all the fiery ardor of which his nature was
competent, and patriotism prompted, and his personal friendship for
Mr. Lincoln could inspire.

Gen. George B. McClellan, who had been the idol of the army for
two years and a half, was nominated by the Democrats. Mr. Blaine
denominates it “a canvass of extraordinary interest and critical
importance.” And such indeed it was, coming as it did right in the
midst of the great war, when over a million men were in arms on the
continent, and the great summer and fall campaigns were to be fought.
It was, indeed, a critical time for heated discussions, the grinding
of opposition, the friction of parties, constant irritation, not only
at home, throughout every city, village, and hamlet of the North, but
throughout the army, in every camp and hospital, on the march, at
picket, post, and bivouac,--for the soldiers were to vote.

It was, indeed, a perilous time. No tongue can tell, no mind can even
dream, the results that would have followed Mr. Lincoln’s defeat; what
reversals of history; what undoing of mighty deeds; what paralysis of
moral power in the nation; what defeat of principle; what compromise
with wrong; what stagnation, downfall, death. But it was not to be;
it could not be. High heaven’s decree was otherwise. Incompetence was
not to be rewarded. The great North, when it spoke out for all the
world to hear, had no premium to place upon supposed disloyalty. The
old ship of state was not to change captains in mid-ocean; he who had
brought her by island, and rock, and reef, through storm and tempest,
through cyclone and hurricane, safely thus far, was no Jonah, to be
cast overboard now. Few people in all the world can know more clearly,
feel more deeply, and act more strongly when things thoroughly arouse,
than the American people, and none have more to rouse them at times.
Indeed, we have the cream of all the nations, and so strike high above
the average. We heard of “thinking bayonets” back there, and fife, and
drum, and horn that spoke the thoughts and love of men. The triumph was
complete.

There were but twenty-one votes in the electoral college, when autumn
came, for McClellan, and two hundred and twelve for Mr. Lincoln.
The decree of a holy Providence had been recorded with an emphasis
as unmistakable as doubtless would have been the case had the Great
Emancipator of Israel been subjected to a test-vote in the wilderness.

It is probable that no period of the nation’s history is so bright with
victories, both civil and military, as the sixty days succeeding the
convention at Chicago, Aug. 29, 1864, which nominated General McClellan
for the presidency,--a period in which the labors of Mr. Blaine were
indefatigable for the Union cause, and to which he referred with the
emphasis of a life-time interest.

The Democrats voted the war a failure, and then placed its leading
general up to within less than a year before, upon their platform.
And yet, while they were declaring the war a failure, the news came
that Fort Morgan was captured, and Sherman took Atlanta the day after
they adjourned, and speedily came the successes of Admiral Farragut in
Mobile Bay.

A proclamation of thanksgiving was issued by President Lincoln for
the great Union victories within two days after they had proposed,
practically, to surrender to traitors; and Secretary Seward said in a
public speech, “Sherman and Farragut have knocked the planks out of the
Chicago platform.”

Meanwhile Grant held Lee in a vise at Petersburgh, and Sheridan, within
three weeks of Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, had dashed down the
Shenandoah valley and won three brilliant victories in the battles of
Winchester, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek.

The political effect of these victories was just what Mr. Lincoln had
predicted. “With reverses in the field,” he said, “the case is doubtful
at the polls; but with victory in the field, the election will take
care of itself.”

And then came the civil victories,--Maine and Vermont in September (and
Mr. Blaine was still chairman of the Republican State Central Committee
in Maine, and had to plan the entire campaign, secure speakers, etc.,
etc.); then in October, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, wheeled into
line, and “registered in advance the edict of the people in regard to
the presidency.”

Mr. Blaine had usually to remain in his own state each summer after the
adjournment of congress, until after the election, and they had one
each year, which occurred the second Monday in September, and as this
would come from the eighth to the twelfth of the month it gave him from
fifty to sixty days for campaign-work in other states, which, during
presidential years, was fully and heartily improved. He was greatly
sought for, and would draw immense audiences, and kindle an enthusiasm
which would blaze and burn, and smoulder, and then blaze forth again.
His offer of a thousand dollars a line for anything that he has written
the past year, expressing in any way a desire for the nomination, is
proof that his nomination is but the result of the old smouldering
fires of almost boundless and unquenchable enthusiasm blazing forth
anew. These fires that are burning now have been kindled for ten or
twenty years, and they have been chiefly lighted during these fifty or
sixty days intervening between September elections in Maine and the
October and November elections in other states. While others might go
to the mountains or sea-shore to rest and rust, he would breathe for
two or three days, and respond to some of the numerous calls for help
where the brunt of battle was heaviest, or the enemy seemed strong and
desperate.

He was always a hard hitter, and never played at politics. It was
business with him, and war. He would wring the neck of a political
heresy with all the gusto an old Scotch Covenanter would experience
in hounding to the death a religious heresy. There is such a thing
as political truth and political virtue to him. It is not fancy and
foible, chimera and dream, phantasm and fable, but granite truth, and
principle rock-like and firm as adamant.

Something was fought for in the war, and that something has been worth
preserving, and is to-day.

It is Liberty in purest form and on grandest scale this world has
ever known; the life of all prosperity, the very spirit of peace,
the inspiration of all development, the law of all growth, and the
harbinger of hope’s brightest anticipations.

And so Mr. Blaine has done his great, best work, not simply in the
light of glowing idols, but in the glow of great victories achieved,
and the substance of great realities enjoyed, in a mental and moral
realization; and a country broad, and grand, and free; its great
cities, rivers, forests, lakes, its ocean, mountains, prairies, plains,
and all its five and fifty million people, to him a joy.

He takes it in and calls it ours,--the fair inheritance of a people
free,--for we inherit one another too, in all that constitutes society,
community, city, and country.

We said he hit hard, struck out to win. It is true. Each man before him
must squirm or cheer. There were no lookers on; he had no idle issues,
but live ones; personal, and things of destiny.

When in Ohio once with Congressman Bingham,--and he did not go that far
from home for nothing,--he got up a little political hail-storm for
the special benefit of the Democrats present. Such a storm is usually
produced by two dark clouds coming together, heavily charged with the
double extract of electricity and other substances. He brought one of
those clouds with him and manufactured the other one on the spot out of
materials in the audience.

The result was a good many were hit, and hail hurts when it has a fair
chance to strike, and as that was well aimed it struck square. Among
others, a man from the “old sod,”--an Irishman,--who had in him what is
rare in Maine,--whiskey,--so after the speaking he made for Mr. Blaine,
determined to try his shillalah upon the cranium of the honorable
gentleman, but just as he came up, Bookwalter, who ran for governor,
seized him, and gave him the direction of the comet which did not know
how it came there, or where it was going. At all events, he did not get
the whirl, and twist, and buzz out of him in time to find out where he
was, or Mr. Blaine either, or to reform his purpose and execute it.

It is said Henry Clay’s speeches had the most effect at the time they
were delivered, and that Daniel Webster’s speeches had more effect a
week afterwards, when people had had time to think them over, than at
the time they were delivered.

You must combine these views to get at the truth regarding Mr. Blaine’s
speeches. They have tremendous effect when delivered, and great
power afterward. His illustrations, taken right out of daily life,
would catch and hold the thought, and illuminate the mind, and make
themselves remembered. They would not let go; like some of the things
that have clung to us through life, we don’t hold on to them, they hold
on themselves.

A speech we heard from him years ago will never leave us. It was on the
currency question, which was discussed for years, and, like Banco’s
ghost, would not down.

His first sentence will never be forgotten. It was characteristic of
the man, and expressed a great principle of his political philosophy.
This was it: “_A thing is never settled until it is settled right._”

How true that was of Slavery! how true of the currency question! how
true of every great question of moral or religious reform! Until it is
settled right it is like a piece of glass in the eye, you cannot get it
into a comfortable position; you move it and arrange and re-arrange it,
and think now that it is fixed for certain, and just as it ceases to
vex you,--like the crooked stick in the fable, so crooked it could not
lie still,--it turns over.

In that same speech,--and it moved and swayed thousands then, and
clings to them yet like an influence of magic power, moving and swaying
them still, in it was a little simple reference to experience he had
in California, and it was before specie payments had been resumed, but
they were on a gold basis out on the Pacific coast. He had gone into a
bank to get a check of three hundred dollars cashed, and he said, “Give
me gold,” and they gave him gold, and he divided it up and put it in
all his pockets to balance the load, and he went about the city calling
here and there, going up long stairways, and over great establishments,
and all the while that gold was getting heavier. He would change it
about and carry some in his hand. It was such a luxury to have gold
and not pay any premium on it. But finally it was too much for him,
and in a sort of desperation he went back to the bank, and asked them
if they would not give him greenbacks for that gold, and the man said
“Yes,” and he took the little roll of greenbacks and put it in his
vest-pocket, and was not bothered any more. He acted out the scene with
dramatic effect. The incident gave all a new love for the greenback,
and less thirst for gold.

It was his delight all through that speech to get questions from the
audience, and so settle their difficulties by giving them just the
information desired.

His power with an audience lay largely in this method of questioning.
He drew near to them, or rather drew them near to him, was helpful
and kindly; he would stop in his speech and talk with anyone in the
audience that had sensible questions to ask, and so was down to earth
all the time, and not up among the clouds “careering on the gale.”
And thus he really did something, really accomplished it, and so made
progress. He did not fly any eagle, he did not have one along.

Some grocer or laboring man in the crowd asked a question about the
revenue on sugar, which Mr. Blaine did not get at first, and an
aristocrat on the platform said, “O, never mind him, go on with your
speech,” but he had said “What,” and was eagerly listening to get the
man’s thought, and said quickly to the honorable gentleman, “Keep
still,” and waved his hand back at him to keep quiet, and he heard the
laboring man’s question fairly, and answered it, too.

It made all respect him the more, and beside, that was his speech. It
was his way of getting error out of the mind and truth in. It does not
do much good to shoot off a quantity of powder out doors. It will make
a big flash and smoke and noise, but what of that; put it in a cannon
behind a ball and give it aim, and then touch it off, and there will be
execution.

Mr. Blaine’s method of getting the light into the people was by getting
the dark out; like the Dutchman who put a window into his barn to let
the dark out, but the same process that let the dark out, let the light
in.

He had gotten this colloquial style, it may be in congress, or in
Yankee land where they “raise questions.” It is a part of a real live
Yankee’s life-work to ask questions. This is his birthright, an
inheritance of the soil.

But the practice is very prevalent in congress, where there are a great
many lawyers who are skilled in questioning witnesses, and it is a
habit with them, carried from their practice in the courts to the halls
of legislation; and it is a very convenient and serviceable habit, as
the record of proceedings clearly shows.

It may be recalled that the campaign of 1864 was prosecuted so
effectually that while McClellan received twenty-one electoral votes,
only one of the eighteen free states voting thus honored him, namely:
New Jersey,--Kentucky and Delaware joining with her.

The real triumph to Mr. Lincoln was in New York, and we close this
chapter by giving it in Mr. Blaine’s own words, for it had attracted
his special attention. Horatio Seymour and Reuben E. Fenton were
respectively the Democratic and Republican candidates for Governor of
New York:--

“Governor Seymour’s speech in the Democratic convention at Chicago,
Aug. 29, 1864, had been an indictment of the most malignant type
against the administration. The president felt that he was himself
wholly wrong, or Governor Seymour was wholly wrong, and the people of
New York were to decide which. They rendered their verdict in the
election of Reuben E. Fenton to the governorship by a majority of
thousands over Mr. Seymour. Without that result Mr. Lincoln’s triumph
would have been incomplete. The victory in the nation,” he adds, “was
the most complete ever achieved in an election that was seriously
contested.”

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

XI.

SECOND TERM IN CONGRESS.


Mr. Blaine reached home weary in body, but fresh in spirit, from the
great political war in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, just
in time to cast his ballot the last time for Abraham Lincoln. He had
stumped his own state from “Kittery to Houlton,” which are the extreme
points in Maine, and had put in about fifty speeches in the other
states,--between one and two hundred in all. He had confidence in the
result, for he had been near the people and got their temper and knew
the purpose of their sovereign will in the matter, and so it came, but
with it the reflection that they were only about five years off from
the Dred Scott decision, and every free state but one voting solid
in the electoral college for the great abolition president, Abraham
Lincoln.

How dark and infamous, and mysterious, too, looked the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise; the war with Mexico; the Kansas and Nebraska
bill; the proposition to purchase Cuba for purposes of slavery, and
all the political paltroonery and truckling of honored public men, the
trimmers and time-servers!

But what ruin strewed the pathway to such triumph! There was not a
slave in all the land now, according to the proclamation, emphatically
endorsed, and the rebellion well-nigh crushed. The effort had been,
it is thought, for the South to hold out until after the presidential
election, and hope for the defeat of Mr. Lincoln. The war was over six
months after his re-election.

In less than a month after election day, Mr. Blaine was in his seat
in congress (December 5th), and there, also, with a knowledge of the
fact that not only had Mr. Lincoln been re-elected president, but he
himself, also, had been re-elected to congress, for the election took
place a year before each term expired. How could he be otherwise than
happy regarding the political outlook of either himself or the nation.
He need have little thought for himself; he had surely caught at the
flood that tide which leads on to greatness. He was not a coming man,
but one who had already come. His record of the former session had made
him more widely known, and known in a larger sense. Indeed, he was
every way a larger man; beloved at home, respected and admired abroad
in other states, and where his great life-work had so auspiciously
begun--in congress.

The principle of evolution was at work upon him in its only true sense,
just as it operates in tree and flower, where heaven and earth in all
their vital forces are made tributary to Nature’s laws of unfolding in
the deep processes of growth upward to perfection.

There had been a wondrous involution from centuries of great history,
according to subtle, silent laws of hereditary inheritance, in very
blood and life, of tone, and quality, and temper, and now there is
evolved, evoked, just that of power which tells of kinship with those
who have gone before.

It should not cause surprise that Nature keeps her treasures, or that
the right, the good, the true, live to confront the wrong, the false,
the bad, with just those elements of a nobler life that no power can
resist.

The people everywhere were singing,--

  “Our God is marching on.”

And so he was, in all of truth and right maintained, in all of good
performed.

Never were the good and true remembered in such hosts as when the
nation struggled with her foes. What mighty ones stepped out of the
chaos of a dismal past into splendid life with her! Their name is
legion; grand in every sphere of greatness, and great in every realm
of grandeur. They thought out the nation first; fought out and forged
it in battle-heat, and hurled it like a thing of life, upon its great
career. It never loses its power to go, to be, and conquer, bringing
ever to the birth, and upward into strong, armed life those whose great
abilities are her own; her own for defense; her own for war, living in
their lives, powerful in their strong right arms,--one with them in
destiny. Among that number now, though reckoned with a multitude, was
James G. Blaine.

He surveyed the field for but a single day after the second session
of his first congress opened,--the thirty-eighth,--and then undid the
mischief of another. It was called the “Gold bill” in the House, and
had simply been offered and referred to the committee of Ways and
Means, by a Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania.

Its substance was, that a dollar note issued by the Government,
declared lawful money and legal tender, is declared of equal value for
all purposes as gold and silver coin of like denominations. A contract
made payable in coin may be payable in legal tender, and anyone should
be imprisoned who received a greenback for less than gold coin was
worth, and fined as well.

Gold went up in Wall Street within twenty-four hours after the
bill was presented, twelve per cent. Mr. Blaine saw it and moved a
reconsideration of it, sections two, three, five, and six being the
objectional features of the bill. His speech in support of his motion
did not occupy ten minutes. The author of the bill, Mr. Stevens, said,--

“My friend from Maine (Mr. Blaine) has an intuitive way of getting
at a great national question, one that has exercised the thoughts of
statesmen of several countries for many years.” This in opening; and in
closing his speech, he said,--

“How the gentleman from Maine, by his intuitive knowledge of these
things comes to understand at once what the ablest statesmen of England
took months to mature, I cannot very well understand. It is a happy
inspiration.”

Had he a knowledge of his long years of study, that it was then
twenty-five years since he finished reciting Plutarch, and but little
less than twenty since his graduation, had he a knowledge of the
strong, determined spirit of mastery which characterized him in all his
work, could he have read over at that moment the long list of volumes
over which he had poured, had he known these things, he would not
have felt that a genius of intuition who got at things by inspiration
merely, sat before him, but one with a genius for the hardest kind
of a student’s work, with intuitions born of high intelligence and
inspiration that comes from conscious strength. No wonder he was an
enigma, a man beyond his years and place, yet master of the situation.

Mr. Stevens’ motion to table the motion of Mr. Blaine, failed,
fifty-one to sixty-eight, and then the motion of Mr. Blaine regarding
the bill of Mr. Stevens, carried, seventy-three to fifty-two. It is
interesting to notice, that though the gentleman did not call up his
bill for a solid month,--not until after the holidays,--and then came
in with an elaborate argument showing the financial course of England
in her war with France in 1793, and then in her war finally with the
whole of continental Europe, though he seemed to have made a careful
study of his subject, and of England’s financial policy, he closed with
this sentence:--

“I feel that England never had so absurd a law as to pay one part of
her war-debt in gold and another part in Bank of England notes.” He
said “I feel,” he did not know. But Mr. Blaine knew, and so he asked
him whether the bonds negotiated by England upon the continent were not
payable in gold.

“I do not know,” was the answer.

Then Mr. Blaine stated, “Every one of them negotiated upon the
continent was payable in gold, both principal and interest. Every one
negotiated at the Hague, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and elsewhere upon
the continent, was negotiated upon the gold basis exclusively.”

This was no contest to win, but simply to bring out financial
intelligence in a semi-official way, for the benefit of the country.
It was a most sensitive subject. Gold was up to two hundred and fifty,
that is, a hundred dollars in gold cost two hundred and fifty dollars
in greenbacks, and Mr. Stevens had endeavored in a wrong way, as Mr.
Brooks showed, to correct gambling in gold, but Mr. Blaine could
furnish him with deficiencies of knowledge, and manifest the acumen of
a statesman upon a subject so great.

Mr. Blaine had his magnetic power then, and Mr. Stevens refers to it,
and his great power over the House in securing so promptly the passage
of his motion. He said,

“The House, partaking of the magnetic manner of my friend from Maine,
became alarmed, and immediately laid the bill on the table.”

It was his power of quick, thrilling action; of feeling strongly, and
making others feel as he did; of casting upon them the glow of his own
brilliancy; of charming them with the rhapsody of his own genius; of
piercing them with the energy of his own thinking, and so shutting them
up to his conclusions by the force of his own arguments; it was thus
by methods the fairest and most honorable to his abilities, that he
carried all before him. And one can but see in his repeated control of
the House, the power of his friendships.

Cox, Pendleton, Brooks, and others of the opposition would show him the
greatest courtesies in debate. Randall, even, in his first session,
gave him time out of his own hour for an entire speech, and Cox
encouraged him in the midst of his Gold bill speech, by saying he was
with him on it.

When the Naval Academy bill was before the House, he moved to repeal
a section relating to cadets “found deficient.” If they had a hundred
demerit marks in six months they would be expelled. Mr. Blaine had
visited the academy in 1861, as a member of the “Board of Visitors,”
and while there a young man was dismissed, not for any fault of
scholarship, for he was among the brightest and best in his class.

Becoming deeply interested in the cause of the young man, he went to
Washington and successfully interceded with the secretary of war, and
he was restored. He subsequently graduated very high in class-rank,
and since his entrance upon active service has distinguished himself
as an officer of great merit, serving with efficiency and distinction
as ordnance-officer on General Sheridan’s staff in that splendid,
victorious campaign in the valley of the Shenandoah.

The demerits were given for singularly small offences, as: “floor out
of order near wash-stand, four demerits,” etc., etc.

Mr. Blaine insisted that to the secretary of war and the president be
restored the power that was taken from them at the last session,--to
pardon any cadet discharged for any of these offences.

General Schenck joined him, and the amendment was adopted.

There is a little section of his speech on the Military Academy bill
which shows his admiration for the telling power of manhood, and his
utter scorn of sacrificing great ability, for which the nation was so
loudly calling then, to little, simple things, good in themselves, but
not of first importance, that we cannot forbear to give it. Here it is,
verbatim, as he delivered it in congress:--

“Many of the cadets, sir, who have been very precise and decorous in
their conduct in matters of petty discipline at the academy, and manage
to pass through smoothly, often graduating with high rank obtained
by very strict attention to ‘folding beds by 10 A. M.,’ and ‘drawing
curtains by at precisely 6.45 A. M.’ (academy rules), are unfortunately
never heard from afterwards. Their names do not always figure in the
record of our bloody battles, and they have achieved no distinction
in this war, with all its thousand opportunities, while on the other
hand not a few of the graduates at the academy who at the Point had
the ‘odor of tobacco in their rooms,’ and whose ‘floors were out of
order near the wash-stand,’ have blazoned their names high on the roll
of fame for conduct as gallant and skill as great as ever graced the
battle-fields of any age country.”

Efficiency has ever been the test with him in his own work, and this
he applies to others; as one has said, “We measure others in our own
half-bushel; of course we do, we have no other.”

Early in the session he had a running debate which tried his metal,
with Thayer, of Pennsylvania; Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; James
S. Wilson, of Iowa; General Schenck, of Ohio, and S. S. Cox, of Ohio
yielding the floor for the purpose.

It was not only a proof of his knowledge, but also of his ability to
use it on demand, and he showed himself equal to the exigency, and
showed that he was generally found away on the lead in his discussion
of constitutional measures and application of principles.

It is possible for a man to go over, in a long-winded speech, a vast
amount of ground, which has been tramped as bare as the camp-ground of
a brigade of soldiers, by a multitude of debaters; ground which has
been surveyed, and staked out, and pre-empted, and owned for a century
or more, and concerning which, as concerning the constitution there is
no question. Such speeches as these wearied the progressive spirit of
advanced ones, and made them restless when the fate of great interests
hung on the decision of a few hours’ discussion. No one watched more
closely the utterances of men upon the floor, or held them to a
stricter account.

In presenting a minority report on amendment of rules for the
government of the House, Mr. Morrill had placed some undue restriction
upon the powers of congress, and courteously waiting until he had
finished a long speech of ten or eleven columns, Mr. Blaine asked him
whether the power of impeachment would not extend to cabinet officers,
and so their attendance upon the sittings of the House be compelled, a
point Mr. Morrill had denied.

There had been little demand for this power slumbering in the
constitution,--power which was used upon a president shortly
afterward,--but brought prominently to the attention of the House,
and much light thrown on it by the answers tersely given to near a
score of questions, members were pleased to ask Mr. Blaine, and while
he was ready with abundant answers; clear and strong, and packed with
knowledge of the highest legal type, he was ready as well if there was
hint of an assailant in manner or tone, to thrust out a sharp, rising
question which would almost take the breath of the man who might be
after him. When General Schenck asked him if the secretary of war was
a civil officer, his quick reply was, “I do not think that a ‘civil’
question.” Neither was it, for as member of the cabinet of course he
was a civil officer, as much so as the president himself, who was by
virtue of his office “Commander-in-chief of the armies of the Union.”

But Mr. Blaine had great respect for age and learning, and allowed no
opportunity to show it to pass by unimproved. His early intercourse
with his Grandfather Gillespie had developed largely veneration both
for gray hairs and scholarly attainments, a veneration which had
matured by associations with his teachers and great men of the nation
whom he had met in his youthful days, and those whom he had since come
to know and honor.

When Mr. Henry Winter Davis came on with his great naval speech,
Mr. Blaine heard him with special pleasure, and had some very
complimentary things to say of “the caustic, scathing, truthful, and
deserved criticism of the naval department in building,” as Mr. Blaine
said, “twenty iron-clad vessels, at a cost of ten millions of dollars,
that will not stay on top of water.”

Mr. Pike had just taken him to task for this last statement, when
the “hammer fell,” and Mr. Davis, showing his appreciation of the
courtesies of Mr. Blaine, arose and said, “I ask unanimous consent that
the gentleman from Maine may be permitted to proceed.” This was indeed
a consideration which young members seldom received from the veterans
of the House, and especially from one with a national reputation for
scholarly attainments. But as “the debate in Committee of the Whole
was closed by order of the House,” the Chair could not grant the
request, and just here Mr. Blaine’s shrewdness and intimate knowledge
of parliamentary rules showed itself. “I move,” he said, “to amend the
amendment, by striking out the first line; that will entitle me to the
floor for a few minutes longer.”

Then he went on to give an official fact, as he called it, and he knew
well the value of such things; there was nothing “fine-spun” about
them, but strong and stubborn, and full of power to convince. “Out of
ninety British steamers,” he said, “caught within a given period in
attempting to run the blockade, only twelve were caught by vessels
built by the present administration of the navy department; while
seventy-eight were caught either by purchased vessels, or vessels
inherited from the old navy. I submit, sir, that this fact bears with
crushing force on the practical question of the speed and efficiency of
vessels of the new navy.” It is bad enough to swindle the government at
any time, and in any thing, but in times of war to swindle her in the
construction of iron-clad vessels that will not float, yet needed at
once for active service, and produce twenty of them at half a million
dollars apiece, was enough to arouse the indignation not only of the
older member, Mr. Davis, but also of the younger man, Mr. Blaine.

And this now gave him a new, fresh start, untrammeled by crutch or
cane, casting him wholly upon his own resources, and placing him where
he must put forth all the power in him, or utterly fail.

“When the Jeannette went down, crushed and sunken by the ice,” writes
Lieutenant Danenhouser, “we started with our boats southward, dragging
them over the ice, broken and piled in every conceivable shape. We
accomplished seven miles the first week, only to find, by taking
observations, that the ice-floe had drifted us back to the northward
twenty-seven miles, and so placing us twenty miles to the rear of the
spot where we had started, and our ship had sunk.” They had intrepid
spirits, but no firm ground; he had both the intrepid spirit and the
firm ground on which to stand, and his victory was swift and certain.

Mr. Blaine never lost an opportunity to do a favor, or make a friend.
Doing duty was his delight; getting hold of strong, plain, practical
facts, and presenting them in a way that showed a constant, abiding
interest in his constituency, that he was living and toiling for them,
and had their best interest, and those of the entire state of Maine,
and the whole country at heart.

Here is one of his plain, practical statements, showing his loyalty to
home interests, as well as the business interests of the country. A
vessel from his district had been chartered to government to carry a
cargo of four hundred and fifty tons of coal from Philadelphia to New
Orleans, for six thousand dollars. Upon her return her disbursements
had been six thousand, two hundred and thirty-eight dollars and
five cents. She received six thousand dollars in certificates of
indebtedness from the government, then selling them at ninety-four,
which made but five thousand six hundred and forty dollars in cash,
showing a net cash loss of five hundred and ninety-eight dollars and
five cents, besides the interest on advance, about two hundred dollars
more.

“And now, sir,” said Mr. Blaine, “after this melancholy experience the
tax-collector came forward and demanded of the owner of the vessel, two
and one-half per cent. on the six thousand dollars which the government
paid, as above, and on top of all losses already incurred actually
compelled him to pay one hundred and fifty dollars under that section
of the internal-revenue law, which we are seeking to amend.

“A man’s profit in business,” he goes on to say, “affords a fair basis
of taxation, but it is a cruel mockery of one’s misfortune to assess a
tax upon losses.”

He further plead that “as commercial men of the country, who do so much
to sustain our finances and our honor, they should be relieved from its
oppressive exactions.”

There were no mists or fogs about him to conceal him or his methods,
and what he said stood out in the clear light of day. In this case he
was able to catch up from memory, a better argument for the repeal
of the oppressive section of the law than had come to the House in
a lengthy written memorial from a company doing business on the
Schuylkill Canal in Pennsylvania, and who could make sitings net them
four hundred and ten dollars, while in the case cited by Mr. Blaine,
one trip was made at a loss of nine hundred and forty-eight dollars and
five cents.

Seldom did he cite his own opinion. It was the bludgeon of hard, solid
facts with which he did his best execution. Others might theorize,
and imagine, and conceive, and spin web after web of sophistry, like
the spider, out of themselves, to be full as flimsy when the storm
of debate beat upon it, but not he. He evidently kept up a living
acquaintance with those to whom he was responsible, and this, with
an ever vigilant correspondence, enabled him to know, and not simply
think and feel, but actually to know their adverse experiences where
the operations of the machinery of government affected them, and with
reasonable and apparent facts in hand he could easily procure the
remedy. This lively interest, so practical and so potent as well, was
with him a constant element of power.

He lost no opportunity to familiarize himself with business
enterprises, great and small, and get the best authority on all
questions of finance and trade, and as a result he could speak with
pertinency, and from a mind prolific of the freshest data on the
practical questions as they were constantly coming before the House,
and especially in the old war-days, when the vexed questions of
internal revenue, with all its myriad details regarding the nature and
value of taxable articles, were being adjusted.

At one time when he first entered congress, nearly every article that
entered into the construction of a ship was taxed, and then upon her
tonnage, and then, beside, upon the gross receipts for carrying the
cargo. He saw to it at once that those matters were attended to.

But a fresh call was out for troops, and it was a final call. They
were getting ready for the great opening of the spring campaign which
was to speedily end in crushing the Rebellion, and annihilating the
Confederacy. There was a flaw in the enrollment law passed the last
session, which Mr. Blaine had discovered, and sought to remedy. It
permitted recruiting in the rebel states, and credits for previous
naval enlistments. “From these two sources have arisen the gigantic and
wide-spread evil of filling quotas of towns without adding troops to
the army.” He had offered an amendment which was designed to bring back
recruiting to “an honest, meritorious, and patriotic effort to fill the
ranks of our gallant army with men, and not with shadowy fictions which
pass under the name of ‘paper credits.’” The quotas of entire cities,
districts, and possibly states, had been thus filled “without adding a
single man or musket to the effective military force of the nation.
There was fraud, and he would so change the law that it could not be
perpetuated.”

There were substitute-brokers, who, in some mysterious way, would get
hold of these “credits,” as they were called, and sell them, much as
torn scrip is sold.

“We can deal just by the government,” he said, “in its struggle for
existence. It calls for men, and it is worse than madness to answer
this call with anything else than men.

“In conclusion,” and his words reveal a genuine patriotism and zeal of
affection for the soldier, “nothing so discourages the brave men at the
front as the belief that proper measures are not adopted at home for
re-enforcing and sustaining them.

“After four years of such patriotic and heroic effort for national
unity as the world has never witnessed before, we cannot now afford
to have the great cause injured, or its fair fame darkened by a
single unworthy incident connected with it. The improper practices of
individuals cannot disgrace and degrade the nation, but after these
practices are brought to the attention of congress, we shall assuredly
be disgraced and degraded if we fail to apply the remedy. Let us, then,
in this hour of the national need, do our duty here, our duty to the
troops in the field, our duty to our constituents at home, and our
country; above all, to our country, whose existence has been in such
peril in the past, but whose future of greatness and glory seems now so
assured, and so radiant.”

Few utterances of those long, dark years, breathed a spirit of more
devoted loyalty than is found even in these few sentences, and they
were uttered when they would do the most good, and secure just those
re-enforcements that would gladden the hearts of veterans, and hasten
the end of the struggle.

Mr. Blaine had a keen eye for fraud, and made it his business to detect
it; and he was just fearless enough to hold it up to the light of day.
Wherever he unearthed it he would point out the individual, and point
his finger at him and say, with a boldness known only to invective and
scorn, “Thou art the man!”

He never seemed to take care of his popularity, but of his constituents
and of his country. Enemies abounded, and evil, and wrong; and to these
he paid effective attention, rightly judging that no course is safer,
or accords with fuller satisfaction, than the right course. With him,
character was the citadel of strength and influence; and so we find
him knowing and trusting himself, reaching for wrong in all of its
strongholds.

And there was much to encourage now Sherman had reached the sea;
Columbia, S. C., was captured; Charleston was evacuated; the old flag
was again flying over Fort Sumter, and Washington’s Birthday was to
be celebrated, by order of the secretary of war, E. M. Stanton, by
a “national salute at West Point, and at every fort, arsenal, and
army head-quarters of the United States, in honor of the event.” This
twenty-second day of February was a long, busy day in congress. It
was a quarter past five before the House adjourned. Mr. Blaine was in
his seat all day long, voting steadily for the right and against the
wrong. The conquered states, cut off from the Rebellion and rescued to
liberty and lawful authority, were left without government, and must
be provided, as Tennessee had been in the person of Andrew Johnson,
now vice-president, with provisional governors. Much legislation was
requisite. Every man in congress who had ever had any pro-slavery
proclivities, was in his place contesting every step of progress with
men who had never breathed aught but the air of freedom and known only
loyal heart-beats.

One bill granted citizenship to all colored men who had served in the
army and navy.

Right royal work, this, for such a man to be doing on a day so sacred;
helping into citizenship the colored man, ever loyal, ever true.

This seemed to be the great feature of all the great bills before the
House that day. It came up in the bill to encourage enlistments, and
the worth and dignity of being an American citizen was held up before
the negro as a prize for him to win; as something in store for him in
the future; and so as giving to the colored troops, and all who united
with them, this personal interest in relation to the government. But
it takes time to get such thoughts adjusted to minds struggling with
the fact of Emancipation, and so little is done but give the bills a
hearing and pass them to another reading. Coming events had cast their
shadows before them. It was, however, but the shadow of a passing
cloud, and told of a great, bright sun shining in the heavens yonder,
which would soon dissipate all clouds and shadows, and the long night
of bondage ended, give a glorious day, in which the world might see
in the poorest black man of the South an American citizen, possessed
of certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.

To the happy consummation of a task so grand, whose inspiration comes
from that free and holy place where “all are one,” Mr. Blaine had set
his hand, only to remove it when the chaplet of America’s proudest,
noblest glory was on the black man’s brow.

That life is most divine which is most in line with Providence, and has
the most of uplifting power in it, which stands the highest up, and
can reach the farthest down, is many-handed in its helpfulness, and
strong-handed as well, to unshackle humanity in body, in soul, and in
spirit, and tell the fallen or sunken ones how to get upward toward God
and heaven.

Opening the gates of heaven means unlocking the gates of earth, and to
this latter task the statesmen of the nation stood pledged from that
day, since numbered among the nation’s holidays. A close student of
Mr. Blaine’s congressional career will be impressed with the fact that
it seems planned and determined before-hand. There are no surprises in
it. He seems to have determined upon his course before entering it, and
gives his strength to certain measures, and does not fritter it away
upon every resolve, or amendment, or motion, that happens to be before
the House, affecting some far away interest of a day-dreamer.

He recognizes the fact fully that he is one of a great body of men,
each one of whom is charged with interests of an important character
to their state or district, and many heavily weighted with special
and peculiar measures of national importance. These must all have
their opportunity. Less than ninety working-days usually comprise the
session, and there are but four of these in a congress,--from March to
adjournment, and from December to March, and then repeated, constitutes
a congressional term, with eight of them in a presidential term, or
two a year for the four years. Beside, it takes so long a time to get
measures through congress that the successful man finds it necessary to
devote himself with great carefulness to the few measures of importance
he would have adopted, and become law organic or otherwise.

Very soon after Mr. Blaine entered congress he presented a resolution
instructing the Committee on Judiciary to inquire into the expediency
of amending the constitution so as to allow congress to levy an export
tax. But the session closed, and it is not reported, and now his second
session is closing, and still it is not forthcoming. Why not? He will
know the reason why! And so there comes a day near the session’s close,
only the day before Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration, when he arises
and states “a little grievance.” He states the resolution, its being
offered at the last session, and now again at the present session.
It had been to the Ways and Means Committee, to which it had been
transferred. Evidently he had been ready to grapple with the subject
for some time, and proceeded to do so. It involved an amendment to
the constitution, and one “essential to the financial success of the
government, and to the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing
prosperity of the country in all future time.”

It was stated that the measure would have been presented by the
committee, if they had supposed time would have permitted of its
consideration. It presented a subject that was discussed at length in
the Convention of 1787. The “Madison Papers” give a synopsis of the
constitutional debates of that convention, and show that many of the
strongest men of that body, the really far-sighted ones, opposed the
insertion of the clause prohibiting a tax on exports. The vote was not
a very decisive one, nor did its advocacy come from the Southern or
“staple states,” and opposition from Northern states.

He proceeds to deliver what is his great speech, if not the great
speech of the session. It was probably not over an hour long, but he
had not proceeded far before it became apparent that he had thoroughly
studied the subject, and was investing it with a new interest.

A great debt of more than two billion eight hundred million was on the
nation. Mr. Blaine’s amendment was looking towards its liquidation.
It was the wise, strong look far ahead. He saw in it several hundred
millions of revenue in the export of cotton, tobacco, and naval stores,
without affecting the demand for them, and also in petroleum, and
numberless articles, still more of revenue. France was taxing her wines
and brandies, and countries having peculiar commodities taxed them.

Cotton which sold in Liverpool at eleven and three-quarters pence per
pound in December, 1861, sold for twenty-four and one-half pence per
pound in just one year from that date. The three million two hundred
thousand bales of five hundred pounds each, this country had exported,
were missed there.

“Whoever as secretary of the treasury shall undertake and succeed in
paying the debt,” he argues in closing, “must have open to him the
three great avenues of taxation, namely, the tariff, the excise system,
and the duties on exports, and must be empowered to use each in its
appropriate place, by congressional legislation.”

And so he closed the first half of his second congressional year, with
the same policy of questions with which he began, aiming still at
thoroughness and mastery, still the guiding stars of his history, the
moulding powers and the prominent features of his great career.



[Illustration]

XII.

CONTINUED WORK IN CONGRESS.


It is Inauguration Day in Washington. Not McClellan,--he is in
Europe,--but Lincoln is to be inaugurated. It is a day of wondrous
glory to him, and to the nation, but one so oppressed with the cares of
state has but little joy in it. There is no retiring president to sign
all the tardy bills of an expiring congress. He must do it all, and
then go from the realizations of the past to the unknown of the new.
There was no instant of rest for him between laying off the armor and
putting it on anew.

Of all the many thousand eyes that looked on him that day, none were
more brilliant with the look of praise, none gleamed with a soul-light
more fervent, none took in the scene with deeper thoughts of the hour
or the future, oppressive with interest, than Mr. Blaine.

Little did he dream of twenty years to come. He had thought to scale
the centuries as they stood like silent statues in the sombre, shadowy
past, and read out the hieroglyphics of their history. But just as the
rebellion was broken, shattered, staggering to its fall, and seemed
certain, and was scarce hung about with doubt, so now to faith the
future is bright and clear, while hope is strong and almost gay with
vivid anticipations.

Mr. Blaine was profoundly impressed with the religious character of
Abraham Lincoln, as exemplified in the tone of his public documents.

He says: “Throughout the whole period of the war he constantly directed
the attention of the nation to dependence on God. It may indeed be
doubted whether he omitted this in a single state paper. In every
message to congress, in every proclamation to the people, he made it
prominent. In July, 1863, after the battle of Gettysburgh, he called
upon the people to give thanks because ‘it has pleased Almighty God to
hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to
vouchsafe signal and effective victories to the army and navy of the
United States,’ and he asked the people ‘to render homage to the Divine
Majesty and to invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to subdue the
anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel
rebellion.’”

“On another occasion,” writes Mr. Blaine, “recounting the blessings
which had come to the Union, he said: ‘No human counsel hath devised,
nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the
gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in
anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.’ Throughout his
entire official career, attended at all times with exacting duty and
painful responsibility, he never forgot his own dependence unto the
same authority, or the dependence of the people upon a Higher Power.”
And then he quotes those words of the great man, uttered reverently
to the people assembled in crowds to congratulate him upon the return
of peace: “In the midst of your joyous expressions, He from whom all
blessings flow must first be remembered.”

His last inaugural, delivered but a little while before this final
utterance, was in keeping with it. It was a deeply religious document,
referring to no political measure or material interest, and in six days
after the people crowd about him, full of joy at the close of the war,
the bullet of the assassin is in his brain! What a week was that in
which the war closed, and the great Lincoln was murdered! And what a
summer was that, when the broken armies came marching home, halting in
Washington for the great review!

But a campaign is on Mr. Blaine, and he hurries home. For the third
time Samuel Coney is elected governor, and Mr. Blaine has again done
his work well. Autumn passes, and he is in his place at the opening of
the thirty-ninth congress. With his usual unforgetfulness, he resumes
connection with a bill presented by him in the early part of the
previous congress, for reimbursing the loyal states for war-expenses in
response to the president’s call for troops. His bill is very explicit,
and shows that during the long delay he had perfected it in its
details. No flaw is found in it, no amendment is made to it, but it is
at once referred, upon his motion, to a select committee of seven, and
upon his motion he demands the previous question, so that the matter
shall be attended to at once. The bill was read a first and second
time, and so referred.

Mr. Blaine is of course upon the committee, and by his motion members
are added to it, and they are empowered to hire a clerk. What a work
to examine and pass upon all the war-debts of the loyal states! A
grave question soon makes its appearance in congress. In undoing the
legislation of years, enacted in the interests of slavery, they have
come to the basis of representation. The slave is not yet a citizen,
and if the basis is population and not suffrage, the South will have an
immense advantage,--indeed an advantage similar to that enjoyed before
the war, when, though slaves were expressly recognized as chattels,
and according to the Dred Scott decision, “a black man had no rights a
white man was bound to respect,” yet, according to slavery law five of
them gave their master three extra votes.

But the ratio of voters to population varied from nineteen to
fifty-eight per cent. in different states, as, for example, California
had two hundred and seven thousand voters out of a population of three
hundred and fifty-eight thousand one hundred and ten, while Vermont had
but eighty-seven thousand voters out of a population of three hundred
and fourteen thousand three hundred and sixty-nine, and each had three
representatives in congress; that is, eighty-seven thousand voters in
Vermont sent three congressmen, while two hundred and seven thousand
voters in California sent but the same number.

There were more women and children in Vermont, two to one, than in
California, and so in the latter state there were more than twice as
many voters in the same population.

It was with such arguments as the above,--a mathematical argument,
without sophistry, and that cannot be impeached,--that he opposed a
constitutional amendment making suffrage and not population the basis
of representation, and so reserving an argument to use in framing the
citizenship of the freemen.

Mr. Blaine has long been noted for the great rapidity with which he
works.

He very soon has an immense report from his committee of nine, to
pay the loyal states their war-claims. In it twenty-six states, five
territories, and the District of Columbia have their war-claims
adjusted, and they are to receive all the way from nine thousand nine
hundred and fifty-five dollars, as in the case of the territory of
Dakota for enlisting one hundred and eighty-one men, up to twenty
million nine hundred and ninety-three thousand two hundred and eighty
dollars, as in the case of New York for enlisting three hundred and
eighty-one thousand six hundred and ninety-six men; and it is a
peculiarity with him to know for himself, by careful computation, the
exact truth of the statistics he employs.

One day it so happened that he used the calculations of a distinguished
member who was chairman of a prominent committee,--that of ways and
means,--and they were called in question; but soon after he was able to
affirm publicly that they were correct.

There was such a charm in being right and knowing it, despite all
contradiction, that he could not forego the pleasure, the very
confidence and self-respect, even at the expense of perplexing effort.
A point of order was raised against him one day; his instant reply was,
“That point was raised exactly ten years ago and overruled,” and the
chair ruled in harmony with his remembrance.

His great love for mathematics, and the position he was in requiring
it, he was led to make an extensive study of the history of finance,
and in a speech of great length, by which he supported his report to
pay the vast war-claims of the loyal states, he clearly shows the wide
range of his acquaintance with the subject. He shows great familiarity
with the policy and utterances of Alexander Hamilton, his exceeding
common-sense methods, which he quotes with so great aptness as to give
them the power of living arguments, as he offers them in evidence of
the wisdom of his own views and the tenable nature of the positions he
has taken.

It was proposed to bring all troops to a three years’ basis, and then
refund at the rate of fifty-five dollars a man. Thus, Pennsylvania,
with three hundred and sixty-six thousand three hundred and twenty-six
men, which, reduced to a three years’ basis, gave two hundred and
sixty-seven thousand five hundred and fifty-eight, which at the rate
proposed made the claim of that state fourteen million seven hundred
and fifteen thousand six hundred and ninety dollars. The Gettysburgh
battle alone had cost the state seven hundred thousand dollars, and as
for that and other service she had furnished men for a much shorter
period than three years, the whole number of men were reduced nearly
one hundred thousand to get them all on the three years’ basis.

No question commanded a more wide-spread or deeper attention for years
subsequent to the war than the question of money, and it behooved any
man with the aspirations of a statesman, to make a long and thorough
study of it.

“Reading,” it is said, “makes a full man, speaking a ready man.” He was
both reader and speaker, and so proved the truth of the maxim, by being
both a full and a ready man; and he never allowed himself to get empty.
It was the knowledge of the day, most valuable to him, with which he
was filled, as well as that which came from historical research.

It was about this time that, as a member of the committee on military
affairs, and while the conduct of the office of provost-marshal
general was being investigated, that he had his lively tilt with Mr.
Roscoe Conkling, and brought out all of his powers of wit and sarcasm,
showing him more than a match for the gentleman. It was undoubtedly
the most brilliant intellectual contest of the session. Ex-Governor
Morrill says, “It was a pretty lively time, but they were boys then,
and probably are better friends to-day, though it is certainly evident
they both did their best.”

Consistency in legislation seemed a law with Mr. Blaine, so that
the House should not be found contradicting itself on the military
functions of the president. Indeed the powers of government are so
nicely balanced between the executive and the Senate and House,
that great watchfulness is needed that there be no conflict; and
new members,--and sometimes old members,--are found transgressing
legitimate bounds. For instance, there was a section to a bill that
“until the fourth day of July, in the year 1870, all persons who
voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and
comfort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for representatives
in congress, and for elections for president and vice-president of the
United States.” He at once raised the question of bad faith, because on
July 17, 1862, they had authorized the president to grant pardon and
amnesty to any person, state or part thereof, that was in rebellion.

And to this effect President Lincoln did issue a proclamation, and
hundreds, and perhaps thousands of pardons were granted. And in 1865
President Johnson issued his celebrated amnesty proclamation, pardoning
all below the military rank of colonel, who had participated in the
Rebellion, excepting certain classes.

One thing is clearly manifest in all of Mr. Blaine’s operations in
congress,--he thoroughly enjoys it all; he is at home, and feels so
constantly. He can trust himself; there is no striving for effect. He
never gets lost in depths, nor aground upon shallows. He can fish in
deep water, or seine near shore. It is quite noticeable how he will go
with the passage of a motion from some minor detail of internal revenue
to the gravest questions of constitutional law. It was said once by
a great preacher who was pastor of a large church, editor of a large
paper, and engaged in writing a book, that he had to live in those
three great spheres, transporting himself daily from one to another,
as he worked in each. But here were not less than a dozen great
departments with which one must be as familiar as with the rooms of his
dwelling, and have in possession, living, present, trenchant facts;
the latest phases of new, fresh life, and the old and musty as well.
For it will not do to blunder in congress; it is blundering before the
nation, and before the world. The folks at home will find it out right
off, and worst of all _you_ will find it out, and a man will feel so
terribly small, and ashamed, and mean, and it will be such desperate
hard work to own up, and sit down with all-hands looking straight at
you.

It is one of the first matters of congressional courtesy, to let anyone
ask you a question. And this is all done so blandly, and in such
elegant diction, one is almost charmed by the tones so as scarcely to
get hold of the question itself; but that question is like the bee, so
bright and beautiful, and musical withal, and yet it has a sting.

What is denominated “brass,” in modern parlance, will not serve one’s
purpose. It is at once detected by its sound, and then confusion
comes,--it will come, it must come, and brass cannot prevent it.

The present was a long, tedious term, and kept the members well into
the summer. The internal-revenue laws must be properly adjusted; the
army re-organized; settlers were pouring, by the thousand, and actually
by the hundred thousand, into the great region between the Missouri and
the Pacific,--so much so that the lieutenant-general urges congress to
provide the means requisite for their protection, as a great body of
citizens who are filling up the country, rendering it productive, and
erecting states; and beside these, a multitude of other things are
demanding attention.

And then, after adjournment, comes the great campaign, in which the
thirteenth amendment is submitted to the suffrage of the people.
Two-thirds of the states must endorse it to make it organic law, and
this they do right heartily, and congress resumes its session the
first Monday in December. It is the second session of the thirty-ninth
congress, and the second of Mr. Blaine’s second term.

Mr. Blaine had a very eligible seat, at the left of the speaker, and
well in front; almost within reach of him sat Garfield.

The first day of the session Mr. Blaine made a move for the repeal of
the three cents per pound tax on raw cotton, which was finally carried.
This was a move which affected every home, and especially the laboring
classes; for older ones do not forget how enormously high cotton goods
were in war times and subsequently, and so have little difficulty in
understanding the importance of such a move. It was contended that it
was a wrong principle to tax the raw production of the soil, and in
conflict with the long-established policy of the nation.

Mr. Blaine’s resolves at this time came thick and fast, like
resolutions at New Year’s, but with more purpose in them. Indeed his
purpose is a noticeable feature of every move, and he could state it
in the plainest kind of English, and it was his practice, after a bill
was read, or resolution presented, to state its meaning, tell just
what he meant by it, as the legal forms do not always make it at once
apparent. He gives his reasons for the measure. For instance, volunteer
officers could not be breveted in the regular army for meritorious
service in the volunteer service. This he saw was wrong, and drew up a
bill in regular form to right the matter, and then states what he means
about it, and the facts that have moved him, generally move the rest.
Almost nine-tenths of the new regular army was to be made up of the old
volunteers, and he would have the old regular army laws changed so as
not to discriminate against them and in favor of West Pointers.

There was no red-tape about him. He did not believe in it. It took
too much time, and was too unjust. He believed in solid worth, and in
rewarding it. He is a straight and constant American, and loves all
who love America, and will not have them dealt unfairly with if it is
in his power to prevent. Fair play is a term he often used during his
early terms in congress. It seemed to express his ideal of honor. An
unfair man was not respectable in his eyes. It was a right upon which
he strenuously insisted for himself. He evidently had seen the old
definition of freeman, “Who knows his rights and knowing dare maintain.”

And yet this genius of fair play which possessed him, kept him from
being a bigot. His sense of justice would rebel against an outrage
inflicted upon anyone. But it is getting to be a hot place in congress.
Andrew Johnson has disappointed the hopes of the nation. He is not
filling the place of the dead Lincoln, but rather dishonoring it,
and articles of impeachment are originating in the House, summoning
him before the bar of the senate because of “the crimes and high
misdemeanors of which he is manifestly and notoriously guilty, and
which render it unsafe longer to permit him to exercise the functions
he has unlawfully assumed.” The air was filled with this matter of
impeachment during the summer campaign, but on in the dead of winter
there is no disposition to rush madly or blindly into it. It is but one
of many things demanding attention.

Mr. Blaine is as conservative as he is radical. He combines in a very
strong and decided manner many of the best characteristics of both. He
does not rush into everything that comes before the House, but calmly
surveys and studies, and comes to know the question in its bearings,
and reaches conclusions, and with these truly gained and firmly held,
he is ready for action.

The novelty of a thing makes him suspicious; he must know it through
and through, for when he begins he will surely end. One comes to expect
that when he presses a measure it will pass, and however much there may
be to retard its progress, he will never lose sight of it until it goes
through.

It seemed to be a time of political apostasy in the nation. Many are
betraying their trusts, and a large number fall, politically, to rise
no more. Many of the old war Democrats, like Andrew Johnson, were
simply Democrats when the war was over. It seemed to be a sort of
political reaction after the high pressure of the war. They were not
prepared to accept all the results of the war. It was more than they
had anticipated, and the result was an unwillingness to proceed, and
so many called a halt; but Thaddeus Stevens in the House, and Charles
Sumner in the senate, kept the work planned and the forces in motion.
Mr. Stevens formed a strong friendship for Mr. Blaine, and as they were
on the military committee together, he learned to respect his talents
and prize his ability.



[Illustration]

XIII.

CONGRESSIONAL CAREER CONTINUED.


The 4th of March comes, and with it the fortieth congress, with
Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, still in the speaker’s chair; Rutherford
B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and James G. Blaine are in the House.
They were on their way up to the nation’s honors, and had seats near
each other. The House, rather than the senate, is the place to look
for presidents. There seems to be no special reason for it, unless it
is that senatorial dignity and greatness are less approachable, not
so easily grasped by the public mind, and farther away from the great
masses of the people.

Mr. Blaine comes to the fortieth congress with the same soldierly
spirit of fearlessness, the same scholarly spirit of intelligence,
the same genial spirit of friendship, that have borne him through
two former terms in Washington. He is now recognized as an adept in
parliamentary law, and is put on with the speaker, Mr. Washburne,
and others to revise the rules of the House, and is found reporting
rule after rule for adoption. He is fairly in training now for the
speakership, but before that can come he must be re-elected, and he
has already been elected twice by way of compliment, as it is termed
in Maine. But he is no dreamer, and so devotes himself to business,
with enough to do, and no idle hours. He is quite methodical, and is
heard frequently insisting upon the regular order of business, and
that business on the speaker’s stand be attended to, and also that
members attend the evening sessions for business. It worries him to
see business of importance drag, and bills accumulate, and so the
House get behind in its work. He uses every parliamentary method to
prevent delays, and seldom is his way hedged up effectually when he
has determined upon his course, and feels that fidelity to his trust
requires expedition. He usually gets through without much opposition,
for good nature in him begets it in others, and so when all are thus
made willing, as by an opposite disposition they are made unwilling,
it is an easy matter. But when the measure is at all political, as are
some of the great measures which crystalize the war-victories into
constitutional enactments, he is put upon his resources for ways and
means, and is found usually to be as fertile as the occasion demands.

He is down in the Record as an editor, and this places him in relations
of sympathy and friendship with journalists at the capital. He is
known, and knows them, and shows by the favor of various acts of
kindness that his editorial heart is still beating warm for the drivers
of the quill. There are but three other editors besides himself in the
House,--James Brooks, of New York city; Lawrence J. Getz, of Reading;
and Adam J. Glassbremer, of York, Penn.

Gen. John A. Logan sits near enough to Mr. Blaine for them to get well
acquainted, and they are soon found speaking upon the same question of
appropriating seventy-five thousand dollars to purchase seed-corn for
the South.

It is certainly a matter of peculiar interest to look in upon these men
and see them at their work, all unconscious of the great future that
lies before them; some of the time doing what seems like little things,
as when Mr. Blaine moves “to exempt wrapping paper made from wood from
internal tax,” and Mr. Garfield rises and says, “I ask the gentleman
from Maine to allow an amendment by inserting the word ‘corn-stalks,’
which,” he added, “was a very important manufacture.” But all of these
little things were part of the great internal-revenue tax bill, which
was to bring millions into the treasury of the nation, and so support
the government, and pay the war-debt.

The impeachment resolutions were having a history in the House, and
a reference to them brings out one fact very conclusively,--that Mr.
Blaine was not hot-headed in the sense of rashness. Many were at this
time,--about a year before the impeachment trial,--filled with alarm,
excited, aroused, and bent upon the work at once; but Mr. Blaine was
cool, attentive, collected, and studious of the great subject, and he
saw that as yet the country did not demand it, and so he moved, the
senate concurring, “That when the House adjourn, on Tuesday next, it be
to meet on Monday, November 11, at twelve o’clock, M.” Some six months
would intervene, and many objected. General Butler was there, and
offered a vigorous protest. He was for war, vigorous, uncompromising,
and merciless. But Mr. Blaine replied, “I would ask the gentleman from
Massachusetts, through what convention of the people, through what
organism of public opinion, through what channel of general information
anywhere throughout the length and breadth of the land, this demand is
made upon congress? [It was then March 23, 1867.] Sir, I maintain that
out of the seventeen or eighteen hundred newspapers that represent the
loyal Union party of this country,--and these are the best indices
of public opinion which a party has,--the gentleman cannot find
twenty-five which regard the impeachment movement as one seriously to
be undertaken on the part of congress at this time.”

It is exceedingly difficult for us now to go back to a year before the
extraordinary spectacle of an impeachment trial of the President of the
United States, and recall all the circumstances and the state of the
country at that particular time. The best minds in the House seemed to
be with Mr. Blaine in his feeling, that there was no immediate demand
or warrant for the impeachment of the president. His acts were public,
and known to the people, and from them to their representatives in
congress must come the demand. Moreover, the resolutions of impeachment
had been in the hands of a special committee for some months, but they,
agreeing with Mr. Blaine, saw no cause for impetuous action.

It was evidently designed to be a matter of wholesome restraint, that
this preliminary step had been taken. A great many speeches were made
under the resolution to adjourn, upon the impeachment question.

Mr. Garfield said, “The gentleman said I desired congress to remain in
session for two reasons; first, to compel the appointment of certain
persons to office [there were several hundred postmasters to be
appointed and confirmed], and second, for the purpose of impeaching the
president. I call his attention to the fact, that I made no allusion
whatever to the question of impeachment; I have nothing to say in that
direction until I hear from the committee. I expressed it as my opinion
merely that the President of the United States would be very glad to
have the fortieth congress adjourn, and this I understood from the
friends of the president.”

Mr. Boutwell, taking part, said, “The great and substantial reason is
that whether this House shall proceed to impeach the president or not,
the majority of the people of this country, South and North, black and
white, loyal and rebel, have pretty generally lost confidence in him.”

“That is true,” said Mr. Blaine.

“Whether this loss of confidence be based upon facts of his character,
or measures of his public policy, or upon suspicion or prejudice
merely, I do not propose now to inquire. The great fact is, the people
of the country everywhere have lost confidence in the wisdom, if not in
the honesty, of his administration.”

Mr. Blaine. “The gentleman will allow me to inquire whether he thinks
that our staying here will restore confidence in the president.”

“No, Sir.”

Mr. Blaine held the floor under a certain rule of congress, and gave
his time to others as they desired to discuss the question, but at
the end was firm as a rock. His mind was unchanged, and from this
and other instances the truth appears, that as he used only facts,
figures, testimony, experience, written or related evidence of a
personal character, and that he could not be gainsaid, and was never
metaphysical, _a priori_, or theorizing in his discussions, so nothing
but facts or figures, something tangible and real, influenced him. The
sailing of an eagle might be very beautiful, and elicit feelings of
admiration and sublimity, but it did not influence his judgment.

Only the kind of arguments he used to influence other minds would
influence his,--and when his mind was made up, it was from just these
sources of evidence that are so convincing, so incontrovertible, giving
strength to the mind, and putting granite under the feet of the man.

As one has said, “I believed, therefore have I spoken”; so with him,
he believed, and therefore spoke. No surface-current, only the deep
under-current, moved him.

Mr. Blaine has great accuracy in the use of language, and although
off-hand and often under peculiarly distracting circumstances, one
who followed him quite closely through his various utterances, did
not discover a grammatical mistake until near the end of the fortieth
congress, and that was possibly a mistake of the printer, and very
slight in itself, using “to” for “at” in the phrase “strike at the
senate committee clerks more than it does _to_ ours.”

Congress adjourned on the 30th of March until the 21st of November,
unless a quorum was present the 3d of July, and if so a session would
be held. A brief session of two weeks was held, but Mr. Blaine was
not there. He and Elihu B. Washburne and another congressman were in
Europe. It was Mr. Blaine’s first trip. Liverpool was visited, and
commercial interests were studied. Imagination seldom furnishes right
impressions. No one about whom we have heard ever looks as we expected
he was going to. It always gets great men too large on the outside,
and enormous cities either too large or too small, as the case may be.
Liverpool was immense; it has to be so. Almost limitless is England’s
foreign trade. What men they must have been to make their island so
important as to compel the commerce of the world to visit them! It was
wonderful; the ships and cargoes for all of India, for Egypt, for all
of Europe, for Australia, for America, and the Indies, for Mexico,
China and Japan.

It was indeed a study for him whose mind must find the merits of every
subject. It was not simply a matter of landing safely and boarding a
train for London. The war was but two years over. The Alabama was not
forgotten, nor all of England’s mischief. Ships and shipping in all
their construction and competition had been the study of years to him,
and to take in those busy scenes upon the Mersey and the Clyde, was but
the reading of a new book to one familiar with the language.

They reach the great metropolis. Parliament is their objective point.
Few will have more brains than they bring with them, or know more about
their affairs of state; but the study is to be long and careful, and
they are to know more fully the inner life and character of those who
have made laws for half the world. Day after day, week after week,
the great Head Centre in all its ramifications is studied at shortest
possible range.

But Scotland and Ireland must be visited, for they are the home of his
ancestors. He breathes the air, he sees the sky, he presses the sod, he
touches the heather. He is really, truly there. The dream of boyhood
days, when he stood by grandfather’s knee, and heard of the old clans,
the blowing of the horn, and the echoes down the valleys, of the cows
and sheep, and the tinkling of the bells, the clash of arms and the
battles won; and now he is there, thrilled with the memories and the
ancient scenes. The old castles, quaint, and moss-covered, and grand,
and the people with their fresh look and fiery eye, vigilant ever to
the end of time. What valleys and mountains and peoples are there; what
rivers and lakes and loud-sounding sea! Surely nothing short of an
affair of the Stuarts would compel them to quit their strongholds and
their homes, their native heather, and flee to other lands, so far, so
very far away as it was then, back in that olden time.

What events have transpired since that 1720, nearly one hundred and
fifty years before. What events in Europe, England and America. What in
India and the Orient; and yet the man of eighty had sat, a boy of five,
upon his grandsire’s knee who had rounded out his four-score years, and
a boy of ten had walked with him upon the highlands, and so could bring
the messages of that far-off time to present generations.

As Mr. Garfield had “during his only visit to England busied himself
in searching out every trace of his forefathers in parish-registries
and ancient army-rolls,” so his inheritor of the nation’s honors traced
back the stock from which he sprang to mountain, glen, and castle,
which had rung with the name he bore. He too might say, sitting with a
friend in the gallery of the House of Commons, “that when patriots of
English blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional government and
human liberty, his family had been represented.”

But they continue their journey, and cross the English channel from
Dover to Calais, and soon are in the capital of the French Empire.
Napoleon III is there in his glory. Two years later his traveling
companion, Hon. E. B. Washburne, is to be United States minister at his
court, and not long after a prisoner in Paris during its siege in the
Franco-Prussian war.

Mr. Blaine’s knowledge of French serves him, and enables him to
secure all the general information he desired. He was not among free
institutions now, and felt the keen chill in the very atmosphere. But
in visiting the French Assembly there was a show of liberty, like
an eagle in a cage. It was a noisy, tumultuous scene, with a jargon
indescribable and largely unintelligible. Few things are wilder, except
the ocean in a storm, than the deliberative assembly of the French
nation when measures of special importance are pending. But the great
city, with its multitudes of people, is full of attractions.

The Tuilleries is visited, and the Champs Elysées, the great armies
so soon to reel in the shock of war, and learn a lesson of sobriety
and contented home-life that shall give to the French of the future
a greatness that has in it more of the element of stability and
permanency, and so tone down their mercurial and volatile nature. The
Rhine is visited, and Florence.

Relaxation and rest are great objects of the visit. The malaria of the
Potomac at Washington, which gets into the bones of congressmen, and
senators, and presidents, must be gotten out of him, and he made ready
for greater service and larger conquests.

History is all about him; the nations of Europe are within his
reach; their capitals are visited, and they are studied from life.
Impressions deep, and strong, and lasting are made. Plutarch’s old
method of comparisons and contrasts still serves him, and he gets his
knowledge in classified, compact forms. The people and their condition,
their rulers and the laws, interest him as much as the great, queer
buildings, the splendid palaces, the magnificent cathedrals, the
varied works of art, and the giant mountains, the beautiful villages,
valleys, and lakes, and all that is picturesque in nature. Switzerland
is a charm; Italy a delight, and the whole journey a joy. He returns a
broader, deeper, wiser man, to live a stronger, richer life in a larger
world.

He was in his seat at the beginning of congress in November. Eight
men are there from Tennessee, whose right to seats is challenged. The
impeachment question has gained prominence, and he joins in the search
for evidence. He does not want hearsay, but official documents, and so
he introduces a resolution, calling upon the general commanding the
armies to communicate to the House any and all correspondence addressed
by him to the president upon the removal of Secretary Stanton and
General Sheridan, and General Sickles as well; and also with reference
to the proposed mission of the general of the army to Mexico in 1866.

But his great friend, Senator Fessenden, is now secretary of the
treasury, and this gives the financial question a new interest, and he
comes to the front in a most vigorous manner as vindicator and defender
of the secretary’s financial policy, in one of his great speeches on
the currency.

It is quite early in the session, only five days after congress
convened. His friend, Mr. Washburne, had taken the initiatory step by
moving they go into committee of the whole on the state of the Union.

Mr. Dawes was in the chair, and the question related to the reduction
of the currency. Erroneous and mischievous views had been put forward,
regarding the nature of the public obligation imposed by the debt of
the United States. Various forms of repudiation had been suggested.
Mr. Pendleton, the recent Democratic candidate for vice-president,
and General Butler, of Massachusetts, had assumed the position that
“the principal and the interest of United States bonds, known as the
five-twenties, may be fairly and legally paid in paper currency by the
government, after the expiration of five years from the date of the
issue.”

And just here we get a view of Mr. Blaine’s power of analysis; the
ability of his mind to grasp a subject in its great features and
fundamental principles; to bring to the surface its underlying points
or elements of strength and weakness, so classified and arranged as to
state them in logical and convincing propositions, and all of them most
practical in their character.

1. “The position contravenes the honor and good faith of the national
government.” And this was the final view adhered to by the best
statesmen of the Republican party.

2. “It is hostile to the spirit and letter of the law.

3. “It contemptuously ignores the common understanding between borrower
and lender at the time the loan was negotiated (which was by Jay Cooke
& Co. in 1863, to the extent of five hundred million dollars), a large
proportion of which was purchased by foreign capitalists, and was very
successful. Nothing was said about payment in gold, but payment in
gold, both of principal and interest, had been the invariable rule from
the foundation of the government.”

“Our government,” said Nathaniel Mason, “is a hard-money government,
founded by hard-money men, and its debts are hard-money debts.”

Nothing was intimated to the contrary when the bill was passed and the
bonds issued, and the duties on imports pledged to their payment, were
to be paid in coin. The final point in his argument was:--

4. “It would prove disastrous to the financial interests of the
government, and the general prosperity of the country,” by, of course,
reducing the par value of the bonds and blockading their sale as they
floated through the markets of the world.

It should be with some pride and glory now, after the honorable history
of the national debt thus far, and which has given to the nation the
credit of the world, that Mr. Blaine remembers that so early in the
discussion, when the ideas of the many were crude, and only those of
the few were clear, that he closed his speech with these splendid
words,--words which embody the steady policy of the government from
that time to the present:--

“I am sure,” said Mr. Blaine, “that in the peace which our arms have
conquered, we shall not dishonor ourselves by withholding from any
public creditor a dollar that we promised to pay him; nor seek by
cunning construction and clever afterthought to evade or escape the
full responsibility of our national indebtedness. It will doubtless
cost us a vast sum to pay that indebtedness, but it will cost us
incalculably more not to pay it.”

It took Gen. Benj. F. Butler two days to reply to this speech of Mr.
Blaine’s, in which he bloomed forth as a greenbacker of fullest flower
and strongest fragrance. This led Mr. Blaine to say:--

“We have a loan distinctly defined, well known to the people,
that has a specific rate of interest, a certain time to run, and
express condition on which it is to be paid; but the gentleman from
Massachusetts is for brushing this all aside and placing before the
country a species of legal-tender notes which have no fixed time
to run, bear no interest, have no standard of value, and which the
government is under no obligation to pay at any particular time, and
which may indeed never be called in for redemption.”

And all of this reminded Mr. Blaine of a story:--

“I think the gentleman must have borrowed his notions of finance from
a man who failed a few years since in one of the eastern cities of
Maine, and who wrote over his store-door, ‘Payment suspended for thirty
days.’ A neighbor passing by said to him, ‘You have neglected to date
your notice.’ ‘Why, no,’ said he, ‘I did not intend to date it; it
would run out if I did.’ And so the gentleman was to issue a government
legal tender that never runs out.”

The sitting of congress during the winter of 1867 and 1868, was
long and tedious, extending from November on into July. Mr. Blaine
was on the committee on appropriations, and had charge of the
army-appropriation bill on its passage through the House. The army had
been reduced to sixty regiments, and thirty-two million dollars asked
to pay them, while before the war twenty-five million dollars for the
army, consisting of only nineteen, or as Mr. Blaine put it, “a regiment
under the Democratic administration preceding the war cost more than
double in gold what it costs now under General Grant in paper, or in
other words, that it cost on an average over a million of dollars in
gold to a regiment then, and when General Grant was in charge, about
half a million to a regiment.”

It required great patience, courage, and intelligence to stand by
such a bill for two or three days, answer all questions, meet all
objections and opposition, and keep sweet all through; for it was
made a political question, as nearly every measure was, and so the
opposition party would sit there and resist and vote in a bunch, but
usually to no purpose. The great impeachment trial had come on, and was
being conducted by the senate in the presence of members of the House.

This caused their adjournment after the morning hour until three
o’clock, daily. The managers of the trial, chosen by the House, were
John A. Bingham, George S. Boutwell, James F. Wilson, Benjamin F.
Butler, Thomas Williams, John A. Logan, and Thaddeus Stevens.

Having faithfully performed all his work upon the great committee, and
seen to it that every trust confided to him in congress was sacredly
discharged, he procured an indefinite leave of absence, after being
there day and night for some eight months, and not being one of the
managers of the impeachment trial, and having no active part to take in
its proceedings, and so he went home to conduct the summer campaign,
giving himself, however, but two months for this purpose. He had been
absent in Europe, the summer before, and now he had been re-nominated
to congress for the fourth time, something unusual in the district, as
he had been elected three times already.

It would not do to fail, having been thus honored by his party. So
notwithstanding his long, hard siege in congress, and which had
brought him more than ever into official communication with heads of
departments and the general of the army, he devotes July and August to
hard campaign-work, discussing before the people the great questions
of the currency, and the war-debt, etc., that had filled his mind in
congress. His experience there had been just the needed preparation
for this field-work, which was little more than justifying their
congressional actions and explaining them.

The great question of the campaign was, “hard or soft money,” as it
was called. The seeds of the greenback heresy, it will be recalled,
had been sown broadcast in Mr. Garfield’s Western Reserve district in
Ohio, and the convention met to renominate him had declared for soft
money, when he was called in for a speech. He was a hard-money man, and
nothing else, and could not stultify himself. He was begged by friends
not to antagonize the convention, but his firm reply was, “I shall not
violate my conscience and my principles in this matter,” and so he
made it known to the convention without any compromise. It was such an
exhibition of courage, integrity, and of all manly power, that they
nominated him at once by acclamation.

Mr. Blaine encountered the same heresy, and wrung its neck most
vigorously. He was up in the art, as he had just had extensive
experience in congress. But 1868 was a presidential year. U. S. Grant
and Horatio Seymour were the candidates.

One president was being impeached, and another being elected. Mr.
Blaine had done what was necessary for him in the case of one, and
now was doing what he could for the other. He had not taken the most
advanced grounds regarding the impeachment. He was quite inclined to be
conservative; and while he did not oppose, neither did he vehemently
demand it at all hazards. It was serious business, and he viewed it
with the broad, comprehensive mind of a statesman.

It was like “tearing up the foundation of things,” as he said. He had a
deep and delicate sense of honor about it. The president was the chief
man of the nation, there by the suffrages of a great people. Results
seem to show that all were finally brought to Mr. Blaine’s conclusions,
if not to his temper of mind upon the subject. He simply did not
make any violent speeches in its favor, as so many did, but acted
effectively with his party for the right. His strength was used in the
campaign. He wanted a new president of the right stamp, and knew that
if faithful work was done, they would have one in less than a year. So
to this task he addressed himself with his accustomed energies, and not
without success, which had come to be almost a matter of course, though
hard, hot fights were made against him.

General Grant received two hundred and fourteen votes in the electoral
college, to eighty-four for Mr. Seymour, and again the Republican sky
was ablaze with great and wide-spread victory.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

XIV.

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS.


The future had no clouds for Mr. Blaine as he returned for the fourth
time to Washington as a member-elect to congress. He was in manhood’s
prime, backed by a splendid record of triumph on the field of political
contest, and of achievement in the arena of debate. He was thoroughly
conversant with the affairs of the House in every detail of rule or
measure, and was widely known and recognized as among the most popular
and efficient members. His knowledge, gathered from wide fields of
travel, experience, and observation, was vast; his powers thoroughly
disciplined and under the finest control; his acquaintance extensive,
and his rank high in personal and political friendships.

Schuyler Colfax, the former speaker, was vice-president now; standing
next to General Grant, the new president. Who should take his place?
This was the question that filled Mr. Blaine with high anticipations.

Granting his fitness and ability, which, perhaps, no one who knows him
at all would question, the still greater question is how to win the
prize, how to secure the position. It is purely a question of votes,
and the one thing that secures them is personal influence. It may come
of the individual’s own exertions, his power to command, the charm
of his name, the fascination of his character, the magnetism of his
person. But it is a matter of stupendous strength and of transcendent
abilities for one to lift himself so far above his fellows as to win
their suffrages in such a place as that, by his own unaided personal
attractions.

Here was the great argument, but not the active agent. There must be
some one to state the case, to manage it, to make the appeal, some one
strong friend or more, who has grit and gumption to put it through,
and see it done,--that man is Thaddeus Stevens, of his native state of
Pennsylvania. He is the one of all others to do this thing.

Of few men’s power Mr. Blaine had a loftier idea than of Mr. Thaddeus
Stevens. There was indeed a trio who attracted and held the admiration
of Mr. Blaine, and he has sketched their characters most vividly. Will
you hear him as he says:--

“The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed
in this country, are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens.
They were all men of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of
intense personality, differing widely each from the others, and yet
with a single trait in common,--the power to command. In the give and
take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating
reluctant and refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms
of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying
phases of unlooked-for assault, or unsuspected defection, it would be
difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our congressional
history.

“But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be
impossible to find in parliamentary annals, greater power than when,
in 1841, at sixty-four years of age, he took the control of the Whig
party from the president who had received their suffrages, against the
power of Webster in the cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the
senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A.
Wise in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plenitude
of power, he hurled against John Tyler, with deepest scorn, the mass
of that conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and
drove his administration to shelter behind the lines of his political
foes.

“Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, when, in 1854,
against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise
counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and
even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant congress
into a repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

“And now we come to Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, who, in his contests from
1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until
congress tied the hands of the president, and governed the country by
its own will, leaving only perfunctionary duties to be discharged by
the executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at
the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the
cabinet, and the moral power of Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson
could not command the support of one-third in either House against the
parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating
spirit and the unquestioned leader.”

And this was the man who stood at Mr. Blaine’s right hand in this
matter of the speakership.

Mr. Blaine was on the committee of military affairs with Mr.
Stevens. He became known to him thoroughly as a man with talent for
indefatigable toil, and a genius for doing hard and difficult things
with great certainty and despatch. He was just the man to attract
the attention, and be admired, respected, and loved by a man of Mr.
Stevens’ consummate ability, and to be selected by him for promotion
and honor. And the hour had come for just that honor, the highest in
the gift of the House.

It was the third office in the nation, with a salary three thousand
dollars greater than that of United States senator, and equal to the
salary of vice-president or secretary of state. And so by virtue of
his recognized fitness, and the power of this great friend, the office
comes to him, and he comes to it.

Some think, and perhaps rightly, that his tilt with Mr. Conkling
popularized him greatly with the members of the House, who thoroughly
enjoyed it, and so prepared the way to the honor which in point of fact
was his by right of nature. But six years was a long time to wait, yet
he waited, and was rewarded. And still it was not waiting, but working,
with him, occupying the stronghold he had made for himself in the
manifold business of the House.

But now he is taken from this, and out of the arena of debate, and yet
lifted into greater prominence and power; appointing all the great
committees of the House, a task requiring the highest order of ability
in the knowledge of men; deciding all questions, and exercising a
controlling influence over legislation.

There is little power men employ in all the great work of life, but he
needs it in its rarest form. He must be a broad, a wide, a universal
man; in sympathy with all, so far as right and justice are concerned.
There are the choice, the crowned ones from every congressional
district in all the states and territories, and he is the choice, the
crowned one among them,--their chosen chief.

Tennyson’s words press for utterance right here, as we see him step
from the floor to the speaker’s chair:--

  “Divinely gifted man,
    Whose life in low estate began,
  And on a simple village green.

  “Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,
    And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
    And breasts the blow of circumstance,
  And grapples with his evil star.

  “Who makes by force his merit known,
    And lives to clutch the golden keys,
    To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
  And shape the whisper of the throne.

  “And moving up from high to higher,
    Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope
    The pillar of a people’s hope,
  The centre of a world’s desire.”

It was only by the proof of character, the most solid and reliable,
he could possibly have secured the friendship of Mr. Stevens. And not
his alone, but the friendship of Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois,
who nominated Mr. Blaine as candidate for speaker, and who, as senior
member, swore him in.

It was a proud day for Mr. Washburne, the staunch friend of General
Grant, to witness his inaugural, and then, as the true friend of Mr.
Blaine, aid so largely in putting him into the speaker’s chair the same
day.

Mr. Stevens was not there to enjoy the triumph of his friend, but his
endorsement was good as a letter of credit.

When the ballot was concluded it read:--Whole number of votes cast,
one hundred and ninety-two; necessary for a choice, ninety-seven;
Mr. Blaine received one hundred and thirty-five; Mr. Kerr received
fifty-seven.

Mr. Dawes and Mr. Kerr conducted him to the chair, when he addressed
the House as follows:--

  “GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

  “I thank you profoundly for the great honor which your votes have
  just conferred upon me. The gratification which this signal mark
  of your confidence brings to me, finds its only drawback in the
  diffidence with which I assume the weighty duties devolving upon me.
  Succeeding to a chair made illustrious by such eminent statesmen,
  and skilled parliamentarians as Clay, and Stevenson, and Polk, and
  Winthrop, and Banks, and Grow, and Colfax, I may well distrust my
  ability to meet the just expectations of those who have shown me such
  marked partiality. But relying, gentlemen, upon my honest purpose
  to perform all my duties faithfully and fearlessly, and trusting in
  a large measure to the indulgence which I am sure you will always
  extend to me, I shall hope to retain, as I have secured, your
  confidence, your kindly regard, and your generous support.

  “The forty-first congress assembles at an auspicious period in the
  history of our government. The splendid and impressive ceremonial
  which we have just witnessed in another part of the capitol [Grant’s
  inauguration], appropriately symbolizes the triumphs of the past,
  and the hopes of the future, a great chieftain, whose sword at the
  head of gallant and victorious armies, saved the Republic from
  dismemberment and ruin, has been fitly called to the highest civic
  honor which a grateful people can bestow. Sustained by a congress
  which so ably represents the loyalty, the patriotism, and the
  personal worth of the nation, the president this day inaugurated will
  assure to the country an administration of purity, fidelity, and
  prosperity; an era of liberty regulated by law, and of law thoroughly
  inspired with liberty.

  “Congratulating you, gentlemen, on the happy auguries of the day, and
  invoking the gracious blessings of Almighty God on the arduous and
  responsible labors before you, I am now ready to take the oath of
  office, and enter upon the discharge of the duties to which you have
  called me.”

It is a curious coincidence that General Schenck, of Ohio, who startled
Mr. Blaine with the charge of irrelevancy at his first utterance on the
floor, but was so utterly discomfited afterwards, is now the first one
to address him as “Mr. Speaker,” and Mr. Kerr, his competitor, soon
follows.

It was at this session that new members from reconstructed states
appeared, and many were the objections made to this new member and
that, because of disloyalty. It was to present a charge of this kind
that Mr. Schenck arose.

The noticeable feature of Mr. Blaine’s speakership is the expeditious
manner in which business is conducted, and the consequent brevity of
sessions.

It may be observed right here that Mr. Blaine’s friend, E. B.
Washburne, chose rather to go as minister to Paris, and Hamilton Fish
became secretary of state.

For two successive congresses Mr. Blaine was re-elected speaker by the
large Republican majorities serving through the reconstruction period
of the rebel states, and through most of General Grant’s two terms of
the presidency. It was during this period his reputation became truly
national.

He might have occupied the chair all the time, and taken things easy;
but this was not his nature. It was his privilege to go upon the floor,
and take up the gauntlet of debate. It was expected that things would
become lively at once when he did so. There was a resolution one day
for a committee to investigate the outrages in the South. Mr. Blaine
had written the resolution, which was presented by his colleague, and
asked for its passage; and, lest the _claquers_ should say he put only
“weak-kneed Republicans” on the committee, he made Benj. F. Butler
chairman, which in some almost unaccountable way greatly enraged Mr.
Butler, who might have then contemplated accompanying Gen. John M.
Palmer and others into the Democratic party, and so he telegraphed
to newspapers and issued a circular which appeared on the desks of
members, denouncing what he was pleased to call a trick, and used other
vigorous language on the floor of the House. Of course the speaker
could not sit quietly in the chair and be thus tempestuously assailed,
so calling a future vice-president to the chair (Wheeler), he said, “I
wish to ask the gentleman from Massachusetts whether he denies me the
right to have drawn that resolution” (it was presented in the caucus
first which had just re-nominated Mr. Blaine for speaker).

Mr. Butler replied, “I have made no assertion on that subject, one way
or other.”

Mr. Blaine: “Did not the gentleman know distinctly that I drew it?”

“No, sir!” was the reply.

“Did I not take it to the gentleman and read it to him?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mr. Butler.

“Did I not show him the manuscript?”

“Yes, sir,” was the reply.

“And at his suggestion,” continued Mr. Blaine, “I added these words,
‘and the expenses of said committee shall be paid from the contingent
fund of the House of Representatives’ (applause), and the fact that
ways and means were wanted to pay the expenses was the only objection
he made to it.”

It appears that the resolution was considered as a test of the
Republicanism of members. General Butler had been asked to take the
chairmanship, but refused, and said he would have nothing to do with
the resolution; but Mr. Blaine put him on the committee, and when
asked why, replied, “Because I knew very well that if I omitted the
appointment of the gentleman it would be heralded throughout the
length and breadth of the country by the _claquers_, who have so
industriously distributed this letter this morning, that the speaker
had packed the committee, as the gentleman said he would, with
‘weak-kneed Republicans,’ who would not go into an investigation
vigorously, as he would. That was the reason (applause), so that
the chair laid the responsibility upon the gentleman of declining
the appointment, and now the gentleman from Massachusetts is on his
responsibility before the country,” and there we leave him.

It can but be with peculiar interest that we read the strong words of
the oath taken so repeatedly by Mr. Blaine, and administered the second
time by Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, after he had received one hundred
and twenty-six votes, to ninety-two for Gen. George W. Morgan, of Ohio.

It kept a large committee busy to pass upon the character of
members-elect and the legality of their election. Such was the broken
condition of state governments in the South, so battered by war, and
distracted by schism and contending factions. All of these perplexities
adhered to applicants for membership in congress, presenting
credentials of membership various in value as greenbacks and gold, and
these same perplexities affected the staple of congressional measures.

Congress was increasing rapidly in the number of its members, so
that while one hundred and ninety-two votes were cast at Mr. Blaine’s
first election to the speakership in 1869, there were two hundred and
sixty-nine votes cast at his election to the same office in 1873, of
which number he received one hundred and eighty-nine, and Mr. Ferdinand
Wood received seventy-six.

Mr. Blaine refers to it in his address to the “Gentlemen of the House
of Representatives,” the last time he was elected speaker. “To be
chosen,” he says, “speaker of the House of Representatives is always
an honorable distinction; to be chosen a third time enhances the honor
more than three fold; to be chosen _by the largest body that ever
assembled in the Capitol_ imposes a burden of responsibility which only
your indulgent kindness could embolden me to assume. The first occupant
of this chair presided over a House of sixty-five members, representing
a population far below the present aggregate of the state of New York.
At that time there were not, in the whole United States, fifty thousand
civilized inhabitants to be found one hundred miles distant from the
flow of the Atlantic tide. To-day, gentlemen, a large majority of you
come from beyond that limit, and represent districts peopled then only
by the Indian and the adventurous frontiersman.

“The national government is not yet as old as many of its citizens,
but in this brief span of time,--less than one lengthened life,--it
has, under God’s good providence, extended its power until a continent
is the field of its empire, and attests the majesty of its law.

“With the growth of new states and the resulting changes in the centres
of population, new interests are developed, rival to the old, but by no
means hostile; diverse, but not antagonistic. Nay, rather are all these
interests in harmony, and _the true science of just government is to
give to each its full and fair play, oppressing none by undue exaction,
favoring none by undue privilege_.

“It is this great lesson which our daily experience is teaching,
binding us together more closely, making our mutual dependence more
manifest, and causing us to feel that, whether we live in the North
or in the South, in the East or in the West, we have indeed but ‘one
country, one constitution, one destiny.’”

Few addresses so brief breathe a spirit of broader statesmanship,
or loftier ideal of civil government. Two years before this, in
1871, he had been charged by General Butler with having presidential
aspirations, and surely he was able to manifest the true conception of
a just and righteous government, “oppressing none by undue exaction,
favoring none by undue privilege,” which is apparently the exact
outcome--a sort of paraphrase of Lincoln’s words, “With malice toward
none, with charity toward all.”

Many who had participated in the Rebellion, having had their political
disabilities removed by the vote of two-thirds of each House of
congress, came forward and took the special oath provided for them by
act of July 11, 1868.

Mr. Blaine seldom, if ever, leaves the chair to participate in debate
when questions of a political nature are pending, so that he may hold
himself aloof for fair ruling in all of his decisions.

The position of speaker is, in many respects, a thankless one. When
party spirit runs high, as it does at times, like the tide of battle,
in the great debates, men are swept on by their sympathies, as
barks are tossed in ocean-storms, and under the influence of their
most powerful prejudices they are driven to rash and unwarrantable
conclusions regarding the justice of any ruling, to conjectures the
most unfair and wanton regarding motive, and as in the case of Mr.
Blaine, to the most stupendous efforts at political assassination.

But it was not until the days of his speakership were over, and the
people at home had expressed their confidence in him and their love and
admiration for him, by electing him to congress for the seventh time
consecutively, that the storm struck him. It had been gathering long.
Its animus was enmity, its bulk was hate, its dark, frowning exterior
was streaked with the lurid lightnings of a baleful jealousy; muttering
thunders like the deep growlings of exasperation were heard oft, but
feared not.

The solid South had marched its rebel brigadiers by the score into the
arena of national questioning and discussion, where for twelve years
he had stood intrepid as the founders of the Republic. No man was more
at home upon that field than he,--none more familiar with the men, the
methods, and the measures that had triumphed there,--and few have been
more victorious in the great ends for which he strove, few readier to
challenge the coming of any man, to know his rights, his mission, and
his weight. He was, of all men, the most unconquerable by those who
plead for measures subversive of any great or minor end for which the
war was fought.

He had gained the credit of the fourteenth amendment, and had been
identified with all. He was simply bent upon resistance, the most
powerful he could command, against all encroachments of the bad and
false, and to show no favor toward any feature for which rebellion
fought. Fair, honorable, just,--none could be more so.

When speaker of the House, he was informed one day that a prominent
correspondent of a leading paper, who had maligned and vilified
him shockingly, was on the floor, and at once he said, “Invite him
up here,” and he gave him a seat by his side, within the speaker’s
desk, and placed at the disposal of the man the information of public
importance at his command. The fellow was amazed, and went away and
wrote how kindly he had been treated by the great-hearted man of noble
impulses, after he had so roundly abused him.

There is nothing vindictive about him, nothing despicable. He is
severe, herculean, desperate for the right, and will win in every
battle that commands the forces of his being, if victory be achievable.
But he honors strong, square men, who have convictions and dare
proclaim them; but petty, mean, ignoble souls are first despised, then
pitied.

But the day of his betrayal came, the day of rebel wrath; and he met
the stroke before the nation’s gaze, and was vindicated before the
world.

A business correspondence, it had been said he had burned. He said,
“No, there it is, and I will read it to the House,” and he read it.
What business firm, it has been asked, would like to have their
correspondence regarding any great business interest, read to those
who are filled with all manner of suspicions, and so have it misjudged,
misinterpreted, and misapplied? And then, to show the temper of those
with whom he dealt, a cablegram from Europe vindicating him, was for
two days suppressed by the chairman of the congressional committee,
before whom he stood, and who failed to convict him by any document at
their command. The scene at that time, and their discomfiture, is thus
described by an eye-witness:--

“His management of his own case when the Mulligan letters came out
was worthy of any general who ever set a squadron in the field. For
nearly fifteen years I have looked down from the galleries of the House
and Senate, and I never saw, and never expect to see, and never have
read of such a scene, where the grandeur of human effort was better
illustrated, than when this great orator rushed down the aisle, and,
in the very face of Proctor Knott, charged him with suppressing a
telegram favorable to Blaine. The whole floor and all the galleries
were wild with excitement. Men yelled and cheered, women waved their
handkerchiefs and went off into hysterics, and the floor was little
less than a mob.”

About this time, Hon. Lot M. Morrill, of his state, was transferred
from the senate to the cabinet of President Grant, and as a partial
justification, General Connor, the governor of Maine at this time,
appointed him to represent Maine in the United States senate in place
of Mr. Morrill. The official note was as follows:--

                                          “AUGUSTA, Maine, July 9, 1876.

  “TO HON. MILTON SAYLOR, _Speaker of the House of
      Representatives, Washington, D. C._:

  “Having tendered to the Hon. James G. Blaine the appointment of
  senator in congress, he has placed in my hands his resignation as
  representative from the third district of Maine, to take effect
  Monday, July 10, 1876.

                                             “SELDON CONNOR,
                                                  “_Governor of Maine_.”

When the legislature of his state met, he came before them and placed
himself under a thorough investigation at their hands. And as Ex-Gov.
A. P. Morrill says, “They made thorough work of it.” A man to come
forth from such an ordeal unscathed, and without the smell of fire on
his garments, must be right and not wrong,--or else he is the veriest
scoundrel, guilty, deeply so, and competent for bribes, and they, the
legislature of Maine, who virtually tried him, hopelessly corrupt. But,
no! this cannot be; and so he was vindicated, and triumphantly elected
by them to the highest trust within their gift, to wear the honors of a
Morrill and a Fessenden.

And yet again do they elect him for a full term of years. And then the
royal Garfield, the nation’s loved and honored president, knowing all,
and knowing him most intimately for seventeen years or more, takes him
into his cabinet, trustingly, and for the nation’s good.

Can victory be grander, or triumph more complete, endorsement more
honorable, or vindication more just, or a verdict be more patient,
thorough, or exhaustive of evidence! What man in all the land, traduced
and vilified just as Washington, Lincoln, and Garfield were, wears
prouder badges of endorsement from congress, governor, legislature,
senate, and conventions by the score! What man that bears credentials
of his character as trophies of higher worth, from judges of sounder
mind, and lives more unimpeachable? Answer, ye who can!

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

XV.

UNITED STATES SENATOR.


It was generally understood in Maine that the Hon. Lot M. Morrill
was serving his last term in the United States senate, and that Mr.
Blaine was to be his successor; so that when Mr. Morrill was advanced
to the secretaryship of the treasury in General Grant’s cabinet, it
occasioned no surprise that Governor Connor appointed Mr. Blaine to the
senate in his stead. He was just recovering from the partial sunstroke
which felled him to the pavement while on his way to church, on a
Sabbath morning, with Miss Abigail Dodge (Gail Hamilton), just prior
to the Cincinnati Convention, and soon after his victory over Proctor
Knott, during his persecution in the House. Next to the nomination
at Cincinnati, nothing of a political nature could have been more
grateful to him than this high honor from the governor of his state,
in accordance, as the governor himself says, with the expectation of
the people. Coming, as it did, at an ill and weary time, it must have
greatly refreshed and revived his spirits, to have new and larger
evidence of the esteem and endorsement of those to whose interests his
life was devoted.

On July 12, 1876, he took his seat as the colleague of Hannibal Hamlin
in the senate. He is placed at once as chairman on the committee on
rules, and on the committee on appropriations, and on naval affairs,
besides on a select committee “on the levees on the Mississippi River.”
This, for a senatorial start, was quite honorable to his judgment and
ability.

There are many old traditions and customs, which amount to laws, so far
as assigning positions of responsibility to new members is concerned,
but there is no law which prevents a new member from taking the most
advanced position possible by virtue of his wisdom and knowledge, and
his ability in debate.

He could not well become entangled in the meshes of an intricate
network of rules and regulations, which Butler, in acknowledging Mr.
Blaine’s superior knowledge of in the House, had said he knew nothing
about,--Blaine knew it all. His position made it necessary that he
should, and now he was made chief in this department in the new branch
of legislation to which he had succeeded. So he could not be held or
hampered by any difficulty of this kind. Moreover, his acquaintance
was well-nigh universal among the members, and some of them knew him a
little better than they could have wished. He was also familiar with
the methods and measures of the senate, having frequently been on
joint committees with them during his early terms of service in the
lower House, and then the general subjects of appropriations, naval,
military, judiciary, manufactures, commerce, foreign affairs, finance,
pension affairs, etc., these were the subjects with which he was
accustomed to deal during all of his years in congress.

He was at home, and coming into the senate on the wave of popular
excitement, which was of the same broad and sweeping character that
surrounded Henry Clay, and which came so near giving him the nomination
for the presidency then, he was not only at home in all his feelings
of political association and public duty, but exceedingly prominent as
well,--the one man of worth above all others, though the last to enter
there.

He had no need to take front rank; he was there already, and gave
himself to his work, not as a defeated man,--they had played but one
inning then,--but as a victor, enjoying his promotion well, from
the lower to the upper house of congress. He was nearing the goal,
taking the honors by the way, just as Garfield did, but unlike him,
tarrying in the senate to enjoy them. It was a good place to be; grand
enough to command the lives, in all their richness and maturity, of
Sumner, Webster, Choate, of Hamlin, Fessenden, and Clay, of Wilson,
Edmunds, Dawes, and galaxies by the score, representing every state
in the Union. Great lights from every department of life shone there:
scholars, teachers, authors, successful generals; culture, refinement,
and every excellence.

Mr. Blaine brought with him from the House, his old spirit of freeness,
and general adaptability and service. He had not come in to rest, be
shelved, or fossilized. His old habit of thoroughness was on him still;
he was not the man to change at six and forty years of age. He must
still touch top, bottom, and sides of every question with which he
dealt, and so he did.

He loved the truths of history, and took them whole, entire, lacking
nothing, and not in a garbled form. This of course caused facts and
figures to strike with telling power upon many a man’s coat of mail, or
cause the shield to tremble with the power of his stroke. But he was
there without apology, to do the strong, decisive work which marked the
history of his life. He loved the state of his adoption, and the time
had come when the pride of her glory should appear.

The old House of Representatives had been devoted, as a gallery of art,
to portraits and statues of the great men of the nation. Two were to be
selected by each state from the record of their leading men.

The statue of William King, the first governor of Maine, in 1820 and
1821, was presented with speeches in the senate by both Mr. Hamlin and
Mr. Blaine. In reciting briefly the history of Mr. King, Mr. Blaine
relied wholly upon Massachusetts authority, and he added, “To have
given anything like a sketch of Governor King’s life without giving his
conflict with Massachusetts, touching the separation of Maine and her
erection into an independent state, would have been like writing the
life of Abraham Lincoln without mentioning the great Rebellion, which,
as president of the United States, he was so largely instrumental in
suppressing.”

These words he uttered in vindication of himself from certain
restrictions placed upon him, and he closed by saying “that he notified
the senators from Massachusetts that he should feel compelled to
narrate those portions of Mr. King’s history that brought him in
conflict with the parent state.”

In less than a month after the statue of Governor King was placed in
the national gallery, by a unanimous vote of the senate, Mr. Blaine
was before that body with a speech of his usual force and energy, upon
the absorbing question of hard money. The subject had been discussed
in the House, and their action sent to the senate, and Mr. Blaine had
offered a substitute for their bill, which contained three very simple
provisions, as he said, viz.:--

1. “That the dollar shall contain four hundred and twenty-five grains
of standard silver, shall have unlimited coinage, and be an unlimited
legal tender.

2. “That all the profits of coinage shall go to the government, and not
to the operator in silver bullion.

3. “That silver dollars or silver bullion, assayed and mint-stamped,
may be deposited with the assistant treasurer at New York, for which
coin-certificates may be issued, the same in denomination as United
States notes, not below ten dollars, and that these shall be redeemable
on demand in coin or bullion, thus furnishing a paper-circulation based
on an actual deposit of precious metal, giving us notes as valuable as
those of the Bank of England and doing away at once with the dreaded
inconvenience of silver on account of bulk and weight.”

He cites an exclusively gold nation like England, which, while it may
have some massive fortunes, shows also the most hopeless and helpless
poverty in the humblest walks of life. But France, a gold-and-silver
nation, while it can exhibit no such fortunes as England boasts,
presents “a people who, with silver savings, can pay a war indemnity
that would have beggared the gold-bankers of London, and to which the
peasantry of England could not have contributed a pound sterling in
gold, nor a single shilling in silver.”

Mr. Blaine’s sense of justice, and national honor, and national
pride were injured by making a dollar which, in effect, was not a
dollar,--was not worth a hundred cents.

“Consider, further,” he says, “what injustice would be done to every
holder of a legal-tender or national-bank note. That vast volume of
paper-money--over seven hundred millions of dollars--is now worth
between ninety-eight and ninety-nine cents on the dollar in gold coin.
The holders of it, who are indeed our entire population, from the
poorest to the wealthiest, have been promised, from the hour of its
issue, that the paper-money would one day be as good as gold. To pay
silver for the greenback is a full compliance with this promise and
this obligation, provided the silver is made as it always has been
hitherto, as good as gold. To make our silver coin even three per cent.
less valuable than gold, inflicts at once a loss of more than twenty
millions of dollars on the holders of our paper-money. To make a silver
dollar worth but ninety-two cents, precipitates on the same class a
loss of well-nigh sixty millions of dollars. For whatever the value of
the silver dollar is, the whole paper issue of the country will sink to
its standard when its coinage is authorized and its circulation becomes
general in the channels of trade.

“Some one in conversation with Commodore Vanderbilt during one of the
many freight competitions of the trunk lines, said, ‘Why, the Canadian
road has not sufficient carrying capacity to compete with your great
line!’

“‘That is true,’ replied the Commodore, ‘but they can fix a rate and
force us down to it.’

“Were congress to pass a law to-day, declaring that every legal-tender
note and every national-bank note shall hereafter pass for only
ninety-six or ninety-seven cents on the dollar, there is not a
constituency in the United States that would re-elect a man that should
support it, and in many districts the representative would be lucky if
he escaped with merely a minority vote.”

Mr. Blaine’s sympathies in this discussion were with the people, and
although he had passed out of that popular branch of congress, as it is
called, most nearly connected with them, he could not in any sense be
divorced from them, and so, although before men of great wealth, his
plea was for the laboring class,--for those who made the country strong
and rich,--and so in continuing his speech he pleaded for them; and it
will bring them nearer to him to-day to recall his strong and earnest
words, which, even in the staid and formal senate, with its infinite
courtesies and conservative venerations, has a heart to smile, and good
cheer sufficient to applaud, as they did this close of his hard-money
speech. These were his final utterances:--

“The effect of paying the labor of this country in silver coin of full
value, as compared with irredeemable paper,--or as compared, even, with
silver of inferior value,--will make itself felt in a single generation
to the extent of tens of millions--perhaps hundreds of millions--in
the aggregate savings which represent consolidated capital. It is the
instinct of man from the savage to the scholar--developed in childhood,
and remaining with age--to value the metals which in all tongues are
called precious.

“Excessive paper-money leads to extravagance, to waste, and to want, as
we painfully witness on all sides to-day. And in the midst of the proof
of its demoralizing and destructive effect, we hear it proclaimed in
the halls of congress, that ‘the people demand cheap money.’ I deny
it. I declare such a phrase to be a total misapprehension--a total
misinterpretation of the popular wish. The people do not demand cheap
money. They demand an abundance of good money, which is an entirely
different thing. They do not want a single gold standard that will
exclude silver, and benefit those already rich. They do not want an
inferior silver standard that will drive out gold, and not help those
already poor. They want both metals, in full value, in equal honor, in
whatever abundance the bountiful earth will yield them to the searching
eye of science, and to the hard hand of labor.

“The two metals have existed side by side in harmonious, honorable
companionship, as money, ever since intelligent trade was known among
men. It is well-nigh forty centuries since ‘Abraham weighed to Ephron
the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth--four
hundred shekels of silver--current money with the merchant.’ Since that
time nations have risen and fallen, races have disappeared, dialects
and languages have been forgotten, arts have been lost, treasures
have perished, continents have been discovered, islands have been
sunk in the sea, and through all these ages, and through all these
changes, silver and gold have reigned supreme as the representatives
of value--as the media of exchange. The dethronement of each has been
attempted in turn, and sometimes the dethronement of both; but always
in vain! And we are here to-day, deliberating anew over the problem
which comes down to us from Abraham’s time--_the weight of the silver_
that shall be ‘current money with the merchant.’”

As Mr. Blaine resumed his seat, it is said, in brackets, there was
protracted applause; and so much was there that the vice-president,
William A. Wheeler, of New York, felt compelled to say, “Order! The
chair assuming that the galleries are ignorant of the laws of the
senate, gives notice that if applause is repeated they will be promptly
cleared.”

This cannot fail to suggest the fact beyond a doubt, that he had lost
none of his old-time fervor, and that he proposed to allow no right of
the people to slip from them, so long as he held place and power in
their interest, and had a voice to lift in their defence.

The great business of congress is done by committees, as is well known,
and their reports are discussed, amended, and acted upon, endorsed or
rejected.

Mr. Blaine’s committee on appropriations was one of the most difficult.
Demands are almost innumerable, and to act intelligently requires a
large knowledge of every department of the government; of the military,
the great postal lines and offices, and the new ones being built,
custom-houses, forts, arsenals, navy-yards, etc.; and this work must be
done by the committees, working not early, but late.

He was specially fitted for the committee on naval affairs, as he had
gone over the whole question of ship-building and shipping while in the
House.

We find him actuated by the same feelings of humanity and carefulness,
as actuated him years before, but now more conspicuously, because in a
larger, loftier sphere.

He presents bills for the relief of the families of those who perished
on the United States dredge-boat “McAlister”; to enlarge the power
and duties of the board of health in the District of Columbia; to
amend the Pacific Railroad act by creating a sinking-fund. He moved to
investigate charges against Senator M. C. Butler, of South Carolina.

We find Mr. Blaine showing an appreciation for that old soldier of the
Republic, in the Mexican war and the war of the Rebellion, Hon. James
Shields, of Missouri, by presenting a bill to make him a major-general.
General Shields had a bullet through his body in Mexico, at Buena
Vista, and a silk handkerchief drawn through his body in the track of
the wound, and now he is honored as an old man; but he does not live
long to enjoy it. He was a hardy, heroic, faithful man and soldier, and
worthy of the repeated honors conferred upon him by his state and by
the nation. It was a generous impulse of a kindly heart that prompted
this honor in the senate for the aged soldier.

The bureau of engraving and printing was remembered by him in a bill to
provide that department with a fire-proof building.

When the bill was before the senate to pension the soldiers of the
Mexican war, Mr. Hoar offered a resolution by way of amendment:
“Provided, further, that no pension shall ever be paid under this act
to Jefferson Davis, the late president of the so-called Confederacy.”
Twenty-two were found to vote against it. The discussion grew now
almost intolerable. Nearly every rebel sympathizer from the South
spoke against it; among them were Garland, Bailey, Maxey, Thurman,
Gordon, Lamar, Morgan, Coke. Strong hearts were stirred against their
utterances, and strong words uttered for the Union cause.

“There is no parallel to the magnanimity of our government,” said
Mr. Blaine, in reply to Lamar’s charge of intolerance. “Not one
single execution, not one single confiscation; at the outside only
fourteen thousand out of millions put under disfranchisement, and
all of them released, and all of them invited to come to the common
board, fraternally and patriotically, with the rest of us, and share a
common destiny for weal or for woe in the future. I tell the honorable
gentleman it does not become him, or any Southern man, to speak of
intolerance on the part of the national government; rather, if he speak
of it at all, he should allude to its magnanimity and its grandeur.”

The great boldness with which Mr. Blaine stood up against the
usurpations of the solid South is a lasting honor to him. He desired
to place on record, in a definite and authentic form, the frauds and
outrages by which some recent elections were carried by the Democratic
party in the Southern states, and to find if there be any method
to prevent a repetition of those crimes against a free ballot. One
hundred and six representatives had been elected recently in the
South, and only four or five of them Republicans, and thirty-five of
the whole number had been assigned to the South, he said, “by reason
of the colored people.” In South Carolina, he speaks of “a series of
skirmishes over the state, in which the polling places were regarded as
forts, to be captured by one party and held against the other, so that
there was no election in any proper sense.” The information came from a
non-partisan press, and without contradiction so far as he had seen.

This was his resolution in the senate:--

  “_Resolved_, That the committee on the judiciary be instructed to
  inquire and report to the senate, whether at the recent elections
  the constitutional rights of American citizens were violated in
  any of the states of the Union; whether the right of suffrage of
  citizens of the United States, or of any class of such citizens,
  was denied or abridged by the action of the election-officers of
  any state in refusing to receive their votes, in failing to count
  them, or in receiving and counting fraudulent ballots in pursuance
  of a conspiracy to make the lawful votes of such citizens of non
  effect; and whether such citizens were prevented from exercising the
  elective franchise, or forced to use it against their wishes, by
  violence or threats, or hostile demonstrations of armed men or other
  organizations, or by any other unlawful means or practices.

  “_Resolved_, That the committee on the judiciary be further
  instructed to inquire and report whether it is within the competency
  of congress to provide by additional legislation for the more perfect
  security of the right of suffrage to citizens of the United States in
  all the states of the Union.

  “_Resolved_, That in prosecuting these inquiries the judiciary
  committee shall have the right to send for persons and papers.”

The negro had become practically disfranchised; the true end of the war
in his rightful liberty as a freeman, in the full sense of the term,
was concerned; and the acts of government in making him a citizen,
and his representation in congress according to the new allotment of
thirty-five representatives for the colored population;--all these ends
had been subverted, these rights abrogated, and the constitution, in
its most sacred and dearly-bought amendments, violently ignored, and
men were there with perjury on their lips and treason in their hearts,
who had countenanced and upheld all of this.

“Let me illustrate,” Mr. Blaine says, “by comparing groups of states
of the same representative strength North and South. Take the states
of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. They send seventeen
representatives to congress. Their aggregate population is composed
of ten hundred and thirty-five thousand whites and twelve hundred and
twenty-four thousand colored; the colored being nearly two hundred
thousand in excess of the whites. Of the seventeen representatives,
then, it is evident that nine were apportioned to these states by
reason of their colored population, and only eight by reason of their
white population; and yet in the choice of the entire seventeen
representatives, the colored voters had no more voice or power than
their remote kindred on the shores of Senegambia or on the Gold Coast.
The ten hundred and thirty-five thousand white people had the sole and
absolute choice of the entire seventeen representatives.

“In contrast, take two states in the North, Iowa and Wisconsin, with
seventeen representatives. They have a white population of two million
two hundred and forty-seven thousand,--considerably more than double
the entire white population of the three Southern states I have named.
In Iowa and Wisconsin, therefore, it takes one hundred and thirty-two
thousand white population to send a representative to congress, but in
South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana every sixty thousand white
people send a representative. In other words, sixty thousand white
people in those Southern states have precisely the same political
power in the government of the country that one hundred and thirty-two
thousand white people have in Iowa and Wisconsin.”

And it is because this state of things continues and has threatened
every presidential election since then, that the brave deed of standing
in the presence of the perpetrators of the wrong, and unmasking its
hideous mien, is still all the more worthy of notice, and demands an
increased interest; and so we venture to give another sample of his
old Plutarch method of contrast and comparison; the last few sentences
of the speech, constituting as they did his peroration, and being so
pointed, personal, and triumphant in tone and manner, revealing the
man so clearly and forcibly, that we close our reference to the speech
with them, and giving a summary of argument and powerful, homeward
putting of truth, worthy of the honor of the great cause he pleaded,
worthy of the dignity of the high place in which he spoke, and worthy
of himself:--

“Within that entire great organization there is not one man, whose
opinion is entitled to be quoted, that does not desire peace and
harmony and friendship, and a patriotic and fraternal union, between
the North and the South. This wish is spontaneous, instinctive,
universal throughout the Northern states; and yet, among men of
character and sense, there is surely no need of attempting to deceive
ourselves as to the precise truth. First pure, then peaceable. Gush
will not remove a grievance, and no disguise of state rights will close
the eyes of our people to the necessity of correcting a great national
wrong. Nor should the South make the fatal mistake of concluding that
injustice to the negro is not also injustice to the white man; nor
should it ever be forgotten, that for the wrongs of both a remedy will
assuredly be found.

“The war, with all its costly sacrifices, was fought in vain unless
equal rights for all classes be established in all the states of
the Union; and now, in words which are those of friendship, however
differently they may be accepted, I tell the men of the South here on
this floor and beyond this chamber, that even if they could strip the
negro of his constitutional rights, they can never permanently maintain
the inequality of white men in this nation; they can never make a white
man’s vote in the South doubly as powerful in the administration of the
government as a white man’s vote in the North.”

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

XVI.

BLAINE AND GARFIELD.


These names will be forever linked together in American history. Not
as the names of Lincoln and Seward. They had little in common except
massive powers and a common work, without any special affinities
or friendships other than of a public and political nature. They
were, indeed, friends in a large sense, and each worthy of the
other, constituting largely the nation’s head, when the greatness of
statesmanship is head, and the loyalty of statesmanship is heart, was
the demand of the hour. It was the cause and circumstance that brought
their great lives in unison. And yet we are not told that in any sense
they were like David and Jonathan,--one at heart in a personal love,
as they were one in mind, devoted to the great concern of the nation’s
perpetuity.

But Mr. Garfield and Mr. Blaine, when young men far from their prime,
entered together the thirty-eighth congress in 1863. Those were dark
days, and side by side they fought out in congress halls the great
battle for Liberty and Right against Slavery and Wrong. No contest
commanded talent of a higher order. No men supremer in those great
qualities which give to greatness the sovereign right to dictate the
destiny of mighty interests, and crown, as personal achievements, those
interests with a glory imperishable,--none better, braver, truer, armed
to the point of triumph, ever stood up against incarnate wrong, to
wage the sharp, decisive engagement to final conquest, than did these
men and their noble compeers. They entered the lists when the breath
of battle blew hottest, when the land was darkest with shadows of the
war-cloud, when the nation was saddest from loss of noble sons by
land and sea, when desperation was stamped in the face of the foe and
rankled in his heart. Like Spartans, there they stood, pouring their
vital energies into the current of the nation’s life, until the end of
war, and all its fruits were gathered in and secured in safety within
the iron chest of the constitution’s sure protection.

It was not for four years, but for thirteen, that they thus held each
other company in their high service of the nation and the world. Such
fellowship as this, rich with every element of honor, could but weld
their hearts in unity. As they grew up into those expansive lives,
rare and fragrant with the choicest gifts of nature, and rich with
deeds worthy of the noblest powers, so that the highest honors of the
nation seemed theirs, they grew not apart, but together. Thinking and
speaking, writing and contending, for the same great measures, their
lives ran in the same great channels.

The friendship of soldiers who have toiled and endured together, is
felt by thousands in our Republic to-day, and the feeling grows deeper
and stronger as the years go by. This is general, and is common to all,
but it is enduring and sincere. Yet there were special, particular
friendships, more personal in their nature, that sprang up like
beautiful plants, upon this larger field. These are not forgotten or
destroyed. The strength of life is in them, and the growth of years is
on them. The immortality of time is theirs. So in the narrower field,
when the life-giving service of years, wrought into the structure of a
nation redeemed, these men added to the charm and glory of the broader
and more general interest, the grace of a special personal friendliness.

They were just dissimilar enough for this. They were both large, strong
men in physique, and yet not large and portly in the sense of large
and needless bulk of flesh; but fine and strong frames, with massive
heads set squarely upon broad shoulders; arms that swung with power;
bodies filled with health,--not shrunken, dwarfed, or withered,--and
good, stout limbs, that held them well in air, and moved with speed of
the same strong will that commanded and controlled their utterance.
There were ease and grace in every motion. They stood erect and bore
themselves with the dignity of kings, and yet the merest child was
beloved by them. If the one was deeper and more metaphysical than the
other, that other was broader, richer in generalization,--marshalling
his well-armed troops of knowledge from every field where Right had
conquered Wrong, and moving his battalions with the speed of a swifter
march. They were never left to be bitter contestants at any point;
neither had ever plunged the iron into the soul of the other, or done
aught to hinder the cause of the other’s promotion.

Early in their congressional career they were both stamped as future
candidates for the presidency. They were so thought of and talked
about. But Mr. Blaine’s prominence as a speaker of the House of
Representatives had given him earliest the greater prominence in this
direction, and from various quarters it was being thrust upon him.
But they were friends, and had no bickerings and jealousies on this
account. Garfield could wait, and would. He did not put himself
forward, nor seek it at the hands of friends. He would rather bide his
time, and help another. But that other was not Mr. Blaine, though they
were friends. It was a matter of honor, of state-pride, and of duty,
that he gave his suffrage and his power to John Sherman, of his own
state of Ohio, who had done such magnificent service in the treasury in
paying the national debt and resuming specie payment. And his great,
honest speech was so brilliant and earnest for his friend at home, that
it turned the mind of the convention toward him.

When the crisis came they crowned him, and on the instant the news was
flashed into the presence of Mr. Blaine, while still the cheers went up
in that great assembly in Chicago; he sent his congratulations to his
friend, and said, “Command my services for the great campaign.” They
were friends and brothers still, each worthy of the other’s highest
honor, truest devotion, and fullest praise. Political lying could not
befoul the heart of either with any member of that brood of vipers
which inhabit this sphere in other breasts. They knew too well the
nature and the tactics of the foe. I have seen a soldier dead upon the
field, so blackened with blood and powder from the fray, that three
stood by and claimed him for their different companies, and none
perchance were right.

But no blackening powder of the enemy, no mud of march, no dust of
camp, or any other creature, could so bespatter or besmear these men
so they should fail to know and love each other. The battle had been
long and hard, and desperate to them. Neither could be pierced or
fall without the other’s notice, and full well they knew that such
hard pressure of the enemy would bring them to desperate straits. But
this did not cause them to fear or falter, but to rush on, through
blinding and begriming powder-smoke, to victory. They could but smile
at the enemies’ reports of battle, and of the skill and bearing of both
general and troops, just as when a paper crossed the lines in Rebellion
times the truth came not always with it. Some one must bear the wrath
of those whose flag was ever in the dust, and whose broken ranks were
reeling in defeat. Hard names and lies were but the sparks,--the flint
flash from the clash of arms,--they but consume themselves, then die
away. No man, since all the hate of treason had blackened Lincoln and
our leading men with crimes imaginary, had had his name politically
tarnished with darker words of calumny than the wise, the good, the
sainted Garfield; and yet Mr. Blaine lived so close to him, so well
knew the health and the beauty of his inward life, the strength and
soundness of his character, the boldness of his purpose, purity of
his motive, and the cleanness of his record,--as history shall record
it,--that his voice resounded as it never had done, from city to city,
from state to state, in support of the man and in vindication of his
cause; and the wreath was on his brow, and multitudes stood, with
uncovered heads, to do him honor. His old, tried friends, who had
watched, and studied, and known him for twenty years had sent him back
to congress for the ninth time. The legislature of Ohio had given him
their suffrage and elevated him spontaneously, without his presence
or his asking, to the senatorship. The convention had nominated, and
the people elected him to the presidency, and all despite the flinging
of mud and the breath of slander. “He was met,” says Mr. Blaine,
“with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and
it continued with increasing volume until the close of his victorious
campaign:--

  “‘No might, nor greatness in mortality,
  Can censure scope; back-wounding calumny.
  The whitest virtue strikes; what king so strong,
  Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue.’”

“Under it all,” he says, “he was calm, and strong, and confident;
never lost his self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty
or ill-considered word. Indeed, nothing in his whole life is more
remarkable than his bearing through those five full months of
vituperation. The great mass of these unjust imputations passed
unnoticed, and with the general _débris_ of the campaign fell into
oblivion.”

The friendship of Mr. Blaine never waned. He was true as steel. And
when the honors of the nation, who had honored him, were in Garfield’s
hands, the chiefest and the best were for his first best friend, whom
he called to the highest place in his cabinet,--the _premier_ of the
nation. This was no mere compliment. It was an official act. The
success of his administration, which was his greatest care, depended
largely upon his secretary of state. He must be clean as well as
competent,--a king in skill and scholarship, as well as brother,
friend. It must then have been an act of his best judgment, as well
as an expression of regard. And yet it was as well respect for the
millions, represented by the large and strong delegations who voted for
him with such strength of purpose for five-and-thirty times.

Four months, less two days, he sat at his right hand in the highest
counsels of the country, a wise, and honored, and trusted man. He
could not have been there had not Garfield known him,--but he did
know him through and through, and because he knew him so thoroughly
and well, he placed the keeping of the nation’s wisdom, integrity, and
honor before the world, and in the great world abroad, into his hands.

“The heart is wiser than the head,” and knows more deeply into life and
character, than simple, abstract thought can penetrate. It receives
and knows the whole man as a whole, knows him as a person in his every
element of personality in reason, conscience, affections, will; knows
him by the touch of moral reason, for pure intellect may act alone
comparatively in abstract questions, of metaphysical thought, but the
heart never. The true enlightenment is here. It is the abode of motive,
purpose, plan,--out of it are the issues of life itself.

We are ignorant of those we hate, as the South was of the North before
the war, and hence her braggart boasts. But those whom we know deeply,
fully, truly, we love deeply, fully, truly. Love lights the path of
reason, when it carries the whole reason with it, and furnishes by
reciprocal acts of confidence data for its guidance. And thus we love
our way into each other’s lives, while reason thus enlightened, helps
us on.

It was thus with these great men of the nation’s hope, her honor, and
her trust. They sat, they stood, they walked, they talked together,
their great hearts open as the day, shining full upon each other. And
as they shone thus on each other’s life, there was a blending, and so a
mutual life, an interlacing, twining, locking, and so a unity.

Every walk in life furnishes its friendships; and the greater the
walk may be, the greater are the friendships; for the greater the
affinities, the broader the sympathies, the purer, sweeter, more
supreme the life; for the true life is never isolated, but unstarved
in every part. The king has his queen, the Czar his Czarina. Only the
small-souled men are shrunken hearted, while large, capacious spirits
take in worlds.

Perhaps the country never possessed two men at the same time who had
more friends of the solid and reliable sort than these men, who admired
and loved to honor, and honored because they loved, and this because
they lived out their splendid natures before their countrymen, hating
every mean thing, loving and praising the good. They were not dark,
unfathomable mysteries, enigmas, puzzles, problems, staring at you,
unsolved, and daring you to the thankless task, and promising but the
gloom of deeper shadows; you felt you knew them. They did not stand
aloof, daring you mount up to them, but coming down, they sat beside
you, and made you feel akin, and not blush out your feelings of a
doomed inferiority; and this great-heartedness, beating responsive to
the strong, warm touch of nature, made them friends.

Garfield did not live to draw the picture of his Blaine, but Blaine has
lived to draw the picture of his Garfield.

“It is not easy,” he says, “to find his counterpart anywhere in the
record of American public life. He, perhaps, more nearly resembles Mr.
Seward in his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle.
He had the love of learning, and patient industry of investigation to
which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence, and his presidency. He
had some of those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr.
Webster, and which, indeed, in all our public life, have left the great
Massachusetts senator without an intellectual peer.

“Some of his methods recall the best features in the strong,
independent course of Sir Robert Peel, to whom he had striking
resemblance in the type of his mind and the habit of his speech. He had
all of Burke’s love for the sublime and the beautiful, with, possibly,
something of his superabundance. In his faith and his magnanimity; in
his power of statement and subtle analysis; in his faultless logic,
and his love of literature; in his wealth and mode of illustration, one
is reminded of that great English statesman of to-day,--Gladstone.”

But the nation seems to commemorate most fittingly the friendship of
those two men, when in the person of its representatives and senators
it selects to deliver the eulogy of the dead president. Not any of his
colleagues in the House from his native state, however long or well
they may have known him; nor his colleague in the senate; no governor
of his honored state; his loved and cultured pastor, nor any other man
than Blaine,--his chosen counsellor in the great affairs of state;
he who was with him when, on that quiet, happy morning in July, they
rode slowly to the depot, and “his fate was on him in an instant. One
moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching out
peacefully before him;--the next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless,
doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave.”

And now, as the hand of Mr. Blaine draws aside the curtain, let us look
in upon the final scene in the life and death of his great friend, and
see, as he saw, the man so deeply, truly loved by the great nation he
had just begun to rule so well.

“Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause,
in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of
murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world’s interest; from
its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence
of death, and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment
in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of
its relinquishment; but through days of deadly languor; through weeks
of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne; with clear
sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and
ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell? What brilliant,
broken plans; what baffled high ambitions; what sundering of strong,
warm manhood’s friendships; what bitter rending of sweet household
ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining
friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors
of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life
lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood’s day of
frolic; the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons, just springing into
closest companionship, claiming every day and every hour the reward of
a father’s love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power
to meet all demands. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his
soul was not shaken.

“His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal
sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of
a nation’s love; enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the
love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He
trod the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death.
With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac
hiss of the assassin’s bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple
resignation he bowed to the divine decree.

“As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness, and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should
will, within sight of its heaving billows, within hearing of its
manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling
breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders; on
its far sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves,
rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the
red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and
shining pathway of the stars. Let us believe that in the silence of the
receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore,
and felt, already upon his wasted brow, the breath of the eternal
morning.”



[Illustration]

XVII.

SECRETARY OF STATE.


Mr. Blaine was a member of the cabinets of President Garfield and
of President Arthur for ten months, retiring at his own request, in
January, 1881.

The Foreign Policy of the Garfield administration, as conducted by Mr.
Blaine, was emphatically a Peace Policy. It was without the motive or
disposition of war in any form. It was one of dignity and uprightness,
as a work of twelve hundred and fifty pages, entitled “Foreign
Relations of the United States for 1881,” and another book entitled
“War in South America, and attempt to bring about Peace, 1880-81,” a
book of about eight hundred pages, both printed by the United States
Government, and now before us, amply testify.

Its two objects, as distinctly stated by him, were: first, to bring
about peace, and prevent future wars in North and South America;
second, to cultivate such friendly commercial relations with all
American countries as would increase the export trade of the United
States, by supplying those fabrics in which we are abundantly able to
compete with the manufacturing nations of Europe.

The second depended on the first. For three years Chili, Peru, and
Bolivia had been engrossed in war, and the friendly offices of the
United States Government had barely averted it between Chili and the
Argentine Republic, postponed it between Guatemala and Mexico; so also
it might in these South American Republics. War was threatened between
Brazil and Uruguay, and foreshadowed between Brazil and the Argentine
states.

To induce the Spanish American states to adopt some peaceful mode of
adjusting their frequently recurring contentions, was regarded by
President Garfield as one of the most honorable and useful ends to
which the diplomacy of the United States could contribute; and in the
line of the policy indicated, is a letter from Mr. Blaine to Gen. S. A.
Hurlbut, United States Minister to Peru. While it shows the spirit of
the president, it shows as well the hand and heart of his secretary:--

                                      “DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
                                             “WASHINGTON, June 15, 1881.

  “SIR:--The deplorable condition of Peru, the disorganization of its
  government, and the absence of precise and trustworthy information
  as to the state of affairs now existing in that unhappy country,
  render it impossible to give you instructions as full and definite as
  I would desire.

  “Judging from the most recent despatches from our ministers, you will
  probably find on the part of the Chilian authorities in possession
  of Peru, a willingness to facilitate the establishment of the
  provisional government which has been attempted by Senor Calderon.
  If so you will do all you properly can to encourage the Peruvians
  to accept any reasonable conditions and limitations with which this
  concession may be accompanied. It is vitally important to Peru,
  that she be allowed to resume the functions of a native and orderly
  government, both for the purposes of internal administration and the
  negotiation of peace. To obtain this end it would be far better to
  accept conditions which may be hard and unwelcome, than by demanding
  too much to force the continuance of the military control of Chili.
  It is hoped that you will be able, in your necessary association
  with the Chilian authorities, to impress upon them that the more
  liberal and considerate their policy, the surer it will be to obtain
  a lasting and satisfactory settlement. The Peruvians cannot but be
  aware of the sympathy and interest of the people and government of
  the United States, and will, I feel confident, be prepared to give to
  your representations the consideration to which the friendly anxiety
  of this government entitles them.

  “The United States cannot refuse to recognize the rights which the
  Chilian government has acquired by the successes of the war, and it
  may be that a cession of territory will be the necessary price to be
  paid for peace....

  “As a strictly confidential communication, I inclose you a copy of
  instructions sent this day to the United States minister at Santiago.
  You will thus be advised of the position which this government
  assumes toward all the parties to this deplorable conflict. It is
  the desire of the United States to act in a spirit of the sincerest
  friendship to the three republics, and to use its influence solely in
  the interest of an honorable and lasting peace.

                                                      “JAMES G. BLAINE.”

The appointment of William Henry Trescot as Spanish envoy, with the
rank of Minister Plenipotentiary to the republics of Chili, Peru,
and Bolivia, was done in the same regard, not only of the nation’s
honor, but also of peace and that commerce which brings prosperity and
happiness.

It has long been felt, and is felt deeply to-day, that there are many
kindly offices of state which this great nation may offer to weaker,
feebler, and distressed peoples, for their good and for our glory;
that it is not enough to be simply an example and an asylum, but to
be a potent benefactor in a direct and personal way, teaching them
that peace, not war, is the secret of growth and greatness. This, in
effect, was the object of the peace congress, which was a cherished
design of the administration, and to which Mr. Blaine was fully
committed.

No wonder that such a project commanded the thought and enlisted the
sympathies of such men as Garfield and his great _premier_; and Mr.
Blaine tells us that it was the intention, resolved on before the fatal
shot of July 2d, to invite all the independent governments of North
and South America to meet in such a congress at Washington, on March
15, 1882, and the invitations would have been issued directly after
the New England tour the president was not permitted to make. But the
invitations were sent out by Mr. Blaine on the 22d of November, when in
Mr. Arthur’s cabinet. It met with cordial approval in South American
countries, and some of them at once accepted the invitations. But in
six weeks President Arthur caused the invitations to be recalled, or
suspended, and referred the whole matter to congress, where it was lost
in debate, just as the Panama congress was wrecked when Mr. Clay was
secretary of state over fifty years ago.

It was argued that such an assemblage of representatives from those
various states would not only elevate their standard of civilization,
and lead to the fuller development of a continent at whose wealth
Humboldt was amazed, but it would also bring them nearer us and turn
the drift of their European trade to our American shores. As it is,
they have a coin balance of trade against us every year, of one hundred
and twenty millions of dollars, and this money is shipped from our
country to Europe, to pay for their immense purchases there. Their
petroleum comes from us, but crosses the Atlantic twice before it gets
to them, and the middle-men in Europe receive a larger profit on it
than the producers of the oil in north-western Pennsylvania.

It may be both wise and prudent, in order to completeness of biography,
to state two aspersions,--one of war, and the other of gain,--cast upon
the policy of Mr. Blaine.

William Henry Trescot, in a published letter dated July 17, 1882,
states “his knowledge of certain matters connected with Mr. Blaine’s
administration as secretary of state”:--

“2. As to your designing a war, that supposition is too absurd for
serious consideration. If you had any such purpose it was carefully
concealed from me, and I left for South America with the impression
that I would utterly fail in my mission if I did not succeed in
obtaining an _amicable settlement of the differences_ between the
belligerents.

“3. In regard to the Cochet and Landreau claims, it is sufficient to
say that you rejected the first, absolutely. As to the second, you
instructed General Hurlbut to ask, if the proper time for such request
should come, that Landreau might be heard before a Peruvian tribunal in
support of his claim.

“General Hurlbut, although approving the justice of Landreau’s claim
in his dispatch of Sept. 14, 1881, never brought it in any way to
the notice of the Peruvian government. During my mission in South
America, I never referred to it, so that, in point of fact, during
your secretaryship the Landreau claim was never mentioned by ministers
of the United States, either to the Chilian or Peruvian government.
It could not, therefore, have affected the then pending diplomatic
questions in the remotest degree.”

But for these he appeared and answered, in company with Mr. Trescot,
before the House committee on foreign affairs, Hon. Charles G.
Williams, of Wisconsin, chairman.

“He received a vindication,” is the simple report.

“I think Mr. Blaine has rather enjoyed his opportunity, and his
triumph,” writes one. “It is inspiring to have Mr. Blaine associated
with public affairs again, if only as a witness before a committee. How
the country rings with his name, the moment he breaks silence! His
familiar face, framed in rapidly whitening hair; his elastic figure,
growing almost venerable, from recent associations; his paternal manner
toward young Jimmie, his name-sake son, whom by some whim of fancy,
he had with him during the examination,--all these were elements of
interest in the picture.”

And now comes a beautiful prophecy, two years old, which shows how
one may argue his way into the future by the hard and certain logic
of events. It is this: “The administration will have to do something
that shall appeal strongly to the popular heart; something out of the
line of hospitalities within its own charmed circle; something magnetic
and heroic, or else ‘Blaine, of Maine,’ will become so idolized in the
minds of the people that he will be invincible in 1884.”

In all of his foreign correspondence there is, in one particular, a
striking likeness between Mr. Blaine and President Lincoln,--the man is
not lost in the statesman, but rather the man is the statesman.

As Abraham Lincoln in all his giant form appears upon the forefront of
every public document that came from his hand, so James G. Blaine is
photographed from life in every state-paper that bears his name. He
copies no model, he stands on no pedestal,--his personality is free
and untrammeled in every utterance.

In his paper to Mr. Lowell, our Minister to England, of Nov. 29, 1881,
we get a full view of the man at his work.

A modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of April 19, 1850, is the
subject in hand. His instructions had been sent ten days before. A week
afterwards the response of Lord Granville to his circular note of June
24, in relation to the neutrality of any canal across the Isthmus of
Panama, had been received.

And so he proceeded to give a summary of the historical objections
to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and the very decided differences of
opinion between the two governments, to which its interpretation has
given rise. And this he does with singular skill and aptness, which is
not unusual to him, when the philosophy of history is needful as the
servant of his genius.

No less than sixteen direct quotations of from two to eight lines each,
are given in a letter of six large pages, taken from the discussion of
the subject for thirty years, while the main body of the letter, in its
various parts, shows a comprehensive grasp of details, a familiarity
with utterances of the leading men of the past, and with England’s
operations under the treaty, as to prove conclusively that in the
highest realms of statesmanship, mastery is still the one word that
defines the man.

His previous letter of instructions, presenting an analysis of the
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, singling out the objectionable features to be
abrogated, and stating his reasons, is of the same clear, strong type,
compactly written, and applying the great arguments of common sense to
a subject of international importance.

“The convention,” he says, “was made more than thirty years ago, under
exceptional and extraordinary conditions, which have long since ceased
to exist,--conditions which at best were temporary in their nature, and
which can never be reproduced.

“The development of the Pacific coast places responsibility upon
our government which it cannot meet, and not control the canal now
building, and just as England controls the Suez canal.

“England requires and sustains an immense navy, for which we have no
use, and might at any time seize the canal, and make it impossible for
us to marshal a squadron in Pacific waters, without a perilous voyage
ourselves around the Horn.”

Great events of permanent importance would doubtless have been the
result, had the president and his secretary been permitted to continue
as they were for the full term of office. Already Mr. Blaine was
showing himself a master in the arts of diplomacy, not with aught of
cunning artifice or sly interrogation, but with straight-forward, solid
utterances upon the great interests of the nation’s weal. Not only of
the loved and honored president did the assassin’s bullet deprive us,
but also of the services of Mr. Blaine, as well. A Providence more kind
seems to be giving him back to the nation, to complete their unfinished
work.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

XVIII.

HOME LIFE OF MR. BLAINE.


In his “Letters to the Joneses” J. G. Holland describes various homes
as possessing all the elements of an empire, a kingdom, a monarchy, or
a republic. Mr. Blaine’s home is a republic. Every member of his family
seems to be on an absolute equality; and he, as one, has described him,
and an intimate friend confirmed it, is more like a big brother than
aught beside. Certainly he is no emperor, no monarch, czar, or king. He
is not even president or governor, nor chieftain there, or general; but
rather the senior member of the family, the head by right of priority.
He is there deeply loved, greatly respected, and highly honored. Why
need he be a tyrant where a father’s wisdom and a father’s love will
serve him best and win high encomiums of praise? Why not shine on when
he enters there, as well as in the places of the state and nation, or
in the simpler walks and haunts of men? Why put out his light when
among those who most admire and love? Why ring down the curtain upon
all those splendid qualities of soul that make him famous in the world
abroad, when in the charmed circle of those who love and share his fame
and honor?

Mr. Blaine’s first home in Augusta was the eastern half of a large,
brown, double house, on Green Street, nearly opposite the Methodist
church. It was a simple, unpretentious, pleasant home, all through
his editorial, legislative, and on into his congressional life. It
was where he did the hard work of those first years, where he made
his friends and bound them to him, where he entertained them and gave
them cheer. His business was a constant thing with him; he never quit
or laid it aside; and it was a great part of his business to get
acquainted. He took them to his home; it was open to all, and there
was a seat for any and all at his table. He kept open house the year
around. When friends came it was hard to get away; he would hold on
to them as he would to a book. He loved the people; they were a study
to him; a very joy and pleasure, a real delight. Among the people he
is perfectly at home, and they are made to feel that “come and see
me” means just that, and all that that means. He is like a father or
big brother out among them. They all knew him, and knew where he
lived,--in that “brown house on Green Street.” This was back in those
years before he was so largely in Washington, and before he had his
pleasant and more commodious house and grounds near the capitol.

The whole care of the home was upon Mrs. Blaine, who looked after
everything down to the veriest _minutiæ_. She was thoroughly in
sympathy with him, was pleased with what he enjoyed; and so was
perfectly willing their home should be the rallying-place for his hosts
of friends, who might come and go at will. The Maine legislature met at
his house during the Garcelon trouble.

Mr. Blaine attended strictly to his work, and that meant the
people,--strangers, and townspeople, one and all. He never, I am
credibly informed, bought a pound of steak in his life, nor a barrel
of flour; never went to a grocery store to buy anything. He has had
no time or thought for things like these. He has been a student and
teacher all his life; a close, deep, careful reader and thinker. He had
never been in a printing-office in his life until he became editor, and
had to learn the people, study them, get politics from their ways of
thinking and looking at things; and it was a matter of principle with
him to make the thing go. It is not a half-dozen things, but “This one
thing I do,” with him, and he does it. But he has always been regular
at his meals, as a matter of health, and so a law of life. He was no
epicurean; cared only for the more substantial things of diet, and
never seemed to be particular about what he ate, except one thing, and
that he liked, and always wanted them in their season, and always had
them. It was baked sweet apples and milk at the close of every meal.
And then he would sit and read, and read, and read, especially after
supper, and Mrs. Blaine, if she wanted him to move from the table,
would say, “James! James!” and again, “James!” like enough half a dozen
times before he would hear, and she pleasant and careful of him all
the time. She has had mind and heart to know his worth, and has needed
no one to tell her that teaching school in Kentucky has paid her a
handsome dividend and is full of promise for the future. He has made no
move but what she has seconded the motion. Her life is in his, and not
a thing independent and apart from it.

One who knew her well in those early years, and knows her well to-day,
said of Mrs. Blaine, “She is just as lovely as she can be; of superior
culture, and a real, true mother.”

The gentleman who was Mr. Blaine’s foreman, and for a year and a
half made his home with them, is most enthusiastic in their praise.
He tells what a real mother Mrs. Blaine was to him if he was sick, or
anything the matter with him, how she would take the best of care of
him. Every winter they published a tri-weekly during the session of the
legislature, and this kept him at the office late every-other night,
and she would be “worried about him because he had to work nights,” and
Mr. Blaine would say, “Howard, you are worth a dozen boys (shiftless,
good-for-nothing boys, he meant), but you must not work so hard.” The
humanities of life were the amenities to them.

This same man, who has since been editor and proprietor of Mr. Blaine’s
old paper, said with depth of feeling, and strong emphasis, “I wish
every voter in America had had my opportunity for eighteen months,
right in his own home, to see and know Mr. Blaine, they would find out
then what a royal man he is.”

In less than ten days after his nomination, parties of prominence,
connected with a paper favorable to his election, but located in quite
a city where a leading Republican paper affects to oppose him, visited
Augusta, and called upon his political enemies, and enquired into his
private, social, and domestic life, and they finally confessed there
was no lisp or syllable of aught to tarnish his name or cause a blush.
It is all pure, and sweet, and clear.

When Mr. and Mrs. Blaine first entered their Augusta home, a bright and
beautiful baby boy was in the arms of Mrs. Blaine. He was the pride and
joy of the home, their first-born. His name was Stanwood Blaine, taking
his mother’s maiden-name. One short, bright year of sunshine, and
prattle, and glee, and a dark cloud rested on that home; a deep sorrow
stung the life of that father, and heavy grief oppressed the heart of
the mother,--their little Stanwood was gone; he was among the jewels on
high, and there he is to-day, while a lovely picture of him adorns the
present home.

Since then, six children have been born to them,--John Walker, a
graduate of Yale college, and a member of the Alabama Court of Claims;
Robert Emmons, a graduate of Harvard college, now connected with
the North-western Railroad, in Chicago; Alice, the wife of Colonel
Coppinger; Margaret; James Gillespie, Jr., and Hattie, named for her
mother, Harriet. Walker, the oldest, is about thirty-one years old,
and unmarried. Hattie, the youngest, is fourteen years of age. All
of the children have been born in Augusta, and with but two or three
exceptions, in the old home on Green Street.

Mr. Blaine has been accustomed to sit up quite late at night with
books, papers, and letters, and make up his sleep in the morning. He
loves a good story, and keeps a fund on hand constantly, and they serve
his purpose well. There is one he has enjoyed telling to knots of
friends here and there, and especially when friends have gathered at
his table. The Maine law, in the interest of temperance, was a leading
issue in the state during Mr. Blaine’s connection with the _Journal_.
It fell to the lot of his partner, John L. Stevens, who had been a
minister, to write the temperance articles, and he would write them
long and strong. It was a custom with Mr. Blaine to go around among
the workmen and chat with them, a few words of good cheer. Among them
was an Irishman named John Murphy, who loved his glass. He was a witty
fellow, and generally had something to say. One day while Mr. Blaine
was around, Murphy had a large, long manuscript from Mr. Stevens, on
temperance, which he was setting up in type. It was a hard job, and
the day was hot. He was about half through, when he called out to the
foreman,--

“Owen, have you a quarter?”

“Yes, sir! What do you want of it?”

All were listening, including Mr. Blaine, for they expected something
bright and sharp.

“Well, sir, I thought I would have to be after having something to wet
me throat wid before I got through with this long, dry temperance job.”

Everybody roared at the Irishman’s quaint sally. It struck Mr. Blaine
as particularly dry and ludicrous; he laughed outright, and he would
tell it as a good joke on his partner.

Mr. Blaine has never talked about people behind their backs; he is
no gossiper. He is a fearless man, and if he has anything to say to
a man he says it squarely to his face. There is a purity of tone and
richness of life in his home, that are both noticeable and remarkable.
There seem to be no frictions, gratings, or harshness. One of ample
opportunity has said, “I never heard him speak a cross word to his
children.” He is rather indulgent than otherwise. While he may be, as
case requires, the strong, central government, they are as sovereign
states; no rebellion manifests itself, requiring coercion.

Mr. Blaine’s family have been accustomed to attend church, and the
family pew is always full. Father and mother are both members of
the Congregational Church, and have the reputation of being devoted
Christians and liberal supporters of the church. Mr. Blaine tells them
to put down what they want from him, and he will pay it.

He has the reputation of being one of the best Bible-class teachers
in the city. His long drill at college, reading the New Testament
through in Greek several times, has helped him in this. A Mission
Sabbath-school was started down in the lower part of Augusta, and he
went down with the others and taught a large Bible-class. His old
pastors, Doctor Ecob, of Albany, N. Y., and Doctor Webb, of Boston,
Mass., bear the highest testimony to his Christian character and
integrity. It was said of him at Cincinnati, that “he needed no
certificate of moral character from a Rebel congress,” and a very
careful examination proves it true. No man could, it would seem, by
any possibility, stand better in his own home community than does Mr.
Blaine. It is not simply cold, formal endorsement, as a matter of
self-respect and state-pride, but the clear, strong words of a deep and
powerful friendship, that one constantly hears who will stand in the
light and let it shine on him.

There were in his Green-street home, parlor, sitting-room, dining-room,
and kitchen, down-stairs, and corresponding rooms up-stairs. There
was quite a large side-yard, with numerous trees, and garden in the
rear. The barn and rear part of the house were connected by a long
wood-house, as is the custom in New England. It was an ample and
respectable place for a young editor and politician to reside, and
while it was up on the hill or low bluff from Water Street, down near
the Kennebec River, where the business portion of the city was, and his
office was located, still it was quite convenient for him.

His old office was burned in the big fire of 1865, which destroyed
the business portion of the city, but the desk was saved at which he
did much of his writing when in charge of the office of the _Journal_
during the presidential campaign of 1860.

During this campaign there was so much to excite him, so much news to
read, so many speeches to make, so many ways to go, and such a general
monopoly of time and attention, that very early in the morning they
would get out of “copy.” The foreman would say,--and he was a very
kind-hearted man, and loved Mr. Blaine,--

“I don’t see any way for you to do, Dan, but to go up to Mr. Blaine’s,
and wake him up, and tell him we must have some more copy.”

Up he would go to the Green-street home, and rouse him up. Mr. Blaine
would come down in his study-gown and slippers and say,--

“What, that copy given out?”

“Yes, sir, and we will have to have more right away!”

“Well, what did he do, sit right down and dash it off for you?”

“Yes, sometimes, and sometimes he would take the scissors.”

This was said with a mild, significant smile.

Mr. Blaine could write anywhere, and did much of it out in the
dining-room on the supper-table, with his family all about him. He
would become oblivious of all surroundings, and with his power of
penetration and concentration, adapt himself to his work, utterly lost
to circumstances.

He had no mercy on meanness. It roused his whole nature. He would walk
the floor at home, plan his articles, think out his sentences, and
send everything to the printer just as he had written it first,--but
when he came to correct the proof he would erase and interline until
the article had passed almost beyond the power of recognition. His
finishing touches were a new creation.

Of course the poor printers never said anything either solemn or
wise at such times, especially when driven to the final point of
desperation. But they could not get mad at him, and there was no use
trying. Dan said,--

“He would just as soon shake hands with a man dressed up as I am now,
with this old suit of overalls on, and sit down and talk with him as
with the richest man in town.”

“The men knew this, and saw and felt his power. He looked at the man,
and not at the clothes?”

“Yes, that is just it.”

Mr. Blaine’s business and home-life are so blended, it is impossible
to separate them. He never left his business at the office. It was all
hours and every hour with him, except upon the Sabbath.

He took some time to look after the education of his children,
something as his father and grandfather had dealt with him. But Mrs.
Blaine, having been a teacher, took this responsibility upon herself.
They all attended the public schools of the city, and were early sent
away to academy, college, and seminary. The home always had an air
of intelligence. Busy scenes with books were common, day and night.
Materials for writing, papers, magazines, and books for general
reading, and for review, seemed omnipresent. There is order and system
amid all the seeming confusion.

Mrs. Blaine’s hand and touch are felt and seen everywhere. She is a
large, magnificent woman, a born queen, as fit to rule America as Queen
Victoria to rule England. She has a quiet, commanding air, with nothing
assumed or affected about her. A gentle, wholesome dignity makes her a
stranger to storms, and her clear, strong mind makes her ready and at
home in society. She is not a great talker, and encourages it in others
by listening only when it is sensible. She is too wise and womanly
to ever gush, and never encourages talk about her husband. There is
nothing patronizing about her.

The fact is, the presidency, since the death of Mr. Garfield, and the
terrible ordeal through which they then passed, has been very serious
business to them. They have not labored for it. It has been thrust upon
them,--for they are one in every sympathy and every joy.

About a year ago, while calling upon his old friend, Ex-Gov. Anson P.
Morrill, Mr. Morrill said,--

“Are you going to try for the presidency again, Blaine? Come, now, tell
me, right out. I want to know.”

“No, sir,” was the reply. “I do not want it. If you could offer it to
me to-night, I would not accept it. I am devoted to my book at present,
and love it, and do not wish to be diverted from it.”

Mr. Morrill went on to say, that “eight years ago, when they tried to
nominate him at Cincinnati, I was opposed to it, and told my neighbor,
Mr. Stevens, I would not vote for him. I thought he was too young, and
had not grown enough.”

“Well, how is it now?”

“O, he is all right now, well-developed, solid, and strong. The nation
can’t do better than put him right in. He will make a master president,
and give the country an administration they will be proud of.”

This shows the honor and honesty of the old governor, and that he loved
the nation above his friend. The happy, blessed, prosperous years of
home-life ended on Green Street, when Mr. Blaine was advanced to the
third office in the nation, as speaker of the House of Representatives
in congress,--and they removed to the larger home, with ampler grounds,
on State Street, next to the capitol. Here they have since resided,
except when living in Washington. Mr. Blaine loves home, and has his
family with him.

There is nothing extravagant about the home on State Street, either
in the house or its furnishing. It is plain, simple, and comfortable.
The sitting-room and dining-room upon the right of the main hall, and
the two parlors on the left are thrown into one, making two large
rooms, which have always been serviceable for entertaining company,
but never more so than since his nomination for the presidency. The
hallway extends into a large, new house, more modern in appearance than
the house proper, erected by Mr. Blaine for his library, gymnasium,
etc. Mr. Blaine is careful about his exercise, and practises with
dumb-bells, takes walks, rides, etc.

He has a large barn for horses, and generally keeps a number of them.
The house is of Corinthian architecture, without a trace of Gothic.
Corinthian columns, two on each side, indicate the old division of the
large room on the left of the hallway into the front and back parlor,
but all trace of doors is removed, and they are practically one. A
large bay-window, almost a conservatory, built square, in keeping with
the house, looks out upon the lawn.

It is, all in all, a very convenient, home-like place, with nothing
pretentious or to terrify the most plebeian who would care to enter,
and they have been there by the score and hundred. Not less than a
thousand friends, neighbors, and visitors were cordially invited to
come in and shake hands with General Logan, when he visited Mr. Blaine
soon after the convention that nominated them, and received a quiet
serenade, declining any public reception.

A bright, important feature of Mr. Blaine’s home is his cousin, “Gail
Hamilton,”--Miss Abigail Dodge,--the gifted authoress. She is an
intellectual companion, and an important factor in the social and
home-life of the family, deeply interested, but with native good grace,
in all that pertains to the honor and welfare of her distinguished
relatives. Books, music, bric-a-brac, abound in their present home.

They do not “fare sumptuously every day,” though feasts of course
there are, but continue in their simple, democratic ways. Eating is
not a chief business in that home. The children are very intelligent,
and minds, rather than stomachs, have premiums on them. When Walker
was a little fellow, long before he could read, less than two years
old, he could turn to any picture in a large book; he knew them all.
But none of them have surpassed, or equalled, their father’s work
at books,--going through those great lives of Plutarch by the time
he was nine years old,--and this we hear from Mrs. Blaine herself.
Only the three younger are at home,--Margaret, James Gillespie, Jr.,
and Hattie, who, although she is the baby, wears glasses. She is a
wide-awake and pleasant child, and finds so much of life as is now a
daily experience, a burden rather than a delight. James has many of
his father’s characteristics, it is said. He is a tall, noble, manly
fellow, and, though still in his teens, has been tutoring in Washington
the past winter. Margaret, older than Hattie or James, has achieved a
national reputation by a dexterous use of the telephone at the time of
her father’s nomination. She was the first to receive the intelligence.
She has mature, womanly ways, and is very like her mother, though
the children all resemble their father,--have his strong, marked
features,--unless it may be Emmons or Alice.

Alice was the oldest daughter, and would accompany, with perhaps
other members of the family, Mrs. Blaine herself, at times, back in
the editorial days, upon the press-excursions. Upon those occasions
Mr. Blaine was in his glory, full of facts, full of life, and full of
stories. There was none of the wag or loafer about him; he was never
idle or obsequious; but he knew all about the bright side of things,
and never failed to find it. His own life seemed to light up all around
him. The ludicrous side was as funny as the mean was despicable. He
was very popular among the journalists of the state. He was an honor
to the craft, and they felt it, and easily recognized him as a royal
good fellow,--a sort of leader or representative man. He was called out
when toasts were to be responded to or speeches to be made, and was
the captivating man on all occasions. The crowd gathered about him. He
never would tell a story but that any lady might listen to it without
a blush. They were well selected, and always first-class, and told in
the shortest, sharpest manner possible. He would never spin a long
yarn. It must be quickly told, and to the point, and have a special
fitness for the occasion.

A story that he enjoyed hugely, and could tell with a gusto inimitable,
was of a country-man elected to the legislature, and for the first
time stopping at a large hotel. The waiters were busy, and while he
awaited his turn he observed a dish of red peppers in front; taking
one of them on his fork, he put it in his mouth, and began the work of
mastication. All eyes were turned on him. The process was a brief one,
and he very soon raised his fair-sized hand, and, taking that pepper
from his mouth, laid it beside his plate, and said, as he drew in a
long breath to cool off his blistered tongue, “You lie thar until you
cool!” This was only matched by one regarding a man from the interior,
at a hotel-table in St. Louis, who, observing a glass of iced-milk on
the outer circle of dishes that surrounded the plate of a gentleman
opposite to him, reached for it and swallowed it down. The gentleman
watched him closely, and, with some expression of astonishment, said
simply,--

“That’s cool!”

“Ya-as,” the fellow blustered out, “of course it is; thar’s ice in it!”

Few toasts touch the heart of Mr. Blaine more deeply than the great
toast of the family and of friendship, and one to which he could
respond with the happiest grace and the liveliest good cheer, “Here’s
to those we love, and those who love us! God bless them!”

Mr. Blaine drinks no liquors, not even the lightest kinds of wine, I
am credibly informed by one who was with him on those occasions, and
frequently at his table.

Mrs. Blaine, like her husband, is a great reader, and while a devoted
mother and faithful wife, never neglecting her home, husband, or her
children, has kept herself well informed, and is intelligent and
attractive in conversation.

Old friends say, “I do love to hear Mrs. Blaine talk; she has a fine
mind, is so well educated, and so well informed.”

An old school-mate testifies that she was a fine scholar when at the
academy over the river from her present home, and that she also studied
and finished her education at Ipswich.

She has trained her children with a skill that few mothers could
command. Her children are her jewels, and are loved with a mother’s
affection. They are as stars, while her husband is as the great sun
shining in the heaven of her joys.

The present Augusta home has been, for years, little more than a
summer-resort, to which they have come the first of June. Their great
home has been in Washington. This, for twenty years, has been life’s
centre to them. Here home-life has reached its zenith; its glories
have shone the brightest; it has been at the nation’s capital, and
husband and father among the first men of the nation. Wealth has been
at their command, to make that home all they desired. They could fill
it with the realizations of their choicest ideals, and friends, almost
worshipers, have come and gone with the days and hours, from all parts
of the nation. They have lived in the nation’s life. They have been in
the onward drift and trend of things, ever on the foremost wave, caught
in the onward rush of events. Life has been of the intensest kind, rich
in all that enriches, noble in all that ennobles. They have occupied a
large place in the nation, and the nation has occupied a large place
in them; and yet, though at the very farthest remove from the quiet,
simple life of the cottage or the farm, it has been an American home;
it could be no other with such a united head, and retains much of the
old simplicity. The habits of early life are still on them, and in
nothing are they estranged from the people.

It has been an experience with them so long, and came on so early in
its beginnings, and gradually, that they have become accustomed to
honor and distinction.

Another home is likely to be theirs in Washington, the crown of all
the others. But in it they will be the same they are now; just as glad
to see their friends, as home-like as themselves, as genuine and true.
Their heads cannot be turned if they have not been, and home in the
White House will be, if in reserve for them, the same dear, restful,
cheerful spot, for the loved ones will be there, and that makes home,
not walls, and floor, and furniture.

Photographs of the family abound at Mr. Blaine’s, all except the
picture of Mrs. Blaine,--she has not had it taken. “They are not true,”
she says, and she brought a half-dozen of her husband, and only one
seemed good, and she admitted it. The others showed, I thought, how
terrific has been the conflict of life with him. They show him when
haggard and worn, and perhaps prove, by her judgment on them, how
consummate is her ideal of the man of her heart. Mr. Blaine loves the
open air. The hammock, seen in the back-ground of the picture of his
house, is soothing and restful to him, and to a man of such incessant
activity rest is very welcome. He was out in the hammock, as shown
in the picture of his home, with his family and some of his nearest
neighbors about him, when the balloting was going on in Chicago. The
third ballot had just been taken when his neighbor, Mr. Hewins, came on
the grounds.

“Well, Charley,” he said, “you don’t see anybody badly excited about
here, do you?”

“Mr. Blaine,” he said, “was the coolest one of the company.”

These lawn-scenes are a part of the home-life, a very large and
pleasant part; for there are no pleasanter grounds in Augusta than
those surrounding Mr. Blaine’s modest mansion.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

XIX.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. BLAINE.


In conversation with a leading business man in Maine, the question was
asked, “What are the chief characteristics of Mr. Blaine?” The man was
well situated to know, and well fitted to comprehend, although he was
not the man to analyze character, except in a general way, and largely
from a business point of view. His answer was,--

“His immense industry; his great enlightenment, and he has always been
a growing man! He has such great force of character, and such large
intellectual power, and then he is such a social man. He knows so much,
and is so interesting in conversation. He will talk to a peasant so
that he will take it all in, and a prince sitting by will enjoy it.”

Captain Lincoln and his wife, New England people, but from the
Sandwich Islands, where he had been for some five years in charge of
a vessel, called to see him about the middle of June, to pay their
congratulations; and it was pleasant to observe, how, without a trace
of aristocracy, but with a genuine manliness, he sat down just like a
brother, and talked with them of their interests, the Island and ocean
affairs, and observed, “They don’t have any more roast missionary out
there now”; but this was slipped into a sentence that almost gave a
history of the Islands. And as he discussed ocean problems, routes to
Mexico, and different parts of America, North and South, the captain’s
eyes opened with admiration. And it was not a display of knowledge, but
brought out in questions, as to what do you think of such a project,
and in stating a few brief reasons for it, the man’s information not
only cropped out, but burst forth. He seems so full of it, that when it
can find a vent it comes forth in deluge fashion, much as water does
from a fire-plug.

Mr. Blaine never could be a specialist, but must be world-wide in his
knowledge, as he is in his sympathies. Some men are like ponds in which
trout are raised,--small and narrow, serve a single purpose, and serve
it well; but he is more like the ocean,--broad, and grand, and manifold
in the purposes he serves, and deep as well. Mr. Blaine is not a
shallow man. His has not been the skimming surface-life of the swallow,
but rather the deep-delving life of reality and substance. Deep-sea
soundings, both of men and things, have been a peculiar delight to him.

Curiosity has ever been a secret spring in him. He must know all, and
he would hunt, and rummage, and delve, and search, until he did. He
has the scent of a greyhound for evidence, however abstract, and he
would track it down somehow, “with all the precision of the most deadly
science,” as he did the telegram which Proctor Knott suppressed. This
inborn faculty, which he has developed to a marvelous degree, has been
a mighty weapon of defence to him, when combinations and conspiracies
have been formed against him, and of the most cruel character, for his
destruction. For, let it not be forgotten, that he has lived through
that era of American life when the great effort was to kill off,
politically, the great men of the Republican party. A rebel congress
of Southern brigadiers did their worst, but the nation applauded as he
triumphed.

The same knowledge seems greater power in him than in ordinary men, or
than in almost any other man, because of his great intellectual force.
Just as a dinner amounts to more in some men, because of greater power
of digestion,--just as the smooth stone from the brook when in David’s
sling went with greater precision and power, penetrating the forehead
of Goliath. It is the man and in his combinations, manner, methods,
and the time, and yet all of these have little to do with it. Force
and directness seem to express it all. Conventionalities are merely
conveniences to Mr. Blaine, and when not such are instantly discarded.
Common sense is the pilot of his every voyage. Everything is sacrificed
to this. This, and this alone, has been the crowned king of his entire
career, and all else merely subjects.

What he has seen in the clear, strong light of his own best judgment,
enlightened by a vast and varied knowledge, he has seized and sworn
to. He has never plundered others of their cast-iron rules; he had no
use for them. Saul’s armor never fitted him. He has delighted in the
fathers’ reverences and laws, though but seldom quotes them. He has
no time or taste for such easy, common methods. He is too original.
And this is one of the strongest features of the man. He is not simply
unlike any other man, but has no need of resemblance. He has much of
the impetuosity and fiery eloquence of Clay, but then he has more of
the solid grandeur of Webster. But then he is too much like himself to
be compared intelligibly with others.

There are great extremes in his nature,--not necessarily
contradictions, yet opposites. He is one of the most fervid men, and
yet one of the most stoical at times, perfectly cool when others
are hot and boiling. He never loses his head. There is never a
runaway,--but great coolness and self-possession when it is needed, and
ability to turn on a full head of steam, when the occasion requires.
Here is the testimony of a scholar and author:--

“One element in his nature impressed itself upon my mind in a very
emphatic manner, and that is his coolness and self-possession at the
most exciting periods. I happened to be in his library in Washington
when the balloting was going on in Cincinnati on that hot day in
June, 1876. A telegraph-instrument was on his library table, and Mr.
Sherman, his private secretary, a deft operator, was manipulating its
key. Dispatches came from dozens of friends, giving the last votes,
which only lacked a few of the nomination; and everybody predicted the
success of Mr. Blaine on the next ballot. Only four persons besides Mr.
Sherman were in the room. It was a moment of great excitement. The next
vote was quietly ticked over the wire, and then the next announced the
nomination of Mr. Hayes. Mr. Blaine was the only cool person in the
apartment. It was such a reversal of all anticipations and assurances,
that self-possession was out of the question except with Mr. Blaine.

“He had just left his bed after two days of unconsciousness from
sunstroke, but he was as self-possessed as the portraits upon the
walls. He merely gave a murmur of surprise, and, before anybody had
recovered from the shock, he had written, in his firm, plain, fluent
hand, three dispatches, now in my possession: one to Mr. Hayes, of
congratulation; one to the Maine delegates, thanking them for their
devotion; and another to Eugene Hale and Mr. Frye, asking them to go
personally to Columbus and present his good-will to Mr. Hayes, with
promises of hearty aid in the campaign. The occasion affected him no
more than the news of a servant quitting his employ would have done.
Half an hour afterward he was out with Secretary Fish in an open
carriage, receiving the cheers of the thousands of people who were
gathered about the telegraph-bulletins.”

This power of self-control seems to be supreme. It is just the
particular in which so many of our great men, and small ones too, have
miserably failed. This enables him to harness all his powers and hold
well the reins,--to bring all his forces into action when emergency
requires, and send solid shot, shrapnel, or shell, with a cool head and
determined hand.

Mr. Blaine has a great memory. Nearly all who know him will speak of
this. He seems never to forget faces, facts, or figures.

Thirty years after he attended school in Lancaster, Ohio, he went
there to speak. It was, of course, known that he was coming, and an old
acquaintance of the town, whom he had not seen all these years, said,
“Now I am going to station myself up there by the cars, and see if he
will know me. They say he has such a wonderful memory.” Several were
looking on, watching the operation. Mr. Blaine had no sooner stepped
off from the train than he spied him, and sang out at once, “Hello,
John, how are you!” and a murmur of surprise went up from those who
were in the secret.

At another time he was near Wheeling,--my informant thought it was
across the river from Wheeling,--in Belmont County; he met a man and
called him by name. The man said, “Well, I don’t know you.” Mr. Blaine
told him just where he met him, at a convention, and then the man could
not remember. That night he told some of his friends about it, and they
said it was a fact; they were with him, and saw him introduced to Mr.
Blaine and talk with him, and not till then did the man remember him.

As General Connor, ex-governor of Maine, who appointed Mr. Blaine to
the United States senate, said: “He could do a thing now as well as any
other time.”

“Governor Connor was in Washington,” he went on to relate, “and called
upon Mr. Blaine when he was secretary of state, and he said, in his
familiar way, ‘Now you talk with Mrs. Blaine awhile,’ and went into his
study. In about an hour he called him, and all about his table were
lying sheets of paper on which he had just written. It was his official
document on the Panama canal, and which he read to the governor. It
had been produced during the past hour, and appeared in print, with
scarcely a change. It came out in a white heat, but it was all in there
ready to be produced at any time.”

The General remarked, “This one characteristic of the man, and an
element of his popularity and hold on others, is this close confidence
he exercises in his friends, of which the above is an illustration.”

And this touches at once another feature, and that is his ability to
read character, and so to know whom to trust. He goes right into a
man’s life, when he gets at him.

While out riding, during the preparation of his volume, with his wife,
two or three miles from Augusta, in Manchester township, he got out to
walk, and finding a farmer in a field near by, he stopped, talked with
him some time, asked him about his history, his ancestors, and found
out pretty much all the man knew about himself, and could have told
whether it would do to leave his pocket-book with the man or no. Such a
thing is a habit with him, and keeps him near the people, gives him a
look into their minds, a peep into their hearts, as well as a view of
their history.

Character-readers usually are persons of strong intuitions. They
see not so much the flesh and blood of the individual, as the soul
within. Just giving one sharp, quick, penetrating look at the man in
the concrete, and the abstract question is settled; the man is rated;
his value written down. It is not so much a study as a look,--thought
touches thought, mind feels of mind. It is power to know clearly,
quickly, strongly, and certainly, with him. He does not have to eat a
whole ham to find out whether it is tainted, nor drink an entire pan of
milk to find out whether it is sweet.

Mr. Blaine is very obliging, and he can usually tell an opportunity
from a chance. Life is no lottery to him; he keeps his feet on the
granite, and gives all “fortuitous combination of atoms” the slip,
being too discriminating to invest. One day he was in the old _Journal_
office, now owned by Sprague and Son,--a very kind and considerate
firm, who are producing a sprightly daily,--when a citizen entered who
had just been appointed clerk of the Probate Court, and asked the
gentleman to go on his bond. Mr. Blaine spoke up at once, “I will do
it,” and then said it reminded him of a story, which he proceeded to
tell:--

“Governor Coney lived in Penobscot, shire-town of Penobscot County, and
was judge of the Probate Court. The sheriff of the County had failed,
and Mr. Sewall, a citizen, met Judge Coney and said, ‘The sheriff has
failed, and you and I are on his bond.’ ‘Well, that’s good,’ said the
judge, ‘I guess you can fix it up.’ ‘O, but my name is on the left-hand
side, as a witness to his signature.’ So the unlucky judge was left
to contemplate the delightful privilege of paying what amounted to a
rogue’s bail.”

This same clerk of the Probate Court of former years, but still
a friend and neighbor, a man, however, with an unhappy physical
disability, came upon the lawn when the large committee to notify him
of his nomination were gathered there to perform that duty, and as the
man told me, Mr. Blaine caught sight of him off some distance, and
“notwithstanding all those men were there, he spoke right up in his
old, familiar way, ‘How are you, ----?’”

It shows his genuineness and simplicity. There is enough to him without
putting on any airs. It could not be otherwise than that a nature so
highly wrought and intense, should be possessed of the powers of
withering scorn and just rebuke, and when the occasion required, could
use them. There happened such an occasion in 1868.

General Grant had been invited to attend the opening of the European
and North American Railway, at Vanceboro’, in the State of Maine.
It formed a new connecting-link with the British Provinces. There
was a special train of invited guests, and as General Grant was then
president, and had never been in the state before, it was quite
an honor to be of the company. Mr. Blaine was, of course, of the
number, as were the leading citizens without respect to party. A
newspaper-correspondent, without any invitation, got aboard the train,
and went with the party, and on his return reported that President
Grant was drunk. This cut Mr. Blaine to the quick, because of its
untruthfulness, and as he was a Republican president, and politics
usually ran high in Maine during the palmy days, from 1861 to 1881,
when Mr. Blaine was at the helm, and also because the president was
guest of the state. Not long after, he met the reporter in the office
of Howard Owen, a journalist of Augusta.

“And if you ever saw a man scalped,”--I use the exact language,--“and
the grave-clothes put on him, and he put in his coffin, and buried,
and the rubbish of the temple thrown on him forty feet deep, he was the
man. I never heard anything like it in all my born days: philippics,
invectives, satires, these common things were nowhere.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“What didn’t he say?” was the reply,--“‘You were not invited, you were
simply tolerated; you sneaked aboard, and then came back here and lied
about us,’ etc.”

But sixteen years had effaced much, and yet the impression was vivid,
as the man’s very expressive manner betokened.

And a leading Washington correspondent, conversant with all the sights
at the capital, says, “It would look strange to see him with the
whiskey-drinking crowd at either bar in the capitol building. He does
not visit them, and he does not drink.”

The great-heartedness of Mr. Blaine comes out in his book, “Twenty
Years in Congress,” and shows how large are his sympathies. He devotes
over fifteen pages of that great work to an historical vindication of
Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone, who was the victim chosen to atone for the
Ball’s Bluff disaster, in which Col. E. D. Baker, of California, a most
gallant officer, lost his life. It is a deeply interesting portion of
the seventeenth chapter.

Mr. Blaine is a great lover of fair play. He is too great to cherish
any feeling of resentment, for he is true-hearted as well as
great-hearted.

In this same chapter he presents Mr. Roscoe Conkling very handsomely,
and does him the honor to quote more extensively from his speech than
from Chandler, Lovejoy, Crittenden, Richardson, or Thad. Stevens,
although Conkling was younger than any of them. The Republican party
is like a great family to him, and he loves and cares for all, in the
sense of valuing them highly for their principles’ and works’ sake, and
so studies the things that make for peace,--but not peace for peace’
sake, but for the sake of principle.

He asks no quarter for himself, but will follow out the behests of his
great nature in the interests of others, and the great cause through
which his life has run, like a thread of purest gold. It is his great
friendliness which has enabled him to take others into his very life,
and live and toil for them so largely. He seems ever living outside
of self,--going outside of self and entering into their cause and
condition, and making their case his own. He aims to know enough about
those within his reach so that he shall be interested in them, and can
think and feel intelligently regarding them. His whole nature acts
in unison, just as heaven designed. His mind must know, and his heart
must love, and his will must act, while conscience detects and demands
purity of motive.

This honor makes life a joy, a melody, a delight, and so resonant
with constant notes of praise. He cannot be idle; this is against his
nature; and to be vicious would give him pain. He is not mean, or low
and truckling, but large and open as the day.

An old Democrat, who had known him ever since he landed in Augusta,
said, when asked a point-blank question about him as a man, “He is a
good neighbor and a great citizen,” and this man had had many dealings
with him, but he could not escape the impressions of his work. No man,
it would seem, could stand a better examination among his neighbors.
If a court of inquiry were established, covering these points, right
where he is best known, it would not be necessary for him to challenge
a juryman, or impeach a witness.

This same old Democrat said, “A number of years ago we wanted to fix
up the Baptist church, and they asked me to go and see Mr. Blaine, as
they were making a general call upon the public. It was on the eve
of his departure for California, but he gave his check at once for a
hundred dollars, and said, ‘If that is not enough I will give you more
when I return.’” He is interested in all good enterprises, and turns
none empty away. As an instance of the humanity of the man, a neighbor
related the following:--

“A laborer fell in a fit right out there in the road near Mr. Blaine’s
house, and his sympathies were all roused for the man. He helped him
what he could, and as he came out of it right away, Mr. Blaine called
to his coachman, and said, ‘Fred, harness the horse, and take this man
to Hallowell,’ which was ten miles away; and Mr. Blaine helped the man
into his carriage, in his kindly way, and so sent him home.” He has
time for all these occasions to help and cheer a fellow-man.

And Mrs. Blaine is just like him. Since their return from Washington,
and since the nomination, she was returning from a ride, and when near
the gate, there was a crowd. A circus was in town, and a girl had been
run over and badly hurt. Mrs. Blaine did not begin to scold and blame
the girl for being out in the crowd, but said, “Take her right into my
parlor,” and they did, when she sent for a doctor, and had every care
taken of the child. She has a mother’s heart, and a mind suited for the
best companionships.

There has been a reference elsewhere to Mr. Blaine’s marked liberality
as a distinguishing characteristic. He is not a wealthy man, as wealth
is reckoned to-day, but whenever he has turned his great abilities to
financial matters for the purpose of money-getting, he has succeeded,
showing most conclusively that, had he served himself all these years
instead of serving the nation, he would be worth reputed millions. As
it is, he told a friend who asked him, about a year ago, if reports
were true that he was worth several millions, as people were saying,
and his answer was, “No, I am worth less than half a million.”

His great activity is very noticeable, especially in society. He has
been compared to Mr. Burlingame in his ability to see and converse
with three or four persons, while another is seeing but one. He moves
rapidly at times, but with great care, especially in examining any
document or letter requiring his signature.

He will sign nothing unless it be a common letter prepared by his
private secretary, without reading every word. But out among men his
activity is quick and constant. He is always in motion, not in an
aimless, nervous way, but in a wide-awake, fully alive manner. His
battery is ever charged with the freshest and purest electricity. It
would be a thing incredible to find him asleep in the day-time.

He had a singular habit when editor, of folding up little slips of
paper and inserting them between his teeth quickly, or tearing them off
from a newspaper, inserting them, and then throwing them away, so that
after a few moments’ conversation, he would be surrounded with bits of
paper which he had torn off and used in this way.

Long walks have been his habit, and at times he would strike off across
the fields and jump the fences. “What,” I said to my informant, “jump
the fences?” “Yes,” he said, and another party confirmed it. To go
across lots, they say, is “the Yankee of it.”

This vigorous exercise is a part of his programme for keeping up his
health. He has had a cross-bar also, for athletic sports, and made use
of it, too. Life is never dull and monotonous with him, but always full
to the brim.

It is this active, energetic spirit which took him to England, and for
four or five months all over the continent of Europe; and in 1875 to
California, and up and down the Pacific coast; and it was this same
mighty energy of being, which led him to make five speeches a day
sometimes when he was campaigning in Ohio. He did this one day, when
the last one was to an immense assemblage in Columbus. And he generally
spoke until he was quite satisfied that he had the people with him,
and they were certain to vote about right when the time came. His
resources of strength, at times, seems amazing. Many who have known
him for thirty years, speak of his great energy, of his decision of
character, of his power with an audience.

His private secretary, who has been by his side for fifteen years,
says that all the time he was speaker in congress, he was never late a
single moment, that just exactly at twelve o’clock, the usual time for
meeting, his gavel would fall, and the House be called to order.

It is a consciousness of responsibility, and conscientiousness in
the discharge of duty, great readiness for the work, and eagerness
to perform it, that have made him prompt, energetic, accurate, and
determined.

He has been among the broadest of men in his thinking, reading,
observation, experience, travel, sympathy, purpose, motive, and
activities. Truly his life has been onward and upward, and with these
as his principal characteristics he has been tested as few men are
tested, and not found wanting. In ten great departments,--as student,
teacher, editor, stump-speaker, legislator, speaker of the House at
home, congressman, speaker of the National House of Representatives,
United States senator, and secretary of state,--has he been tried, and
not found wanting. Only a man of transcendent abilities could have
triumphed in such a career.



[Illustration]

XX.

NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT.


Mr. Blaine’s steady march upward in the line of promotion, was constant
and irresistible, from 1856 to 1876, and even that year was crowned
with a seat in the United States senate. But the presidency seemed
within his grasp. It was the demand and expectation of the people that
he should have it. The popular fervor was intense. He was the ideal
statesman of the multitude. But the cast-iron political machinery,
then running so deftly and with such precision in several states, was
manipulated with a craftiness so subtle as to defeat their strongly
expressed and urgent wish. They were ready, hat in hand, in every
state and territory in the Union, to cheer his nomination, when the
intelligence came that the “dark horse,” Rutherford B. Hayes, was the
honored man. No one was more loyal to him than Mr. Blaine.

The state machinery was run by a Corliss engine in 1880,--band, pulley,
and cog united the complicated and ingenious device into a single and
powerful combination of great effectiveness. The whirl of its great
wheel, and the whir of the wheels within, were swift and precise in
their momentum. There was no cessation of control, no deviation in rate
of speed or execution. The result was ever the same. The steam-gauge
registered three hundred and six, simply that and nothing more. They
would “make or break,” and so they broke;--Garfield, grand, and
splendid, and worthy, came to be the convention’s man. And the people
loved him and were loyal to him,--none more so than Mr. Blaine.

For the third time the people sent their chosen men to take for them
the great initiative, that they might have the long-sought privilege of
endorsing him with their suffrage. It was a great day in Chicago,--that
Tuesday, the third of June, 1884,--when the great convention opened in
the massive exposition building, where four years before the stubborn
contest was had. Fresh men were there. The old machinery was worn out,
broken, and cast aside,--not a squeak of it was heard. New men were at
the helm when Senator Sabin, of Minnesota, chairman of the Republican
National Committee, called the convention to order.

After prayer, and the reading of the call for the convention, Senator
Sabin addressed the convention, welcoming them to Chicago, as amongst
the most cherished spots in our country, sacred to the memories
of a Republican. “It was the birthplace of Republican victories.
Here the fathers chose that immortal chief who first led us on to
victory,--Abraham Lincoln; here they elevated to the first place in
the nation that great chieftain of the conflict,--General Grant;
here they nominated that honored soldier, that shining citizen, that
representative American,--James A. Garfield.”

Hon. John R. Lynch, of Mississippi, a colored gentleman, well known
throughout the South for his conspicuous parliamentary ability, for his
courage, and for his character, was chosen temporary chairman.

The following day, after prayer, memorials and resolutions were
presented in great profusion, which were referred to committees, save
one, and that was, “that all are bound to support the nominee of the
convention,” which, after a determined discussion, pro and con., was
withdrawn.

Gen. John B. Henderson, of St. Louis, was made permanent chairman.

Thursday, June 5th, the nominations began. When in the call of states
Maine was reached, the vast assembly arose, and for nearly six or
eight minutes, twelve to fourteen thousand people were shouting at the
top of their voices, cheer upon cheer, and could not be restrained.
Then Judge West, of Ohio, in a speech from the people’s heart,
presented, amid almost continuous applause, the name of the people’s
choice,--James G. Blaine. The names of Generals Hawley and John A.
Logan had been presented.

When Hon. T. C. Platt, of New York, seconded the nomination of Mr.
Blaine, the applause broke out anew at the mention of the magic name,
more tumultuous than before. It was a nation in miniature, sending
forth the sovereignty of their hearts, not to be baffled a third time,
but surely to win.

Governor Davis of Maine, Goodeloe of Kentucky, and Galusha A. Grow
of Pennsylvania, joined in most exalting kind of commendations, in
seconding the nomination, while flags were waved, and every conceivable
form of demonstration consistent with the hour, was indulged in.

Mr. Townsend placed President Arthur in nomination, seconded by Bingham
of Pennsylvania, Lynch of Mississippi, Winston of North Carolina, and
Pinchback of Louisiana.

Judge Foraker, of Ohio, presented the name of John Sherman. Judge Holt,
of Kentucky, seconded Mr. Sherman’s nomination, and Ex-Governor Long,
of Massachusetts, seconded by George William Curtis, of New York,
presented the name of Senator Edmunds, of Vermont.

Friday, June 6th, after the usual prayer and preliminary exercises,
the voting began. On the first ballot Mr. Blaine had three hundred
and thirty-four and one-half; Arthur, two hundred and seventy-eight;
Edmunds, ninety-three; Logan, sixty-three and one-half; John Sherman,
thirty; Hawley, thirteen; Lincoln, four; and W. T. Sherman, two.

The second ballot resulted in three hundred and forty-nine for Blaine;
two hundred and seventy-six for Arthur; eighty-five for Edmunds;
sixty-one for Logan; twenty-eight for John Sherman; thirteen for
Hawley; four for Lincoln; two for W. T. Sherman.

Cheering followed the announcement of gains for Blaine. With many
incidents the third ballot was taken, increasing Mr. Blaine’s ballot
twenty-six votes, to three hundred and seventy-five; Arthur went down
to two hundred and seventy-four; Edmunds, sixty-nine; John Sherman,
twenty-five; Logan, fifty-three; Hawley, thirteen; Lincoln, seven; and
W. T. Sherman, one.

Cheers again rent the air, and confusion ensued; the inevitable was
in sight, and motions to adjourn, and in various ways to postpone the
result, were resorted to; but Stewart, of Blaine’s native state, said,
“We are ready for the brunt of battle, Mr. Chairman; let it come.” And
come it did, though filibustering abounded to prevent it.

In the midst of the fourth and decisive ballot, General Logan’s
despatch came, to cast his strength for Blaine.

Senator Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois, began the stampede by announcing
thirty-four votes from Illinois for Blaine, seven for Logan, and three
for Arthur.

Judge Foraker, of Ohio, followed, and withdrawing John Sherman, cast
forty-six votes for James G. Blaine, amid a tremendous outburst of
applause.

A whirlwind of vociferous cheering, unmanageable and unparalleled,
greeted the announcement: Blaine five hundred and forty-one; Arthur
still had two hundred and seven; Edmunds, forty-one; Hawley, fifteen;
Logan, seven, and Lincoln, two.

But Blaine was nominated, after contesting for eight years, in three
of the greatest conventions ever held, with the principal men of the
nation. The nomination was made unanimous, in the midst of the wildest
enthusiasm.

At the evening session, Senator Plumb of Kansas, seconded by Judge
Houck of Tennessee, Thurston of Nebraska, Lee of Pennsylvania,
and Congressman Horr of Michigan, nominated John A. Logan for
vice-president.

Gen. J. S. Robinson, in seconding the nomination of General Logan,
moved to suspend the rules and nominate him by acclamation, which was
carried.

Logan’s total vote was seven hundred and seventy-nine, the New York
delegation having given six votes for Gresham, and one for Judge
Foraker.

The voice of the people had at last been heard, and the men of their
choice presented as the standard-bearers, and from East to West went up
a shout of joy, which had in it the ring of a long-cherished purpose
to see that the “calling and election” of their heroes should “be made
sure” at the polls.

[Illustration]



[Illustration: General JOHN A. LOGAN]



[Illustration]

XXI.

JOHN A. LOGAN.


It was on the 9th of February, 1826, that John A. Logan was born, at
Murphysborough, Ill., a little town among the hills that hem in the
Mississippi River. He was the eldest of eleven children.

His father was a physician, and came to America from Ireland three
years before, while his mother, Elizabeth Jenkins, was from a family
that lived in Tennessee.

He grew up, strong and powerful in youth, amid the exciting scenes of
purely western life. It was a life that appealed to courage, placed a
premium upon all of manly energy and exertion, and infused into him,
with every breath, that best of robust health which, like bank-stock
drawing a high rate of interest, has met every demand made upon it for
over half a century.

His advantages of education in early youth were of a slender character,
except as he derived instruction from the teaching of his father and at
his mother’s knee; for no regular schools existed in the settlement,
except at a log school-house, where an itinerant teacher presided,
under whose tuition only the quickest and aptest boy or girl would make
advancement.

One who knows him well says that when eighteen years old he was sent
to the nearest school, called Shiloh Academy, under the jurisdiction
of the Methodist Church, and graduated from it into the Mexican war.
He had breathed an atmosphere of war from childhood. In his youth the
stories of the war of 1812 and of the Revolution were fresh in the
memories and constantly in the mouths of those about him, many of whom
had been actual participants. The Seminole and Black-Hawk wars had
occurred in his youth, and personal acquaintance with many who had
participated in them kindled in him the glow and fervor of adventure.
He enlisted in the First Illinois Regiment, and went to Mexico.

Though among the youngest of the men, he came at once into prominence
by his energy and bearing, and the quick activity of his mind, and the
great fearlessness with which he occupied and held each post of danger
to which he was assigned.

There was about him such an utter abandonment to the work of battle,
that his strong marks of leadership were quickly recognized, and he was
made lieutenant, then adjutant, and finally quartermaster, a position
of grave responsibility in the enemy’s country.

After the war he studies at college, and then reads law with his uncle,
Alexander M. Jenkins, who was a great man in southern Illinois. He had
at one time been lieutenant-governor of the state, and was a Jacksonian
Democrat.

In 1849 Mr. Logan was elected clerk of Jackson County, and continued
his study of law. He took a course of law-lectures at Louisville, and
was admitted to the bar. He commenced practice with his uncle, and soon
gained prominence. But political life, for one so active, filled with
an unbounded energy, had charms for him.

Soon after his return from Louisville, he was elected prosecuting
attorney for Jackson County, in 1852, and the same year to the
legislature, and re-elected in 1853, 1856, and 1857. In 1854 he was
elected prosecuting attorney of the third judiciary district of
Illinois, and in 1856 was a presidential elector on the Buchanan and
Breckenridge ticket.

It was at this time he began his career as a stump-speaker, and his
speeches were regarded as remarkable examples of eloquence, giving
him a reputation that sent him to congress in 1858. He was an earnest
Douglas man, and being re-nominated in 1860, he stumped the state
with great success, and was re-elected by a large majority. This was
a transition period. The great contest was coming on, and “the piping
times of peace” were angry with the most dread forebodings.

At this point we will let one speak who knows him well:--

“Right here came a critical period in his career, and although there
are men who still assert that his sympathy was with the secessionists,
there is plenty of evidence that the South had no claim upon him,--that
whatever his original sentiments may have been, his public utterances
were always loyal, and that when the crisis came he was on the right
side. The country he lived in was full of Southern sympathizers, his
mother’s family were secessionists, and his surroundings made loyalty
unpopular. The story that he tendered his services to Jefferson Davis
is contradicted by that gentleman, who says he never heard of Logan
until more than a year after the war began.

“There are several witnesses to the fact that in November, 1860, when
Lincoln’s election was assured, and threats were freely made that
he should not be inaugurated, Logan publicly declared that he would
shoulder a musket and escort the ‘Rail-Splitter’ to the White House.

“While he was in Washington, attending the called session of congress
in the summer of 1861, he went to the front, as many representatives
did, to visit the army in Virginia, and being the guest of Colonel
Richardson when the battle of Bull Run took place, he was given a
musket and fought through that eventful July day as a private in the
ranks.”

When congress adjourned in August, he went home, resigned his seat in
congress, raised the Thirty-first Illinois Regiment, was commissioned
its colonel, and led them into battle at Belmont, Missouri, ten months
after they were mustered into service. One has well said, “Logan was
developed by the war. The bugler of the army sounded the key-note of
his character, and in an atmosphere of dust and powder he grew great.”

In that first battle at Belmont he had his horse shot under him, while
leading a successful bayonet-charge. He fought with General Grant at
Fort Henry, and in the siege and terrific contest at Fort Donelson he
bore a brave, conspicuous part, and was wounded in the left arm. He
was off duty for a while, and refused a re-election to congress, but
reported on March 5th to General Grant for duty at Pittsburgh Landing,
only about a month after the Fort Donelson engagement, and was at once
made a brigadier-general.

Nashville had fallen. Tennessee was largely within the Union lines,
and entrance was being effected into Georgia and Mississippi; hence
the stubborn resistance of the foe at Pittsburgh Landing. But victory
brought them to the siege of Corinth, Island No. 10 falling under the
guns of Commodore Foote. Grant and Logan led their armies down to
Vicksburg.

During the winter-campaign in Mississippi and the siege of Vicksburg,
Logan’s bravery was proverbial. He was given command of a division in
McPherson’s corps, and made a major-general in the army, within a year
of entrance.

During the summer of 1862 he was repeatedly urged to “run for
congress,” but his reply was worthy a hero: “I have entered the field
to die, if need be, for this Government, and never expect to return
to peaceful pursuits until the object of this war of preservation has
become a fact established.”

His personal bravery and military skill were so conspicuous in Grant’s
Northern Mississippi movements, where he commanded a division of the
Seventeenth Army Corps, under General McPherson, he was promoted to
the rank of major-general Nov. 26, 1862. He was present in every fight,
his daring bravery animating his men at Fort Gibson, Raymond, Jackson,
Champion Hill, and Vicksburg. He was in command of McPherson’s centre,
June 25th, when the assault upon Vicksburg was made. His column led the
entrance into the city, and he became its first military governor.

In November, 1863, he was called to succeed General Sherman in command
of his famous Fifteenth Army Corps. The following May he joined Sherman
as the Georgia campaign was opening. It was Logan who led the advance
of the Army of the Tennessee at Resaca, who whipped Hardee’s trained
veterans at Dallas, and drove the enemy from Kenesaw Mountain.

On July 22d he was in the fierce assault before Atlanta. In this
desperate attack upon Hood, Logan fought as he never fought before, and
when McPherson fell he took command of the Army of the Tennessee, and
with resistless fury avenged the death of the beloved commander.

After the fall of Atlanta he returned to Illinois, temporarily, to
take part in the presidential campaign. It was our privilege to hear
him then, and never, it would seem, did such withering scorn, such
utter denunciation, such infinite contempt, show themselves, as he
manifested in a great speech, full of vim and fire, not for the brave,
honest rebel in arms, but for the cowardly copperheads in the rear.

He was less than forty years of age, only thirty-eight, but his name
and fame as a soldier were a tower of strength, and he drew together
immense crowds.

Soon after Mr. Lincoln’s second election he returns to the front, and
joins Sherman in his march to the sea, and continued with him until
the surrender of Gen. Joseph Johnston, on April 26, 1865. After the
surrender he marched his men to Alexandria, and rode at their head in
the grand review in Washington. He had taken command of the Army of
the Tennessee, Oct. 23, 1864, and tendered his resignation when active
service was over, being unwilling to draw pay unless on duty in the
field.

President Johnson tendered him the mission to Mexico, but he declined
it, and returning home was elected successively to the fortieth, the
forty-first, and the forty-second congresses. He was selected as one of
a committee of seven to represent the House in the impeachment trial of
Andrew Johnson.

Before he had taken his seat in the forty-second congress, the
legislature of Illinois elected him to the United States senate for
the full term from March 4, 1871, to succeed the Hon. Richard Yates,
the gallant war-governor of that state. He was again chosen for the
senate, and took his seat the second time March 18, 1879. His present
term expires March 3, 1885. He led the delegation of his state in
the national convention of 1880, and was one of the most determined
of the “three hundred and six” who followed the fortunes of “the old
commander,” General Grant.

He has been an active man at military reunions, and was one of the
founders of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was the first national
commander of that organization, and as such issued the order in 1868
for the decoration of the graves of Union soldiers.

His financial views have been the subject of criticism, but they have
generally represented the sentiments of his constituency. In 1866
he took strong grounds in favor of the payment of the national debt
in gold coin. In 1874 he followed the popular Western movement, and
voted for the Inflation bill, which President Grant vetoed. But in the
following year he favored the Sherman Resumption act.

General Logan was always a leader in securing pension legislation. He
has been radical in favoring internal improvements, has always voted
for liberal appropriations for rivers and harbors, and has given his
support to railroad land-grant measures. His property consists of a
residence on Calumet Avenue in Chicago, which is worth from twenty-five
thousand to thirty thousand dollars, and a farm at his old home in
southern Illinois.

He resides in Washington at a boarding-house on Twelfth Street,
occupying two modest rooms, the same in which he has lived for twelve
years.

In 1855 he married Miss Mary Cunningham, of Shawneetown, Ill., and she
has proved a most valuable helpmeet, being as good, if not a better
politician than himself, and a lady of great refinement as well as
intellectual force. There is no woman in public life who possesses
more admirable traits than Mrs. Logan, and her popularity with her own
sex is quite as great as with the other. She can write a speech on
finance, or dictate the action of a political caucus, with as much ease
and grace as she can preside at a dinner-party, or receive her guests.
At the same time she is a devoted mother. She has two children,--a
daughter, who is the wife of Paymaster Tucker, of the army, and a son,
Manning, a cadet at West Point. Both of them have been educated by her,
or under her personal supervision.

As a society woman she is graceful and accomplished; in charities she
is always active and generous; in religion she is a devout Methodist.

During the campaign of 1866 General Logan was running for
congressman-at-large. The multitudes came to hear him; a grand stand
was erected in the court-house yard at Bloomington; thousands were
gathered, filling the grounds and covering the roofs of buildings.
He was in his glory; for three hours he spoke; the people laughed,
and cried, and shouted cheer on cheer. We had heard Douglas, Lovejoy,
Colfax, but never such a speech as that.

The rebel army was whipped and gone, and now the Democratic party
loomed up as an enemy in the land.

In telling why he had left the party and become a staunch Republican,
his sarcasm burned like caustic. He told a story in an inimitable way,
to illustrate the point. It was the story of the flock of sheep the
farmer gave his boys:--

“Tommy was to divide the flock, and Johnny take his choice, so Tommy
put all the fine, large ones by themselves, and all the scabby, scaly,
shaggy ones in another yard, and with them he put Johnny’s little pet
lamb, which he had raised and cared for all summer, feeding it with
fresh, warm milk, and had put a little blue ribbon, with a bell on
it, about its neck; and Tommy knew how he loved it, and so he put it
in with the poor, old, scaly lot of sheep. When Johnny came to look at
the sheep he looked for Nannie, his lamb; he heard its bell, and saw
it was in bad company, with a miserable lot of bad sheep, and so he
said, ‘Nannie, good-bye; I’ve loved you. I tied that blue ribbon about
your neck, and put that bell on it. I’ve fed you and taken care of you
all this time’ (and this description was given with the most dramatic
effect); ‘but, Nannie, we must part. Johnny, I will take this lot,’
pointing to all the best sheep.”

The roar was tumultuous when they saw the point, and it was a terrific
hit for the old party, in with the copperheads and rebels.

It was surely one of the happiest steps of his life, when he came out
on the Republican side of the Republic’s great battle for the liberty
of the enslaved and the citizenship of freemen.

Few soldiers are now living, not excepting the old commander himself,
who in a political campaign will make the heart of the old veterans
beat faster and warmer at the remembrance of former times, and
the achievements of battles now enjoyed, than Gen. John A. Logan,
United States senator from Illinois, and Republican candidate for
vice-president, with James G. Blaine, of Maine, for president.

The old hearts thrill anew, and the old shout rings out again, and the
victory of the past must at their hands be perpetuated in the victory
of the future.

[Illustration: _FINIS._]



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

  Pages 7, 8, 17 and 18 are missing in this edition.




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Pine to Potomac : Life of James G. Blaine: his boyhood, youth, manhood, and public services; with a sketch of the life of Gen. John A. Logan" ***

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