“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.
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