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!_’”
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