“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.
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