“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]