Arrived at Chicago, I soon ascertained that Mr. Blaine had been doing
a good deal of talking of the same kind I had heard, but he had
not been able to impress the more robust of those favorable to his
nomination with the view that he should be heeded. They insisted that
he was not wise, but timid; that he did not like war and would do too
much for peace; that he especially miscalculated when he said he could
not carry New York, for he was the very man who could carry it;
that his personal force was far beyond his own estimation; that his
intuitions were like those of a woman, but were not infallible; that
his singing the campaign was a fancy; that "Marching Through
Georgia" would wear out, and was of the stuff of dreams. Mr. Blaine's
accredited friends felt that things had gone too far to permit a
change to be contemplated. They were half mad at Blaine for his
Sherman and Lincoln proposal, which was confidentially in the air,
regarding it as not favorable to themselves. They said they could
carry the country more certainly with Blaine than Sherman, for Sherman
was an uncertain political quantity, and might turn out to be almost
the devil himself. Some of them said he would proclaim martial law and
annihilate the Constitution! They were sure the force of the celebrity
of General Sherman in a campaign had been overestimated by Blaine, who
had the caprice and high color in his imagination that produce
schemes too fine for success. In a word, Sherman and Lincoln were not
practical politicians. Blaine's idea was not politics, but poetry.
What they wanted was the magnetism and magic of Blaine. The country
was at any rate safely in the hands of the Republican party. They had
nearly lost the election because they had not nominated Blaine eight
years before, and won with Garfield because he was a Blaine man. The
wisdom of the Republican politicians was thus against Blaine's ticket
so far as it was known; and those favorable to President Arthur, John
Sherman, John A. Logan, and George F. Edmunds did not give the least
credit to the statement that Blaine did not want the nomination. His
rumored objection to making the race--of course the real reasons
were not known--was regarded as a mere "play" in politics, if not
altogether fantastic; and they pursued their own courses heedless of
the real conditions. There was a singular complication of errors of
judgment in the Blaine opposition. The friends of Arthur took the
complimentary resolutions from a majority of the States to mean his
nomination. In truth, the significance of that unanimity was quite
otherwise. Ohio was not solid for Sherman. It is a State that has been
very hard to manage in national conventions--was so in the time when
Chase was the Republican leader--divided in '60, nominating Lincoln,
and rarely presented a front without a flaw for a national candidate.
The energy of Logan's friends was not sufficiently supported to give
confidence. The reformers by profession and of prominence were for
Edmunds; and they were a body of men who had force, if judiciously
applied, to have carried the convention, provided they divested
themselves of the peculiarities of extreme elevation that prevent
efficiency. While they assumed to have soared above practical politics
and to abhor the ways of the "toughs" in championing candidates, they
subordinated their own usefulness to a sentiment that was limited to
a senator--Mr. Edmunds. It was clear at an early hour that the
nomination of Mr. Edmunds was impossible. He was put into the combat
by Governor Long with a splendid speech, and the mellow eloquence of
George William Curtis was for him, and Carl Schurz was a counsellor
who upheld the banner of the lawyer statesman of Vermont. The
conclusion was to stick to Edmunds; and they stuck until the last, and
frittered away their influence. They were in such shape they might,
by going in force, at a well-selected time and in a dramatic way, have
carried the convention with them. They could not, however, get their
own consent to go for Logan, or Arthur, or either of the Shermans; and
so Blaine was overruled and nominated.
He did a wonderful work in the campaign, and was himself apparently
satisfied at last that his apprehensions as to New York had been
unwarranted. Still his words came back to me often during the heat of
the summer and the fierce contest. "I cannot carry New York; we shall
lose it, perhaps by just a little--but we shall lose it;" and so we
did. As the vote was counted the plurality of Mr. Cleveland over Mr.
Blaine in the decisive State was one thousand and forty-seven. Gail
Hamilton says, in her "Life of Blaine," of the New York election, that
there was a plurality claimed on election day for Cleveland of
fifty thousand, and "the next day the figures came down to seventeen
thousand; then to twelve thousand; the next day to five thousand, and
at length dwindled to four hundred and fifty-six." The election was on
the 4th, and it was nearly two weeks before a decision was announced.
General Butler "openly proclaimed that the New York vote for himself
was counted to Cleveland." The "just a little" by which Blaine was
beaten was on the face of the returns one thousand and forty-seven,
and John Y. McKane was ten years afterward convicted of frauds that
were perpetrated as he willed, that amounted to thousands. There was
a fraud capacity in the machines of many times the plurality by which
Blaine was defeated, and there never was a rational doubt that it was
exerted. A change of six hundred votes would have given the Plumed
Knight the Presidency, and outside the Solid South he had a popular
majority, "leaving out the protested vote of New York and Brooklyn, of
nearly half a million." Mr. Blaine, when it became known that the New
York vote was held to be against him, and civil war was threatened
if the returns were rectified, telegraphed to friends asking their
opinion of the New York situation; and I had the honor to be one
consulted. My reply was that the New York influences that had
prevailed to cause the declaration of a plurality for Cleveland
would be sufficient to maintain that determination. Then came the
opportunity of those unkindly toward Mr. Blaine to charge him with
forcing himself on the Republican party and ruining it with his
reckless candidacies, and I thought the facts within my knowledge
should be given the public, and wrote to General Sherman, asking him
to allow me to publish the correspondence between himself and Blaine,
proving that the nomination, instead of being forced by Blaine for
himself, was forced upon him; and I wrote to Blaine also, to the same
effect. I received from the General the remarkable letters following: