[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER WRITTEN BY MR. BLAINE TO MR.
HALSTEAD JUST AFTER MR. BLAINE'S DEFEAT FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1884,
AND NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED--THE SAME LETTER THAT IS EMBODIED IN THE
TEXT OF THIS ARTICLE ON PAGE 169.]
[Illustration: CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF LETTER.]
[Illustration: CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF LETTER.]
There is intrinsic evidence that these letters were not written with a
thought of possible publication. That which General Sherman says
about Catholicism could only have been told to a close and sympathetic
friend. Mrs. Sherman and Mr. Blaine were cousins, and their mothers
were Catholics. Mrs. Sherman was one whose devotion to the Church was
intense; and General Sherman could not endure the thought that her
religion should be subjected to such discussions as were certain to
arise in a Presidential campaign. She was a very noble and gifted
woman, and the happiness of herself and husband in their domestic life
was beautiful and elevated.
James G. Blaine was nearer the Presidency than any other man who did
not reach the office. It was by a very narrow margin that he
missed the nomination in Cincinnati in 1876; and the opposition he
encountered there from Republican editors was regretted by all of
them, because they believed when the storm ceased that he had been
accused excessively, sensationally, and maliciously, and condemned--by
those who did not appreciate his vindication--on evidence that was
indicated but not presented--on letters supposed to have been taken
from the original package, and that were not produced because they
never existed. The investigations were largely instigated and carried
on to continue agitation with the purpose to strike down a brilliant
man whose genius gave him almost incredible promotion, and to assail
him because he was lofty and aspiring. The personal fight that he made
in Congress when cruelly set upon was one of the most effective that
ever took place in a public body. A competent observer, who was a
spectator of the scene in the House when the Mulligan letters were
read, said as Blaine came down the aisle, the letters in his hand,
and called upon all the millions of his countrymen to be witnesses: "I
thought his fist was going right up through the dome." Unhappily, his
exciting experiences in the course of these fierce controversies, with
the conduct of his Cincinnati campaign, and the sultry weather, caused
his prostration, attended with hours of unconsciousness, just at
the critical time when the delegates were assembling in national
convention. The local influences; the Republican editorial antagonism;
the enthusiastic efforts for Bristow; the strenuous perseverance of
Morton of Indiana; the prestige of Conkling, backed with the high
favor of Grant; the solidity of Ohio for Hayes--all would have been
overwhelmed but for the incident of the fall of Blaine in a swoon at
the door of the church which he was in the habit of attending and that
he was about to enter with his wife. It is reasonable to believe,
if he had been the candidate that year, he could have carried the
election unequivocally, and that his administration would have vastly
strengthened the Republican party. It is due President Hayes, however,
to say that his administration of the great office was an era of good
for the country, and that he was succeeded by a Republican; but the
fact of a disputed Presidency had a far-reaching evil influence, and
prevented showing fair play in New York in 1884. Blaine lost in his
illness coincident with the Cincinnati convention the confidence of
the country in his firm health and strength, and that handicapped him
to his grave. Perhaps it is even more important that he lost faith
in himself as a strong man, and had almost a superstition that if he
became President it would be for him personally a fatality. And yet
he was intellectually a growing man for fifteen years after his
Cincinnati defeat. His greater works, his most influential ideas, the
full fruition of his gifts, were after that catastrophe.
Mr. Blaine was so strong and so weak, so delicate and so tenacious,
that he was as constant a puzzle to those who loved him as to his
enemies, to the best-informed as to the most ill-informed. Those
very near to him took the liberty of laughing at him about his two
overcoats, and his going to bed and sending for a doctor in the
afternoon, and getting off with gayety to the opera in the evening;
about an alleged indigestion followed by eating a confection that
would have tested the hardihood of a young candy-eater. One who
studied him with affection wrote of him that he had an association
of qualities giving at once sensitiveness and endurance, and we were
indebted to this for the faculties, the capacities, that made up
the man whose influence had been so remarkable and his popularity a
phenomenon. He was of fine sensibilities, and there was nothing on
earth or in the air that did not tell him something. He was like an
instrument of music that a breath would move to melody, and that was
ever in tune for any wind that blew, and yet had patient strength, and
wore like steel. He had a rare make-up of refinement and power, and
life was sweeter and brighter and more costly far to him than to the
ordinary man.
It was after his first and, as it turned out, final defeat for the
Presidency, in his earliest effort for the office, that his fame grew
splendid. His campaigning was fascinating, and his speeches, as the
years passed, took greater variety. In his tour when a candidate in
1884, his addresses were marvellous in aptitude and in a thousand
felicities. There was much said of the fact that he was not a lawyer,
and an affected superiority to him by gentlemen whose profession
permitted "fees," and there was a system of deprecation to the effect
that he only harangued, that he had neither originality nor grace. But
after Garfield's death and the retirement of the Secretary from the
Cabinet, he turned to writing history "as a resource," and his great
work is of permanent value to the country, while his Garfield oration
is one of the masterpieces of the highest rank; and there came
straight from his brain two far-flashing ideas--that of the union
of American nations, and to protect the policy of protection with
reciprocity--and in the two there is the manifestation of that
crowning glory of public life which enters the luminous atmosphere
of immortality--statesmanship. That he had not the opportunity of the
execution of these policies--of guiding and shaping their triumph--was
not his fault but his fate. Their time may be coming but slowly,
yet it surely will come. His zeal in behalf of making the protective
principle irresistible by associating it intimately with reciprocity,
was so strong that he grew impatient when others were tedious in
comprehension; and there was a story of his concluding a sharp
admonition to the laborers on the tariff schedules by "smashing his
new silk hat on a steam-heater in the committee-room." He was asked by
a friend who rode out with him to see the statue that he thought the
most accurate and impressive of all the likenesses of Lincoln and was
fond of driving to see, located in a park east of the Capitol--that
by Story--whether he had "smashed a new silk hat" on a steam-heater
on behalf of reciprocity; and he softly responded, "It was not a new
hat."
That Mr. Blaine was keenly disappointed when defeated for the
Presidency at Cincinnati, there is no doubt; and that he began then to
see that it was not his destiny to be President, is certain.
There is a great contrast in his favor in his manner of bearing this
disappointment with that of Clay and Webster under somewhat similar
circumstances. Clay was furious at the nomination of General William
Henry Harrison, and greeted with unmeasured denunciation those
responsible for that judicious act; and Webster was bitter when Taylor
and Scott were nominated in the first instance, but came, after a
time, grandly out of the clouds. It is an interesting coincidence that
Webster when Secretary of State was a candidate for the Presidential
nomination against his chief, President Fillmore, and died, on the
24th of October, 1852, a few months after Scott's triumph at Baltimore
and a few days before the popular election of Pierce. The enduring
memory of Mr. Blaine appeared in the last October he lived, in the
precise remark, when something was said of the death of Webster, "Ah!
day after to-morrow it will be forty years since Webster died." The
news of the nomination of Hayes, Blaine received serenely, and before
the vote was declared in the convention sent the nominee a cordial
telegram of congratulation. When he knew at Augusta in 1884 that he
was beaten, he said: "Personally I care less than my nearest friends
would believe, but for the cause and for many friends I profoundly
deplore the result." And that was the entire truth. He felt that he
had not been fairly beaten, but he gave utterance only to the public
wrong done in the unfairness, and left that expression as a warning to
the country. He did not, as we have seen, follow the example of Clay,
who persistently favored his own candidacy. On the contrary, Blaine
did not covet the Presidency, and tried to avoid the personal strife
of 1884, and not for any of the apprehensive motives attributed to
him by those who acted upon the feeling in his case that the spirit of
justice was malevolent.
I feel that I should not now deal fairly with the public if I did
not give here the letter from Blaine in my possession, that more
completely than any published gives expression to his personal bearing
when defeated.