IX.SECOND TERM AS SPEAKER.
O
ON Jan. 1, 1862, Mr. Blaine was re-nominated by acclamation, and re-elected by an almost unanimous vote, Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. The war was enlarging the demand for legislation. All great national issues must be discussed by the state legislatures, and the demand for their adoption sprung from the people, a knowledge of whose will could be best gained in this way. Resolutions were discussed as regards confiscating the slaves, and arming them in the nation’s defence, and so the representatives in congress were instructed and encouraged, and their actions brought up as legislative measures and endorsed.
Grave suspicions existed at this time in the minds of many in the state of Maine, in view of the attitude of the British nation towards the United States, and the feeling of a portion of the British people, as developed by the Mason and Slidell affair, and the blockade-runners fittedout in British ports. The exposed condition of the coast and boundary line of Maine, had caused national alarm upon this subject to center largely in the state.
“For more than four hundred miles,” said the governor, Israel Washburn, Jr., in his inaugural address of January, 1862, “this state is separated from the British Provinces of New Brunswick and Canada by a merely imaginary line. Of the deep and bitter hostility to this country of large numbers of the people, we have now, unhappily,” he goes on to say, “the most indubitable proofs.
“Upon the coast of Maine there are more deep, accessible harbors, capable of being entered by the largest ships of war, than can be found on the entire coast-line of the slave-holding states; and yet since she entered the federal Union in 1820, less than half has been expended for her coast protection and improvement than was expended within ten years for the building of a custom-house in the single city of Charleston.”
The old adage, “In time of peace prepare for war,” had not been followed, and now commissioners are sent to Washington to present the facts regarding Maine’s defenseless condition, and the engineer department was directed, by order of Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, to send acompetent officer to examine and report upon the subject.
This is one of the topics filling the mind of Maine statesmen of this time, and its importance is so presented and impressed, that on Jan. 17, one hundred thousand dollars was appropriated for Fort Knox on the Penobscot River, Maine, one hundred thousand dollars for the fort on Hog Island, Portland Harbor, and fifty thousand dollars each for these two forts the following year.
Seldom were there so many bills of great importance to the state and nation before the legislature, as at this and subsequent sessions. But most of the time the speaker sat quietly in his chair, exercising the functions of his office. Men seemed to be growing into greatness at a single session; speeches of great effectiveness, and eloquent with patriotic ardor, came to be a daily occurrence.
Union victories began to cheer the nation. General Thomas at Mill Springs, Ky., had fought and won a glorious day. Forts Henry and Donelson had fallen, and hordes of rebels had surrendered. Nashville was occupied by Union troops, and Andrew Johnson was appointed governor of Tennessee. Indeed, he was descending the steps of the Capitol at Washington with a bevy of his friends, and just starting for the capital of Tennessee,the very afternoon of March 7th, to which we are about to call special attention.
No scene more brilliant graces the early history of Mr. Blaine, than his reply to Hon. A. P. Gould, a distinguished lawyer of Thomaston, and a member of the lower House, in vindication of the war-power of congress. The hearty support of every Northern state was a necessity.
The following resolutions were passed by the Senate of Maine, on the 7th of February, 1862, by yeas twenty-four, nays four:—
“STATE OF MAINE.“RESOLUTIONS RELATING TO NATIONAL AFFAIRS.“Resolved, That we cordially endorse the administration of Abraham Lincoln in the conduct of the war against the wicked and unnatural enemies of the Republic, and that in all its measures calculated to crush this rebellion speedily and finally, the administration is entitled to and will receive the unwavering support of the loyal people of Maine.“Resolved, That it is the duty of congress, by such means as will not jeopardize the rights and safety of the loyal people of the South, to provide for the confiscation of estates, real and personal, of rebels, and for the forfeiture and liberation of every slave claimed by any person who shall continue in arms against the authority of the United States, or who shall in any manner aid and abet the present wicked and unjustifiable rebellion.“Resolved, That in this perilous crisis of the country, it is the duty of congress, in the exercise of its constitutional power, to ‘raise and support armies,’ to provide by law for accepting the services of all able-bodied men of whatever status, and to employ these men in such manner as military necessity and the safety of the Republic may demand.“Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the senators and representatives in congress from this state, and that they be respectfully requested to use all honorable means to secure the passage of acts embodying their spirit and substance.”
“STATE OF MAINE.
“RESOLUTIONS RELATING TO NATIONAL AFFAIRS.
“Resolved, That we cordially endorse the administration of Abraham Lincoln in the conduct of the war against the wicked and unnatural enemies of the Republic, and that in all its measures calculated to crush this rebellion speedily and finally, the administration is entitled to and will receive the unwavering support of the loyal people of Maine.
“Resolved, That it is the duty of congress, by such means as will not jeopardize the rights and safety of the loyal people of the South, to provide for the confiscation of estates, real and personal, of rebels, and for the forfeiture and liberation of every slave claimed by any person who shall continue in arms against the authority of the United States, or who shall in any manner aid and abet the present wicked and unjustifiable rebellion.
“Resolved, That in this perilous crisis of the country, it is the duty of congress, in the exercise of its constitutional power, to ‘raise and support armies,’ to provide by law for accepting the services of all able-bodied men of whatever status, and to employ these men in such manner as military necessity and the safety of the Republic may demand.
“Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to the senators and representatives in congress from this state, and that they be respectfully requested to use all honorable means to secure the passage of acts embodying their spirit and substance.”
The resolutions were sent to the House for concurrence, and were there referred to the committee of the whole. On the 6th and 7th of March, Mr. Gould, of Thomaston, made an elaborate argument against them. At the conclusion of his remarks he was replied to by Mr. Blaine, Speaker of the House. The resolutions were subsequently adopted by the House in concurrence with the Senate, by yeas one hundred and four, nays twenty-six.
Mr. Gould had spoken for seven hours against the resolutions. The House had gone into committee of the whole, with Mr. Frye, the present United States senator, in the chair. The senate was present in a body, on one side, the governor and his council on the other, and as many as could enter, filled the galleries andvacant spaces, when Mr. Blaine, then but thirty-two years of age, took up the gage of battle, and spoke for two hours, and so utterly demolished the premises and conclusions of his powerful antagonist as to carry the resolution through the House with but few dissenting voices.
Mr. Blaine had been re-elected Speaker of the House by a vote of one hundred and thirty-five out of one hundred and forty, at the present session. All eyes were turned to him as the man for the occasion.
His old paper, theKennebec Journal, with which he had had no official connection for three years, says of the speech:—
“Never, in the legislative history of Maine, has there been such an opportunity for a forensic effort as was presented in the House of Representatives on Friday afternoon, at the close of the seven hours’ speech of Hon. A. P. Gould on the national resolutions. The expectation of the legislature was that Hon. James G. Blaine would speak in defense of the principles and the measures by which the Federal government will be able to crush the Rebellion and restore the Republic to that true and certain basis on which it was originally established. Mr. Blaine’s speech occupied two hours, and was fully equal to the anticipations of the unconditional friends of thegovernment. From beginning to close it was crowded with arguments and salient facts, interspersed with due proportion of wit, satire, invective and telling hits against the doctrines and positions of his opponent. It showed, with great clearness and strength, that the power of confiscating the slaves of rebels belongs to congress, and to no other power. It adhered firmly to the long-recognized principle thatthe safety of the Republic is the supreme law, before which every pecuniary interest must give way, and advancing in this broad highway, so clearly defined by the highest authorities of international law, and so luminous with the best light of history, the speaker made a complete overthrow of the sophistry and disloyalty of those who plead the defences of the constitution for the security of traitors, as against the necessities of the Republic. The speech was brilliantly eloquent, conclusive in argument, and in all essential particulars was a success which cannot fail to add to the reputation of the author.”
We give some extracts from the speech of Mr. Blaine:—
“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 distinguishedcitizen 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 theone-manpower; 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 appropriationof 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, muchto 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 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 distinguishedcitizen 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 theone-manpower; 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 appropriationof 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, muchto 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 emancipationof 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 indebate, 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 sacrificingof 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 astate 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 multitudeall 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 himto 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 traitorsstill 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, whatwill 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,—wasto 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 highestorder, 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 soheart 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.