USA > Maine > Maine; a history, Volume II > Part 28
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"His broad views, his swift glance were accompanied by such a patience of detail as counted nothing done for victory while anything remained to be done. This it was which invested his counsels with an unsurpassed vigor and vitality. When in other States expected victories turned them- selves into defeats at the polls his surprised question was, 'Why did they not know?' Thorough organization was the secret of his political dicta- torship."
It might have been supposed that he would make his way slowly because of prejudice against him as an outsider who was interfering in Maine politics. But such was not the case. Ex-Governor Kent said, "There was a sort of western dash about him that took with us down- easters; an expression of frankness, candor and confidence that gave him from the start a very strong and permanent hold on our people.""
In 1862 he was elected to the National House and retained his seat until he was transferred to the Senate, in 1876. His first term was dis- tinguished by an encounter with the redoubtable Thaddeus Stevens over a bill to forbid discrimination between gold and greenbacks. The result was a mortifying defeat of the leader of the House by the new member from Maine.
Both in the State Legislature and in Congress Mr. Blaine was a vigor- ous supporter of President Lincoln. In 1864 Mr. Lincoln asked Vice-Presi- dent Hamlin to pick out some bright, likely man to look after delegates in Maine and keep a weather eye open for squalls in New England. Mr. Hamlin recommended Blaine, whose position as chairman of the Republican State committee gave him special facilities for such work.
During the stormy times of Johnson's presidency Mr. Blaine played a prominent though not a leading part. A stalwart Republican, he yet showed a moderation which the fiery zealots or mere partisans who fol- lowed Sumner and Stevens would have done well to imitate.
Mr. Blaine's chief contribution to the reconstruction policy was the disfranchising clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The emancipation of the slaves had greatly increased the number of representatives in Congress to which the South would be entitled, but as the Southern whites were firmly resolved not to allow the negroes to vote, it appeared that the "reb- els" would be greatly benefited politically by the triumph of freedom. The Republicans were determined to prevent this, and numerous propositions were offered for a constitutional amendment basing representation on the
'Stanwood, "James G. Blaine," 1-52.
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number of votes cast. Mr. Blaine proposed that the general rule of repre- sentation in proportion to population should be unchanged, but that if a State denied civil or political rights on account of race or color, its repre- sentation should be reduced in proportion to the number of persons thus disfranchised. Mr. Blaine's chief argument was that, basing representation on votes would give a great and most unjust advantage to the newly settled States of the West, where the proportion of adult males to the total popula- tion was extremely large, and he claimed that similar conditions would pre- vail for a century "under the stimulus to the emigration of young voters from the older States to the inviting fields of the Mississippi valley and the Pacific slope." The rule he proposed was adopted and became part of the Fourteenth Amendment, but has never been and probably never will be enforced.
The most important official act of Mr. Blaine during his fourteen years as a Representative was neither the defeat of Stevens on the money bill, nor the formulation, in substance, of a part of the Fourteenth Amendment, for both might have been accomplished by others had Mr. Blaine remained silent. His most distinctive and far-reaching act was a reply to Represen- tative Conkling of New York. In less than five minutes he delivered one of the most telling invectives in our legislative history, made a lifelong enemy, prevented his own attainment of the highest office in the nation, and made Grover Cleveland, President. Mr. Conkling was an able and honorable man, but of the type of Thomas H. Benton, impatient of con- tradiction, vain and domineering. He had made a severe attack on Pro- vost Marshal General Frye. Frye replied in a letter, bringing counter accusations against Conkling, and this letter Blaine, who had already come to Frye's defense, read in the House. There was a sharp debate, Blaine accusing Conkling of receiving public money illegally and of unfairly changing one of his speeches before it appeared in the Congressional Rec- ord. Conkling expressed his profound indifference to what the gentleman from Maine might think of him and Mr. Blaine made a brief reply, closing thus: "As to the gentleman's cruel sarcasm, I hope he will not be too severe. The contempt of that large-minded gentleman is so wilting; his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, over- powering turkey gobbler strut has been so crushing to myself and all the members of this House that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him. But, sir, I know who is responsible for all this. I know that within the last five weeks, as members of the House will recollect, an extra strut has characterized the gentleman's bearing. It is not his fault. It is the fault of another." Mr. Blaine then stated that Theodore Tilton in a letter to the Independent had said in jest that the mantle of the brilliant Henry Winter Davis had fallen upon Conk- ling. "The gentleman took it seriously, and it has given his strut addi- tional pomposity. The resemblance is great. It is striking. Hyperion to
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a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to marble, dunghill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost profanation of that jocose satire."
Conkling never forgave the attack, and personal relations between him and Blaine ceased. They would not speak to each other when guests at the same table or when sitting in a small company of mutual friends in a rail- way car. Conkling insisted on an apology as a condition of reconciliation, Blaine would make none, and all attempts to bring them together failed.
At the time of the clash Mr. Blaine was comparatively unknown, but he soon forged to the front, and when Speaker Colfax became Vice-Presi- dent, Mr. Blaine was chosen to succeed him. He served for six years, being twice unanimously renominated, and then, the Democrats having car- ried the House, gave up the chair to Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania.
As speaker he proved remarkably successful. Mr. Stanwood says of him :
"Mr. Blaine was master of his position from the day when he first took the gavel in his hand. He had the look and the bearing of a leader and commander. His strong and handsome features, his well-shaped person, his easy and graceful attitude, his penetrating voice, his thorough acquaintance with the rules of the sometimes turbulent body over which he presided, the quickness and keenness of his mind in perceiving the relation of a point of order to the particular rule that was invoked, and finally a personal magnetism that won for him the unavowed affection even of political opponents against whom he decided such points,-all these characteristics made him a model Speaker, one of three or four great occupants of the chair hardly second to any one."
Like all the great Speakers, Mr. Blaine magnified his office. He not only used his authority to assist his party, "but also to promote or hinder measures according as they did or did not recommend themselves to his individual judgment." He took special advantage of the Speaker's right of recognition and would fail to "see" a member unless the measure which he wished to offer had been previously submitted to the Speaker for his approval. But he firmly refused to count a quorum, that is, to count as present members who, though in the House, remained silent when their names were called and so broke a quorum and prevented the transaction of business. The assumption of this power was to be the work of another great Speaker from Maine, Thomas B. Reed. Mr. Blaine left the Speaker's chair amidst expressions of the most cordial good will from both sides of the House.
His future career as candidate for the Presidency and Secretary of State will be noticed in a later chapter, but something may be said here of his personal characteristics. Mr. Stanwood says: "Mr. Blaine was a brilliant and powerful speaker, capable of appealing to the best in men and of basing his argument upon eternal principles. He was also a clever
'Stanwood, "Blaine," 109.
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debater, skillful in leading opponents away from the principal question, and winning an advantage on minor, unrelated points." Mr. Stanwood admits that there was some justice in the charge often made that Blaine was "too smart."
But Mr. Blaine had a breadth of culture and of taste rare in an Ameri- can politician. Senator Hoar says of him: "In addition to the striking qualities which caught the public eye, he was a man of a profound knowl- edge, of a sure literary taste, and of great capacity as an orator. He studied and worked out for himself very abstruse questions on which he formed his own opinions, usually with great sagacity."
In his speeches and letters he used classic references and quotations, not with the awkwardness and vanity of the half-learned, but with the natural ease of one who knows and loves the literature of Greece and Rome. More remarkable still, he had a knowledge of and fondness for theological questions. He liked to discuss them, and the first number of the Kennebec Journal which he edited contained a review by him of a work on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
Like Henry Clay, Blaine had a high-strung, affectionate nature. His speech was often vigorous and impassioned and he was easily moved to tears. His heart went out to the whole world with sympathetic interest. Mr. Stanwood says: "It was his nature to be drawn toward every man and woman whom he met, and to make friends with them. He would enter into the interests of a boy, hold him by the hand, and question him about his school and his studies, as readily as he would attach a political magnate to his fortunes, and with as much or as little after-thought as to the con- sequence in the one case as in the other. It was simply his habit to be friendly with everybody, and his hunger for friendship was satisfied by his wonderful faculty for making friends."
Like Clay, Blaine had a power of attracting men which cannot be wholly analyzed or explained. His friends might boast of his magnetism and his enemies sneer at it, but that he possessed it there could be no doubt. His most bitter opponents yielded to the charm. A friend of his, Mr. A., was visiting at the house of Mr. Z., a true Massachusetts mugwump, to whom Mr. Blaine and all his works were anathema. Mr. A., however, obtained permission to ask Mr. Blaine to call. When he did so, Mr. Z. received him with just the courtesy required toward a guest, not an atom more. Mr. Blaine apparently saw nothing, but he did not fail to exert his usual power, and when he took his leave, great was Mr. A.'s amusement to see Mr. Z. follow him to the door and in most cordial tones request him to call again.
Mr. Blaine's power was not limited to those who came directly under his spell. Says Mr. Stanwood: "His magnetic field extended far beyond his personal acquaintance, beyond those whom the sound of his voice could reach. To those who never were affected by it, still more to the genera- tions that are to come, the language that might be used to describe his
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almost magical influence will seem extravagant and fanciful. But how can anyone explain the frenzy of the enthusiasm manifested on many occa- sions, when the name of Blaine was shouted by thousands of men who had never seen him?"
Mr. Blaine's facility in making friends was aided by a remarkable memory for faces and names, and he fully recognized its value. Gail Hamilton says in her account of the campaign of 1884: "Mrs. Ewing relates a characteristic anecdote of his visit at Lancaster, Ohio. At noon of the second day, she saw a carriage containing three men coming towards them. 'I suspect,' said she, 'that carriage is coming for you, Mr. Blaine.' 'Yes,' said he, 'but that is not the point. The point is that there is a man on the front seat whom I have not seen for twenty-seven years, and I have got just two minutes and a half to remember his name in. Not another word was said till the carriages met, when Mrs. Ewing's anxiety came to an end by his jumping from the carriage with hand extended, and a welcome beginning with the remembered name-a spirit called from the vasty deep."
Men of the Clay-Blaine type are specially liable to temptation and the atmosphere of Washington is not conducive to private morality. But how- ever it may have been with Clay, Blaine escaped unscathed. As a youth he entered heartily into college life, when Speaker of the House of Repre- sentatives he was a frequent and liberal entertainer, and his tact and powers as a conversationalist made his dinners among the most enjoyable in Wash- ington. But dissipation had no charms for him. On his leaving college one of the professors said in a certificate of recommendation, you "are indeed one of the few who have passed through their course without a fault or a stain." In after years the bitter attacks of his political opponents were confined almost entirely to his public life. He never used tobacco and was very moderate in the use of wine. His home was his club. "He was domes- tic in his habits to an extraordinary degree, was never so happy or so exuberant in his spirits as when he was with his family, of which he was the adored and the adoring head, and was attached to all of his own and Mrs. Blaine's relatives, from the grandfathers to the infants in arms. In the other relations in which one judges of a man as a member of a social community he was not less irreproachable. No man was a kinder neighbor than he, or more helpful or sympathetic toward all with whom he was brought in contact. He was a liberal giver to charities, a generous sup- porter of the churches he attended, a buyer who did not bargain, a prompt payer of his debts. In early manhood he became a member of the Congre- gational Church in Augusta, and his name was borne on its rolls as of one in good standing to the end of his life. His religion was not flaunted in the faces of those who conversed with him, but it was deep and sincere."
Mr. Blaine was undoubtedly ambitious, but his ambition was restrained and guided by a cool judgment. Mr. Stanwood says: "Leadership was a
"Stanwood, "Blaine," Chapter XII.
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passion with him; the consciousness of power gave him the keenest pleasure; and he was wise enough to retain his power by not abusing it." He did not attempt to pick the pear before it was ripe. In 1861 he declined to seek a nomination for Congress which was desired by ex-Governor A. P. Mor- rill. He said that it would be unbecoming for one so young as he was to pit himself against a man of ex-Governor Morrill's age and services, and that should he do so it would divide the hitherto harmonious ranks of the Republicans of Kennebec. He desired a United States senatorship, but stood aside in 1871, influenced at least in part by the wishes of his friends that he should retain the Speakership. It may be thought that his attitude to the presidency was a proof of unrestrained ambition. He showed his good sense in refusing to lead against Grant in 1872, but from 1876 to 1892, both inclusive, by his own act or that of his friends, he was a com- petitor for the Republican nomination for President. Successful in 1884, he was defeated at the polls. It is difficult not to think of him as a per -. petual candidate and a perpetual failure. Yet both Mr. Stanwood and Gail Hamilton, well informed if not wholly impartial witnesses, are confident that his frequent candidacies came rather from the urgency of friends than his own desire. He often saw more clearly than his over-zealous supporters the difficulties which he would be obliged to meet.
Nevertheless, Mr. Blaine was by nature eager and enthusiastic and his forecasts sometimes do more honor to his heart than his head. In 1868, for example, he declared that the election of Grant as President had settled finally both the Southern and the financial questions. On one subject alone did Mr. Blaine's almost constant hopefulness fail him. Gail Hamilton says : "His worst vice was a mind hospitably inclined to illness. It must be admitted that a drug and a doctor had irresistible, even hereditary charms for him." His wife speaks in one of her letters of the cry, "'O Mother, Mother Blaine, tell me what is the matter with me,' which has so often assailed my earliest waking ear, and which always makes my very soul die within me." As a political manager Mr. Blaine was distinguished for his carefulness and his attention to details, but he resolutely refused to cul- tivate these excellent qualities in his personal and home life. Gail Hamilton says: "His friends, his sons, his smallest child scoffed at his clothes, and he simply and stoutly defended his clothes. It was de rigeur to laugh at his hats.""
His wife when alone in her comfortable home wrote to a daughter that she longed for the family. "First of all, I miss Mr. Blaine. I can- not bear the orderly array of my life. I miss the envelopes in the gravy, the bespattered table linen, the uncertainty of the meals, for you know he always starts out on his constitutional when he hears them taking in dinner."
Mr. Blaine had many excellent qualities, but were they outweighed by
'Gail Hamilton, "Blaine," 529, 599.
""Letters of Mrs. James G. Blaine," II, 17.
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a most serious defect, was he dishonest? When he was nominated for the presidency, in 1884, by the Republican national convention, many of the purest men in the party, who had joined it in its earliest and best days and had always remained in the ranks, though at times perhaps with doubt and hesitation, now declared that Blaine was corrupt and that they could not support him. But other equally pure men like Longfellow, Whittier and George F. Hoar, held him free from blame.
The Independents, who voted for Cleveland, were unable to compre- hend how an honest man could vote for Blaine, and hundreds of thousands of Blaine's followers hailed him as the peerless leader on whose white plume there was neither spot nor stain. Today a more moderate view finds its champions. Mr. Stanwood believes "that by exaggeration, distortion and misplacement of facts, one series of acts in which Mr. Blaine was not wholly free from blame has been made to seem the conduct of a person destitute of moral character," but that in reality Mr. Blaine "was actuated by high motives, that he was inspired by a lofty patriotism, and that both in his public and his private life he was obedient to the promptings of a sensi- tive conscience." Governor McCall in his life of Reed says: "The Little Rock incident in which he was involved was sufficiently unfortunate with- out exaggeration, but its significance was magnified by the partisan ani- mosity of critics who supplemented the known facts by conjectures of their own, and who reserved standards of judgment for him which they refrained from applying to their political friends."
The most serious accusations affecting Mr. Blaine's integrity relate to his connection with railroads. The United States had granted lands to the State of Arkansas provided that a railroad were begun within a certain time. The State gave the land to the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Com- pany, and Mr. Blaine used his parliamentary knowledge to assist the passage of a law extending the time allowed for construction. A little later he was anxious to obtain from Mr. Josiah Caldwell an interest in the road, and Mr. Blaine suggested to a mutual friend, Warren Fisher, that he might show Caldwell a letter from Blaine stating what he had done to save the bill which extended the land grant. Mr. Blaine said that he had endeavored not to be indelicate. It was certainly indelicate for one desiring a financial favor to mention official action, however proper, which he had taken to the advantage of the person from whom the favor was sought. This was not the only instance of such indelicacy on the part of Mr. Blaine. In the same year he tried to induce Jay Cooke, the great banker and financier, to assist the road. His letter asking Cooke to do so was written in almost suppliant language and strongly intimated that the writer would place his official influence or power at Cooke's service. On another occasion Blaine was very anxious that Cooke should take some action and Cooke's brother, Henry, wrote, "Blaine is so persistent in this matter that I feel it is im- portant that he should be conciliated. . . . He is a formidable power for good or evil, and he has a wide future before him. However unreasonable
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in his demands he may appear to you to be, my conviction is irresistible that he should be appeased."10
Mr. Blaine sold bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith road to vari- ous friends in Maine. The chief buyer was A. and P. Coburn and Com- pany, who took $50,000, three other friends agreed to take $10,000 apiece, the others, $5,000. Mr. Blaine promised one or two of the purchasers to make good any loss which they might sustain, and this he did, not only for them, but for all who bought of him, when the road proved a failure. Nevertheless, he lost not only money, but friends by the affair. The Maine investors did not receive land grant bonds to an amount equal in face value to the first mortgage bonds, which other purchasers obtained, the company delivering the retained bonds to Mr. Blaine himself, as a commission for his services. His friends had not known that he was acting as the paid agent of the company in the affair, or that they should have received more than they did, and they were angry at what they regarded as trickery. Mr. Blaine did, however, save them from loss, which was more than the bonds that he received as commission would have done.
Nevertheless, he was most anxious to keep his agency secret, and, like many of the men who were caught in the Credit Mobilier affair, he made matters worse by attempts at concealment. He asked Fisher to write a letter as of his own motion, full of suppression and misrepresentation, and he made a speech in the House of Representatives which was entirely mis- leading and contained absolute falsehoods.
He was also charged with selling Little Rock and Fort Smith bonds of the par value of $75,000 to the Union Pacific Railroad for a sum consider- ably in excess of their market value, the railroad buying them presumably because it wished to oblige the Speaker of the House. Blaine denied the sale, and the president of the Union Pacific testified that the bonds were his own and bought by the road at a high price to recompense him for his services as president. But his testimony does not wholly agree with the other evidence, and Blaine appears to have parted with $75,000 of bonds and never to have named the person or persons who bought them. Fisher in one of his letters to Blaine tells him that, owing to his political position, he was able to work off all his bonds at a very high price, and Blaine in his reply does not deny it, but says that the money was at once used to save his friends in Maine from loss. It should be noted, however, that Blaine did not sell all his bonds, and yet did not think it worth while to correct Fisher in the matter, and he may have passed over the assertion regarding his political position for the same reason. What specially interested him at the moment was to deny Fisher's assertion that he had made money out of the Little Rock and Fort Smith affair. Mr. Rhodes, after giving the whole question careful consideration, is of the opinion that while there may
"Oberholzer, "Jay Cooke," II, 171-173, 354.
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not be full legal proof against Blaine, the evidence against him is very strong.11
In the winter of 1869 the Republican party was seriously embarrassed by the question of the enforcement of the liquor laws. The annual State temperance convention demanded the re-establishment of a State constab- ulary. There was, however, considerable difference of opinion on the sub- ject, even in the "temperance" wing of the Republican party. Woodbury Davis thought that there was no need of a State police except in large cities like Boston and New York. He said that it was the imposition of a jail sentence on the first conviction that had caused the great falling off of liquor selling in 1867. John L. Stevens, the editor of the Kennebec Journal, opposed both the creation of a State police and the passing of a law for jailing on the first conviction. Attorney General William P. Frye believed a State police necessary ; he said that there were great violations of all laws, not of the prohibitory law only. He thought that there should be a State constabulary, with a chief and at least one deputy in each county. Joshua Nye, formerly chief constable, said that the rumsellers told him that it was the enforcement, and not the legal penalty, which they cared for, and he declared that as soon as the constabulary law was repealed liquor sell- ing began again, although the imprisonment law was still in force.12
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