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Source:
Biographical Encyclopedia
 of
Maine of The Nineteenth Century

Boston: Metropolitan Publ. & Engraving Co.
1885

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JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE, of Augusta, Maine. Born at West Brownsville, Washington County, Pennsylvania, on the 31st of January, 1830. His parents were Ephraim L. and Maria G. Blaine. The Blaine patronymic is of Highland-Scotch origin, and was anciently borne by residents at or near Loch Lomond. Their clan colors were red and black, or red and blue plaid. After the abortive Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 large emigrations of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish to the American colonies followed. Pennsylvania gladly received many of them. The proprietary governors of that rising commonwealth, aware of their sterling character and highly appreciative of their fighting qualities, quartered them on the western frontier, to guard the non-militant Quakers against the incursions of the Indians.
     James Blaine was the first of the family to settle in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania. Domiciling himself, in or about 1722-23, near the present town of Carlisle, he there energetically labored for the secular welfare of his family and neighbors; and, as a worthy member of the Presbyterian church, for their spiritual prosperity also. One of his sons, named Ephraim, first brought the family into prominence. He was born in 1740, took an active part in the Revolutionary War, and held the commission, at the personal request of General Washington, of Commissary-General of Purchases. His own wealth, and that of his wife's family, the Galbraiths, was patriotically offered to the Government to feed and clothe the army at Valley Forge.  Ephraim Blaine died in 1804. His son James emigrated to Fayette County, opened a store at Brownsville, and officiated as justice of the peace. Successful in business, he left at his death seven children, of whom Ephraim L. was the first-born. The latter was intellectual, brilliant, educated, generous, but not distinguished by the characteristics which make up what is termed in common parlance a thoroughly practical man. A graduate of Washington College, and attractive in manners and person, he met and married Maria Gillespie of Washington County, in 1820, when he himself was twenty-four years of age.
     Maria Gillespie was the daughter of Neal, and the grand-daughter of Neal Gillespie, Sr., who emigrated to her native county from the North of Ireland in 1771. The sturdy Scotch-Irish immigrant was a natural nobleman. Strain upon his character only developed additional strength. His fresh and charming grand-daughter was accounted an heiress when she gave her hand and life into the keeping of her handsome and dignified bridegroom.
     Inaptitude for judicious management of affairs proved to be the bane of the young husband. Restless and extravagant, he soon thoughtlessly involved himself in pecuniary difficulties, and would have been involved much sooner but for his wife. Loving, modest, sweet, patient, careful, and religious, she could only be constrained to enter gay company by love for her husband. "All her inclinations were for a quiet, affectionate home, and for hidden deeds of Christ-like charity."
     Genius, it is said, has no pedigree. Long ages are often seen to present their choicest product in the person of a great man, who concentrates and intensifies within himself all the traits of character and elements of nature that lifted his progenitors in any respect above the ordinary level of society. Such an example is James G. Blaine. His boyhood was like that of his playfellows. Love of political reading was instilled and fostered by the newspapers, which he regularly went to the post-office to obtain, and which included the best county and State papers, and also the Washington National Intelligencer. His father was rigidly Presbyterian in theory, but relegated the religious teaching of his children to his wife. Mrs. Blaine was a Roman Catholic, but not a bigot. With her, Christianity was wider than creed, and essence infinitely more than form. She was a sweet Christian mother, who taught her children to be honest, generous, self-sacrificing, and kind, and willingly consented to their adoption of forms of faith different from her own.
The straitened circumstances of his father's family compelled much and close meditation on the part of    James G. Blaine. Intelligent resolution and self-reliance were born of it. Bad company he disliked, good books he loved, honesty he firmly illustrated, and truthfulness with him was guileless and constant. Between mother and son the most intimate moral sympathy existed.
     In 1842 James G. Blaine spent twelve months in the family of the Hon. Thomas Ewing of Ohio, who was a distant relative of his mother, and while there prepared himself for matriculation at Washington College. The election of his father, Ephraim L. Blaine, to the office of Prothonotary led to the removal of that gentleman and his family to Washington, the county-seat. There James G. entered upon college life at the very early age of thirteen. The standard of admission was low, and the course of study much less arduous than at present. The Rev. Dr. McConaughy was then president of the college. The Freshman class was composed of robust, intellectual boys, many of whom have since made proud record for themselves. Lank and awkward in figure, and not particularly precocious, the young aspirant to collegiate distinction kept very much to himself, and took but little part in athletic sports. In literary and debating clubs he delighted; was an admirable writer; diligent, persistent, frank; the leader of his class, but not of such traits as led any one to prophesy that his would be an uncommonly practical life—the incarnation of cautious and yet courageous statesmanship. Sudden demands even then developed the wealth of his resources. He was always equal to any emergency. The natural habit of thoroughly mastering whatever he took in hand had especially endowed him with ability to grapple and overcome unexpected opposition. In 1847 he graduated near the head of his class. The honors were equally divided between himself and two other students.
Leaving college, the youthful graduate resolved to become a lawyer. But he had to earn his own livelihood, and provide the means wherewith to «ratify his laudable ambition. He adopted temporarily the profession of a teacher, as the most remunerative and favorable to his ulterior aim. Securing the position of teacher in the  Western Military Institute at Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky, he soon became the favorite in that establishment. During the three years of his tutorship there, he exhibited singular energy, strong repugnance to every kind of oppression, keen sense of justice, and almost unerring ability in the detection of deceit and shams. His knowledge of the pupils, sympathy with them, and success in instructing them were unusual, and left most grateful memories in their minds.
     In March, 1851, Mr. Blaine married at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and in 1852 went to Philadelphia in order to teach in the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind. There he began the study of law with Theodore Cuyler, and spent his leisure hours in the acquisition of legal knowledge. William Chapin, Esq., who was then the principal of the institution, has since said that the qualities of James G. Blaine which impressed him most deeply "were his culture, the thoroughness of his education, and his unfailing self-possession. He was also a man of very decided will, and was very much disposed to argument. His memory was remarkable, and seemed to retain details which ordinary men would forget." Labor seemed to be a necessity to him. Unasked, he compiled the journal of the institution from official records, and from its foundation to the year 1854. His duties were those of a teacher of mathematics, in which he excelled, and particularly in the higher branches.
     In 1854 Mr. Blaine removed to Augusta, Maine, the former home of his wife, and there entered upon journalistic work as the partner of Joseph Baker, the proprietor and editor of the Kennebec Journal, a weekly newspaper issued at Augusta, and of which tri-weekly editions were published during the sessions of the Maine Legislature. Baker and Blaine appeared at the head of its columns. The junior partner had now fairly entered upon the road to greatness and enduring fame. New ambitions and new hopes sprang up within him. His latent powers of mind and character received astonishing development, and were quickly appreciated by multitudes of keen and cultured readers. An able thinker and a vigorous writer, he soon became a conspicuous power in that rugged and sturdy commonwealth. Speaking in 1855 of the Republican Party in Maine, he said: "Long may it live to protect our interests, develop our resources, and under all circumstances dare to do rigid, and trust the consequences to Infinite Wisdom" He maintained that nations, in strict justice, should be measured by the same moral standard as that which determines the character of a man, and that "all arrows dipped in bad rum, or the poison of slander, will fall powerless at the moral man's feet." Convictions of this character have been needed since then for consolation when assailed by the meanest spite and malignity. Compromises, where morals are concerned, he scathingly denounced. Slavery he stigmatized as "an undisguised, open, hideous wrong." Plain facts, he insisted, should always be viewed separately" from all party and sectional influences." The filibustering expeditions intended to seize and occupy various States of Central America in the interests of slavery were castigated with unsparing severity. Dough-facery was treated with withering scorn. Compromise with slavery was, in his avowed opinion, but sacrifice of liberty, of which " in the past we have had enough, and more." The Republican Party he declared to be "the only true national party. Its platform is the only ground upon which the friends of the Union can stand." Squatter sovereignty was a delusion, since this union of the people is a nation, and not a confederation of States, held together by a rope of sand.
     Mr. Blaine espoused the cause of Hannibal Hamlin in his candidacy for election to the Senate of the United States in 1857, and had the pleasure of seeing him triumphantly returned. The decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case evoked his sternest reprehension, and induced him to say, " Slavery has got to the farthest limits of its power and aggression. Henceforth it must lose in the great contest which it is waging against freedom." His zeal in the primitive organization of the Republican Party, and in the promotion of its interests, as the editor of the leading journal in the State, naturally drew attention to him.  The Republican Legislature made his journal the official organ of the State, and the party cheerfully accepted its leadership. Nominations to office he persistently declined, but was at length persuaded to accept the place of delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1856, which nominated John C. Fremont for the Presidency and William L. Dayton for the Vice-Presidency of the United States of America.
On the 9th of October, 1857, Mr. Blaine sold his interest in the Kennebec Journal, and took a more remunerative and influential position in connection with the Portland Daily Advertiser. Funds and friends were now accumulating. Moral, economical, industrious, and generous, he grappled and held his friends as with hooks of steel. One of the best tests of character is constant and unrestrained association with the people. James G. Blaine never appeared to better advantage than when in the glare of publicity—in the fierce light which beats upon the editorial sanctum.
     In 1858 he first entered political life as representative of the citizens of Augusta in the Legislature. His fame as a debater began in that body. Newspaper writing had given him terseness of thought and condensation of utterance. He never made a speech too long to be read, nor one which the people were weary of hearing. Local interests were never lost sight of in devotion to national affairs. His masterly eloquence at a public meeting saved to the city of Augusta its controlling manufacturing interest. " Blaine always says something," was a frequent popular comment on his campaign speeches. He was most successful in planning, and in setting others to work—a faculty which has since grown immensely by exercise. On religious subjects he was perfectly at home, had profound knowledge and a sharply defined system of belief, and showed deep research into theological schemes and history. So general was his knowledge that he could touch men at the most susceptible points. His intimate acquaintance with the history of remarkable horses once captured a noted horse-dealer who called upon him, and won the support of the man from that day forward. His liberality in matters of public beneficence—churches, schools, libraries, etc.—was profuse, without ceasing to be discreet.
     Twenty-seven years ago, in 1857, Mr. Blaine united with the Congregational Church, under the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Webb, in Augusta. Broad and liberal in his views and affiliations, he is a firm believer in the doctrines and polity of the church he then espoused. " He has the heart and soul and life of an every-day practical Christian," writes one who knows him well. In the Sunday-school held in the "devil's half-acre" at Augusta he had a class of men and women who had scarcely ever entered a church, who were gathered in from the highways, and who came in en deshabille, some laying aside their pipes and tobacco, and some having about them the fumes of liquor. There was inspiration and power in his teaching. Many a poor outcast of the slums he led into the pure and bracing atmosphere of a higher life. Apprentices in the printing-office boarded at his house, and received from himself and Mrs. Blaine all the kindly ministries of faithful and judicious parents. In every relation of life he sought to fill out the full measure of duty, and that because he delighted in it, as well as because it was right.
     In the fall of 1858 Mr. Blaine was elected to the lower house of the Maine Legislature, and was re-elected for the three following terms. At the beginning of his third term he was elected Speaker of the House. All his constituents knew that they were efficiently served, and gratefully acknowledged the fact. While Speaker, in the session of 1862, when the nation was suffering the calamities of civil war, he made a speech in Committee of the Whole, which has never been forgotten, and which surely presaged his victories in a wider arena of debate. It was in reply to Mr. Gould of Thomaston, on the Confiscation Resolution, in which he indorsed the dogma of John Quincy Adams, that " from the instant that your slaveholding States become the theatre of war, civil or foreign, from that instant the war powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution of slavery, in every way in which it can be interfered with—from a claim of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the cession of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power." His antagonist was not merely routed—he was logically annihilated. Not less convincing were his arguments in favor of enlisting the negroes, one of whom had made the capture of Fort Donelson possible by revealing to Grant the failing strength of the rebel general Buckner. Both these speeches were, in point of ethical and political doctrine, wholly in harmony with another scarcely less celebrated, in opposition to the purchase of Cuba, which he delivered in the Maine Legislature in February, 1859.
     Appointed Prison Commissioner for the State of Maine in i860, he investigated everything relating to the prisons, and also visited many prisons in other States. His recommendations, contained in the report he drew up with painstaking care, are often quoted as authoritative in distant commonwealths.
     Mr. Blame was a delegate to the National Republican Convention in i860, and worked earnestly for the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. In 1862 he was elected to Congress from the Augusta district, in the place of Anson P. Morrill, who voluntarily retired. His constituency was one of the most intelligent in the nation, and also one of the most patriotic. On the 7th of December, 1863, he took his seat in the National House of Representatives, having for colleagues many of the ablest statesmen of the day. Modestly entering upon his duties, he did his work in committee and on the floor of the House carefully, thoroughly, and exhaustively. He not only served in Committee on the Militia and on Post-Offices, but was appointed with increasing frequency on special committees. The work sought the man who was fitted to perform it. Trained in parliamentary tactics as Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, he found himself wholly at home in the popular Hall of Congress. Motions, objections, and points of order were always timely, and won for him the reputation of a master-mind and a very shrewd parliamentarian.
     National emergencies, disastrous defeats, glorious victories, necessitated measures for the enlistment of soldiers, the taking of slaves as contraband of war, negotiation with rebels, the nation's uncertain relations to England and Mexico, the treatment of traitors, the status of prisoners of war, the construction of a navy, the issue of paper money, the drafting of men into the army, contraction of the public debt, the construction of the Pacific Railroad, and, above all, the emancipation of the slaves. On all these questions Mr. Blaine manifested thorough and profound statesmanship, and unhesitatingly voted as his convictions dictated. The nation approved his course, and took its cue from him and his political associates. True to his maxim, " Under all circumstances dare to do right, and leave the consequences to Infinite Wisdom," he courageously did his whole duty, and rested confident in the assurance of a beneficent issue.
     In June, 1864, Mr. Blaine brilliantly distinguished himself as the champion of protection to American industry. In the fall of the same year he was re-elected to Congress, with but little opposition. An ardent nationalist, the very thought of disunion was intolerable to him. His perception of the calamities that would certainly ensue from such an event was too clear to admit of anything but stern and invincible antagonism. He was fully resolved to wage war to the last extremity in defence of the Union, the Constitution, and the laws. The Constitution would need future adaptation to changed social conditions; the laws would require many and serious modifications and additions; but, in and through all changes, the Union must be preserved. In the Thirty-ninth Congress he was an influential member of the Committee on Military Affairs. Nor was he less influential in the passage of measures on the floor of the House. His position that the South should be entitled to Representatives in Congress only in proportion to the number of its enfranchised citizens was that which, when adopted, compelled the South, in its own interest, to grant the right of suffrage to the negro population.
     "The registry of vessels engaged in American trade; the appropriations for the army; the still unsettled question of paying to the States their expenditures for raising troops in the war; the West India telegraph; reorganization of the army; the reconstruction of the Southern States; equalization of taxes; and the celebrated controversy with the Hon. Roscoe Conkling over General Fry—called out his most brilliant talents, and fastened him to the hearts of the people."
     On the question of reimbursement to the States he displayed a native equity, a knowledge of American precedents, and a convincing eloquence that carried the measure through to satisfactory consummation. Similar sense of sound justice appeared in his speech in favor of amending the National Constitution so as to admit of the taxation of exports, delivered in the Thirty-eighth Congress, on the 2d of March, 1865. The proposition for issuing an irredeemable paper currency met with his most intelligent and resolute hostility. He had no confidence in imaginary values, nor any favor for anything but an honest dollar. The mischiefs wrought by irredeemable paper currency in all lands were too familiar to his memory to allow him to consent to a measure fraught only with deceit and suffering.
     Slavery was now eradicated. But enfranchisement was required to make the boon of personal liberty one of real and lasting worth. The right to buy ships abroad he refused, on the ground that " the ship-owners who took British registers escaped the heavy war risks to which American registers were subjected, and now to place them on the same footing with those who hazarded everything rather than sail under a foreign flag, would be flagrantly unjust." Mr. Blaine spoke with all the force of profound conviction. "If we are going to have free trade," he remarked, " let us have it equally and impartially applied to all the industrial interests of the land; but, for myself, I am opposed to it altogether. In theory and in practice I am for protecting American industry in all its forms, and to this end we must encourage American manufactures, and we must equally encourage American commerce."
    Prolonged and exhausting labors now demanded time for physical recuperation, and in 1867 Mr. Blaine visited Europe, and spent several months in travelling for recreation and instruction in England and on the Continent.
     Again elected to Congress in 1866 by the Republicans, and with the unfeigned respect of the Democrats, his abilities as a ready and forcible debater, clear reasoner, sound legislator, and fearless advocate of the principles and organization of the party of union and right again came into forceful operation. In the House of Representatives wide diversities of opinion concerning currency and finance prevailed.. The greatest of thinkers were often misled by novel and illusory theories. The national honor and prosperity were threatened with wreck and ruin amid the dangerous breakers. It was proposed, in contravention to the pledged faith of the nation, to pay the national debt with depreciated paper currency. This Blaine righteously opposed. He held, in the pithy language of Nathaniel Macon, that "our Government was a hard-money Government, founded by hard-money men, and its debts were hard-money debts." His able and convincing speech in the House of Representatives was closed with the words: " I am sure that in the peace which our arms have conquered we shall not dishonor ourselves by withholding from any public creditor a dollar that we promised to pay him, nor seek by cunning construction and clever after-thought to evade or escape the full responsibility of our national indebtedness. It will doubtless cost us a vast sum to pay that indebtedness, but it would cost us incalculably more not to pay it." Such were the convictions of the vast majority of the American people, who nobly and honestly preserved entire faith with all the public creditors. The labor performed by Mr. Blaine in the Fortieth Congress,—1867-8,—was astonishing. Either as originator, or in committee, he was directly connected with measures concerning the army, navy, post-offices,   Congressional library, Indian reservations, relief of individuals, common carriers between the States, Treasury Department, cotton tax, issue of United States bonds, funding bill, Mexican treaties, foreign commerce, election cases, river and harbor improvements, funeral of ex-President Buchanan, custom-house frauds, House rules, military laws, rearrangement of the rooms in the Capitol, and even matters connected with the messengers, pages, and restaurant-keeper. The acknowledged leader of the Republican Party had sufficient sweep of genius and enterprise not only for the highest State affairs, but for the smallest matters. In this respect he reminds the observer of those great organizers and administrators, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, who held that the success of their grandest projects depended largely on attention to the smallest and least important details. James A. Garfield and himself were true yokefellows, and much alike in point of earnest patriotism and tireless industry.
     On the 4th of March, 1869, James G. Blaine was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives by more than a two-thirds majority vote. Cool, courteous, decided, and impartial, even his opponents admitted his excellence as a presiding officer during the whole of his six years' term of office. Engrossing public duties were relieved by oratorical and literary labors. He found time to prepare scores of political campaign speeches, and to write many important addresses and magazine articles. One of the best of the latter appeared in the North American Review, under the title, " Ought the Negro to be Disfranchised ?" To this question he returned a wise and emphatic negative answer, adding, " I wish to speak for the millions of all political parties, and in their name to declare that the Republic must be strong enough, and shall be strong enough, to protect the weakest of its citizens in all their rights."
     The elections of 1874 placed the Democrats in the majority in the House of Representatives. Mr. Blaine again took his seat among the members, and assumed the leadership of his party. The nation's ultimate good was his only aim. In 1876 the agitation of the currency question became exciting and dangerous. His unchangeable opinion of the essential nature and value of the circulating medium was in harmony with that of those who never believed in any other than a specie standard for our currency. The gradual resumption of specie payments was the true policy of the country. "No nation," said he, " has ever succeeded in establishing any other standard of value; no nation has ever made the experiment except at great cost and sorrow; and the advocates of irredeemable money to-day are but asking us to travel the worn and weary road travelled so many times before—a road that has always ended in disaster, and often in disgrace."
     In January, 1876, he and Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia were pitted against each other in debate over the proposition to grant a general amnesty to all the rebels against the Government who took part in the War of 1861-65. The contest ended in the complete discomfiture of the latter. This converted the Southern Democrats and their Northern allies into vindictive and relentless enemies of the great statesman. With patient, dogged malignity, it was sought to find some pretext on the strength of which he might be punished and crushed. His private business transactions were pitched upon for this purpose. The purchase of some railroad bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad was made the basis of accusations against his personal integrity, and of prostituting his official powers for private gain. A full vindication of himself—a vindication that was intelligently accepted by honest men who were politically unfriendly—followed. In the closing words of that conclusive refutal of all charges, he solemnly and manfully said, " I have never done anything in my public career for which I could be put to the faintest blush in any presence, or for which I cannot answer to my constituents, my conscience, and the great Searcher of hearts." Subsequent developments and discussions have only confirmed his right to that manly and most enviable claim. His private correspondence with Warren Fisher of Boston, which extended over many years, and related to many purely business transactions between them, fell into the hands of one Mulligan, who had sustained a clerkly relation to Fisher, and who was decidedly unfriendly to Mr. Blaine. Mulligan took this private correspondence with him to Washington, when summoned before the Democratic Committee that was appointed to investigate Blaine, and to defeat his nomination for the Presidency by the National Republican Convention. That Mulligan had no right to those letters, either in law or equity, was a matter of no moment to the conspirators. Others might bear the burden of crime; they proposed to reap its profits. After repeated remonstrances with Mulligan, the latter gave up the correspondence, together with his personal memorandum of its contents, to Mr. Blaine, and afterward made representations of such character as to the method by which he was induced to surrender them as will justify any shrewd observer of human nature in believing only such portion of his statements as he chooses. Blaine, as a personal privilege, boldly read all the letters to the House, and had them printed in the record of its proceedings. It is possible that this subtle maneuver of the enemy accomplished its object temporarily. For the time being he seemed to be less successful in defence of himself than he had been of his country. Speaking of the latter, Robert G. Ingersoll said, before the Convention, " Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress, and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen forehead of every defamer of this country and maligner of its honor." This eloquent characterization fastened upon its subject the sobriquet of the " plumed knight." His nodding casque was not, however, to appear in the forefront of the Republican host at this juncture. Governor R. B. Hayes received the nomination, and also the honor of election. On the 10th of July, 1876, Mr. Blaine was appointed successor to the Hon. Lot M. Morrill in the U. S. Senate, and while holding that position did most excellent service as a public speaker in different parts of the country in advocacy of the claims of Governor Hayes.
In February, 1879, Senator Blaine argued strongly in favor of the bill to restrict Chinese immigration, on the grounds that it is not entirely voluntary; that nine tenths are adult males; that it is incapable of assimilation, is physically and morally pestilent, is degrading to native labor, and likely to overwhelm and corrupt the American population; also that restriction is in harmony with treaty obligations, with commercial interests, with national safety, with enlightened religious sentiment, and with due regard to the rights of labor. His powerful logic, though not squaring altogether with the eternally true abstractions on which American institutions are built, is yet conclusive. The ideal is not reached per saltum. The Author of all good, in His conduct of human affairs, brings it about by degrees. Congress accepted Blaine's statesmanly putting of the case, and adopted the course that he recommended.
     The shrewd maneuvering of Roscoe Conkling, who had never forgiven the excoriation received from the hands of Blaine on the floor of Congress, prevented the nomination of the latter for the Chief Magistracy of the nation at the Republican Convention of 1880. The noble and lamented Garfield received that honor. Just before his inauguration he tendered to Mr. Blaine the Secretaryship of the State Department. The universal expression of public opinion was in favor of acceptance. Many reasons prompted compliance with Garfield's wishes. " I can but regard it as somewhat remarkable," wrote he to the President, "that two men of the same age, entering Congress at the same time, influenced by the same aims and cherishing the same ambitions, should never for a single moment, in eighteen years of close intimacy, have had a misunderstanding or a coolness, and that our friendship has steadily grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength."
     Resigning Senatorial functions, Mr. Blaine took his post at the head of Garfield's Cabinet on the 4th of March, 1881. His personal influence was immediately felt in every department of the Government, and notably in its foreign policy. Two principal objects of the latter were to bring about peace and prevent future wars in North and South America, and to cultivate such friendly commercial relations with all American countries as would lead to a large increase in the export trade of the United States, by supplying those fabrics which we can easily furnish in competition with the manufacturing nations of Europe. To effect these benevolent designs it was resolved to invite all the independent governments of both sections of the continent to meet in a Peace Congress at Washington. The cowardly pistol-shot of the fiendish assassin Guiteau temporarily suspended all movements in this direction. President Arthur caused all invitations to be recalled. Should negotiations be successfully resumed, a closer commercial connection will almost infallibly be one of the consequences. Then, in place of paying an annual balance of $120,000,000 against us in current exchanges, we may liquidate it in manufactured articles of American production. Not only that, but the guarantee and guardianship of the Inter-Oceanic Canal will be entrusted to American hands, and the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine be embodied in a purely American policy. Peace, under a well-digested system of arbitration, will be the normal condition of the entire continent, and unprecedented prosperity will bless all its inhabitants. Such an arrangement as that proposed by Mr. Blaine will be "a signal victory of philanthropy over the selfishness of human ambition, a complete triumph of Christian principles, as applied to the affairs of nations." The example of seventeen independent nations solemnly agreeing to abolish the arbitrament of the sword, and to settle all disputes by reasonable methods of adjudication, will exert a salutary influence over all civilization, and upon all the generations of the future. Should such a desiderated state of affairs be reached, the name of James G. Blaine must always be identified with it.
     The terrible grief into which the nation was plunged by the assassination of Garfield was mitigated by the confidence that its interests were safe in the hands of Blaine. On the 27th of February, 1882, the latter delivered a magnificent and judicious oration on his murdered friend in the hall of the House of Representatives at Washington. It was in every way worthy of the subject, the orator, the audience, and the occasion.
     Three months after the death of Garfield, Secretary Blaine resigned his portfolio in the Cabinet, retired to the privacy of domestic life, and devoted his energies to the composition of an accurate and comprehensive history of Congress during the twenty years intervening between Lincoln and Garfield. The first volume, published in 1884, covered the history of the causes of the Civil War, and of the important events of that dreadful struggle. It is clear, calm, concise, and equitable; a very valuable addition to historical literature; a remarkable book by a remarkable man.
     The "Maine State Steal" of 1880 is another event which cannot be passed over in silence. It was an attempt of the Democrats, aided by Fusionist Republicans, to fraudulently capture the State Government. Blaine was summoned from Washington, and the cause of the people was put into his hands. Through his wise counsel, bloodshed and anarchy were averted, and peace and constitutional order re-established.
The summer of 1884 brought interruption to the quiet domestic pursuits of the brilliant retired statesman. The popular demand for his nomination to the Presidency was too strong to be resisted; and in June, at the National Republican Convention in Chicago, on the fourth ballot, he received 544 votes, against 207 cast for President Arthur. When the news of his nomination arrived, Blaine was quietly resting at his own home in Augusta, Maine. Neighbors and friends flocked in to congratulate him. The post and the telegraph poured in expressions of satisfaction from all quarters. The best and greatest men of the nation sent felicitations. A special train brought the Pacific Coast delegation to greet him, and a few days later the Committee of the National Convention arrived, with official notification of the honor conferred upon him. General Henderson, the Chairman of the Committee, at the conclusion of the proceedings, took a step forward, and said, " To one and all of you I introduce the next President of the United States."
     The nomination of Mr. Blaine opened the flood-gates of detraction and calumny, and necessarily occasioned a campaign of blended defensive and offensive character, That the defensive was completely successful, can scarcely be questioned by an impartial observer. The offensive was singularly vigorous, eloquent, and gentlemanly. The popular enthusiasm in his behalf increased as the decisive Tuesday in November drew near, and would doubtless have placed him in the Executive Chair—honored for more than a century by a long line of distinguished, able, and patriotic incumbents—but for the injudicious remarks of a clergyman, at a reception given to Mr. Blaine in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York. As it was, the plurality of Grover Cleveland in New York over that of James G. Blaine was less than 1200. The latter deserved the success, that a fortuitous indiscretion would not allow him to achieve. Mr. Blaine is still in the prime of vigorous manhood, is of unusually pleasing and dignified address, and in every element of strong, symmetrical, and cultured character is admirably fitted to hold the helm of the American ship of state—an office to which he may yet be called.
     James G. Blaine was married in March, 1851, at Pittsburg, Pa., to Miss Harriet Stanwood, of Augusta, Maine. She belongs to the grand old Puritan stock, and is descended in direct line from the Stanwood family of Ipswich. Mass. Tall, graceful, strong, easy and yet dignified in manner, she is a fit type of cultured American womanhood. Six children have blessed their union: Walker Blaine of Washington, D. C.,—who inherits much of the paternal genius,—is the eldest; Emmons Blaine of Colorado, the second; Alice, wife of Colonel Coppinger, the third; Margaret Isabella Blaine is the fourth; James G. Blaine, Jr., the fifth; and Harriet S. Blaine, the sixth and youngest.

 

 

 

 


 
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