Part 11

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 highest order, 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 so heart 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.

X.

ENTERING CONGRESS.

It is said that life in Washington is a liberal education, social life in particular, but public life as well. The great interests of the nation center there, and all nations are represented there. Life is intense in all respects. Victors gather there from all fields of contest. They are at their best, and have multitudes to cheer them on, or cry them down, if they fail or falter. The door of prosperity to the country hinges there; defective legislation closes it, and mars the delicately balanced confidence in the business world. It is the nation’s higher school of politics, or rather university, with all its great departments. Graduates from all the state academies are there, taking observations of the nation and the world, discussing all live questions, following out great lines of thought, fixing policies, framing laws and enacting them. The arts and sciences flourish there, scholars congregate from all parts of the land. To them it is a place of mighty interests; institutions and libraries abound, history is manufactured day by day. Strong men in pride and power are in their glory there.

Society is like a myriad-sided palace, with many a gate of entrance and of exit, but all most deftly closed except to bearer of the keys,--a palace filled with light of knowledge, and resplendent with beauty; the goal of every clique and clan the nation over, where all the aristocracies of the Republic may glow and shine and shine and glow, and all the courtiers of all the nations mingle in magnificent and pompous array. Guards are at every door. Passports are in demand.

At twelve o’clock, the 7th of December, 1863, Mr. Blaine was in his seat. His heart beat high, his hopes were great. Earnest faces of determined men were all about him. The administration had a clear working majority, but there could scarcely have been seventeen Democrats from New York to fourteen Union Republicans, had not one hundred and fifty thousand men been at the front from that state, and not permitted to vote until the presidential election. And so with Lincoln’s own state of Illinois, which just before the war gave him such a great majority, now sends nine Democrats to five Union Republicans to congress, and has over one hundred thousand men in the field.

In the Pennsylvania delegation the result is similar, though the administration is endorsed by six thousand two hundred and thirty-one majority,--which would have been vastly increased if her one hundred thousand soldiers had been permitted to vote, as they were a year or two later.

Out of figures sent from the field then were shown to be five thousand two hundred and sixty-seven Republican votes in a total ballot of seven thousand one hundred and twenty-two, in over thirty organizations; but most of these were from Iowa, a state with such Republican majorities that when Mr. Blaine was urged to speak there during the campaign of 1876, replied,

“What is the use of burnishing gold?”

But there had been a vast amount of political light spread over that state during the years that intervened from 1862 and ’63 to 1876.

Mr. Blaine had spent a year as a quiet observer and a deep and diligent student since his election in September, 1862.

No course could have been wiser than the one adopted by Mr. Blaine. None from the state was more popular, and so none had a heavier correspondence. It related to all departments of the government, and he must at once gain influence in all. And this he did, with the greatest certainty of results. He was most obliging. It was soon found out, and all parties, without respect to politics, wrote him for favors of various characters, and they never appealed in vain.

A Democrat of the deepest dye, a malignant enemy of Mr. Blaine politically, had a son in the army who had deserted, was tried by a court-martial, found guilty, and condemned to be shot, according to the army law in such cases. The father appealed to Mr. Blaine to use his good offices with the great-hearted president in behalf of his son’s release.

True to his instincts as a man, and his fidelity in all matters of public trust, utterly destitute of a prejudice, and without a particle of enmity to curdle the milk of human kindness by its lightning-stroke, to poison his motive or weaken his purpose to truly represent the people, he went at once to Mr. Lincoln, and so presented the facts, and plead for the life of the young man, that the pardon was granted, and he was transferred from the guard-house to his place in the regiment at the front.

And it is a simple fact that a brother of that same young man hooted the nomination of Mr. Blaine recently upon the streets of Augusta. So little does gratitude hold sway in the breasts of some!

It is a singular coincidence that Mr. Blaine and Mr. Garfield had entered so nearly together, and both so nearly of an age; but they were both great students, and ready for the service required at their hands.

Some have said that Mr. Blaine spent his first term in congress in quiet observation, without being read, seen, or heard. This would not be his nature. He would not be there if he was to be simply an onlooker. This he could be from the galleries. Such a course would be crucifixion, and an acknowledgment of inefficiency and incompetency. Within two weeks after entrance we find him participating in debate.

The secretary of war had sent a note to the Committee on Ways and Means, requesting an immediate appropriation of twenty million dollars for bounties, to encourage more rapid enlistment. The chairman had reported the item at once, and there was no delay in calling it up, and in its discussion he took part. His first resolution related to the prompt payment of prize-money to the officers and seamen of the navy, and was offered Jan. 6, 1864.

Six days after he rose to oppose the views of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in appropriating seven hundred thousand dollars to pay a Pennsylvania claim only six months old, when claims filed eighteen months before by the state of Maine were unpaid. It was a claim for enlisting, arming, and organizing troops to guard the navy-yard and coast at Kittery and Portsmouth when cruisers endangered them.

On April 21st Mr. Blaine presented his first bill, having reference to this same subject of war-claims of the state against the nation, the subject having remained in an unsettled condition. His bill is a model of excellence, providing for a commission of three, appointed by the president, to receive, examine, and endorse state claims, etc., against the general government, and order the payment of the same, after a specified time fixed in the future, so heavy were the drafts then upon the national treasury. He supported the measure with a speech of great breadth of view and comprehensiveness of statement, occupying ten columns of the _Congressional Globe_. Mr. Hamilton’s refunding measure, after the war of the Revolution, was used in argument, and also the adoption of similar measures after the war with England in 1812 to ’15, and also the Mexican war.

He was replied to by Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, and a general debate ensued. He had now fairly entered upon his congressional career, and seems to have come with a bound into a position that numbered him at once with the leading members. He was easily at the head of his delegation; he commanded the attention of the House, which some members never do. He was recognized, assented to, opposed in person and particulars, co-operated with, and in various ways was it manifest that he had gained in a session what never comes to many members.

We find his resolutions and amendments passing; his points of order sustained. He is referred to on over fifty pages of the _Congressional Globe_, in remarks, resolutions, amendments, bills, etc. He has something to say on all great measures of importance that come before the House. He shows himself at home upon all the questions receiving attention, and watches the drift of proceedings with close and careful eye, and shows an abiding interest in all that is going on. The matter in hand seems ever to be just the matter in his mind. He is from the start a “working-member.” There are members who are not classed as working-members. They listen and look on; work does not agree with them; they do not like it. They have an equal chance with all the others, but they are afraid to speak out; to take a position and defend it.

Intelligence is an important factor in such a man, and it is hardly wise or best for a man, although he is a member, to “speak out in meeting” unless he surely has something to say and knows how to say it, and can really get it off, and to the point. Men may go into battle by regiments, brigades, corps, and divisions, and no man flinch; but they do not act that way on the floor of congress. It is worse than a battle-field in some respects; takes courage of a different type. They must go in alone, and fire away, with several hundred keen eyes upon them. They will quale and tremble, falter and trip in a little sentence, and stand there, pale and blanched with fear, while the same one might mount a horse and charge into hottest battle, midst fearful carnage, with the tinge of highest courage mantling cheek and brow.

In his eloquent eulogy of Mr. Garfield, Mr. Blaine says: “There is no test of a man’s ability in any department of public life more severe than service in the House of Representatives. There is no place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously acquired, or to eminence won outside; no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings or failures of beginners. What a man gains in the House, he gains by sheer force of his own character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy, and will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive, and no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is impartially weighed, and his rank is irreversibly decreed.”

A long and strong experience had convinced him of the deep, historic truth of this utterance. The challenge seemed constantly to be, “What are you doing here?” The waves dashed high, and the undertow was dreadful. One can easily read between the lines the battle Mr. Blaine had with himself at his first rising in the House, which was simply to read in evidence on the pending discussion a few sentences from the report of the secretary of the treasury, he was met by a slight rebuff from old General Schenk of Ohio, to the effect that the matter was irrelevant.

He was not Mr. Speaker any more, and felt the newness of his situation, but he belonged there, and he proposed to whip and win, and so he sets himself to work to draft a bill, and works, and watches his opportunity for four months, and not until December 21st is lost in April 21st does just his opportunity come; but when it came he showed by a speech of nearly two hours in length, full of hard, solid facts, arguments forged with something of the weight and power of thunderbolts, bristling with statistics, and fairly boiling with his richest and most fervid eloquence, that he knew his rights, and knowing, dared maintain them. And it was in discussing this same bill on which he and Schenk had spoken, and which had kept afloat, or anchored in the House in various forms of bill, resolve, or amendment, that he won his spurs in this splendid speech. He did not let it come to final passage until he had shown his power of relevancy, and convinced the General from Ohio that men were not elected speakers up in Maine until they could fairly discriminate between tweedle de and tweedle dum.

Meantime, what he said of Garfield is true of him: “He stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there.”

Nineteen of those who sat with Mr. Blaine when he first took his place in the House, have been chosen United States senators since then. Many served well as governors, and many in the foreign service of their country. “But among them all, none grew more rapidly; none more firmly,” are his words of that other one, but they are just as true of himself. His early course in congress was marked by great courage and persistency.

Two others had failed to secure the adoption of an amendment to the bill for the establishment of national banks, to the effect that interest should be uniform when not fixed by state law, and though it had been voted on and defeated before; though its form had been changed, yet seeing the wisdom of it, and having the courage of his conviction, he moved it again, and made a short, ringing speech of not over fifteen minutes, and it was carried by a vote of sixty-nine to thirty-one. Such power to control legislation so soon after entering congress, clearly reveals the influence already gained.

Shortly after this, when the committee on the penitentiary in the District of Columbia reported a bill appropriating two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the purpose, he was ready to oppose. He had been one of the chairmen of the prison committee in the Maine legislature, had been on a committee or commission appointed by the governor to visit prisons elsewhere and gain full information concerning them, having, with his customary energy and thoroughness, visited seventeen, and found they were being run at great expense to the several states, and so he opposed the bill, as prisoners were being kept safely in prisons already established, and, as he said, the proposed amount would only start the work and make many hundred thousands a necessity.

Whatever the question of national or state importance that came before the House, he had made himself familiar with it. And so we find him speaking on the revenue, conscription, and currency bills; legislative appropriation and tariff bills; the Fugitive Slave Law and the civil appropriation bills, beside the bill relating to Pennsylvania war-expenses. The terrible battle of Gettysburgh had been fought the summer before, and the state heavily involved, and the effort was to have her re-imbursed.

Mr. Blaine was heartily on the side of the administration and the war, supporting the various measures of prosecution and relief as against the opposition, with all the power in him. But it was not a blind support. It must be wise, intelligent, and discriminating, to put him in the fullest action, and bring on what might so soon be termed accustomed triumph.

But there came a day on the twenty-first of June, and during the first session of his first congress,--the thirty-eighth,--that a bill came into the House embodying a report from James B. Fry provost-marshal general, endorsed definitely by Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of war, and concurred in by Abraham Lincoln, proclaiming the conscription act a failure. The bill had come from the committee on military affairs, through their chairman. The exact point in the bill that had proved objectionable, and which they desired expunged, was what is known as the three hundred dollar clause, enabling any drafted man by the payment of the above sum to procure a substitute, and so be relieved himself. This very feature of the bill Mr. Blaine had incorporated as his first amendment offered in congress, and enforced by a vigorous speech, which carried it through, and now a repeal of it would compel any business man in the country, if drafted, to go at once, provided only he was fit for military service. This would take the best physician, with the largest practice, in the greatest city of the Union.

“Such a conscription,” said Mr. Blaine, “was never resorted to but once, even in the French Empire, under the absolutism of the First Napoleon; and for the congress of the United States to attempt its enforcement upon their constituents is to ignore the best principles of republican representative government.”

Remarkable as it may seem, and specially so in view of the fact that he had but fifteen minutes granted him to speak, his motion prevailed by a vote of one hundred to fifty. Such men as Boutwell, Brooks, Dawes, McDowell, Edward H. Rollins, Schofield, Wadsworth, and Wheeler, stood with him. Mr. Stanton’s idea was that by forcing into the field a great army of soldiers the war might be speedily terminated. But freemen cannot be dealt with as slaves. There is a vast difference between the purely military and the truly civil view of a question.

A few days after the same bill was up again, for further repairs, when we get a fine view of Mr. Blaine. It was Saturday afternoon, June 25, 1864. Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky, was making a long speech against the feature of the bill that provided for enlisting the negro, when he observed Mr. Blaine watching him. He said,--

“My friend from Maine (Mr. Blaine), who seems to be listening so attentively, lived in Kentucky once, and knows the negro and his attributes, and he knows, if he will tell you what he knows, that they won’t fight.”

Mr. Blaine: “From a residence of five years in Kentucky, I came to the conclusion from what I saw of the negroes, that there was a good deal of fight in them.”

After a pleasant colloquy, he went on to state that during the Crimean war Egypt furnished Turkey fifteen regiments of negroes of pure blood, unmixed from the foundation of the world, and as good troops as ever marched upon European soil. And so the debate went on. One thing seems quite evident: Mr. Blaine had come to feel perfectly at home on the floor of the House. His quiet ways and quick-witted replies; the conversational character of the proceedings at times, in which he participates; his familiarity with men and their almost constant recognition of him; the fluent and undisturbed character of his sentences; the general ease and pleasure of the man, and the home-like air that seems constantly to surround him, show that he is in his element. But he is always there, and very attentive, keeping up with the great debates as they are carried on day after day. Nothing seems to escape him, and every move is a cautious one. Even then he must have been the pride of his state.

He had not listened so attentively to the speech of the Kentuckian, Mr. Mallory, for naught, in which it was asserted that Mr. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in consequence of pressure brought to bear upon him by a meeting of governors of the loyal states, at Altoona, Penn., the autumn of 1862. Having armed himself with documentary proof, so that he might be doubly sure, though his memory told him he was right, he thus corners the gentleman in the neatest manner possible.

“I understood the gentleman (Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky) to assert,” said Mr. Blaine, “and to reiterate with great emphasis, that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon the president by the meeting of the governors at Altoona, in the autumn of 1862.”

Mr. Mallory. “I said it was issued in consequence of the pressure brought to bear by these governors.”

Mr. Blaine. “Will the gentleman state at what date the president’s proclamation was issued?”

Mr. Mallory. “On the 22d of September.”

Mr. Blaine. “Will the gentleman state further at what date the meeting of the governors took place at Altoona?”

Mr. Mallory. “Some days before.”

Mr. Blaine. “Not at all, sir. That meeting was on the 24th of September, two days after the proclamation was issued.”

Mr. Mallory. “Oh, no.”

Mr. Blaine. “Yes, sir; I am correct. I had a personal recollection of the date, and I have further certified it by documentary evidence, which I sent for and now hold in my hand.”