Pine to Potomac

THE future had no clouds for Mr. Blaine as he returned for the fourth time to Washington as a member-elect to congress. He was in manhood’s prime, backed by a splendid record of triumph on the field of political contest, and of achievement in the arena of debate. He was thoroughly conversant with the affairs of the House in every detail of rule or measure, and was widely known and recognized as among the most popular and efficient members. His knowledge, gathered from wide fields of travel, experience, and observation, was vast; his powers thoroughly disciplined and under the finest control; his acquaintance extensive, and his rank high in personal and political friendships.

Schuyler Colfax, the former speaker, was vice-president now; standing next to General Grant, the new president. Who should take his place? This was the question that filled Mr. Blaine with high anticipations.

Granting his fitness and ability, which, perhaps, no one who knows him at all would question, the still greater question is how to win the prize, how to secure the position. It is purely a question of votes, and the one thing that secures them is personal influence. It may come of the individual’s own exertions, his power to command, the charm of his name, the fascination of his character, the magnetism of his person. But it is a matter of stupendous strength and of transcendent abilities for one to lift himself so far above his fellows as to win their suffrages in such a place as that, by his own unaided personal attractions.

Here was the great argument, but not the active agent. There must be some one to state the case, to manage it, to make the appeal, some one strong friend or more, who has grit and gumption to put it through, and see it done,—that man is Thaddeus Stevens, of his native state of Pennsylvania. He is the one of all others to do this thing.

Of few men’s power Mr. Blaine had a loftier idea than of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. There was indeed a trio who attracted and held the admiration of Mr. Blaine, and he has sketched their characters most vividly. Will you hear him as he says:—

“The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in this country, are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. They were all men of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, differing widely each from the others, and yet with a single trait in common,—the power to command. In the give and take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault, or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our congressional history.

“But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in parliamentary annals, greater power than when, in 1841, at sixty-four years of age, he took the control of the Whig party from the president who had received their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plenitude of power, he hurled against John Tyler, with deepest scorn, the mass of that conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his administration to shelter behind the lines of his political foes.

“Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant congress into a repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

“And now we come to Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, who, in his contests from 1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until congress tied the hands of the president, and governed the country by its own will, leaving only perfunctionary duties to be discharged by the executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the cabinet, and the moral power of Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson could not command the support of one-third in either House against the parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned leader.”

And this was the man who stood at Mr. Blaine’s right hand in this matter of the speakership.

Mr. Blaine was on the committee of military affairs with Mr. Stevens. He became known to him thoroughly as a man with talent for indefatigable toil, and a genius for doing hard and difficult things with great certainty and despatch. He was just the man to attract the attention, and be admired, respected, and loved by a man of Mr. Stevens’ consummate ability, and to be selected by him for promotion and honor. And the hour had come for just that honor, the highest in the gift of the House.

It was the third office in the nation, with a salary three thousand dollars greater than that of United States senator, and equal to the salary of vice-president or secretary of state. And so by virtue of his recognized fitness, and the power of this great friend, the office comes to him, and he comes to it.

Some think, and perhaps rightly, that his tilt with Mr. Conkling popularized him greatly with the members of the House, who thoroughly enjoyed it, and so prepared the way to the honor which in point of fact was his by right of nature. But six years was a long time to wait, yet he waited, and was rewarded. And still it was not waiting, but working, with him, occupying the stronghold he had made for himself in the manifold business of the House.

But now he is taken from this, and out of the arena of debate, and yet lifted into greater prominence and power; appointing all the great committees of the House, a task requiring the highest order of ability in the knowledge of men; deciding all questions, and exercising a controlling influence over legislation.

There is little power men employ in all the great work of life, but he needs it in its rarest form. He must be a broad, a wide, a universal man; in sympathy with all, so far as right and justice are concerned. There are the choice, the crowned ones from every congressional district in all the states and territories, and he is the choice, the crowned one among them,—their chosen chief.

Tennyson’s words press for utterance right here, as we see him step from the floor to the speaker’s chair:—

It was only by the proof of character, the most solid and reliable, he could possibly have secured the friendship of Mr. Stevens. And not his alone, but the friendship of Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, who nominated Mr. Blaine as candidate for speaker, and who, as senior member, swore him in.

It was a proud day for Mr. Washburne, the staunch friend of General Grant, to witness his inaugural, and then, as the true friend of Mr. Blaine, aid so largely in putting him into the speaker’s chair the same day.

Mr. Stevens was not there to enjoy the triumph of his friend, but his endorsement was good as a letter of credit.

When the ballot was concluded it read:—Whole number of votes cast, one hundred and ninety-two; necessary for a choice, ninety-seven; Mr. Blaine received one hundred and thirty-five; Mr. Kerr received fifty-seven.

Mr. Dawes and Mr. Kerr conducted him to the chair, when he addressed the House as follows:—

It is a curious coincidence that General Schenck, of Ohio, who startled Mr. Blaine with the charge of irrelevancy at his first utterance on the floor, but was so utterly discomfited afterwards, is now the first one to address him as “Mr. Speaker,” and Mr. Kerr, his competitor, soon follows.

It was at this session that new members from reconstructed states appeared, and many were the objections made to this new member and that, because of disloyalty. It was to present a charge of this kind that Mr. Schenck arose.

The noticeable feature of Mr. Blaine’s speakership is the expeditious manner in which business is conducted, and the consequent brevity of sessions.

It may be observed right here that Mr. Blaine’s friend, E. B. Washburne, chose rather to go as minister to Paris, and Hamilton Fish became secretary of state.

For two successive congresses Mr. Blaine was re-elected speaker by the large Republican majorities serving through the reconstruction period of the rebel states, and through most of General Grant’s two terms of the presidency. It was during this period his reputation became truly national.

He might have occupied the chair all the time, and taken things easy; but this was not his nature. It was his privilege to go upon the floor, and take up the gauntlet of debate. It was expected that things would become lively at once when he did so. There was a resolution one day for a committee to investigate the outrages in the South. Mr. Blaine had written the resolution, which was presented by his colleague, and asked for its passage; and, lest the claquers should say he put only “weak-kneed Republicans” on the committee, he made Benj. F. Butler chairman, which in some almost unaccountable way greatly enraged Mr. Butler, who might have then contemplated accompanying Gen. John M. Palmer and others into the Democratic party, and so he telegraphed to newspapers and issued a circular which appeared on the desks of members, denouncing what he was pleased to call a trick, and used other vigorous language on the floor of the House. Of course the speaker could not sit quietly in the chair and be thus tempestuously assailed, so calling a future vice-president to the chair (Wheeler), he said, “I wish to ask the gentleman from Massachusetts whether he denies me the right to have drawn that resolution” (it was presented in the caucus first which had just re-nominated Mr. Blaine for speaker).

Mr. Butler replied, “I have made no assertion on that subject, one way or other.”

Mr. Blaine: “Did not the gentleman know distinctly that I drew it?”

“No, sir!” was the reply.

“Did I not take it to the gentleman and read it to him?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mr. Butler.

“Did I not show him the manuscript?”

“Yes, sir,” was the reply.

“And at his suggestion,” continued Mr. Blaine, “I added these words, ‘and the expenses of said committee shall be paid from the contingent fund of the House of Representatives’ (applause), and the fact that ways and means were wanted to pay the expenses was the only objection he made to it.”

It appears that the resolution was considered as a test of the Republicanism of members. General Butler had been asked to take the chairmanship, but refused, and said he would have nothing to do with the resolution; but Mr. Blaine put him on the committee, and when asked why, replied, “Because I knew very well that if I omitted the appointment of the gentleman it would be heralded throughout the length and breadth of the country by the claquers, who have so industriously distributed this letter this morning, that the speaker had packed the committee, as the gentleman said he would, with ‘weak-kneed Republicans,’ who would not go into an investigation vigorously, as he would. That was the reason (applause), so that the chair laid the responsibility upon the gentleman of declining the appointment, and now the gentleman from Massachusetts is on his responsibility before the country,” and there we leave him.

It can but be with peculiar interest that we read the strong words of the oath taken so repeatedly by Mr. Blaine, and administered the second time by Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, after he had received one hundred and twenty-six votes, to ninety-two for Gen. George W. Morgan, of Ohio.

It kept a large committee busy to pass upon the character of members-elect and the legality of their election. Such was the broken condition of state governments in the South, so battered by war, and distracted by schism and contending factions. All of these perplexities adhered to applicants for membership in congress, presenting credentials of membership various in value as greenbacks and gold, and these same perplexities affected the staple of congressional measures.

Congress was increasing rapidly in the number of its members, so that while one hundred and ninety-two votes were cast at Mr. Blaine’s first election to the speakership in 1869, there were two hundred and sixty-nine votes cast at his election to the same office in 1873, of which number he received one hundred and eighty-nine, and Mr. Ferdinand Wood received seventy-six.

Mr. Blaine refers to it in his address to the “Gentlemen of the House of Representatives,” the last time he was elected speaker. “To be chosen,” he says, “speaker of the House of Representatives is always an honorable distinction; to be chosen a third time enhances the honor more than three fold; to be chosen by the largest body that ever assembled in the Capitol imposes a burden of responsibility which only your indulgent kindness could embolden me to assume. The first occupant of this chair presided over a House of sixty-five members, representing a population far below the present aggregate of the state of New York. At that time there were not, in the whole United States, fifty thousand civilized inhabitants to be found one hundred miles distant from the flow of the Atlantic tide. To-day, gentlemen, a large majority of you come from beyond that limit, and represent districts peopled then only by the Indian and the adventurous frontiersman.

“The national government is not yet as old as many of its citizens, but in this brief span of time,—less than one lengthened life,—it has, under God’s good providence, extended its power until a continent is the field of its empire, and attests the majesty of its law.

“With the growth of new states and the resulting changes in the centres of population, new interests are developed, rival to the old, but by no means hostile; diverse, but not antagonistic. Nay, rather are all these interests in harmony, and the true science of just government is to give to each its full and fair play, oppressing none by undue exaction, favoring none by undue privilege.

“It is this great lesson which our daily experience is teaching, binding us together more closely, making our mutual dependence more manifest, and causing us to feel that, whether we live in the North or in the South, in the East or in the West, we have indeed but ‘one country, one constitution, one destiny.’”

Few addresses so brief breathe a spirit of broader statesmanship, or loftier ideal of civil government. Two years before this, in 1871, he had been charged by General Butler with having presidential aspirations, and surely he was able to manifest the true conception of a just and righteous government, “oppressing none by undue exaction, favoring none by undue privilege,” which is apparently the exact outcome—a sort of paraphrase of Lincoln’s words, “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.”

Many who had participated in the Rebellion, having had their political disabilities removed by the vote of two-thirds of each House of congress, came forward and took the special oath provided for them by act of July 11, 1868.

Mr. Blaine seldom, if ever, leaves the chair to participate in debate when questions of a political nature are pending, so that he may hold himself aloof for fair ruling in all of his decisions.

The position of speaker is, in many respects, a thankless one. When party spirit runs high, as it does at times, like the tide of battle, in the great debates, men are swept on by their sympathies, as barks are tossed in ocean-storms, and under the influence of their most powerful prejudices they are driven to rash and unwarrantable conclusions regarding the justice of any ruling, to conjectures the most unfair and wanton regarding motive, and as in the case of Mr. Blaine, to the most stupendous efforts at political assassination.

But it was not until the days of his speakership were over, and the people at home had expressed their confidence in him and their love and admiration for him, by electing him to congress for the seventh time consecutively, that the storm struck him. It had been gathering long. Its animus was enmity, its bulk was hate, its dark, frowning exterior was streaked with the lurid lightnings of a baleful jealousy; muttering thunders like the deep growlings of exasperation were heard oft, but feared not.

The solid South had marched its rebel brigadiers by the score into the arena of national questioning and discussion, where for twelve years he had stood intrepid as the founders of the Republic. No man was more at home upon that field than he,—none more familiar with the men, the methods, and the measures that had triumphed there,—and few have been more victorious in the great ends for which he strove, few readier to challenge the coming of any man, to know his rights, his mission, and his weight. He was, of all men, the most unconquerable by those who plead for measures subversive of any great or minor end for which the war was fought.

He had gained the credit of the fourteenth amendment, and had been identified with all. He was simply bent upon resistance, the most powerful he could command, against all encroachments of the bad and false, and to show no favor toward any feature for which rebellion fought. Fair, honorable, just,—none could be more so.

When speaker of the House, he was informed one day that a prominent correspondent of a leading paper, who had maligned and vilified him shockingly, was on the floor, and at once he said, “Invite him up here,” and he gave him a seat by his side, within the speaker’s desk, and placed at the disposal of the man the information of public importance at his command. The fellow was amazed, and went away and wrote how kindly he had been treated by the great-hearted man of noble impulses, after he had so roundly abused him.

There is nothing vindictive about him, nothing despicable. He is severe, herculean, desperate for the right, and will win in every battle that commands the forces of his being, if victory be achievable. But he honors strong, square men, who have convictions and dare proclaim them; but petty, mean, ignoble souls are first despised, then pitied.

But the day of his betrayal came, the day of rebel wrath; and he met the stroke before the nation’s gaze, and was vindicated before the world.

A business correspondence, it had been said he had burned. He said, “No, there it is, and I will read it to the House,” and he read it. What business firm, it has been asked, would like to have their correspondence regarding any great business interest, read to those who are filled with all manner of suspicions, and so have it misjudged, misinterpreted, and misapplied? And then, to show the temper of those with whom he dealt, a cablegram from Europe vindicating him, was for two days suppressed by the chairman of the congressional committee, before whom he stood, and who failed to convict him by any document at their command. The scene at that time, and their discomfiture, is thus described by an eye-witness:—

“His management of his own case when the Mulligan letters came out was worthy of any general who ever set a squadron in the field. For nearly fifteen years I have looked down from the galleries of the House and Senate, and I never saw, and never expect to see, and never have read of such a scene, where the grandeur of human effort was better illustrated, than when this great orator rushed down the aisle, and, in the very face of Proctor Knott, charged him with suppressing a telegram favorable to Blaine. The whole floor and all the galleries were wild with excitement. Men yelled and cheered, women waved their handkerchiefs and went off into hysterics, and the floor was little less than a mob.”

About this time, Hon. Lot M. Morrill, of his state, was transferred from the senate to the cabinet of President Grant, and as a partial justification, General Connor, the governor of Maine at this time, appointed him to represent Maine in the United States senate in place of Mr. Morrill. The official note was as follows:—

When the legislature of his state met, he came before them and placed himself under a thorough investigation at their hands. And as Ex-Gov. A. P. Morrill says, “They made thorough work of it.” A man to come forth from such an ordeal unscathed, and without the smell of fire on his garments, must be right and not wrong,—or else he is the veriest scoundrel, guilty, deeply so, and competent for bribes, and they, the legislature of Maine, who virtually tried him, hopelessly corrupt. But, no! this cannot be; and so he was vindicated, and triumphantly elected by them to the highest trust within their gift, to wear the honors of a Morrill and a Fessenden.

And yet again do they elect him for a full term of years. And then the royal Garfield, the nation’s loved and honored president, knowing all, and knowing him most intimately for seventeen years or more, takes him into his cabinet, trustingly, and for the nation’s good.

Can victory be grander, or triumph more complete, endorsement more honorable, or vindication more just, or a verdict be more patient, thorough, or exhaustive of evidence! What man in all the land, traduced and vilified just as Washington, Lincoln, and Garfield were, wears prouder badges of endorsement from congress, governor, legislature, senate, and conventions by the score! What man that bears credentials of his character as trophies of higher worth, from judges of sounder mind, and lives more unimpeachable? Answer, ye who can!