Various
The Bay State Monthly Volume 2, No. 1, October, 1884
JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE
In the long list of illustrious men who have held the high office of President of the United States, a few names stand out with such prominence as to be constantly before the American people. While Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, and others, did the country service that never will be forgotten, it is indisputable that Washington, Lincoln, and Garfield gained a firmer hold upon the confidence and affection of the masses than any others. And now, as we approach another presidential campaign, the result of which is to place in the highest office of the nation a new man, it is alike a source of pride and satisfaction that the Republican party has put in nomination a man, who, if elected, will bring to the discharge of his duties as high a degree of honesty as Washington, as thorough an acquaintance with human nature as Lincoln, and as profound a knowledge of political economy as Garfield. Through all the years of his manhood he has been a central figure in American politics, and his achievements are indelibly written on almost every page of American history for the last quarter of a century. With such a man as a candidate the country may well congratulate itself that if he proves to be the choice of the majority he will, by his ability and experience, bring as great renown to the office as any of his predecessors, and that under his guidance the material prosperity and intellectual growth of the nation will be such as to gain for his administration great popular favor, the admiration of his friends, and the respect of all nations.
James Gillespie Blaine, the nominee of the Republican party for President of the United States, was born on January 31, 1830, in Washington County, in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, in West Brownsville, a village on the west bank of the Monongahela. Here Neil Gillespie, before the British army left America at the close of the Revolution, had established his family, purchasing the land of the Indians. Nearly twenty years later the Blaines came from Carlisle, seeking investment and development in this new West, and the father of James G. Blaine, who had left Carlisle when a child, married the daughter of Neil Gillespie the second.
The first of the Blaine family of whom much is known was Colonel Ephraim Blaine, who lived at Chester, and in the Revolution was purveyor-general of the Pennsylvania troops, and incidentally of the whole Revolutionary array. He married Rebekah Galbraith in 1765. Elaine is a well-known Scotch name. Galbraith and Gillespie are Scotch-Irish; in fact, the ancestors of James G. Blaine were nearly all Scotch and Irish. It is a circumstance worthy of comment that Blaine comes from a stock which has furnished the United States with many of her ablest public men, notably among them being Andrew Jackson and Horace Greeley.
Colonel Ephraim Blaine had two sons named Robert and James, and each of these sons named his son for Colonel Ephraim Blaine. Old Ephraim Blaine did not leave his property to his sons, but to these two grandsons, (1) Ephraim, who remained in Carlisle, and (2) Ephraim Lyon Blaine, who grew up in western Pennsylvania. Ephraim Lyon Blaine was named for his mother, Miss Lyon, the daughter of Samuel Lyon from about Carlisle. Ephraim Lyon Blaine married Miss Gillespie, a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church, but most of their seven childrenfive boys and two girlsadhered to the traditional faith of the Blaines. The second of these sons, James Gillespie Blaine, is the subject of this sketch. He would have inherited large blended fortunes, had not his father, like his grandfather, been a spendthrift. Therefore, soon after James G. Blaine was born his parents had to move out of the big house which they could no longer keep up, and occupy a frame-house called the Pringle dwelling, also in West Brownsville, about a quarter of a mile distant. Here young Elaine lived and went to school both in Brownsville and in West Brownsville, until his father was elected prothonotary of the county, in 1843, when the whole family removed to Little Washington, twenty-four miles distant.
James G. entered Washington College in 1843, being then thirteen years of age, and became at once prominent as a scholar among the two or three hundred other lads from all parts of the country. He was also a leader in athletic sports. He was not a bookworm, but he was a close student and possessed the happy faculty of assimilating knowledge from books and tutors far more easily and quickly than most of his fellows. In debating-societies he held his own well, and was conspicuous by his ability to control and direct others.
After leaving college young Blaine started for Kentucky to carve out his own fortune. He went to Blue Lick Springs and became a professor in the Western Military Institute, in which there were about four hundred and fifty boys. A retired officer who was a student there at the time relates that Professor Blaine was a thin, handsome, earnest young man, with the same fascinating manners he has now. He was popular with the boys, who trusted him and made friends with him from the first. He knew the given name of every one, and he knew his shortcomings and his strong points. He was a man of great personal courage, and during a fight between the faculty of the school and the owners of the springs, involving some questions about the removal of the school, he behaved in the bravest manner, fighting hard but keeping cool. Revolvers and knives were freely used, but Blaine only used his well-disciplined muscle. Colonel Thornton F. Johnson was the principal of the school, and his wife had a young ladies' school at Millersburg, twenty miles distant. There Blaine met Miss Harriet Stanwood, who subsequently became his wife. She was a Maine girl of excellent family sent to Kentucky to be educated.
After teaching for a while Blaine left Kentucky and went to Philadelphia to study law. While there he taught for a short time at the blind asylum and also wrote for the newspapers. He soon, however, was irresistibly attracted to the State of Maine, and left his native State for a home in the community with which his name is now indissolubly connected. It is somewhat remarkable that this ambitious young man should have gone East instead of West, choosing a State which the young men were fast leavingone whose population in the last forty years has increased very little. He is, indeed, almost the only man who has gone East in the last half-century and risen to any prominence.
Mr. Blaine went to Maine in 1853, and soon afterward married Miss Stanwood, whose family are well known in New England. Through their influence he soon found an occupation in journalism, and until 1860 was actively engaged in editing at different times the Kennebec Journal and the Portland Daily Advertiser. He retained a part ownership in the Kennebec Journal until it began to hamper him in his political career, and then he sold out. A friend has said of him as a journalist: "I have often thought that a great editor, as great perhaps as Horace Greeley, was lost when Mr. Blaine went into politics. He possesses all the qualities of a great journalist: he has a phenomenal memory; he remembers circumstances, dates, names, and places more readily than any other man I ever met."
Wielding a strong, vigorous, aggressive pen, Mr. Blaine soon made its power felt among politicians. He went to Maine at a time when the Whig and Democratic parties were breaking up. Previous to 1854 the Democratic party had governed the State for a quarter of a century, but its power was broken in the September election of that year, through a temporary union of the anti-slavery and temperance elements. In 1855 the different wings of the new party were well consolidated, and in the famous Frémont campaign of 1856 they carried the State, electing Hannibal Hamlin governor by twenty-four thousand majority. Mr. Blaine, during all these exciting times, did not by any means confine himself to writing political leaders. He took an active part in politics, attending Republican meetings throughout the State, and soon made himself one of the recognized Republican leaders in Maine. Of this period of his career, the late Governor Kent, of Maine, who himself stood in the front rank of public men in his State, once wrote as follows:
"Almost from the day of his assuming editorial charge of the Kennebec Journal, at the early age of twenty-three, Mr. Elaine sprang into a position of great influence in the politics and policy of Maine. At twenty-five he was a leading power in the councils of the Republican party, so recognized by Fessenden, Hamlin, the two Morrills, and others, then, and still, prominent in the State. Before he was twenty-nine he was chosen chairman of the executive committee of the Republican organization in Mainea position he has held ever since, and from which he has practically shaped and directed every political campaign in the State, always leading his party to brilliant victory. Had Mr. Blaine been New-England born, he would probably not have received such rapid advancement at so early an age, even with the same ability he possessed. But 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, and, as the foundation of all, a pure character and a masterly ability equal to all demands made upon him."
Mr. Blaine's early political addresses, and especially the ability which he displayed in them as a debater, won him great local reputation, and, during the Frémont campaign, he achieved a distinction as a speaker which insured him a seat in the Legislature, in 1858, though he was not yet thirty years of age and had been but five years in his adopted State. The ability which he displayed as a legislator was so marked that his constituents returned him four years in succession, and the Legislature, recognizing his talents, elected him speaker in 1860 and 1861, a rare honor for so young a man. As a presiding officer he displayed those fine qualifications which afterward made him one of the most brilliant of the long line of able men who have occupied the speaker's chair in the National House of Representatives.
By this time Mr. Blaine had become a professional politician. In other words he had given up all other occupations and made politics his sole employment. This is a fact worthy of serious consideration, for few men in this country have avowedly chosen politics as a calling and succeeded in it as James G. Blaine has succeeded. Most of our statesmen, like Webster and Lincoln, have been eminent lawyers. Blaine studied law thoroughly, but never applied for admission at the bar. Some, like Greeley, have been eminent journalists. Blaine made journalism merely a means to an end, discarding it as soon as it had served his purpose. Blaine has made a systematic and thorough study of politics and political affairs. Constitutional history and international law he made it his business to master. Above all, he has studied men, has learned by careful observation how to handle, to mould, to use his fellow-beings. No man in America to-day is more learned in everything pertaining to the science of statesmanship than James G. Blaine. It is the fashion in this country to decry professional politicians, to uphold the doctrine that the office should seek the man and not the man the office. Yet there can be no more honorable profession than the service of one's country, and surely no man should be blamed for fitting himself for that service as thoroughly and as carefully as for any other profession.
A man of Mr. Blaine's ability, of his rare knowledge of parliamentary usages, and, above all, of his ambitions, was not likely to remain long content with the position of a representative in the State Legislature. As early as 1859 he had an ambition to go to Congress, and he was talked of as a candidate in 1860. But Anson P. Morrill was nominated, Mr. Blaine not having strength enough to obtain the honor. In 1862 Mr. Blaine was nominated to the office, although he was not then so desirous of it as he had been two years before. His patriotic utterances in the convention which nominated him met with a hearty response, and he was elected over his Democratic competitor by the largest majority that had ever been given in his district, it exceeding three thousand. This majority he held in six succeeding and consecutive elections, running it up in one exciting contest to nearly four thousand.
During his first term in Congress Mr. Blaine gave himself up to study and observation, but in the next Congress, the Thirty-ninth, he gained some prominence, and from that time to the end of his congressional career he occupied a foremost place among the Republican leaders. His reputation was that of an exceedingly industrious committeeman. He was a member of the post-office and military committees, and of the committees on appropriations and rules. He paid close attention to the business of the committees, and took an active part in the debates of the House, manifesting practical ability and genius for details. The first remarkable speech which he made in Congress was on the subject of the assumption by the general government of the war debts of the States, in the course of which he urged that the North was abundantly able to carry on the war to a successful issue. This vigorous speech attracted so much attention that two hundred thousand copies of it were circulated in 1864 as a campaign document by the Republican party. In the winter of 1865-66 Mr. Blaine was very energetic in promoting the passage of reconstruction measures. In the early part of 1866 he proposed a resolution which finally became the basis of that part of the fourteenth amendment relating to congressional representation. In the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress he also distinguished himself by the "Blaine amendment" to the military bill, which was universally discussed in the public press of the day.
In 1867 Mr. Blaine made a trip to Europe, returning in time to fight against the greenback heresy, of which he was the foremost opponent. In December he made an elaborate speech on the finances, in which he analyzed Mr. Pendleton's greenback theory. "The remedy for our financial troubles," said he, "will not be found in a superabundance of depreciated paper currency. It lies in the opposite direction, and the sooner the nation finds itself on a specie basis the sooner will the public treasury be freed from embarrassment and private business be relieved from discouragement. Instead, therefore, of entering upon a reckless and boundless issue of legal tenders, with their constant depreciation, if not destruction, of value, let us set resolutely to work and make those already in circulation equal to so many gold dollars."
This was the last great question in the discussion of which Mr. Blaine took part on the floor of the House, his colleagues in 1869 electing him to the office of speaker, vacated by the promotion of Schuyler Colfax to the vice-presidency. The vote stood one hundred and thirty-five votes for Blaine to fifty-seven for Kerr, of Indiana. Mr. Blaine proved himself eminently fitted for the position. As a speaker he may be classed with Henry Clay and General Banks, who are acknowledged to have been the best speakers we have ever had. Blaine was their equal in every respect. The whole force of such a statement as this cannot be felt unless it is fully understood that the speaker of the House of Representatives stands next to the President in power and importance in the United States. The business of Congress is done largely by committees, and the committees of the House are appointed and shaped by the speaker. Then, to say that Blaine was one of our three ablest speakers is to say a great deal, for a long line of very able men have filled the speaker's chair. His quickness, his thorough knowledge of parliamentary law and of the rules, his firmness, clear voice, impressive manner, his ready comprehension of subjects and situations, and his dash and brilliancy, really made him a great presiding officer. He rose to a high place not only in the estimation of his Republican friends, but also of his Democratic opponents, and he was re-elected to the speakership in 1871 and again in 1873. In 1875, the Democratic majority took control, and Mr. Blaine resumed his place on the floor to win fresh laurels as a debater, and to discomfit the majority in many a projected scheme which his quick eye detected and his ready words exposed.