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 “Resolved, That the committee on the judiciary be further
instructed to inquire and report whether it is within the
competency of congress to provide by additional
legislation for the more perfect security of the right of
suffrage to citizens of the United States in all the states of
the Union.
“Resolved, That in prosecuting these inquiries the judiciary
committee shall have the right to send for persons and
papers.”
The negro had become practically disfranchised; the true end of the
war in his rightful liberty as a freeman, in the full sense of the term,
was concerned; and the acts of government in making him a citizen,
and his representation in congress according to the new allotment of
thirty-five representatives for the colored population;—all these ends
had been subverted, these rights abrogated, and the constitution, in
its most sacred and dearly-bought amendments, violently ignored,
and men were there with perjury on their lips and treason in their
hearts, who had countenanced and upheld all of this.
“Let me illustrate,” Mr. Blaine says, “by comparing groups of states of
the same representative strength North and South. Take the states
of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. They send seventeen
representatives to congress. Their aggregate population is
composed of ten hundred and thirty-five thousand whites and twelve
hundred and twenty-four thousand colored; the colored being nearly
two hundred thousand in excess of the whites. Of the seventeen
representatives, then, it is evident that nine were apportioned to
these states by reason of their colored population, and only eight by
reason of their white population; and yet in the choice of the entire
seventeen representatives, the colored voters had no more voice or
power than their remote kindred on the shores of Senegambia or on
the Gold Coast. The ten hundred and thirty-five thousand white
people had the sole and absolute choice of the entire seventeen
representatives.
“In contrast, take two states in the North, Iowa and Wisconsin, with
seventeen representatives. They have a white population of two
million two hundred and forty-seven thousand,—considerably more
than double the entire white population of the three Southern states I
have named. In Iowa and Wisconsin, therefore, it takes one hundred
and thirty-two thousand white population to send a representative to
congress, but in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana every
sixty thousand white people send a representative. In other words,
sixty thousand white people in those Southern states have precisely
the same political power in the government of the country that one
hundred and thirty-two thousand white people have in Iowa and
Wisconsin.”
And it is because this state of things continues and has threatened
every presidential election since then, that the brave deed of
standing in the presence of the perpetrators of the wrong, and
unmasking its hideous mien, is still all the more worthy of notice, and
demands an increased interest; and so we venture to give another
sample of his old Plutarch method of contrast and comparison; the
last few sentences of the speech, constituting as they did his
peroration, and being so pointed, personal, and triumphant in tone
and manner, revealing the man so clearly and forcibly, that we close
our reference to the speech with them, and giving a summary of
argument and powerful, homeward putting of truth, worthy of the
honor of the great cause he pleaded, worthy of the dignity of the high
place in which he spoke, and worthy of himself:—
“Within that entire great organization there is not one man, whose
opinion is entitled to be quoted, that does not desire peace and
harmony and friendship, and a patriotic and fraternal union, between
the North and the South. This wish is spontaneous, instinctive,
universal throughout the Northern states; and yet, among men of
character and sense, there is surely no need of attempting to
deceive ourselves as to the precise truth. First pure, then peaceable.
Gush will not remove a grievance, and no disguise of state rights will
close the eyes of our people to the necessity of correcting a great
national wrong. Nor should the South make the fatal mistake of
concluding that injustice to the negro is not also injustice to the white
man; nor should it ever be forgotten, that for the wrongs of both a
remedy will assuredly be found.
“The war, with all its costly sacrifices, was fought in vain unless equal
rights for all classes be established in all the states of the Union; and
now, in words which are those of friendship, however differently they
may be accepted, I tell the men of the South here on this floor and
beyond this chamber, that even if they could strip the negro of his
constitutional rights, they can never permanently maintain the
inequality of white men in this nation; they can never make a white
man’s vote in the South doubly as powerful in the administration of
the government as a white man’s vote in the North.”
 XVI.
BLAINE AND GARFIELD.

HESE names will be forever linked together in American

history. Not as the names of Lincoln and Seward. They had
little in common except massive powers and a common
work, without any special affinities or friendships other than
of a public and political nature. They were, indeed, friends in a large
sense, and each worthy of the other, constituting largely the nation’s
head, when the greatness of statesmanship is head, and the loyalty
of statesmanship is heart, was the demand of the hour. It was the
cause and circumstance that brought their great lives in unison. And
yet we are not told that in any sense they were like David and
Jonathan,—one at heart in a personal love, as they were one in
mind, devoted to the great concern of the nation’s perpetuity.
But Mr. Garfield and Mr. Blaine, when young men far from their
prime, entered together the thirty-eighth congress in 1863. Those
were dark days, and side by side they fought out in congress halls
the great battle for Liberty and Right against Slavery and Wrong. No
contest commanded talent of a higher order. No men supremer in
those great qualities which give to greatness the sovereign right to
dictate the destiny of mighty interests, and crown, as personal
achievements, those interests with a glory imperishable,—none
better, braver, truer, armed to the point of triumph, ever stood up
against incarnate wrong, to wage the sharp, decisive engagement to
final conquest, than did these men and their noble compeers. They
entered the lists when the breath of battle blew hottest, when the
land was darkest with shadows of the war-cloud, when the nation
was saddest from loss of noble sons by land and sea, when
desperation was stamped in the face of the foe and rankled in his
heart. Like Spartans, there they stood, pouring their vital energies
into the current of the nation’s life, until the end of war, and all its
fruits were gathered in and secured in safety within the iron chest of
the constitution’s sure protection.
It was not for four years, but for thirteen, that they thus held each
other company in their high service of the nation and the world. Such
fellowship as this, rich with every element of honor, could but weld
their hearts in unity. As they grew up into those expansive lives, rare
and fragrant with the choicest gifts of nature, and rich with deeds
worthy of the noblest powers, so that the highest honors of the
nation seemed theirs, they grew not apart, but together. Thinking and
speaking, writing and contending, for the same great measures, their
lives ran in the same great channels.
The friendship of soldiers who have toiled and endured together, is
felt by thousands in our Republic to-day, and the feeling grows
deeper and stronger as the years go by. This is general, and is
common to all, but it is enduring and sincere. Yet there were special,
particular friendships, more personal in their nature, that sprang up
like beautiful plants, upon this larger field. These are not forgotten or
destroyed. The strength of life is in them, and the growth of years is
on them. The immortality of time is theirs. So in the narrower field,
when the life-giving service of years, wrought into the structure of a
nation redeemed, these men added to the charm and glory of the
broader and more general interest, the grace of a special personal
friendliness.
They were just dissimilar enough for this. They were both large,
strong men in physique, and yet not large and portly in the sense of
large and needless bulk of flesh; but fine and strong frames, with
massive heads set squarely upon broad shoulders; arms that swung
with power; bodies filled with health,—not shrunken, dwarfed, or
withered,—and good, stout limbs, that held them well in air, and
moved with speed of the same strong will that commanded and
controlled their utterance. There were ease and grace in every
motion. They stood erect and bore themselves with the dignity of
kings, and yet the merest child was beloved by them. If the one was
deeper and more metaphysical than the other, that other was
broader, richer in generalization,—marshalling his well-armed troops
of knowledge from every field where Right had conquered Wrong,
and moving his battalions with the speed of a swifter march. They
were never left to be bitter contestants at any point; neither had ever
plunged the iron into the soul of the other, or done aught to hinder
the cause of the other’s promotion.
Early in their congressional career they were both stamped as future
candidates for the presidency. They were so thought of and talked
about. But Mr. Blaine’s prominence as a speaker of the House of
Representatives had given him earliest the greater prominence in
this direction, and from various quarters it was being thrust upon
him. But they were friends, and had no bickerings and jealousies on
this account. Garfield could wait, and would. He did not put himself
forward, nor seek it at the hands of friends. He would rather bide his
time, and help another. But that other was not Mr. Blaine, though
they were friends. It was a matter of honor, of state-pride, and of
duty, that he gave his suffrage and his power to John Sherman, of
his own state of Ohio, who had done such magnificent service in the
treasury in paying the national debt and resuming specie payment.
And his great, honest speech was so brilliant and earnest for his
friend at home, that it turned the mind of the convention toward him.
When the crisis came they crowned him, and on the instant the news
was flashed into the presence of Mr. Blaine, while still the cheers
went up in that great assembly in Chicago; he sent his
congratulations to his friend, and said, “Command my services for
the great campaign.” They were friends and brothers still, each
worthy of the other’s highest honor, truest devotion, and fullest
praise. Political lying could not befoul the heart of either with any
member of that brood of vipers which inhabit this sphere in other
breasts. They knew too well the nature and the tactics of the foe. I
have seen a soldier dead upon the field, so blackened with blood
and powder from the fray, that three stood by and claimed him for
their different companies, and none perchance were right.
But no blackening powder of the enemy, no mud of march, no dust of
camp, or any other creature, could so bespatter or besmear these
men so they should fail to know and love each other. The battle had
been long and hard, and desperate to them. Neither could be
pierced or fall without the other’s notice, and full well they knew that
such hard pressure of the enemy would bring them to desperate
straits. But this did not cause them to fear or falter, but to rush on,
through blinding and begriming powder-smoke, to victory. They could
but smile at the enemies’ reports of battle, and of the skill and
bearing of both general and troops, just as when a paper crossed the
lines in Rebellion times the truth came not always with it. Some one
must bear the wrath of those whose flag was ever in the dust, and
whose broken ranks were reeling in defeat. Hard names and lies
were but the sparks,—the flint flash from the clash of arms,—they
but consume themselves, then die away. No man, since all the hate
of treason had blackened Lincoln and our leading men with crimes
imaginary, had had his name politically tarnished with darker words
of calumny than the wise, the good, the sainted Garfield; and yet Mr.
Blaine lived so close to him, so well knew the health and the beauty
of his inward life, the strength and soundness of his character, the
boldness of his purpose, purity of his motive, and the cleanness of
his record,—as history shall record it,—that his voice resounded as it
never had done, from city to city, from state to state, in support of the
man and in vindication of his cause; and the wreath was on his brow,
and multitudes stood, with uncovered heads, to do him honor. His
old, tried friends, who had watched, and studied, and known him for
twenty years had sent him back to congress for the ninth time. The
legislature of Ohio had given him their suffrage and elevated him
spontaneously, without his presence or his asking, to the
senatorship. The convention had nominated, and the people elected
him to the presidency, and all despite the flinging of mud and the
breath of slander. “He was met,” says Mr. Blaine, “with a storm of
detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it continued with
increasing volume until the close of his victorious campaign:—
“‘No might, nor greatness in mortality,
Can censure scope; back-wounding calumny.
The whitest virtue strikes; what king so strong,
 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue.’”
“Under it all,” he says, “he was calm, and strong, and confident;
never lost his self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or
ill-considered word. Indeed, nothing in his whole life is more
remarkable than his bearing through those five full months of
vituperation. The great mass of these unjust imputations passed
unnoticed, and with the general débris of the campaign fell into
oblivion.”
The friendship of Mr. Blaine never waned. He was true as steel. And
when the honors of the nation, who had honored him, were in
Garfield’s hands, the chiefest and the best were for his first best
friend, whom he called to the highest place in his cabinet,—the
premier of the nation. This was no mere compliment. It was an
official act. The success of his administration, which was his greatest
care, depended largely upon his secretary of state. He must be clean
as well as competent,—a king in skill and scholarship, as well as
brother, friend. It must then have been an act of his best judgment,
as well as an expression of regard. And yet it was as well respect for
the millions, represented by the large and strong delegations who
voted for him with such strength of purpose for five-and-thirty times.
Four months, less two days, he sat at his right hand in the highest
counsels of the country, a wise, and honored, and trusted man. He
could not have been there had not Garfield known him,—but he did
know him through and through, and because he knew him so
thoroughly and well, he placed the keeping of the nation’s wisdom,
integrity, and honor before the world, and in the great world abroad,
into his hands.
“The heart is wiser than the head,” and knows more deeply into life
and character, than simple, abstract thought can penetrate. It
receives and knows the whole man as a whole, knows him as a
person in his every element of personality in reason, conscience,
affections, will; knows him by the touch of moral reason, for pure
intellect may act alone comparatively in abstract questions, of
metaphysical thought, but the heart never. The true enlightenment is
here. It is the abode of motive, purpose, plan,—out of it are the
issues of life itself.
We are ignorant of those we hate, as the South was of the North
before the war, and hence her braggart boasts. But those whom we
know deeply, fully, truly, we love deeply, fully, truly. Love lights the
path of reason, when it carries the whole reason with it, and
furnishes by reciprocal acts of confidence data for its guidance. And
thus we love our way into each other’s lives, while reason thus
enlightened, helps us on.
It was thus with these great men of the nation’s hope, her honor, and
her trust. They sat, they stood, they walked, they talked together,
their great hearts open as the day, shining full upon each other. And
as they shone thus on each other’s life, there was a blending, and so
a mutual life, an interlacing, twining, locking, and so a unity.
Every walk in life furnishes its friendships; and the greater the walk
may be, the greater are the friendships; for the greater the affinities,
the broader the sympathies, the purer, sweeter, more supreme the
life; for the true life is never isolated, but unstarved in every part. The
king has his queen, the Czar his Czarina. Only the small-souled men
are shrunken hearted, while large, capacious spirits take in worlds.
Perhaps the country never possessed two men at the same time
who had more friends of the solid and reliable sort than these men,
who admired and loved to honor, and honored because they loved,
and this because they lived out their splendid natures before their
countrymen, hating every mean thing, loving and praising the good.
They were not dark, unfathomable mysteries, enigmas, puzzles,
problems, staring at you, unsolved, and daring you to the thankless
task, and promising but the gloom of deeper shadows; you felt you
knew them. They did not stand aloof, daring you mount up to them,
but coming down, they sat beside you, and made you feel akin, and
not blush out your feelings of a doomed inferiority; and this great-
heartedness, beating responsive to the strong, warm touch of nature,
made them friends.
Garfield did not live to draw the picture of his Blaine, but Blaine has
lived to draw the picture of his Garfield.
“It is not easy,” he says, “to find his counterpart anywhere in the
record of American public life. He, perhaps, more nearly resembles
Mr. Seward in his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a
principle. He had the love of learning, and patient industry of
investigation to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence,
and his presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of
mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in all our
public life, have left the great Massachusetts senator without an
intellectual peer.
“Some of his methods recall the best features in the strong,
independent course of Sir Robert Peel, to whom he had striking
resemblance in the type of his mind and the habit of his speech. He
had all of Burke’s love for the sublime and the beautiful, with,
possibly, something of his superabundance. In his faith and his
magnanimity; in his power of statement and subtle analysis; in his
faultless logic, and his love of literature; in his wealth and mode of
illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of to-
day,—Gladstone.”
But the nation seems to commemorate most fittingly the friendship of
those two men, when in the person of its representatives and
senators it selects to deliver the eulogy of the dead president. Not
any of his colleagues in the House from his native state, however
long or well they may have known him; nor his colleague in the
senate; no governor of his honored state; his loved and cultured
pastor, nor any other man than Blaine,—his chosen counsellor in the
great affairs of state; he who was with him when, on that quiet,
happy morning in July, they rode slowly to the depot, and “his fate
was on him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong,
confident in the years stretching out peacefully before him;—the next
he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of
torture, to silence, and the grave.”
And now, as the hand of Mr. Blaine draws aside the curtain, let us
look in upon the final scene in the life and death of his great friend,
and see, as he saw, the man so deeply, truly loved by the great
nation he had just begun to rule so well.
“Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in
the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of
murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world’s interest; from
its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of
death, and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in
which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its
relinquishment; but through days of deadly languor; through weeks
of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne; with clear
sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight
and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell? What brilliant,
broken plans; what baffled high ambitions; what sundering of strong,
warm manhood’s friendships; what bitter rending of sweet household
ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining
friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors
of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay
in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood’s day of frolic;
the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons, just springing into closest
companionship, claiming every day and every hour the reward of a
father’s love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to
meet all demands. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And
his soul was not shaken.
“His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal
sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre
of a nation’s love; enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love
and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod
the wine-press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With
unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss
of the assassin’s bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple
resignation he bowed to the divine decree.
“As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of
pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its
oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness, and its hopelessness.
Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to
the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will,
within sight of its heaving billows, within hearing of its manifold
voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze,
he looked out wistfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders; on its far
sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling
shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red
clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and
shining pathway of the stars. Let us believe that in the silence of the
receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further
shore, and felt, already upon his wasted brow, the breath of the
eternal morning.”
 XVII.
SECRETARY OF STATE.

R. BLAINE was a member of the cabinets of President

Garfield and of President Arthur for ten months, retiring at
his own request, in January, 1881.
The Foreign Policy of the Garfield administration, as conducted by
Mr. Blaine, was emphatically a Peace Policy. It was without the
motive or disposition of war in any form. It was one of dignity and
uprightness, as a work of twelve hundred and fifty pages, entitled
“Foreign Relations of the United States for 1881,” and another book
entitled “War in South America, and attempt to bring about Peace,
1880-81,” a book of about eight hundred pages, both printed by the
United States Government, and now before us, amply testify.
Its two objects, as distinctly stated by him, were: first, to bring about
peace, and prevent future wars in North and South America; second,
to cultivate such friendly commercial relations with all American
countries as would increase the export trade of the United States, by
supplying those fabrics in which we are abundantly able to compete
with the manufacturing nations of Europe.
The second depended on the first. For three years Chili, Peru, and
Bolivia had been engrossed in war, and the friendly offices of the
United States Government had barely averted it between Chili and
the Argentine Republic, postponed it between Guatemala and
Mexico; so also it might in these South American Republics. War
was threatened between Brazil and Uruguay, and foreshadowed
between Brazil and the Argentine states.
To induce the Spanish American states to adopt some peaceful
mode of adjusting their frequently recurring contentions, was
regarded by President Garfield as one of the most honorable and
useful ends to which the diplomacy of the United States could
contribute; and in the line of the policy indicated, is a letter from Mr.
Blaine to Gen. S. A. Hurlbut, United States Minister to Peru. While it
shows the spirit of the president, it shows as well the hand and heart
of his secretary:—
“Department of State,
“Washington, June 15, 1881.
“Sir:—The deplorable condition of Peru, the
disorganization of its government, and the absence of
precise and trustworthy information as to the state of
affairs now existing in that unhappy country, render it
impossible to give you instructions as full and definite as I
would desire.
“Judging from the most recent despatches from our
ministers, you will probably find on the part of the Chilian
authorities in possession of Peru, a willingness to facilitate
the establishment of the provisional government which
has been attempted by Senor Calderon. If so you will do
all you properly can to encourage the Peruvians to accept
any reasonable conditions and limitations with which this
concession may be accompanied. It is vitally important to
Peru, that she be allowed to resume the functions of a
native and orderly government, both for the purposes of
internal administration and the negotiation of peace. To
obtain this end it would be far better to accept conditions
which may be hard and unwelcome, than by demanding
too much to force the continuance of the military control of
Chili. It is hoped that you will be able, in your necessary
association with the Chilian authorities, to impress upon
them that the more liberal and considerate their policy, the
 surer it will be to obtain a lasting and satisfactory
settlement. The Peruvians cannot but be aware of the
sympathy and interest of the people and government of
the United States, and will, I feel confident, be prepared to
give to your representations the consideration to which the
friendly anxiety of this government entitles them.
“The United States cannot refuse to recognize the rights
which the Chilian government has acquired by the
successes of the war, and it may be that a cession of
territory will be the necessary price to be paid for peace....
“As a strictly confidential communication, I inclose you a
copy of instructions sent this day to the United States
minister at Santiago. You will thus be advised of the
position which this government assumes toward all the
parties to this deplorable conflict. It is the desire of the
United States to act in a spirit of the sincerest friendship to
the three republics, and to use its influence solely in the
interest of an honorable and lasting peace.
“JAMES G. BLAINE.”
The appointment of William Henry Trescot as Spanish envoy, with
the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary to the republics of Chili, Peru,
and Bolivia, was done in the same regard, not only of the nation’s
honor, but also of peace and that commerce which brings prosperity
and happiness.
It has long been felt, and is felt deeply to-day, that there are many
kindly offices of state which this great nation may offer to weaker,
feebler, and distressed peoples, for their good and for our glory; that
it is not enough to be simply an example and an asylum, but to be a
potent benefactor in a direct and personal way, teaching them that
peace, not war, is the secret of growth and greatness. This, in effect,
was the object of the peace congress, which was a cherished design
of the administration, and to which Mr. Blaine was fully committed.
No wonder that such a project commanded the thought and enlisted
the sympathies of such men as Garfield and his great premier; and
Mr. Blaine tells us that it was the intention, resolved on before the
fatal shot of July 2d, to invite all the independent governments of
North and South America to meet in such a congress at Washington,
on March 15, 1882, and the invitations would have been issued
directly after the New England tour the president was not permitted
to make. But the invitations were sent out by Mr. Blaine on the 22d of
November, when in Mr. Arthur’s cabinet. It met with cordial approval
in South American countries, and some of them at once accepted
the invitations. But in six weeks President Arthur caused the
invitations to be recalled, or suspended, and referred the whole
matter to congress, where it was lost in debate, just as the Panama
congress was wrecked when Mr. Clay was secretary of state over
fifty years ago.
It was argued that such an assemblage of representatives from
those various states would not only elevate their standard of
civilization, and lead to the fuller development of a continent at
whose wealth Humboldt was amazed, but it would also bring them
nearer us and turn the drift of their European trade to our American
shores. As it is, they have a coin balance of trade against us every
year, of one hundred and twenty millions of dollars, and this money
is shipped from our country to Europe, to pay for their immense
purchases there. Their petroleum comes from us, but crosses the
Atlantic twice before it gets to them, and the middle-men in Europe
receive a larger profit on it than the producers of the oil in north-
western Pennsylvania.
It may be both wise and prudent, in order to completeness of
biography, to state two aspersions,—one of war, and the other of
gain,—cast upon the policy of Mr. Blaine.
William Henry Trescot, in a published letter dated July 17, 1882,
states “his knowledge of certain matters connected with Mr. Blaine’s
administration as secretary of state”:—
“2. As to your designing a war, that supposition is too absurd for
serious consideration. If you had any such purpose it was carefully
concealed from me, and I left for South America with the impression
that I would utterly fail in my mission if I did not succeed in obtaining
an amicable settlement of the differences between the belligerents.
“3. In regard to the Cochet and Landreau claims, it is sufficient to say
that you rejected the first, absolutely. As to the second, you
instructed General Hurlbut to ask, if the proper time for such request
should come, that Landreau might be heard before a Peruvian
tribunal in support of his claim.
“General Hurlbut, although approving the justice of Landreau’s claim
in his dispatch of Sept. 14, 1881, never brought it in any way to the
notice of the Peruvian government. During my mission in South
America, I never referred to it, so that, in point of fact, during your
secretaryship the Landreau claim was never mentioned by ministers
of the United States, either to the Chilian or Peruvian government. It
could not, therefore, have affected the then pending diplomatic
questions in the remotest degree.”
But for these he appeared and answered, in company with Mr.
Trescot, before the House committee on foreign affairs, Hon. Charles
G. Williams, of Wisconsin, chairman.
“He received a vindication,” is the simple report.
“I think Mr. Blaine has rather enjoyed his opportunity, and his
triumph,” writes one. “It is inspiring to have Mr. Blaine associated
with public affairs again, if only as a witness before a committee.
How the country rings with his name, the moment he breaks silence!
His familiar face, framed in rapidly whitening hair; his elastic figure,
growing almost venerable, from recent associations; his paternal
manner toward young Jimmie, his name-sake son, whom by some
whim of fancy, he had with him during the examination,—all these
were elements of interest in the picture.”
And now comes a beautiful prophecy, two years old, which shows
how one may argue his way into the future by the hard and certain
logic of events. It is this: “The administration will have to do
something that shall appeal strongly to the popular heart; something
out of the line of hospitalities within its own charmed circle;
something magnetic and heroic, or else ‘Blaine, of Maine,’ will
become so idolized in the minds of the people that he will be
invincible in 1884.”
In all of his foreign correspondence there is, in one particular, a
striking likeness between Mr. Blaine and President Lincoln,—the
man is not lost in the statesman, but rather the man is the
statesman.
As Abraham Lincoln in all his giant form appears upon the forefront
of every public document that came from his hand, so James G.
Blaine is photographed from life in every state-paper that bears his
name. He copies no model, he stands on no pedestal,—his
personality is free and untrammeled in every utterance.
In his paper to Mr. Lowell, our Minister to England, of Nov. 29, 1881,
we get a full view of the man at his work.
A modification of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of April 19, 1850, is the
subject in hand. His instructions had been sent ten days before. A
week afterwards the response of Lord Granville to his circular note of
June 24, in relation to the neutrality of any canal across the Isthmus
of Panama, had been received.
And so he proceeded to give a summary of the historical objections
to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and the very decided differences of
opinion between the two governments, to which its interpretation has
given rise. And this he does with singular skill and aptness, which is
not unusual to him, when the philosophy of history is needful as the
servant of his genius.
No less than sixteen direct quotations of from two to eight lines each,
are given in a letter of six large pages, taken from the discussion of
the subject for thirty years, while the main body of the letter, in its
various parts, shows a comprehensive grasp of details, a familiarity
with utterances of the leading men of the past, and with England’s
operations under the treaty, as to prove conclusively that in the
highest realms of statesmanship, mastery is still the one word that
defines the man.
His previous letter of instructions, presenting an analysis of the
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, singling out the objectionable features to be
abrogated, and stating his reasons, is of the same clear, strong type,
compactly written, and applying the great arguments of common
sense to a subject of international importance.
“The convention,” he says, “was made more than thirty years ago,
under exceptional and extraordinary conditions, which have long
since ceased to exist,—conditions which at best were temporary in
their nature, and which can never be reproduced.
“The development of the Pacific coast places responsibility upon our
government which it cannot meet, and not control the canal now
building, and just as England controls the Suez canal.
“England requires and sustains an immense navy, for which we have
no use, and might at any time seize the canal, and make it
impossible for us to marshal a squadron in Pacific waters, without a
perilous voyage ourselves around the Horn.”
Great events of permanent importance would doubtless have been
the result, had the president and his secretary been permitted to
continue as they were for the full term of office. Already Mr. Blaine
was showing himself a master in the arts of diplomacy, not with
aught of cunning artifice or sly interrogation, but with straight-
forward, solid utterances upon the great interests of the nation’s
weal. Not only of the loved and honored president did the assassin’s
bullet deprive us, but also of the services of Mr. Blaine, as well. A
Providence more kind seems to be giving him back to the nation, to
complete their unfinished work.
 XVIII.
HOME LIFE OF MR. BLAINE.

N his “Letters to the Joneses” J. G. Holland describes

various homes as possessing all the elements of an
empire, a kingdom, a monarchy, or a republic. Mr. Blaine’s
home is a republic. Every member of his family seems to
be on an absolute equality; and he, as one, has described him, and
an intimate friend confirmed it, is more like a big brother than aught
beside. Certainly he is no emperor, no monarch, czar, or king. He is
not even president or governor, nor chieftain there, or general; but
rather the senior member of the family, the head by right of priority.
He is there deeply loved, greatly respected, and highly honored.
Why need he be a tyrant where a father’s wisdom and a father’s love
will serve him best and win high encomiums of praise? Why not
shine on when he enters there, as well as in the places of the state
and nation, or in the simpler walks and haunts of men? Why put out
his light when among those who most admire and love? Why ring
down the curtain upon all those splendid qualities of soul that make
him famous in the world abroad, when in the charmed circle of those
who love and share his fame and honor?
Mr. Blaine’s first home in Augusta was the eastern half of a large,
brown, double house, on Green Street, nearly opposite the
Methodist church. It was a simple, unpretentious, pleasant home, all
through his editorial, legislative, and on into his congressional life. It
was where he did the hard work of those first years, where he made