THE DEFEAT OF BLAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
By Murat Halstead.
HE fame of Blaine does not decline, but increases and will endure. It was not his destiny to fill the greater office created by our Constitution, but with a distinction exceeding that of the majority of Presidents, he is enrolled, with Clay, Webster, and Seward, among the illustrious Secretaries of State. The defeat of James G. Blaine for the Presidency in 1884 will rank among the memorable disappointments and misfortunes of the people with that of Henry Clay, forty years before.
Late in the week before the meeting of the Chicago National Republican Convention in 1884, I received in Cincinnati a telegram from Mr. Blaine requesting me to call on him in Washington, where he lived on the opposite side of Lafayette Square from that of the celebrated old house where he spent his last days. He was engaged on his "Twenty Years in Congress." I called on him the day after his despatch reached me, making haste, for I was about to go to Chicago; and he first said he feared he had sent for me on an insufficient errand, and after a moment's pause began to speak of the approaching convention, and quickly used the expression—"I am alarmed."
MR. BLAINE IN 1891.
This is accounted one of the best portraits of Mr. Blaine in existence. It is from a photograph taken at Bar Harbor in the autumn of 1891 by Mr. A. von Mumm Schwartzenstein, then Charge d'Affaires of the German Empire at Washington, and is here reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W.E. Curtis.
"Concerning what are you frightened?" I inquired; and added: "You surely are not afraid you are not going to be nominated?"
He responded with a flash of his eyes and a smile: "Oh, no; I am afraid I shall be nominated, and have sent for you for that reason, and want you to assist in preventing my nomination." I shook my head, and Mr. Blaine asked: "Why not?"
I said I had not been so long in his confidence and known by his friends to be of them, to venture upon such an enterprise as working in opposition. If I should appear actively against him, no matter how I presented the matter, the easy answer to any argument of mine would be that I had relapsed into personal antagonism to him. I then said: "I have not heard of this;" and asked: "Are there many who know that you are against your candidacy?" He said he had talked freely to that effect, and mentioned William Walter Phelps as one who was fully acquainted with his views, and also Colonel Parsons, of the Natural Bridge, Virginia, then in the house. I said: "Mr. Blaine, I think it is too late. I have looked over the field, and your nomination is almost certain—the drift is your way. Why precisely do you object, and what exactly do you think should happen?" He replied in his rapid way with much feeling, and I believe his very words were: "The objection to my nomination is that I cannot be elected. With the South solid against us we cannot succeed without New York, and I cannot carry that State. There are factions there and influences before voting and after voting, such that the party cannot count upon success with me. I am sure of it—I have thought it all over, and my deliberate judgment is as I tell you. I know, too, where I am strong as well as where I am weak—and we might, if we should get into the campaign with my name at the head of the ticket, think we were going to win. We would get to believing it, perhaps, but we should miss it in the end, if not by a great deal, just a little. With everything depending on New York," he continued, "it would be a mistake to nominate me. This is not new to me—I have weighed all the chances. Besides"—and here he kindled—"why should we let the country go into the hands of Democrats when we can name a ticket that is certain to be elected—one that would sweep every Northern State?"
"What is it?" I asked.
The answer came with vivid animation: "William T. Sherman and Robert T. Lincoln." This idea was instantly amplified. "The names of Sherman and Lincoln put together would be irresistible. That ticket would elect itself. We should have a campaign of marching and song. We need the inspiration, and 'Marching Through Georgia' and 'We Are Coming, Father Abraham,' would give it. We must not lose this campaign, and I am alarmed by the prospect of losing it in my name."
"But," I interposed, "it is the report and the public opinion that General Sherman would not consent to be a candidate; that he would throw the party down that would nominate him. Why not try the other Sherman?"
Mr. Blaine's response was that John Sherman would have the like difficulty in carrying New York that he would have himself. The element of military heroism was wanting. He had written to General Sherman on the subject, and of course the General thought he could not consent to be President—for that was what it amounted to—but his reasoning was fallacious. If General Sherman had the question put to him—whether to be President himself or turn the office over to the Democratic party, with the Solid South dominant—he would see his duty and do it, though his reluctance was real.
I said General Sherman could not consent to appear in competition with his brother John at Chicago, though he had a funny way of looking on John in West Point style as a "politician," and that was an insuperable difficulty; and that, Mr. Blaine did not seem to have thought of as a serious element in the case, but he realized the force of it. I was anxious to hear more about the correspondence between Blaine and General Sherman; but was only told that the letter to the General was a call to consider that circumstances might arise, and should do so, in which the General's sense of duty could be appealed to, and be as strong as that to take up arms had been when the Union demanded defenders.
MR. BLAINE AT HIS DESK IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT.
From a photograph by Miss F.B. Johnston.
Arrived at Chicago, I soon ascertained that Mr. Blaine had been doing a good deal of talking of the same kind I had heard, but he had not been able to impress the more robust of those favorable to his nomination with the view that he should be heeded. They insisted that he was not wise, but timid; that he did not like war and would do too much for peace; that he especially miscalculated when he said he could not carry New York, for he was the very man who could carry it; that his personal force was far beyond his own estimation; that his intuitions were like those of a woman, but were not infallible; that his singing the campaign was a fancy; that "Marching Through Georgia" would wear out, and was of the stuff of dreams. Mr. Blaine's accredited friends felt that things had gone too far to permit a change to be contemplated. They were half mad at Blaine for his Sherman and Lincoln proposal, which was confidentially in the air, regarding it as not favorable to themselves. They said they could carry the country more certainly with Blaine than Sherman, for Sherman was an uncertain political quantity, and might turn out to be almost the devil himself. Some of them said he would proclaim martial law and annihilate the Constitution! They were sure the force of the celebrity of General Sherman in a campaign had been overestimated by Blaine, who had the caprice and high color in his imagination that produce schemes too fine for success. In a word, Sherman and Lincoln were not practical politicians. Blaine's idea was not politics, but poetry. What they wanted was the magnetism and magic of Blaine. The country was at any rate safely in the hands of the Republican party. They had nearly lost the election because they had not nominated Blaine eight years before, and won with Garfield because he was a Blaine man. The wisdom of the Republican politicians was thus against Blaine's ticket so far as it was known; and those favorable to President Arthur, John Sherman, John A. Logan, and George F. Edmunds did not give the least credit to the statement that Blaine did not want the nomination. His rumored objection to making the race—of course the real reasons were not known—was regarded as a mere "play" in politics, if not altogether fantastic; and they pursued their own courses heedless of the real conditions. There was a singular complication of errors of judgment in the Blaine opposition. The friends of Arthur took the complimentary resolutions from a majority of the States to mean his nomination. In truth, the significance of that unanimity was quite otherwise. Ohio was not solid for Sherman. It is a State that has been very hard to manage in national conventions—was so in the time when Chase was the Republican leader—divided in '60, nominating Lincoln, and rarely presented a front without a flaw for a national candidate. The energy of Logan's friends was not sufficiently supported to give confidence. The reformers by profession and of prominence were for Edmunds; and they were a body of men who had force, if judiciously applied, to have carried the convention, provided they divested themselves of the peculiarities of extreme elevation that prevent efficiency. While they assumed to have soared above practical politics and to abhor the ways of the "toughs" in championing candidates, they subordinated their own usefulness to a sentiment that was limited to a senator—Mr. Edmunds. It was clear at an early hour that the nomination of Mr. Edmunds was impossible. He was put into the combat by Governor Long with a splendid speech, and the mellow eloquence of George William Curtis was for him, and Carl Schurz was a counsellor who upheld the banner of the lawyer statesman of Vermont. The conclusion was to stick to Edmunds; and they stuck until the last, and frittered away their influence. They were in such shape they might, by going in force, at a well-selected time and in a dramatic way, have carried the convention with them. They could not, however, get their own consent to go for Logan, or Arthur, or either of the Shermans; and so Blaine was overruled and nominated.
He did a wonderful work in the campaign, and was himself apparently satisfied at last that his apprehensions as to New York had been unwarranted. Still his words came back to me often during the heat of the summer and the fierce contest. "I cannot carry New York; we shall lose it, perhaps by just a little—but we shall lose it;" and so we did. As the vote was counted the plurality of Mr. Cleveland over Mr. Blaine in the decisive State was one thousand and forty-seven. Gail Hamilton says, in her "Life of Blaine," of the New York election, that there was a plurality claimed on election day for Cleveland of fifty thousand, and "the next day the figures came down to seventeen thousand; then to twelve thousand; the next day to five thousand, and at length dwindled to four hundred and fifty-six." The election was on the 4th, and it was nearly two weeks before a decision was announced. General Butler "openly proclaimed that the New York vote for himself was counted to Cleveland." The "just a little" by which Blaine was beaten was on the face of the returns one thousand and forty-seven, and John Y. McKane was ten years afterward convicted of frauds that were perpetrated as he willed, that amounted to thousands. There was a fraud capacity in the machines of many times the plurality by which Blaine was defeated, and there never was a rational doubt that it was exerted. A change of six hundred votes would have given the Plumed Knight the Presidency, and outside the Solid South he had a popular majority, "leaving out the protested vote of New York and Brooklyn, of nearly half a million." Mr. Blaine, when it became known that the New York vote was held to be against him, and civil war was threatened if the returns were rectified, telegraphed to friends asking their opinion of the New York situation; and I had the honor to be one consulted. My reply was that the New York influences that had prevailed to cause the declaration of a plurality for Cleveland would be sufficient to maintain that determination. Then came the opportunity of those unkindly toward Mr. Blaine to charge him with forcing himself on the Republican party and ruining it with his reckless candidacies, and I thought the facts within my knowledge should be given the public, and wrote to General Sherman, asking him to allow me to publish the correspondence between himself and Blaine, proving that the nomination, instead of being forced by Blaine for himself, was forced upon him; and I wrote to Blaine also, to the same effect. I received from the General the remarkable letters following:
GENERAL SHERMAN TO MR. HALSTEAD.
912 GARRISON AVENUE,
ST. LOUIS, MO., November 17, 1884.
DEAR HALSTEAD:—After my former letter, when I went to put the newspaper slip into my scrap-book, I discovered my mistake in attributing the article to the "Louisville" instead of the "London Times." My opinion is nevertheless not to contest the matter, as the real truth will manifest itself.[9]
I think Arthur could have carried the Republicans past the last election[10]—but no man can tell what issues would have been made in case of his nomination. So the wisest conclusion is to accept gracefully the actual result, and to profit by the mistakes and accidents sure to attend the new administration, handicapped as it will surely be by the hot heads of the South. Truly yours,
W.T. SHERMAN.
912 GARRISON AVENUE,
ST. LOUIS, MO., November 21, 1884.
DEAR HALSTEAD:—I have yours of the 19th. The letter of Blaine to me was meant as absolutely confidential, and of course I would not allow any person to see it without his consent. I am not sure that I would, even with his consent, because I believe the true policy is to look ahead and not behind. Blaine's letter without any answer would be incomplete, and surely I will not have my letter published, as it contained certain points purely personal which the public has no right to. New questions will arise, and these will give you plenty of occupation without raking up the past.
Wishing you always all honor and fame, I am,
Truly yours,
W.T. SHERMAN.
The letters that passed between Blaine and Sherman have appeared in Gail Hamilton's "Biography of Blaine," but have not commanded attention according to their interest, because they have not been framed by the relation of the circumstances that gave them significance and that are supplied in this article.
MR. BLAINE TO GENERAL SHERMAN.
(Confidential.)
Strictly and absolutely so.
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 25, 1884.
MY DEAR GENERAL:—This letter requires no answer. After reading it carefully, file it away in your most secret drawer, or give it to the flames.
At the approaching convention in Chicago it is more than possible—it is indeed not improbable—that you may be nominated for the Presidency. If so you must stand your hand, accept the responsibility, and assume the duties of the place to which you will surely be chosen if a candidate. You must not look upon it as the work of the politicians. If it comes to you, it will come as the ground-swell of popular demand; and you can no more refuse than you could have refused to obey an order when you were a lieutenant in the army. If it comes to you at all, it will come as a call of patriotism. It would, in such an event, injure your great fame as much to decline it as it would for you to seek it. Your historic record, full as it is, would be rendered still more glorious by such an administration as you would be able to give the country. Do not say a word in advance of the convention, no matter who may ask you. You are with your friends, who will jealously guard your honor.
Do not answer this.
JAMES G. BLAINE.
GENERAL SHERMAN TO MR. BLAINE.
ST. LOUIS, May 28, 1884.
HON. J.G. BLAINE.
MY DEAR FRIEND:—I have received your letter of the 25th; shall construe it as absolutely confidential, not intimating even to any member of my family that I have heard from you; and though you may not expect an answer, I hope you will not construe one as unwarranted. I have had a great many letters from all points of the compass to a similar effect, one or two of which I have answered frankly; but the great mass are unanswered. I ought not to subject myself to the cheap ridicule of declining what is not offered; but it is only fair to the many really able men who rightfully aspire to the high honor of being President of the United States to let them know that I am not, and must not be construed as, a rival. In every man's life there occurs an epoch when he must choose his own career, and when he may not throw the responsibility, or tamely place his destiny in the hands of friends. Mine occurred in Louisiana when, in 1861, alone in the midst of a people blinded by supposed wrongs, I resolved to stand by the Union as long as a fragment of it survived to which to cling. Since then, through faction, tempest, war, and peace, my career has been all my family and friends could ask. We are now in a good home of our choice, with reasonable provision for old age, surrounded by kind and admiring friends, in a community where Catholicism is held in respect and veneration, and where my children will naturally grow up in contact with an industrious and frugal people. You have known and appreciated Mrs. Sherman from childhood, have also known each and all the members of my family, and can understand, without an explanation from me, how their thoughts and feelings should and ought to influence my action; but I will not even throw off on them the responsibility. I will not, in any event, entertain or accept a nomination as a candidate for President by the Chicago Republican convention, or any other convention, for reasons personal to myself. I claim that the Civil War, in which I simply did a man's fair share of work, so perfectly accomplished peace, that military men have an absolute right to rest, and to demand that the men who have been schooled in the arts and practice of peace shall now do their work equally well. Any senator can step from his chair at the Capitol into the White House, and fulfil the office of President with more skill and success than a Grant, Sherman or Sheridan, who were soldiers by education and nature, who filled well their office when the country was in danger, but were not schooled in the practices by which civil communities are, and should be, governed. I claim that our experience since 1865 demonstrates the truth of this my proposition. Therefore I say that "patriotism" does not demand of me what I construe as a sacrifice of judgment, of inclination, and of self-interest. I have my personal affairs in a state of absolute safety and comfort. I owe no man a cent, have no expensive habits or tastes, envy no man his wealth or power, [have] no complications or indirect liabilities, and would account myself a fool, a madman, an ass, to embark anew, at sixty-five years of age, in a career that may, at any moment, [become] tempest-tossed by the perfidy, the defalcation, the dishonesty, or neglect of any one of a hundred thousand subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United States, not to say the eternal worriment by a vast host of impecunious friends and old military subordinates. Even as it is, I am tortured by the charitable appeals of poor distressed pensioners; but as President, these would be multiplied beyond human endurance. I remember well the experience of Generals Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Hayes and Garfield, all elected because of their military services, and am warned, not encouraged, by their sad experiences. No—count me out. The civilians of the United States should, and must, buffet with this thankless office, and leave us old soldiers to enjoy the peace we fought for, and think we earned.
With profound respect, your friend,
W.T. SHERMAN.
FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER WRITTEN BY MR. BLAINE TO MR. HALSTEAD JUST AFTER MR. BLAINE'S DEFEAT FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1884, AND NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED— THE SAME LETTER THAT IS EMBODIED IN THE TEXT OF THIS ARTICLE ON PAGE 169.
CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER TO MR. HALSTEAD
CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER TO MR. HALSTEAD
NOTE.—We omit from this reproduction a short postscript which is given in the text on page 170.
There is intrinsic evidence that these letters were not written with a thought of possible publication. That which General Sherman says about Catholicism could only have been told to a close and sympathetic friend. Mrs. Sherman and Mr. Blaine were cousins, and their mothers were Catholics. Mrs. Sherman was one whose devotion to the Church was intense; and General Sherman could not endure the thought that her religion should be subjected to such discussions as were certain to arise in a Presidential campaign. She was a very noble and gifted woman, and the happiness of herself and husband in their domestic life was beautiful and elevated.
James G. Blaine was nearer the Presidency than any other man who did not reach the office. It was by a very narrow margin that he missed the nomination in Cincinnati in 1876; and the opposition he encountered there from Republican editors was regretted by all of them, because they believed when the storm ceased that he had been accused excessively, sensationally, and maliciously, and condemned—by those who did not appreciate his vindication—on evidence that was indicated but not presented—on letters supposed to have been taken from the original package, and that were not produced because they never existed. The investigations were largely instigated and carried on to continue agitation with the purpose to strike down a brilliant man whose genius gave him almost incredible promotion, and to assail him because he was lofty and aspiring. The personal fight that he made in Congress when cruelly set upon was one of the most effective that ever took place in a public body. A competent observer, who was a spectator of the scene in the House when the Mulligan letters were read, said as Blaine came down the aisle, the letters in his hand, and called upon all the millions of his countrymen to be witnesses: "I thought his fist was going right up through the dome." Unhappily, his exciting experiences in the course of these fierce controversies, with the conduct of his Cincinnati campaign, and the sultry weather, caused his prostration, attended with hours of unconsciousness, just at the critical time when the delegates were assembling in national convention. The local influences; the Republican editorial antagonism; the enthusiastic efforts for Bristow; the strenuous perseverance of Morton of Indiana; the prestige of Conkling, backed with the high favor of Grant; the solidity of Ohio for Hayes—all would have been overwhelmed but for the incident of the fall of Blaine in a swoon at the door of the church which he was in the habit of attending and that he was about to enter with his wife. It is reasonable to believe, if he had been the candidate that year, he could have carried the election unequivocally, and that his administration would have vastly strengthened the Republican party. It is due President Hayes, however, to say that his administration of the great office was an era of good for the country, and that he was succeeded by a Republican; but the fact of a disputed Presidency had a far-reaching evil influence, and prevented showing fair play in New York in 1884. Blaine lost in his illness coincident with the Cincinnati convention the confidence of the country in his firm health and strength, and that handicapped him to his grave. Perhaps it is even more important that he lost faith in himself as a strong man, and had almost a superstition that if he became President it would be for him personally a fatality. And yet he was intellectually a growing man for fifteen years after his Cincinnati defeat. His greater works, his most influential ideas, the full fruition of his gifts, were after that catastrophe.
Mr. Blaine was so strong and so weak, so delicate and so tenacious, that he was as constant a puzzle to those who loved him as to his enemies, to the best-informed as to the most ill-informed. Those very near to him took the liberty of laughing at him about his two overcoats, and his going to bed and sending for a doctor in the afternoon, and getting off with gayety to the opera in the evening; about an alleged indigestion followed by eating a confection that would have tested the hardihood of a young candy-eater. One who studied him with affection wrote of him that he had an association of qualities giving at once sensitiveness and endurance, and we were indebted to this for the faculties, the capacities, that made up the man whose influence had been so remarkable and his popularity a phenomenon. He was of fine sensibilities, and there was nothing on earth or in the air that did not tell him something. He was like an instrument of music that a breath would move to melody, and that was ever in tune for any wind that blew, and yet had patient strength, and wore like steel. He had a rare make-up of refinement and power, and life was sweeter and brighter and more costly far to him than to the ordinary man.
It was after his first and, as it turned out, final defeat for the Presidency, in his earliest effort for the office, that his fame grew splendid. His campaigning was fascinating, and his speeches, as the years passed, took greater variety. In his tour when a candidate in 1884, his addresses were marvellous in aptitude and in a thousand felicities. There was much said of the fact that he was not a lawyer, and an affected superiority to him by gentlemen whose profession permitted "fees," and there was a system of deprecation to the effect that he only harangued, that he had neither originality nor grace. But after Garfield's death and the retirement of the Secretary from the Cabinet, he turned to writing history "as a resource," and his great work is of permanent value to the country, while his Garfield oration is one of the masterpieces of the highest rank; and there came straight from his brain two far-flashing ideas—that of the union of American nations, and to protect the policy of protection with reciprocity—and in the two there is the manifestation of that crowning glory of public life which enters the luminous atmosphere of immortality—statesmanship. That he had not the opportunity of the execution of these policies—of guiding and shaping their triumph—was not his fault but his fate. Their time may be coming but slowly, yet it surely will come. His zeal in behalf of making the protective principle irresistible by associating it intimately with reciprocity, was so strong that he grew impatient when others were tedious in comprehension; and there was a story of his concluding a sharp admonition to the laborers on the tariff schedules by "smashing his new silk hat on a steam-heater in the committee-room." He was asked by a friend who rode out with him to see the statue that he thought the most accurate and impressive of all the likenesses of Lincoln and was fond of driving to see, located in a park east of the Capitol—that by Story—whether he had "smashed a new silk hat" on a steam-heater on behalf of reciprocity; and he softly responded, "It was not a new hat."
That Mr. Blaine was keenly disappointed when defeated for the Presidency at Cincinnati, there is no doubt; and that he began then to see that it was not his destiny to be President, is certain.
There is a great contrast in his favor in his manner of bearing this disappointment with that of Clay and Webster under somewhat similar circumstances. Clay was furious at the nomination of General William Henry Harrison, and greeted with unmeasured denunciation those responsible for that judicious act; and Webster was bitter when Taylor and Scott were nominated in the first instance, but came, after a time, grandly out of the clouds. It is an interesting coincidence that Webster when Secretary of State was a candidate for the Presidential nomination against his chief, President Fillmore, and died, on the 24th of October, 1852, a few months after Scott's triumph at Baltimore and a few days before the popular election of Pierce. The enduring memory of Mr. Blaine appeared in the last October he lived, in the precise remark, when something was said of the death of Webster, "Ah! day after to-morrow it will be forty years since Webster died." The news of the nomination of Hayes, Blaine received serenely, and before the vote was declared in the convention sent the nominee a cordial telegram of congratulation. When he knew at Augusta in 1884 that he was beaten, he said: "Personally I care less than my nearest friends would believe, but for the cause and for many friends I profoundly deplore the result." And that was the entire truth. He felt that he had not been fairly beaten, but he gave utterance only to the public wrong done in the unfairness, and left that expression as a warning to the country. He did not, as we have seen, follow the example of Clay, who persistently favored his own candidacy. On the contrary, Blaine did not covet the Presidency, and tried to avoid the personal strife of 1884, and not for any of the apprehensive motives attributed to him by those who acted upon the feeling in his case that the spirit of justice was malevolent.
I feel that I should not now deal fairly with the public if I did not give here the letter from Blaine in my possession, that more completely than any published gives expression to his personal bearing when defeated.
LETTER FROM MR. BLAINE TO MR. HALSTEAD.
(Personal.)
AUGUSTA, MAINE, 16th Nov., '84.
DEAR MR. HALSTEAD:—I think there would be no harm to the public and no personal injustice if you should insert the three enclosed items in your editorial columns.
I feel quite serene over the result. As the Lord sent upon us an ass in the shape of a preacher, and a rainstorm, to lessen our vote in New York, I am disposed to feel resigned to the dispensation of defeat, which flowed directly from these agencies.
In missing a great honor I escaped a great and oppressive responsibility. You know—perhaps better than any one—how much I didn't want the nomination; but perhaps, in view of all things, I have not made a loss by the canvass. At least I try to think not. The other candidate would have fared hard in Maine, and would have been utterly broken in Ohio.
Sincerely,
JAMES G. BLAINE.
Of course all this is private.
P.S.—This note was written before receipt of yours. Pray publish nothing of the kind you intimate unless you first permit me to see the proof. Don't be afraid of the enclosed items. They are rock-ribbed for truth and for a good rendering of public opinion.
Mr. Blaine refers in the closing paragraph to the proposition I made to him to publish the true story of his candidacy—substantially the same pressed upon the attention of General Sherman. Between them they suppressed me, but it is due them that this chapter of history should be known now that they are gone.
I had the privilege of walking with Mr. Blaine in the beautiful and fragrant parks at Homburg, in Southern Germany, in the summer of 1887, and discussing with him the question whether he should be a candidate for the Republican nomination the next spring. He then seemed to be very well, but exertion speedily fatigued him. He was on sight a very striking personage, and always instantly regarded with interest by strangers. His personal appearance was of the utmost refinement and of irreproachable dignity. His absolute cleanliness was something dainty, his dress simple but fitting perfectly and of the best material. His face was very pale, but his sparkling eyes contradicted the pallor.
His form was erect, and his figure that of youth. His hair and beard were exquisitely white. His mouth had the purity of a child's, and he never had tasted tobacco or used spirituous liquors, save when his physician had recommended a little whiskey, and then not enough to color a glass. He drank sparingly of claret and champagne, caring only for the flavor. He was gentle, kindly, genial, and in a manly sense beautiful. There are many distinguished English people at Homburg in the season, and they were gratified to meet Mr. Blaine, and charmed with him. It required no ceremony to announce him as a personage—a man who had made events—and he never posed or gave the slightest hint, in his movements, of conscious celebrity. I never saw him bothered by being aware of himself but once, and that was when, across the street from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the dusk of an evening, he shaded his face with his hand, and looked curiously at ten thousand people who were gazing at the house, and shouting madly for him, expecting that he would appear at a window and make acknowledgment of their enthusiasm. Suddenly he saw in the glance of one beside him that he was curiously yet doubtfully regarded, and hastened away in fear of his friends, who in their delight at discovering him would have become a mob.
In Homburg he seemed to care for others' opinions about the proper course for him to take; and the substance of that which I had to say—and he seemed to think me in a way representative—was that he alone must decide for himself, as he only knew all the circumstances and elements that must be considered in a decision. Once we walked the main street of the town in the night—and it is then a very lonely place, for it is the fashion to get up in the morning at six o'clock, and take the waters and the music—and that time I was impressed, and the impression abided, that the inner conviction of Mr. Blaine was he had not the vitality to safely take the Presidency if he held it in his hand; that he believed the office would wear him out—that it was a place of dealing with persons who would worry away his existence; that he felt he could not endure the wear and tear and pressure of the first position, and preferred the Secretaryship of State, with the hope of going on with his South American policy, which he had developed in Garfield's time, brief as that was; and I conjectured that all this had been in his mind when he wanted Sherman and Lincoln to be the ticket in 1884. And it occurred to me with so much force as the logic of many things he said, that I accepted it as true, and was reminded of his weary exclamation once of a good friend whose moods were changeable: "Now that he is right, stay with him. He takes the health out of me with his uncertainties."
The Secretaryship of State he cared for; in that office the world was all before him, and he was fully himself, and was not fretted by a perpetual procession of favor-seekers. The argument his urgent admirers used with him was that it would be easier to make up his mind than to convince a President, and that as the Chief of State he could throw the work on the Cabinet; but he was not satisfied. The Florence letter to me seemed familiar, for it was a reminder of Homburg, and its sincerity was in all the lines and between the lines; and it was addressed to a friend in Pittsburg, that it might not be suppressed in New York. He had very close and influential friends who did not divine his true attitude, or would not admit that they had, and insisted that he was really well and strong and tough, better than he had been, and that he should not be humored in his fancy that he was an invalid. This feeling continued even to 1892, though he had been meantime painfully broken by a protracted illness. It will be remembered that in the correspondence between General Harrison as President-elect and Mr. Blaine, when the Secretaryship of State was offered and accepted, there appeared harmony of views concerning Pan-Americanism; that Mr. Blaine enjoyed the office and that his official labors during the Harrison Administration were of the highest distinction, showing his happiest characteristics. The difference as to duties that arose between the President and the Secretary was forgotten, and their mutual sympathies abounded, when there came upon them, in their households, the gravest, tenderest sorrows.
BLAINE'S GRAVE AT WASHINGTON, D.C. THE TREE AT THE LEFT MARKS THE HEAD OF THE GRAVE, AND THE FIRST OF THE THREE LOW STONES IN THE FOREGROUND, NUMBERING FROM THE LEFT, MARKS THE FOOT.
From a photograph by Miss F.B. Johnston.
When Mr. Blaine was for the last time in New York on his way to Washington, stopping as was his habit at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, he asked me to walk with him to his room, fronting on Twenty-third Street, on the parlor floor; and he slowly, as if it were a task, unlocked the door. There was a sparkle of autumnal crispness in the air, and he had a fire, that glittered and threw shadows about fitfully. There was not much to say. It was plain at last that Mr. Blaine was fading, that he had within a few weeks failed fast. His great, bright eyes were greater than ever, but not so bright. His face was awfully white; not that brainy pallor that was familiar—something else! He seated himself in the light of the fire, on an easy-chair. There was a knock at his door, and a servant handed him a card, and he said: "No;" and we were alone. I could not think of a word of consolation; and in a moment he appeared to have forgotten me, and stared in a fixed, rapt dream at the flickering flame in the grate. It occurred to me to get up and go away quietly, as conversation was impossible—for there was too much to say. It came to me that I ought not to leave him alone. Something in him reminded me of the mystical phrases of the transcendent paragraph of his oration on Garfield, picturing the death of the second martyred President, by the ocean, while far off white ships touched the sea and sky, and the fevered face of the dying man felt "the breath of the eternal morning."
Some weeks earlier Mr. Blaine and I had had a deep talk about men and things, and he was very kind, and his boundless generosity of nature never revealed itself with a greater or sadder charm. He now remembered that conversation—as a word disclosed—and said: "I could have endured all things if my boys had not died." The door opened, and his secretary walked in—and I took Mr. Blaine's hand for the last time, saying, "Good-night," and he said, with a look that meant farewell—"Good-by."
His grave is on a slope that when I saw it was goldenly sunny, and the turf was strewn by his wife's hand with lilies—for it was Easter morning! Close at his left was a steep, grassy bank, radiantly blue with violets, and there was in the shining air the murmurous hum of bees, making a slumbrous, restful music. Blaine's monument is a hickory tree whose broken top speaks of storms, and at his feet is a stone white as new snow, and on it only—and they are enough—the initials "J.G.B.," that were the battle-cry of millions, and are and shall be always to memory dear.
Footnote 9:[ (return) ]
This related to a matter General Sherman had mentioned in another letter, and did not refer to the subject I was trying to get him to consider.
Footnote 10:[ (return) ]
General Sherman differed in this judgment with Blaine and many Republicans who were not unfriendly to Arthur.