He was at home, and coming into the senate on the wave of popular excitement, which was of the same broad and sweeping character that surrounded Henry Clay, and which came so near giving him the nomination for the presidency then, he was not only at home in all his feelings of political association and public duty, but exceedingly prominent as well,—the one man of worth above all others, though the last to enter there.
He had no need to take front rank; he was there already, and gave himself to his work, not as a defeated man,—they had played but one inning then,—but as a victor, enjoying his promotion well, from the lower to the upper house of congress. He was nearing the goal, taking the honors by the way, just as Garfield did, but unlike him, tarrying in the senate to enjoy them. It was a good place to be; grand enough to command the lives, in all their richness and maturity, of Sumner, Webster, Choate, of Hamlin, Fessenden, and Clay, of Wilson, Edmunds, Dawes, and galaxies by the score, representing every state in the Union. Great lights from every department of life shone there: scholars, teachers, authors, successful generals; culture, refinement, and every excellence.
Mr. Blaine brought with him from the House, his old spirit of freeness, and general adaptability and service. He had not come in to rest, be shelved, or fossilized. His old habit of thoroughness was on him still; he was not the man to change at six and forty years of age. He must still touch top, bottom, and sides of every question with which he dealt, and so he did.
He loved the truths of history, and took them whole, entire, lacking nothing, and not in a garbled form. This of course caused facts and figures to strike with telling power upon many a man’s coat of mail, or cause the shield to tremble with the power of his stroke. But he was there without apology, to do the strong, decisive work which marked the history of his life. He loved the state of his adoption, and the time had come when the pride of her glory should appear.
The old House of Representatives had been devoted, as a gallery of art, to portraits and statues of the great men of the nation. Two were to be selected by each state from the record of their leading men.
The statue of William King, the first governor of Maine, in 1820 and 1821, was presented with speeches in the senate by both Mr. Hamlin and Mr. Blaine. In reciting briefly the history of Mr. King, Mr. Blaine relied wholly upon Massachusetts authority, and he added, “To have given anything like a sketch of Governor King’s life without giving his conflict with Massachusetts, touching the separation of Maine and her erection into an independent state, would have been like writing the life of Abraham Lincoln without mentioning the great Rebellion, which, as president of the United States, he was so largely instrumental in suppressing.”
These words he uttered in vindication of himself from certain restrictions placed upon him, and he closed by saying “that he notified the senators from Massachusetts that he should feel compelled to narrate those portions of Mr. King’s history that brought him in conflict with the parent state.”
In less than a month after the statue of Governor King was placed in the national gallery, by a unanimous vote of the senate, Mr. Blaine was before that body with a speech of his usual force and energy, upon the absorbing question of hard money. The subject had been discussed in the House, and their action sent to the senate, and Mr. Blaine had offered a substitute for their bill, which contained three very simple provisions, as he said, viz.:—
1. “That the dollar shall contain four hundred and twenty-five grains of standard silver, shall have unlimited coinage, and be an unlimited legal tender.
2. “That all the profits of coinage shall go to the government, and not to the operator in silver bullion.