Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

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.

THESE 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.