Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

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.”