He got into the national drift of the new party and has kept it ever since. It was like a splendid ship, all staunch and strong, launched at his hand; he sprang aboard, was soon at the helm, and has steadily passed along the line of honorable promotion.
There have been storms whose fury has been terrific; and there have been triumphs whose brightness has reflected the nation’s glory.
The paper improved in every way. They procured the state printing, and an increased circulation.
Mr. Blaine’s pleasant home on Green Street, where most of his children were born, was one of comfort and happiness.
He soon became a favorite in Augusta, and among the public men of the state. People love to hear good things said well, and he never failed in this.
He soon appears on the Republican Central Committee. The party is victorious from the start, and elects Anson P. Morrill Governor. Mr. Morrill is still living in Augusta, hale and hearty at eighty-one, a great reader, and soon after his nomination called upon Mr. Blaine to congratulate him. The name of J. G. Blaine appears as chairman of the Republican Central Committee soon after its organization, and the following year he is presented as a candidate for the legislature.
Residence of James G. Blaine, Augusta, Maine.
He enters a city seventy-five years older than himself, rich with numbers of strong men, but is taken up and speedily honored with a place in the councils of the state.
It was an era of great and almost constant political conventions. The remnants of the Whig party and the Know-nothings kept up a struggle for existence, but they were doomed, and failed to submit gracefully to the inevitable. They must be watched and won, if possible, to the new party of the future, whose substantial, steadfast principles,—as expressed by Mr. Blaine and his editorial colleague, Joseph Baker, in their inaugural,—were freedom, temperance, river and harbor improvement within constitutional limits, homesteads for freemen, and a just administration of the public lands of the state and nation; and the present testifies how well those principles, embracing all that were needful then in a political party, have been carried out.