Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

“This was his first public effort. He was then twenty-six years of age. Although remarkably ready and easy of speech and holding a practiced and powerful pen, he had an almost unconquerable repugnance to letting his voice be heard, except in familiar conversation, where his brilliant powers of statement and argument, his marvelous memory of dates and events in political history, and his acquaintance with, and keen estimate of the public men and parties of the day, were the delight and wonder of all who listened to him. The writer well recalls the trepidation, at once painful and ludicrous, with which he rose to address the meeting. In confronting the sea of faces, almost every one of which was known to him, he seemed to be struggling to master the terror that possessed him. He turned pale and red by turns, and almost tottering to the front, he stood trembling until the generous applause which welcomed him had died away, when, by a supreme effort, he broke the spell, at first by the utterance of some hesitating words of greeting and thanks, and then gathering confidence, he went on with a speech which stirred the audience as with the sound of a trumpet, and held all present in breathless interest and attention to its close. From that moment Mr. Blaine took rank among the most effective popular speakers of the day; but it may be doubted if among the many maturer efforts of his genius and eloquence upon the political platform or the legislative tribune, he has ever excited an audience to a more passionate enthusiasm, or left a profounder impression upon the minds and hearts of his hearers.”

His editorials of this year would fill a large volume, and all bold, trenchant, and uncompromising in tone. His experience of the year before had just fitted him for this hard, strong work. The temptation is exceedingly great to make copious extracts, for it is our single effort to cause the man to appear in all the just and worthy splendor of his enduring manhood, and if a scar is found in all of wide research, no hand shall cover it.

Not alone the great cause, but the great men who embodied it, were to him an inspiration. Next to books, men were his study. He studied the nation in them, and all the questions they incarnated. Henry Wilson was to him an inspiration. “All praise to the cold and lofty bearing of Henry Wilson at the Philadelphia convention,” he writes of him in his issue of June 22, 1854. And all the great, strong men of the party loomed up before him at full stature, and had a large place in his affections. They were the apostles of liberty to him.

The last year of Mr. Blaine’s journalistic career in Augusta was tame compared with other years, and yet the paper continued a splendid specimen of what the leading paper at the state capital ought to be,—rich in every department, and justly noted for the courage and acumen of its editorial writings.

The great presidential campaign had resulted in the election of James Buchanan, to whom the Richmond Enquirer immediately gave this friendly word of caution: “The president elect will commit a fatal folly if he thinks to organize his administration upon any other principle than that of an avowed and inflexible support of the rights and institutions of the slave-holding states. He who is not with us is against us, and the South cannot attach itself to an administration which occupies a neutral ground, without descending from its own lofty and impregnable position.”

In announcing the cabinet of Mr. Buchanan and the Dred Scott decision in the same issue, Mr. Blaine says,—“The conquest of slavery is complete. President, cabinet, congress, judiciary, treasury, army, navy, the common territory of the union are all in its hands to be directed as its whims shall direct.” The five great acts in the drama of national shame and degradation he mentions as, “the Fugitive Slave Act, repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the raid on Kansas, election of James Buchanan, and the supreme court decision in the Dred Scott case.”

It was a great deal for the nation to endure, but it was the thing to arouse the nation to the iniquity to be overthrown by the Republican party in the next election. Five of the nine judges were from the South, and two of the others, Nelson and Grier, were selected with special regard to their fidelity to the slave-holding interests of the South.

But there was some honor and joy in the fact that Hannibal Hamlin was Governor of Maine, and United States senator elect. His inaugural address Mr. Blaine heads,—“A Paralytic Stroke.”

It was, indeed, a time for great men to speak out, and this Mr. Hamlin did with power. So greatly had the Journal prospered under the firm management of Stevens and Blaine, that they removed from the office at the corner of Oak and Water Streets, which it had occupied for twenty-four years, and at great expense, added new and improved machinery. This had scarcely been done a month when Mr. Blaine’s name disappears from its management. He had sold his interest in the paper for “a good, handsome price,” and invested it all, beside money loaned from a brother-in-law, in coal lands in Pennsylvania.

He urged his partner, Mr. Stevens, to sell out his interest and do the same. This investment, says Mr. Stevens, was very fortunate, and has yielded him handsome returns. But Mr. Blaine was wanted on the Portland Daily Advertiser. John M. Wood, a man of wealth, owned it, and was looking around for an able editor. Mr. Blaine had acquired a reputation as editor, and was offered the position, which he accepted at three thousand dollars a year salary, but never removed to Portland.