Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

This year of 1857 is remembered as the year of the great financial crash. It was anything but a crash to Mr. Blaine. He had sold his paper, which he had brought into a leading position in state journalism, at a large advance, made a profitable investment of his funds, gone on a salary of the first-class, for the time, and also been nominated and elected a member of the state legislature, as one of the two representatives of the city of Augusta.

His popularity is seen in the fact that at the time of this seeming break-up, when if he had been a machine man with insatiable political aspirations he would certainly have held on to his paper, and parted with it at no price, he artlessly sells out and enters business about eighty miles from home. But the people wanted him. He would not leave their midst. He had served the cause of his espousal with ability and fidelity for three years, and the time had come to honor him.

It is not often that a man so young comes into an old established state, and in a time so brief makes for himself a name and a place so large.

It is only needful to read over the files of that paper from the first hour his pen touched it to see that he had made for himself a place so large. He had put himself into its columns, and so into the life both of the state and the nation. He lived, and thought, and wrought for that paper. That was the instrument of his power. The bold thunder of artillery is heard along its columns; the charge of cavalry and the sweep of infantry are seen and felt upon its pages. There is push, and dash, and rush, and swing, and hurrah along the whole battle-line where he stood and fought through those years. It was a manly fight. He stood squarely to the line. It was all upon the broad scale of the nation’s existence and welfare. He spoke the truth as such; he had no dreams to tell.

He took no vacation, but summer and winter was at his post. In July and August there is no relaxation, but the same dash of breakers on the shore. No wonder he was in demand elsewhere, and the fee was large. He was a business success, and had made a success of politics thus far. The first Republicans of Maine had gone into office mid the glow of his genius, and now his turn had come. It was a weekly before, but now it was a daily, and a seat in the legislature to fill beside. But he was abreast of the times, a full man, a large man, with immense capabilities of work, and a strong, tenacious memory, or he could never have done the work of two men steadily, and four men much of the time, and a man destined for leadership. He took to Portland all his powers, and soon was felt as fire is felt, or the rising sun, for foes and friends learned speedily of his presence. Every day was a field-day in politics then. It was a political revival all the year round. No ponds or pools were visible. There were currents in every stream. There was a mighty flood to the tides. The states were raising men and building characters. They were mining gold and minting it. Life then was a Bessemer steel-process; the heat was intense, and hydraulic pressure drove out all impurities. The great columbiads that did the execution were cast before the war; they were large of calibre and deep of bore, and thoroughly rifled, for it was the men who manned the guns in war times who made the guns man the rebellion.

The clouds are drawing water and marshaling forces for the sweep of a mighty storm,—the storm of a righteous judgment, of a holy justice. It was God’s storm and must come. Already the lightning played furiously along the sky, and mutterings of thunder could be distinctly heard. The air grew thick, and heavy, and dark. All signs were ominous. From throne to cloud, and cloud to brain, and brain to pen, the electric current flew. Men were thinking the thoughts of God. They were being filled with his vision and armed with his purpose. No times were grander since men had pledged their lives, and fortunes, and sacred honor at the shrine of Liberty, for its perpetuation; and now their sons from heights of manhood just as lofty, were breathing the same spirit and plighting the same faith. How men stretch upward to a kingly height when such grand occasions come, or wither and waste like froth on the billows that charge along the shore!

It was promotion to rank of greater influence when Mr. Blaine took his sceptre of power in Portland. Six times a week instead of once, he went out in teeming editorials to the people. Every department of the paper was enriched and felt the thrill of his presence. He was a graduate in journalism now. Its ways were all familiar. His study of it and experience had brought him the ability of hard, rapid work. It was the testimony of his old associate at Augusta, that he would go at once to the core of a subject, and get the wheat out of the chaff. The beginning and ending of an article, he said, were its heavy parts, and Mr. Blaine knew just where to look, whether in newspaper, review, or book.

He always found what he wanted, and so was always armed to the teeth with fact and incident, with argument and illustration. He had the eye and ear and pen of the true journalist.

Some men have a peculiar faculty for getting at what is going on. They seem to know by instinct. It is not always told them, but they are good listeners, as all great men are. They are men of great industry; search and research are ever the order with them.

Some men are sound asleep when the decisive hours of life are passing, others seem ever awake It is this ability to see, and hear, and feel, to catch and ever know, that has made Mr. Blaine a living centre of the political intelligence of his time. As a student of history he had learned the ways of men and nations, the policies of governments, and the methods of their execution, their meteorology, mineralogy, and ways of navigation,—for nations have all of these, political weather, materials of construction, together with tides and currents in their affairs, besides rocks and reefs and coasts of danger. The right ways are always the great ways, the light the best ways.