Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

A few days after, he presented a long, well-worded resolution that the house, in concurrence with the senate, according to certain forms of law indicated, proceed, upon the following Tuesday, at twelve o’clock, to elect a United States senator to succeed Hon. Wm. Pitt Fessenden, whose term expired on the fourth of March, of that year. Also an important resolution submitting an amendment of a legal character to their consideration, thus showing that his knowledge of law was utilized by him as a law-maker.

As one of the chairmen of the State Prison committee of the house he delivers a long speech upon the 17th and 18th of March in reply to one delivered by the same Hon. E. R. Smart, who had opposed resolutions presented by Mr. Blaine’s committee upon improving the present prison and building another.

Mr. Smart was evidently the aggressor, and very much his senior in age, but Mr. Blaine sharply tells him that large portions of his speech were irrelevant, having been delivered the night before in a democratic meeting downtown; calls him the Earl of Warwick to the Democratic Plantagenets; compares him, with great vigor, to a character in Gil Blas, who had written a book in support of certain remedies sure to cure, and which, though utterly futile, he argued with a friend he must continue to practice, because he had written the book, and so Mr. Smart must inflict his speech because he had written it.

Blaine was well-armed; had a wide array of statistics; had, indeed, been over the ground thoroughly the year before with the governor, and written it up for his paper, and showed himself competent to take care of his committee.

A short time before this he had made a handsome little speech in favor of a resolve introduced by this same leader of the Democracy, in which he desired a new county formed, and his own town of Camden made the shire-town, and yet Mr. Blaine’s measure, a necessity, and for the public good, is violently assailed.

A careful examination of the proceedings of the legislature prove this to be a fact, that Mr. Blaine was a devoted, constant, and faithful member; that about every motion he made was carried; and that he ranked in ability as a speaker, both in matter and method, with the best of them. His three years’ work as an editor had made him well acquainted with its members, and thoroughly conversant with the ways of the house, so that he was thoroughly at home in their midst, with none of the nervous diffidence which a new member from the country, however good and honest he might be, would be very likely to have. He spoke about as he wrote. He had written about five hundred good, solid editorials in the previous years, as they issued a tri-weekly during the session of the legislature, and in reporting its doings had caught the drift of its operations.

Moreover, he had a good business preparation for his work. He had been largely upon his own resources for ten years, and in the business management of his paper, and in studying up the business interests of the city and of the state, he had acquired experience and knowledge. No one, it would seem, can read the record of his speeches, short and long, or the motions he made, resolves he offered, without being impressed that he had a clear, strong way of looking at questions. He could tell the husk from the corn at a glance, and if he had anything to do with a member’s speech would tear off the husk without any ceremony and make quick search for the corn.

But the affairs of the country were in a bad way as Mr. Blaine was daily recording them. There had been over nine thousand business failures in the country in 1857 and 1858; or, to be exact, there were four thousand nine hundred and thirty-two in 1857, and four thousand two hundred and twenty-five in 1858, with a loss of three hundred and eighty-seven million four hundred and ninety-nine thousand six hundred and sixty-two dollars, a sum in those days of enormous proportion. Slave-holders, who had the power then, were urging the purchase of Cuba, at a cost of two hundred million dollars, for the purposes of slavery.

The country seemed to be at a stand-still, or going backwards. The state of Vermont had increased in population but one thousand six hundred and fifty-seven in ten years, from 1850 to 1860.

Senators Crittenden, of Kentucky, and Seward, of New York, had a passage of words in the senate, and apologized.