Mr. Blaine’s life could not be put into the nation, nor the life of any strong, true man, at a time when it would be more valuable than now. Men were men in earnest. They rose to par, and some, by a mathematical process which redoubles energy and intensifies life, are cubed or squared or lifted to the hundredth power; a premium is on them; they are invaluable.
The governor issues his call for ten thousand men from Maine. Will Mr. Blaine go? Mr. Garfield is in the state senate of Ohio, and president of a college, but he drops all at once, and is soon at the front with his regiment. His stay is short, however. Elected to congress, by advice of President Lincoln he lays aside the dress of a major-general on Saturday to enter the national House of Representatives, a congressman in citizen’s dress, the following Monday.
What will Mr. Blaine do? He is speaker of the House, and that gives his name a power in the state. He is wielding a powerful pen as editor of the leading daily paper at Portland. Few men in the state have more influence; some must stay; the state must be aroused and electrified; an immense work of organization is to be done. It is a less conspicuous, more quiet home-work, but it is of the utmost importance.
He stays, while many, like Garfield, go to return to do the statesman’s work and make available the resources of the nation, and strengthen the hands of the brave men at the front.
This was a work of vast importance in the conduct of the war. It was power that was felt by both governor and president, by army and navy. Mr. Blaine was on terms of intimacy with the governor of his state,—a firm supporter of a faithful man. Very soon he was instrumental in raising two regiments, and rallied thousands more to the standard of the Union.
He became at this time chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, and continued in this position for twenty years. He planned every campaign, selected the speakers, fixed dates and places for them, and so arranged all details, that no man of his ever disappointed an audience. He knows the time of departure and arrival of every train. He must do his part to see that the legislature continues Republican, that the governor and his council are Republican, that congressmen and senators of the United States are Republican, and that the war-power of the state is not broken.
The great question for him to aid largely in settling is the worth of the state of Maine to the nation. She must have governors that are in full sympathy with the president; congressmen and senators that uphold his administration.
In North’s History of Augusta, a valuable work of nearly a thousand pages, it is recorded of Mr. Blaine that “probably no man in Maine exerted a more powerful influence on the patriotic course pursued than he. Ever active, always watchful, never faltering, he inspired confidence in the cause of the Union in its darkest days.”
At the close of the first session of the legislature over which Mr. Blaine presided, the leading Democrat in the House, a Mr. Gould, from Thomaston, arose after remarks of great pathos and tenderness, and presented this resolution:—
“Resolved, That the thanks of this House are presented to the Hon. James G. Blaine, for the marked ability, the urbanity and impartiality with which he has presided over its deliberations, and for the uniform amenity of his personal intercourse with its members.”