This is the simple record, and Mr. Blaine was declared nominated, and “the result was made unanimous with enthusiasm and mutual congratulations.” He was brought in, and with something of sober diction, evidently feeling the greatness of the honor and the responsibility upon him, he only pledged his best intentions and most earnest efforts to serve the constituency of the district to the best of his ability, should he be elected.
“If so, I shall go with a determination to stand heartily and unreservedly by the administration of Abraham Lincoln. In the success of that administration, in the good providence of God, rests, I solemnly believe, the fate of the Union.
“Perish all things else,” he exclaims, “the nation’s life must be saved. If slavery or any other institution stands in the way, it must be removed. I think the loyal masses are rapidly adopting the idea that to smite the rebellion, its malignant cause must be smitten. Perhaps we are slow in coming to it, and it may be even now we are receiving our severe chastisement for not more readily accepting the teachings of Providence.
“It was the tenth plague which softened the heart of Pharaoh and caused him to let the oppressed go free. That plague was the sacrificing of the first-born in every household, and with the sanguinary battle-fields, whose records of death we are just reading, I ask you in the language of another, how far off are we from the day when our households will have paid that penalty to offended heaven?”
After his nomination Mr. Blaine went on a short visit to his old home in Washington, Penn. His mother was still living; many friends and relatives, beside business interests, demanding attention. He had been gone but eight years, and four of them he had spent in the legislature, and now was nominated for congress, with a certainty of election. He had come on a visit to the old scenes of childhood, and early manhood, and could present himself to them as he soon did to the nation, covered with honor.
He returned just in time to attend a great mass-meeting in Augusta. The two calls for troops, each for three hundred thousand, were out. Senator Lot M. Morrill, a brother of the ex-governor, had just made a strong speech, saying “we have been playing at arms before, but now we are going to fight,” etc., and closed, when there were loud calls for Blaine, and he appeared, burning with enthusiasm, and kindled all hearts with his presence and patriotic appeals.
On Monday, Sept. 8, 1862, Mr. Blaine was first elected to congress. Although it was a state campaign in which he was elected, conducted by Mr. Blaine in person, aided by able lieutenants and a governor,—five congressmen and a host of minor officials were to be elected,—the work was prosecuted with vigor.
A draft is threatened. Maine’s quota must be filled, and it was during this same month of September the Emancipation Proclamation appeared, and two months later General McClellan was relieved, and General Burnside put in command of the army of the Potomac.
The great events of national importance would of course over-shadow all state matters of minor importance, comparatively, and to which the public mind was accustomed. Beside, the mind and heart of the new congressman were full of the nation’s interest. Women were going to the front as nurses,—more than forty had gone from one town in Maine; the Mississippi was open now clear to the Gulf; General Butler was in New Orleans. Volumes of history were made in a day, much of it unwritten history, traced only in saddened faces, swollen, tearful eyes, in nights of watchings, in sobs and sighs, and long farewells, in fields billowed with mounds, and in the dark shadows that even now will not be chased away from many a heart, from many a hearth-stone. How little is ever heard or known of the dark dreamings still of a multitude all silent and alone, when night is on the earth.
Mr. Blaine encountered one of the hard-headed men, yet men of harder hearts, during his campaign up in Clinton township, a hard, Democratic hold. General Logan used to call them copperheads down in southern Illinois during the war. They have mostly emigrated since then. At the close of the speech one of them arose up and said,—a fellow of grizzly beard,