“I do not know,” was the answer.
Then Mr. Blaine stated, “Every one of them negotiated upon the continent was payable in gold, both principal and interest. Every one negotiated at the Hague, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and elsewhere upon the continent, was negotiated upon the gold basis exclusively.”
This was no contest to win, but simply to bring out financial intelligence in a semi-official way, for the benefit of the country. It was a most sensitive subject. Gold was up to two hundred and fifty, that is, a hundred dollars in gold cost two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks, and Mr. Stevens had endeavored in a wrong way, as Mr. Brooks showed, to correct gambling in gold, but Mr. Blaine could furnish him with deficiencies of knowledge, and manifest the acumen of a statesman upon a subject so great.
Mr. Blaine had his magnetic power then, and Mr. Stevens refers to it, and his great power over the House in securing so promptly the passage of his motion. He said,
“The House, partaking of the magnetic manner of my friend from Maine, became alarmed, and immediately laid the bill on the table.”
It was his power of quick, thrilling action; of feeling strongly, and making others feel as he did; of casting upon them the glow of his own brilliancy; of charming them with the rhapsody of his own genius; of piercing them with the energy of his own thinking, and so shutting them up to his conclusions by the force of his own arguments; it was thus by methods the fairest and most honorable to his abilities, that he carried all before him. And one can but see in his repeated control of the House, the power of his friendships.
Cox, Pendleton, Brooks, and others of the opposition would show him the greatest courtesies in debate. Randall, even, in his first session, gave him time out of his own hour for an entire speech, and Cox encouraged him in the midst of his Gold bill speech, by saying he was with him on it.
When the Naval Academy bill was before the House, he moved to repeal a section relating to cadets “found deficient.” If they had a hundred demerit marks in six months they would be expelled. Mr. Blaine had visited the academy in 1861, as a member of the “Board of Visitors,” and while there a young man was dismissed, not for any fault of scholarship, for he was among the brightest and best in his class.
Becoming deeply interested in the cause of the young man, he went to Washington and successfully interceded with the secretary of war, and he was restored. He subsequently graduated very high in class-rank, and since his entrance upon active service has distinguished himself as an officer of great merit, serving with efficiency and distinction as ordnance-officer on General Sheridan’s staff in that splendid, victorious campaign in the valley of the Shenandoah.
The demerits were given for singularly small offences, as: “floor out of order near wash-stand, four demerits,” etc., etc.