Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

It should be with some pride and glory now, after the honorable history of the national debt thus far, and which has given to the nation the credit of the world, that Mr. Blaine remembers that so early in the discussion, when the ideas of the many were crude, and only those of the few were clear, that he closed his speech with these splendid words,—words which embody the steady policy of the government from that time to the present:—

“I am sure,” said Mr. Blaine, “that in the peace which our arms have conquered, we shall not dishonor ourselves by withholding from any public creditor a dollar that we promised to pay him; nor seek by cunning construction and clever afterthought to evade or escape the full responsibility of our national indebtedness. It will doubtless cost us a vast sum to pay that indebtedness, but it will cost us incalculably more not to pay it.”

It took Gen. Benj. F. Butler two days to reply to this speech of Mr. Blaine’s, in which he bloomed forth as a greenbacker of fullest flower and strongest fragrance. This led Mr. Blaine to say:—

“We have a loan distinctly defined, well known to the people, that has a specific rate of interest, a certain time to run, and express condition on which it is to be paid; but the gentleman from Massachusetts is for brushing this all aside and placing before the country a species of legal-tender notes which have no fixed time to run, bear no interest, have no standard of value, and which the government is under no obligation to pay at any particular time, and which may indeed never be called in for redemption.”

And all of this reminded Mr. Blaine of a story:—

“I think the gentleman must have borrowed his notions of finance from a man who failed a few years since in one of the eastern cities of Maine, and who wrote over his store-door, ‘Payment suspended for thirty days.’ A neighbor passing by said to him, ‘You have neglected to date your notice.’ ‘Why, no,’ said he, ‘I did not intend to date it; it would run out if I did.’ And so the gentleman was to issue a government legal tender that never runs out.”

The sitting of congress during the winter of 1867 and 1868, was long and tedious, extending from November on into July. Mr. Blaine was on the committee on appropriations, and had charge of the army-appropriation bill on its passage through the House. The army had been reduced to sixty regiments, and thirty-two million dollars asked to pay them, while before the war twenty-five million dollars for the army, consisting of only nineteen, or as Mr. Blaine put it, “a regiment under the Democratic administration preceding the war cost more than double in gold what it costs now under General Grant in paper, or in other words, that it cost on an average over a million of dollars in gold to a regiment then, and when General Grant was in charge, about half a million to a regiment.”

It required great patience, courage, and intelligence to stand by such a bill for two or three days, answer all questions, meet all objections and opposition, and keep sweet all through; for it was made a political question, as nearly every measure was, and so the opposition party would sit there and resist and vote in a bunch, but usually to no purpose. The great impeachment trial had come on, and was being conducted by the senate in the presence of members of the House.

This caused their adjournment after the morning hour until three o’clock, daily. The managers of the trial, chosen by the House, were John A. Bingham, George S. Boutwell, James F. Wilson, Benjamin F. Butler, Thomas Williams, John A. Logan, and Thaddeus Stevens.

Having faithfully performed all his work upon the great committee, and seen to it that every trust confided to him in congress was sacredly discharged, he procured an indefinite leave of absence, after being there day and night for some eight months, and not being one of the managers of the impeachment trial, and having no active part to take in its proceedings, and so he went home to conduct the summer campaign, giving himself, however, but two months for this purpose. He had been absent in Europe, the summer before, and now he had been re-nominated to congress for the fourth time, something unusual in the district, as he had been elected three times already.