CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER TO MR. HALSTEAD

NOTE.—We omit from this reproduction a short postscript which is given in the text on page 170.

There is intrinsic evidence that these letters were not written with a thought of possible publication. That which General Sherman says about Catholicism could only have been told to a close and sympathetic friend. Mrs. Sherman and Mr. Blaine were cousins, and their mothers were Catholics. Mrs. Sherman was one whose devotion to the Church was intense; and General Sherman could not endure the thought that her religion should be subjected to such discussions as were certain to arise in a Presidential campaign. She was a very noble and gifted woman, and the happiness of herself and husband in their domestic life was beautiful and elevated.

James G. Blaine was nearer the Presidency than any other man who did not reach the office. It was by a very narrow margin that he missed the nomination in Cincinnati in 1876; and the opposition he encountered there from Republican editors was regretted by all of them, because they believed when the storm ceased that he had been accused excessively, sensationally, and maliciously, and condemned—by those who did not appreciate his vindication—on evidence that was indicated but not presented—on letters supposed to have been taken from the original package, and that were not produced because they never existed. The investigations were largely instigated and carried on to continue agitation with the purpose to strike down a brilliant man whose genius gave him almost incredible promotion, and to assail him because he was lofty and aspiring. The personal fight that he made in Congress when cruelly set upon was one of the most effective that ever took place in a public body. A competent observer, who was a spectator of the scene in the House when the Mulligan letters were read, said as Blaine came down the aisle, the letters in his hand, and called upon all the millions of his countrymen to be witnesses: "I thought his fist was going right up through the dome." Unhappily, his exciting experiences in the course of these fierce controversies, with the conduct of his Cincinnati campaign, and the sultry weather, caused his prostration, attended with hours of unconsciousness, just at the critical time when the delegates were assembling in national convention. The local influences; the Republican editorial antagonism; the enthusiastic efforts for Bristow; the strenuous perseverance of Morton of Indiana; the prestige of Conkling, backed with the high favor of Grant; the solidity of Ohio for Hayes—all would have been overwhelmed but for the incident of the fall of Blaine in a swoon at the door of the church which he was in the habit of attending and that he was about to enter with his wife. It is reasonable to believe, if he had been the candidate that year, he could have carried the election unequivocally, and that his administration would have vastly strengthened the Republican party. It is due President Hayes, however, to say that his administration of the great office was an era of good for the country, and that he was succeeded by a Republican; but the fact of a disputed Presidency had a far-reaching evil influence, and prevented showing fair play in New York in 1884. Blaine lost in his illness coincident with the Cincinnati convention the confidence of the country in his firm health and strength, and that handicapped him to his grave. Perhaps it is even more important that he lost faith in himself as a strong man, and had almost a superstition that if he became President it would be for him personally a fatality. And yet he was intellectually a growing man for fifteen years after his Cincinnati defeat. His greater works, his most influential ideas, the full fruition of his gifts, were after that catastrophe.

Mr. Blaine was so strong and so weak, so delicate and so tenacious, that he was as constant a puzzle to those who loved him as to his enemies, to the best-informed as to the most ill-informed. Those very near to him took the liberty of laughing at him about his two overcoats, and his going to bed and sending for a doctor in the afternoon, and getting off with gayety to the opera in the evening; about an alleged indigestion followed by eating a confection that would have tested the hardihood of a young candy-eater. One who studied him with affection wrote of him that he had an association of qualities giving at once sensitiveness and endurance, and we were indebted to this for the faculties, the capacities, that made up the man whose influence had been so remarkable and his popularity a phenomenon. He was of fine sensibilities, and there was nothing on earth or in the air that did not tell him something. He was like an instrument of music that a breath would move to melody, and that was ever in tune for any wind that blew, and yet had patient strength, and wore like steel. He had a rare make-up of refinement and power, and life was sweeter and brighter and more costly far to him than to the ordinary man.

It was after his first and, as it turned out, final defeat for the Presidency, in his earliest effort for the office, that his fame grew splendid. His campaigning was fascinating, and his speeches, as the years passed, took greater variety. In his tour when a candidate in 1884, his addresses were marvellous in aptitude and in a thousand felicities. There was much said of the fact that he was not a lawyer, and an affected superiority to him by gentlemen whose profession permitted "fees," and there was a system of deprecation to the effect that he only harangued, that he had neither originality nor grace. But after Garfield's death and the retirement of the Secretary from the Cabinet, he turned to writing history "as a resource," and his great work is of permanent value to the country, while his Garfield oration is one of the masterpieces of the highest rank; and there came straight from his brain two far-flashing ideas—that of the union of American nations, and to protect the policy of protection with reciprocity—and in the two there is the manifestation of that crowning glory of public life which enters the luminous atmosphere of immortality—statesmanship. That he had not the opportunity of the execution of these policies—of guiding and shaping their triumph—was not his fault but his fate. Their time may be coming but slowly, yet it surely will come. His zeal in behalf of making the protective principle irresistible by associating it intimately with reciprocity, was so strong that he grew impatient when others were tedious in comprehension; and there was a story of his concluding a sharp admonition to the laborers on the tariff schedules by "smashing his new silk hat on a steam-heater in the committee-room." He was asked by a friend who rode out with him to see the statue that he thought the most accurate and impressive of all the likenesses of Lincoln and was fond of driving to see, located in a park east of the Capitol—that by Story—whether he had "smashed a new silk hat" on a steam-heater on behalf of reciprocity; and he softly responded, "It was not a new hat."

That Mr. Blaine was keenly disappointed when defeated for the Presidency at Cincinnati, there is no doubt; and that he began then to see that it was not his destiny to be President, is certain.