E. K. Cressey

“ They know and are known; they love and are beloved. Place awaits them, and they enter; fitness fits; life is a triumph, and they are happy. Such men, fresh from nature’s mint, bring consciences with them,—consciences unseared, into the battle of life.
These are not only the germ of character and the source of joy, but chief among the elements of that stupendous strength which makes victory their birthright, and victory is the birthright of every good, true soul that will work to win. Only the false and the indolent are sure to fail; the true and industrious are ever succeeding. ”

“ Statesmanship is more the work of the whole man and of a life-time. Garfield was splendid upon the field of battle, but while there he shone as a star among suns, while in the halls of state he shone as a sun among stars. There was a steady grandeur of purpose, a magnificence of character, a wealth of intellect, a power of thought, a loftiness of courage, of that high, heroic type which moral stamina alone can produce, which created a greater demand for him in the councils of the nation than in the battle-front when warriors were the nation’s sorest need. ”

“ IN THE LEGISLATURE.
THE great year of Republicanism dawns, in which its friends are to meet, and its foes are to feel its power. Men had been hearing the voice of conscience on the moral questions of the nation. Money had stiffled it with some; for others the climate and location were not propitious; blight and mildew had struck some,—darkness to them was light, black was white. Some, perchance, held the truth in unrighteousness; trimmers and time-servers abounded. But the press and the pulpit had been great educators. God was in the contest, and it was beginning to be apparent. ”

“ Society is like a myriad-sided palace, with many a gate of entrance and of exit, but all most deftly closed except to bearer of the keys,—a palace filled with light of knowledge, and resplendent with beauty; the goal of every clique and clan the nation over, where all the aristocracies of the Republic may glow and shine and shine and glow, and all the courtiers of all the nations mingle in magnificent and pompous array. Guards are at every door. Passports are in demand.
At twelve o’clock, the 7th of December, 1863, Mr. Blaine was in his seat. ”

“ They are as stars, while her husband is as the great sun shining in the heaven of her joys.
[381] The present Augusta home has been, for years, little more than a summer-resort, to which they have come the first of June. Their great home has been in Washington. This, for twenty years, has been life’s centre to them. Here home-life has reached its zenith; its glories have shone the brightest; it has been at the nation’s capital, and husband and father among the first men of the nation. Wealth has been at their command, to make that home all they desired. ”

“ It is this ability to see, and hear, and feel, to catch and ever know, that has made Mr. Blaine a living centre of the political intelligence of his time. As a student of history he had learned the ways of men and nations, the policies of governments, and the methods of their execution, their meteorology, mineralogy, and ways of navigation,—for nations have all of these, political weather, materials of construction, together with tides and currents in their affairs, besides rocks and reefs and coasts of danger. The right ways are always the great ways, the light the best ways. ”

“ We are, then, for a common union against the National Administration, on the basis of restoring the Missouri Prohibition against slavery in the territories, forgetting past distinctions and priority in the combination. Who shall be the standard-bearer of this patriotic and conservative Opposition in the great struggle of ’56? Whoever the right man may be,—whether he has his home in the East or the West, in the North or the South, we care not, if he is but the statesman to comprehend the hour, and is equal to the necessities of the country, we hope to see him triumphantly elected. ”

“ All that is sacred in business and religion in home and country is the question. Men are lifted by appeals almost divine in eloquence, above any petty consideration, to the grave question of the nation’s life and destiny. Their names go down by scores [167] and hundreds. Regiments and brigades seem born in a day. They come from all ranks and conditions,—from pulpit and press, from farm and shop, from bank and office, and store and halls of state,—and are transformed in an hour from citizens to soldiers, and march away to the front. ”

“ They were on their way up to the nation’s honors, and had seats near each other. The House, rather than the senate, is the place to look for presidents. There seems to be no special reason for it, unless it is that senatorial dignity and greatness are less approachable, not so easily grasped by the public mind, and farther away from the great masses of the people.
Mr. Blaine comes to the fortieth congress with the same soldierly spirit of fearlessness, the same scholarly spirit of intelligence, the same genial spirit of friendship, that have borne him through two former terms in Washington. ”

“ But strong men, tried and true, who cannot be brow-beaten and crushed; men who have not been deceived or intimidated, or despoiled of their convictions since the Whig party sold out to Slavery in 1852; men who have waited eighteen long, eventful years for the iron to get hot enough to strike, are there; there in their power; there, not to become demoralized, and drop their guns and run, but to stand firm and strong in a mighty phalanx, and do tremendous battle for tremendous right against tremendous wrong.
William H. Seward is the choice of men, but Abraham Lincoln is the choice of God. ”

“ It was thus with these great men of the nation’s [346] hope, her honor, and her trust. They sat, they stood, they walked, they talked together, their great hearts open as the day, shining full upon each other. And as they shone thus on each other’s life, there was a blending, and so a mutual life, an interlacing, twining, locking, and so a unity.
Every walk in life furnishes its friendships; and the greater the walk may be, the greater are the friendships; for the greater the affinities, the broader the sympathies, the purer, sweeter, more supreme the life ”

“ MR. BLAINE’S steady march upward in the line of promotion, was constant and irresistible, from 1856 to 1876, and even that year was crowned with a seat in the United States senate. But the presidency seemed within his grasp. It was the demand and expectation of the people that he should have it. The popular fervor was intense. He was the ideal statesman of the multitude. But the cast-iron political machinery, then running so deftly and with such precision in several states, was manipulated with a craftiness so subtle as to defeat their strongly expressed and urgent wish. ”

“ Known and acknowledged worth could have been the only argument for an action so personal to the honor of the state and its power in the Union, and helpfulness to the nation in an emergency imminent with danger.
This man of one and thirty is lifted over the heads of old and respected citizens of soundest integrity. Is it an experiment, or do they know their man? The state has called to the helm a man who has been ten years in the congress of the United States; a man of largest experience and profoundest wisdom, nearly twice the age of the young speaker. ”

“ Blaine, more than ever, the life and grandeur, the power and greatness of the party to which he had wedded his destiny, giving his hand and his heart. He was in complete sympathy with every principle and every measure. No man living more fully, and clearly, and strongly, represents the ideas and purposes of the men then at the front,—the leading men to whom was entrusted the guidance and responsibility, for he himself was then at the front,—than does he. ”

“ Blaine. Men have been his glory, his study, and delight. This was his first work in Augusta, his first work in the state legislature, his first work in congress. And not their names alone, but their political history, their pedigree,—all about them. They must all be weighed and measured, sized and classified. And he must know himself as well, and how far he can reach, and how firm he can grasp, and how much he can lift. He uses only the powers of his personality, and these must all be toned and tempered anew. ”

“ Blaine, if she wanted him to move from the table, would say, “James! James!” and again, “James!” like enough half a dozen times before he would hear, and she pleasant and careful of him all the time. She has had mind and heart to know his worth, and has needed no one to tell her that teaching school in Kentucky has paid her a handsome dividend and is full of promise for the future. He has made no move but what she has seconded the motion. Her life is in his, and not a thing independent and apart from it. ”

“ We only ask that he be loyal to Liberty, a sworn defender of the Union on its constitutional basis, in favor of bringing back our government to the principles and policy of its founders, and pledged to undo the giant wrong of 1854. To enlist in such an opposition, patriotism, the memory of our Revolutionary sires, everything sacred in our history, the welfare of posterity, invoke us. In such a ‘union for the sake of the Union’ we shall all be Republicans, all Whigs, all Democrats, all Americans. ”

“ Garfield, Mr. Blaine says: “There is no test of a man’s ability in any department of public life more severe than service in the House of Representatives. There is no place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously acquired, or to eminence won outside; no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings or failures of beginners. What a man gains in the House, he gains by sheer force of his own character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy, and will receive no sympathy. ”

“ It is gathering what is outside that one may get out what is inside, that is the process of education; not getting what is outside regardless of what is within, that may be developed into treasures of transcendent worth, more valuable than the contents of forest and mine.
American history furnishes few examples of the practical value of cultivated brain more illustrious and potent than James A. Garfield and James G. Blaine, and each the opposite in temperament and opportunity, but both brought up on a farm, and both getting their first start up the hill of knowledge in a country school. ”

“ The great interests of the nation center there, and all nations are represented there. Life is intense in all respects. Victors gather there from all fields of contest. They are at their best, and have multitudes to cheer them on, or cry them down, if they fail or falter. The door of prosperity to the country hinges there; defective legislation closes it, and mars the delicately balanced confidence in the business world. It is the nation’s higher school of politics, or rather university, with all its great departments. ”

“ Washington’s birthday came soon, and with it the Republican gathering at Pittsburgh, and then the great convention that nominated Frémont and Dayton at Philadelphia, in the summer of 1856;—Blaine was there; it was on his native heather. Never had men listened so intently since the farewell address of Washington; rarely had they thought, and felt, and resolved so deeply. Conscience and will, intelligence and love, were in all they thought, and said, and did. They chose their men for standard-bearers, and fought out the hard, bitter fight. ”

“ They have lived in the nation’s life. They have been in the onward drift and trend of things, ever on the foremost wave, caught in the onward rush of events. Life has been of the intensest kind, rich in all that enriches, noble in all that ennobles. They have occupied a large place in the nation, and the nation has occupied a large place in them; and yet, though at the very farthest remove from the quiet, simple life of the cottage or the farm, it has been an American home ”

“ All the light of any subject comes from the truth it holds within, and the man of mastery is the man of light and life and energy. It is unfilled capacity that makes of so many the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Unfed, untrained, and unworked minds have filled the world with wrecks.
Mr. Blaine is climbing the ladder now. Coming up out of the ranks, as some must come, with worth or worthlessness. ”

“ It is the part of wisdom and sagacity in men to make the most of their first years, or the first half of life. This is an eminent feature in the career of Mr. Blaine. There are no wasted years in his life; no baneful habits to destroy his energies or dry up the fountain of his joys. He is a clean, strong, vigorous man, and is able to celebrate the year of his majority with a more extensive preparation and experience as scholar, teacher, traveler, and man of business, and a brighter outlook for life, than falls to the lot of many young Americans. ”

“ There was not a soul within three hundred miles who would think of calling him Jim Blaine, or Jimmy, nor dare to, if by some strange, unnatural process it did occur to him.
He was treated, respected, and honored as a man and a scholar. The world had opened to him, and he had entered. It was well there was no show or shoddy about him, and he knew it. The stamp of the mint was on him, and he passed at par, with the ring of honest coin.
There is a power in some men to meet any emergency when it is fairly on them. ”

“ But this did not cause them to fear or falter, but to rush on, through blinding and begriming powder-smoke, to victory. They could but smile at the enemies’ reports of battle, and of the skill and bearing of both general and troops, just as when a paper crossed the lines in Rebellion times the truth came not always with it. Some one must bear the wrath of those whose flag was ever in the dust, and whose broken ranks were reeling in defeat. ”

“ The solid South had marched its rebel brigadiers by the score into the arena of national questioning and discussion, where for twelve years he had stood intrepid as the founders of the Republic. No man was more at home upon that field than he,—none more familiar with the men, the methods, and the measures that had triumphed there,—and few have been more victorious in the great ends for which he strove, few readier to challenge the coming of any man, to know his rights, his mission, and his weight. ”

“ Blaine was in his seat all day long, voting steadily for the right and against the wrong. The conquered states, cut off from the Rebellion and rescued to liberty and lawful authority, were left without government, and must be provided, as Tennessee had been in the person of Andrew Johnson, now vice-president, with provisional governors. Much legislation was requisite. Every man in congress who had ever had any pro-slavery proclivities, was in his place contesting every step of progress with men who had never breathed aught but the air of freedom and known only loyal heart-beats. ”

“ The Professor found in young Blaine a pupil to his mind, and James found in the teacher just the man of his heart. He learned to love him. A genuine teacher can incarnate himself in his pupils, just as Napoleon seemed to reproduce himself in his armies, firing them with his spirit, arming them with his purpose, so that they would move with the solid impetuosity of [66] his own daring, scaling the Alps, triumphing at Austerlitz, until they came to look, and breathe, and act him out long after; but Professor Murray was training men and citizens of the great Republic. ”

“ Blaine knew just where to look, whether in newspaper, review, or book.
He always found what he wanted, and so was always armed to the teeth with fact and incident, with argument and illustration. He had the eye and ear and pen of the true journalist.
Some men have a peculiar faculty for getting at what is going on. They seem to know by instinct. It is not always told them, but they are good listeners, as all great men are. They are men of great industry; search and research are ever the order with them. ”