Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 by Various
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Various >> Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884
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8 THE
Bay State Monthly
_A Massachusetts Magazine_
OF
LITERATURE, HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND STATE PROGRESS
* * * * *
VOLUME II
* * * * *
BOSTON
JOHN N. McCLINTOCK AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
No. 31 MILK STREET
1885
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by John N.
McClintock and Company, in the office of the Librarian of Congress
at Washington. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
* * * * *
Ames, Lieutenant Governor Oliver James W. Clarke, A.M. 185
Bartholdi Colossus William Howe Downes 153
Battle of Shiloh General Henry B. Carrington 330, 367
Bermuda Islands, Early History of James H. Stark 277
Blaine, James Gillespie 1
Boston, Taverns of in Ye Olden Time David M. Balfour 106
Boston Herald 22
Our National Cemeteries Charles Cowley. LL.D. 58
Cleveland, Grover Henry H. Metcalf 61
Cleveland, Grover, and The Roman
Catholic Protectory Charles Cowley, LL.D. 243
Dark Day Elbridge H. Goss 254
Easy Chair Elbridge H. Goss 306
Editor's Table 120
Elizabeth: A Romance of Francis C. Sparhawk
Colonial Days 82, 159, 236, 296, 375
Fitchburg, Historical Sketch of Ebenezer Bailey 226
Fitchburg in 1885 Atherton P. Mason, M.D. 341
Gaston William Arthur P. Dodge 245
Gems from the Easy Chair 372
Glorifying Trial by Jury Charles Cowley, LL.D. 82
Gold, Past and Future of David M. Balfour 359
Groton, Boundary Lines of Old--III
IV Hon. Samuel Abbott Green, M.D. 12, 69
Lancaster, Historical Sketch of Hon. Henry S. Nourse 261
Lee, William George L. Austin, M.D. 309
Lothrop, Daniel John N. McClintock, A.M.
(Illustrated) 121
Middlesex Canal Lorin L. Dame, A.M. 96
Names and Nicknames Gilbert Nash 255
National Bank Failures George H. Wood 373
New England Conservatory of Music Mrs. M.J. Davis (Illustrated) 132
Phillips, Wendell 306
Pittsfield, Historical Sketch of Frank W. Kaan (Illustrated) 193
Protection of Children Ernest Nusse 89
Publishers Department--Chromo--
Lithography 89, 174
Robinson, George Dexter Fred W. Webber, A.M. 177
Rogers, Robert, the Ranger Joseph B. Walker 211
Reuben Tracy's Vacation Trips. II. Elizabeth Porter Gould 368
Saugus, Historical Sketch of E.P. Robinson (Illustrated) 140
Shepard, Charles A.B. George L. Austin, M.D. 312, 316
Summer on the Great lakes, A Fred. Myron Colby 42
Sunday Travel and the Law Chester F. Sanger 231
Wachusett Mountain and Princeton Atherton P. Mason 35
Webster, Daniel, Reminiscences of Hon. George W. Nesmith, LL.D. 252
Wallace, Hon. Rodney Rev. S. Leroy Blake, D.D. 317
POETRY.
A Glimpse Mary H. Wheeler 276
Fitchburg Mrs. Caroline A. Mason 328
Heart and I Mary Helen Boodey 295
My Mountain Home William C. Sturoc 366
Roused From Dreams Adelaide Cilley Waldron 225
Sails 81
Washington and the Flag Henry B. Carrington 41
STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
James G. Blaine 1
Grover Cleveland 61
Daniel Lothrop 121
George D. Robinson 177
Oliver Ames 185
William Gaston 245
William Lee 309
Charles A.B. Shepard 313
Rodney Wallace 317
* * * * *
[Illustration: James G. Blaine]
THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.
_A Massachusetts Magazine._
VOL. II. OCTOBER, 1884. No. 1.
* * * * *
JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE.
In the long list of illustrious men who have held the high office
of President of the United States, a few names stand out with such
prominence as to be constantly before the American people. While Adams,
Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, and others, did the country service
that never will be forgotten, it is indisputable that Washington,
Lincoln, and Garfield gained a firmer hold upon the confidence and
affection of the masses than any others. And now, as we approach another
presidential campaign, the result of which is to place in the highest
office of the nation a new man, it is alike a source of pride and
satisfaction that the Republican party has put in nomination a man, who,
if elected, will bring to the discharge of his duties as high a degree
of honesty as Washington, as thorough an acquaintance with human nature
as Lincoln, and as profound a knowledge of political economy as
Garfield. Through all the years of his manhood he has been a central
figure in American politics, and his achievements are indelibly written
on almost every page of American history for the last quarter of a
century. With such a man as a candidate the country may well
congratulate itself that if he proves to be the choice of the majority
he will, by his ability and experience, bring as great renown to the
office as any of his predecessors, and that under his guidance the
material prosperity and intellectual growth of the nation will be such
as to gain for his administration great popular favor, the admiration of
his friends, and the respect of all nations.
James Gillespie Blaine, the nominee of the Republican party for
President of the United States, was born on January 31, 1830, in
Washington County, in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, in West
Brownsville, a village on the west bank of the Monongahela. Here Neil
Gillespie, before the British army left America at the close of the
Revolution, had established his family, purchasing the land of the
Indians. Nearly twenty years later the Blaines came from Carlisle,
seeking investment and development in this new West, and the father of
James G. Blaine, who had left Carlisle when a child, married the
daughter of Neil Gillespie the second.
The first of the Blaine family of whom much is known was Colonel Ephraim
Blaine, who lived at Chester, and in the Revolution was purveyor-general
of the Pennsylvania troops, and incidentally of the whole Revolutionary
array. He married Rebekah Galbraith in 1765. Elaine is a well-known
Scotch name. Galbraith and Gillespie are Scotch-Irish; in fact, the
ancestors of James G. Blaine were nearly all Scotch and Irish. It is a
circumstance worthy of comment that Blaine comes from a stock which has
furnished the United States with many of her ablest public men, notably
among them being Andrew Jackson and Horace Greeley.
Colonel Ephraim Blaine had two sons named Robert and James, and each of
these sons named his son for Colonel Ephraim Blaine. Old Ephraim Blaine
did not leave his property to his sons, but to these two grandsons, (1)
Ephraim, who remained in Carlisle, and (2) Ephraim Lyon Blaine, who grew
up in western Pennsylvania. Ephraim Lyon Blaine was named for his
mother, Miss Lyon, the daughter of Samuel Lyon from about Carlisle.
Ephraim Lyon Blaine married Miss Gillespie, a devout member of the Roman
Catholic Church, but most of their seven children--five boys and two
girls--adhered to the traditional faith of the Blaines. The second of
these sons, James Gillespie Blaine, is the subject of this sketch. He
would have inherited large blended fortunes, had not his father, like
his grandfather, been a spendthrift. Therefore, soon after James G.
Blaine was born his parents had to move out of the big house which they
could no longer keep up, and occupy a frame-house called the Pringle
dwelling, also in West Brownsville, about a quarter of a mile distant.
Here young Elaine lived and went to school both in Brownsville and in
West Brownsville, until his father was elected prothonotary of the
county, in 1843, when the whole family removed to Little Washington,
twenty-four miles distant.
James G. entered Washington College in 1843, being then thirteen years
of age, and became at once prominent as a scholar among the two or three
hundred other lads from all parts of the country. He was also a leader
in athletic sports. He was not a bookworm, but he was a close student
and possessed the happy faculty of assimilating knowledge from books and
tutors far more easily and quickly than most of his fellows. In
debating-societies he held his own well, and was conspicuous by his
ability to control and direct others.
After leaving college young Blaine started for Kentucky to carve out his
own fortune. He went to Blue Lick Springs and became a professor in the
Western Military Institute, in which there were about four hundred and
fifty boys. A retired officer who was a student there at the time
relates that Professor Blaine was a thin, handsome, earnest young man,
with the same fascinating manners he has now. He was popular with the
boys, who trusted him and made friends with him from the first. He knew
the given name of every one, and he knew his shortcomings and his strong
points. He was a man of great personal courage, and during a fight
between the faculty of the school and the owners of the springs,
involving some questions about the removal of the school, he behaved in
the bravest manner, fighting hard but keeping cool. Revolvers and knives
were freely used, but Blaine only used his well-disciplined muscle.
Colonel Thornton F. Johnson was the principal of the school, and his
wife had a young ladies' school at Millersburg, twenty miles distant.
There Blaine met Miss Harriet Stanwood, who subsequently became his
wife. She was a Maine girl of excellent family sent to Kentucky to be
educated.
After teaching for a while Blaine left Kentucky and went to Philadelphia
to study law. While there he taught for a short time at the blind asylum
and also wrote for the newspapers. He soon, however, was irresistibly
attracted to the State of Maine, and left his native State for a home in
the community with which his name is now indissolubly connected. It is
somewhat remarkable that this ambitious young man should have gone East
instead of West, choosing a State which the young men were fast
leaving--one whose population in the last forty years has increased very
little. He is, indeed, almost the only man who has gone East in the last
half-century and risen to any prominence.
Mr. Blaine went to Maine in 1853, and soon afterward married Miss
Stanwood, whose family are well known in New England. Through their
influence he soon found an occupation in journalism, and until 1860 was
actively engaged in editing at different times the Kennebec Journal and
the Portland Daily Advertiser. He retained a part ownership in the
Kennebec Journal until it began to hamper him in his political career,
and then he sold out. A friend has said of him as a journalist: "I have
often thought that a great editor, as great perhaps as Horace Greeley,
was lost when Mr. Blaine went into politics. He possesses all the
qualities of a great journalist: he has a phenomenal memory; he
remembers circumstances, dates, names, and places more readily than any
other man I ever met."
Wielding a strong, vigorous, aggressive pen, Mr. Blaine soon made its
power felt among politicians. He went to Maine at a time when the Whig
and Democratic parties were breaking up. Previous to 1854 the Democratic
party had governed the State for a quarter of a century, but its power
was broken in the September election of that year, through a temporary
union of the anti-slavery and temperance elements. In 1855 the different
wings of the new party were well consolidated, and in the famous Fremont
campaign of 1856 they carried the State, electing Hannibal Hamlin
governor by twenty-four thousand majority. Mr. Blaine, during all these
exciting times, did not by any means confine himself to writing
political leaders. He took an active part in politics, attending
Republican meetings throughout the State, and soon made himself one of
the recognized Republican leaders in Maine. Of this period of his
career, the late Governor Kent, of Maine, who himself stood in the front
rank of public men in his State, once wrote as follows:--
"Almost from the day of his assuming editorial charge of the Kennebec
Journal, at the early age of twenty-three, Mr. Elaine sprang into a
position of great influence in the politics and policy of Maine. At
twenty-five he was a leading power in the councils of the Republican
party, so recognized by Fessenden, Hamlin, the two Morrills, and others,
then, and still, prominent in the State. Before he was twenty-nine he
was chosen chairman of the executive committee of the Republican
organization in Maine--a position he has held ever since, and from which
he has practically shaped and directed every political campaign in the
State, always leading his party to brilliant victory. Had Mr. Blaine
been New-England born, he would probably not have received such rapid
advancement at so early an age, even with the same ability he possessed.
But there was a sort of Western _dash_ about him that took with us
Down-Easters; an expression of frankness, candor, and confidence, that
gave him from the start a very strong and permanent hold on our people,
and, as the foundation of all, a pure character and a masterly ability
equal to all demands made upon him."
Mr. Blaine's early political addresses, and especially the ability which
he displayed in them as a debater, won him great local reputation, and,
during the Fremont campaign, he achieved a distinction as a speaker
which insured him a seat in the Legislature, in 1858, though he was not
yet thirty years of age and had been but five years in his adopted
State. The ability which he displayed as a legislator was so marked that
his constituents returned him four years in succession, and the
Legislature, recognizing his talents, elected him speaker in 1860 and
1861, a rare honor for so young a man. As a presiding officer he
displayed those fine qualifications which afterward made him one of the
most brilliant of the long line of able men who have occupied the
speaker's chair in the National House of Representatives.
By this time Mr. Blaine had become a professional politician. In other
words he had given up all other occupations and made politics his sole
employment. This is a fact worthy of serious consideration, for few men
in this country have avowedly chosen politics as a calling and succeeded
in it as James G. Blaine has succeeded. Most of our statesmen, like
Webster and Lincoln, have been eminent lawyers. Blaine studied law
thoroughly, but never applied for admission at the bar. Some, like
Greeley, have been eminent journalists. Blaine made journalism merely a
means to an end, discarding it as soon as it had served his purpose.
Blaine has made a systematic and thorough study of politics and
political affairs. Constitutional history and international law he made
it his business to master. Above all, he has studied men, has learned by
careful observation how to handle, to mould, to use his fellow-beings.
No man in America to-day is more learned in everything pertaining to the
science of statesmanship than James G. Blaine. It is the fashion in this
country to decry professional politicians, to uphold the doctrine that
the office should seek the man and not the man the office. Yet there can
be no more honorable profession than the service of one's country, and
surely no man should be blamed for fitting himself for that service as
thoroughly and as carefully as for any other profession.
A man of Mr. Blaine's ability, of his rare knowledge of parliamentary
usages, and, above all, of his ambitions, was not likely to remain long
content with the position of a representative in the State Legislature.
As early as 1859 he had an ambition to go to Congress, and he was talked
of as a candidate in 1860. But Anson P. Morrill was nominated, Mr.
Blaine not having strength enough to obtain the honor. In 1862 Mr.
Blaine was nominated to the office, although he was not then so desirous
of it as he had been two years before. His patriotic utterances in the
convention which nominated him met with a hearty response, and he was
elected over his Democratic competitor by the largest majority that had
ever been given in his district, it exceeding three thousand. This
majority he held in six succeeding and consecutive elections, running it
up in one exciting contest to nearly four thousand.
During his first term in Congress Mr. Blaine gave himself up to study
and observation, but in the next Congress, the Thirty-ninth, he gained
some prominence, and from that time to the end of his congressional
career he occupied a foremost place among the Republican leaders. His
reputation was that of an exceedingly industrious committeeman. He was a
member of the post-office and military committees, and of the committees
on appropriations and rules. He paid close attention to the business of
the committees, and took an active part in the debates of the House,
manifesting practical ability and genius for details. The first
remarkable speech which he made in Congress was on the subject of the
assumption by the general government of the war debts of the States, in
the course of which he urged that the North was abundantly able to carry
on the war to a successful issue. This vigorous speech attracted so much
attention that two hundred thousand copies of it were circulated in 1864
as a campaign document by the Republican party. In the winter of 1865-66
Mr. Blaine was very energetic in promoting the passage of reconstruction
measures. In the early part of 1866 he proposed a resolution which
finally became the basis of that part of the fourteenth amendment
relating to congressional representation. In the second session of the
Thirty-ninth Congress he also distinguished himself by the "Blaine
amendment" to the military bill, which was universally discussed in the
public press of the day.
In 1867 Mr. Blaine made a trip to Europe, returning in time to fight
against the greenback heresy, of which he was the foremost opponent. In
December he made an elaborate speech on the finances, in which he
analyzed Mr. Pendleton's greenback theory. "The remedy for our financial
troubles," said he, "will not be found in a superabundance of
depreciated paper currency. It lies in the opposite direction, and the
sooner the nation finds itself on a specie basis the sooner will the
public treasury be freed from embarrassment and private business be
relieved from discouragement. Instead, therefore, of entering upon a
reckless and boundless issue of legal tenders, with their constant
depreciation, if not destruction, of value, let us set resolutely to
work and make those already in circulation equal to so many gold
dollars."
This was the last great question in the discussion of which Mr. Blaine
took part on the floor of the House, his colleagues in 1869 electing him
to the office of speaker, vacated by the promotion of Schuyler Colfax to
the vice-presidency. The vote stood one hundred and thirty-five votes
for Blaine to fifty-seven for Kerr, of Indiana. Mr. Blaine proved
himself eminently fitted for the position. As a speaker he may be
classed with Henry Clay and General Banks, who are acknowledged to have
been the best speakers we have ever had. Blaine was their equal in every
respect. The whole force of such a statement as this cannot be felt
unless it is fully understood that the speaker of the House of
Representatives stands next to the President in power and importance in
the United States. The business of Congress is done largely by
committees, and the committees of the House are appointed and shaped by
the speaker. Then, to say that Blaine was one of our three ablest
speakers is to say a great deal, for a long line of very able men have
filled the speaker's chair. His quickness, his thorough knowledge of
parliamentary law and of the rules, his firmness, clear voice,
impressive manner, his ready comprehension of subjects and situations,
and his dash and brilliancy, really made him a great presiding officer.
He rose to a high place not only in the estimation of his Republican
friends, but also of his Democratic opponents, and he was re-elected to
the speakership in 1871 and again in 1873. In 1875, the Democratic
majority took control, and Mr. Blaine resumed his place on the floor to
win fresh laurels as a debater, and to discomfit the majority in many a
projected scheme which his quick eye detected and his ready words
exposed.
The governor of Maine, on the tenth of July, 1876, appointed Mr. Blaine
to the national Senate, in place of Mr. Morrill, who had resigned to
become secretary of the treasury. He was afterward elected for the
unexpired term and the full term following. On his appointment he wrote
to his constituents thus:--
Beginning with 1862, you have, by continuous elections, sent me as your
representative to the Congress of the United States. For such marked
confidence, I have endeavored to return the most zealous and devoted
service in my power, and it is certainly not without a feeling of pain
that I now surrender a trust by which I have always felt so signally
honored. It has been my boast, in public and in private, that no man on
the floor of Congress ever represented a constituency more distinguished
for intelligence, for patriotism, for public and personal virtue. The
cordial support you have so uniformly given me through these fourteen
eventful years is the chief honor of my life. In closing the intimate
relations I have so long held with the people of this district, it is
a great satisfaction to me to know that with returning health I shall
enter upon a field of duty in which I can still serve them in common
with the larger constituency of which they form a part.
While in the Senate Mr. Blaine advocated the Chinese immigration bill,
and opposed the electoral commission and Bland silver legislation. Here,
as throughout his political career, he was never on the fence on any
question. His position has always been clear and he has always taken
strong grounds.
Mr. Elaine was a candidate for the presidential nomination in 1876, and
came within twenty-seven votes of being successful. His vote increased
from two hundred and ninety-one on the first ballot to three hundred and
fifty-one on the seventh, but he was beaten by a combination against him
of the delegates supporting Morton, Conkling, Hartranft, Bristow, and
Hayes, who united upon Hayes, and made him the nominee. He was also one
of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination at the
Republican National Convention in Chicago, in June, 1880. Out of a total
of seven hundred and fifty-five he received, on the first ballot, two
hundred and eighty-four votes. On the thirteenth and fourteenth ballots
he received his highest vote, two hundred and eighty-five, which very
gradually declined to two hundred and fifty-seven on the thirty-fifth
ballot. On the thirty-sixth ballot General Garfield was nominated by a
combination of the elements opposed to General Grant and a third term.
As before, Mr. Blaine yielded to the inevitable, remaining true to his
party principles, and contributing his aid to the election of James A.
Garfield.
When President Garfield made up his Cabinet he offered Mr. Blaine the
control of the state department. This is how Mr. Blaine accepted the
offer:
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