Memorial Edition.  Life and Work of James G. Blaine.  PREFACE


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Memorial Edition.  Life and Work of James G. Blaine.  
by John Clark Ridpath, LL. D., General Selden Connor, Ex-Governor 
of Maine, and other eminent friends of Mr. Blaine.
A National Gallery of Pictures and Portraits.
Philadelphia:  Historical Publishing Company 1893.
Copyright, 1893, by H. S. Smith.
(All Rights Reserved.)

pages iii - viii


We do not conceal from ourselves or the public the hesitation which we feel
in attempting to portray the life and work of James G. Blaine. It is a life
so unique, a work so great, that the writers may well pause before
beginning the delineation of the one and the estimation of, the other.

Public interest, however, is so deeply rooted in the character of Blaine
that much will be overlooked and much more forgiven in the case of an
honest attempt to transcribe that character to the printed page. The people
of the United States will, at the present juncture, read with sympathy the
essays and deductions of many authors. A great volume of matter, much of it
transient and a certain part permanent in value, will be given forth in the
current year. It were not beyond the range of probability that the personal
life and public career of Blaine will be more discussed and written about
than that of any other American of the present age, with the possible
exception of General Grant.

These facts may excuse such faults and imperfections in the following work
as are incident to the nature of the subject and to the occasion. The
occasion certainly exists. The shadow of a great eclipse has passed over
the American landscape.  The shadow has been as broad as the borders of our
country, and the penumbra of it has extended northward to the frozen seas
and southward to the pampas.

American history of the current age has been rich in great men; but it has
not been so rich as to spare any. Of these death has been claiming from
time to time a rich harvest. The shaft has struck here and there, in places
far and near. Our distinguished generals are all gone or going. They who
were developed to so high a degree of character and action in the epoch of
our national trial have passed off one by one-

                                    "To join 
                      The innumerable caravan which moves 
                 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
                   His chamber in the silent halls of death."

Grant and Lee, Sherman and Johnston have lain down together. McClellan and
Sheridan, Hancock and Logan have gone away to the far country whose
landscape no earthly witness has described.

In like manner the great civilians of the age have passed from the arena of
the world. Where, alas!   are those stately figures that filled the walks
of public life during the last quarter of a century ? Silent all!  Two
great Presidents dead by violence!   Two other Presidents gone away ---the
greatest sleeping at Riverside. Vice-Presidents and aspirants fallen!  If
Senators, diplomatists, ministers, publicists-a legion departed into
silence!  Ere long all the great relics of the heroic days will be seen no
more in the gloom and shine of this planet. So also the intellectually
great are going. Our authors, poets, men of letters, have disappeared until
the thinned ranks are reduced to a spectral array, among whom contentions
and rivalries are almost vain from paucity of numbers.

It would appear that the world cannot well spare its great men. They are
not so plentiful in any age or under any-condition as to be wastefully put
out of sight. The world loses by their going. It is not certain that OUR
planet has any intrinsic value ; but its extrinsic or related value as the
abode of human activity is great. It is men and the deeds of men that
confer upon this scene its interest and importance. Nevertheless, our
estimate of harm from the loss of the great is doubtless overdrawn. If,
indeed, men - individuals -were, as the poorest school of thinking would
have us believe, the creators of history, then the world-the progress of
events-might seem to be put out of place by the departure of great actors
from the arena. But the world is fortunately not so disturbed by the loss
of any, however great. History is able to care for herself. She produces
according to her exigencies. If the exigencies be great, then history is a
great mother. If the exigency be small, then the mother is correspondingly
parsimonious in her offspring. Sometimes, for a while, she brings forth
nothing at all-not, perhaps, because she cannot, but because she thinks the
occasion does not demand the exercise of the full powers of her sublime
maternity!

James G. Blaine has now been transferred from this to another scene. He has
gone to Garfield!  What that other estate is, we shall not presumptuously
venture to declare. Certainly they are with the immortals, wheresoever it
be. May be it is in Lyra; may be in Altair!  May be the glories of the sun
have taken them both back to the embrace of fire. Let us at any rate hope
that they live, and think, and enjoy, and know!

The day was when these two walked down side by side, on the early July
morning, and entered the Chesapeake Station together. Eighteen years before
they had entered Congress together. Both had risen to rank and fame. One
had the greater success ; the other had the greater genius. It would seem
that they were friends. Crash goes the assassin's bullet! One is down, and
the other goes on through contention and battle for a season. He, too, has
now made his exit through that narrow door which has opened and closed for
every son of man. What a strange scene is this I Can any fathom life? What
is this action for ?. What are all these senses, this intellect, this
perception, this will, this consciousness and soul-what is life intended to
subserve and accomplish ?

It is still the day of deep sympathy for the exit of James G. Blaine from
the mortal scene. We do not doubt that the faculties of all Americans are
for the present moved by the event, and that the logical estimate of the
dead is disturbed a little by affection and the sense of loss. That Blaine
has occupied a conspicuous place in the thought and in the heart of his
countrymen for many years cannot be denied or doubted. He was the friend of
many men, and many were friends of him. In his life he said brilliant
things and enacted a striking part in the drama of the age.

This is said of his part in the public life of the American nation. We all
know that an exaggerated estimate is placed upon our public life and upon
the actors in it. The public life of the people is not its real life ; but
only its spectacular existence. The real life is the life of the masses. It
is measured by their every-day thoughts and feelings and hopes. As these
rise and fall civilization ascends or descends to corresponding altitudes
and depressions. Certainly we do not deny that the public life has its
greatness and value. We simply insist that this public life is not the true
one-that it is only exponential of a greater life resident in the breast of
the people.

In the arena of governmental affairs-necessarily a great arena in a
democratic and republican country-leaders have a remarkable ascendancy over
the minds of the people. It is well that it should be so. The people,
looking to their leaders, remember that they are leaders because they are
chosen to be such. Therefore, the people glory in themselves because of the
leadership which they themselves have created. There are, however, leaders
and leaders. James G. Blaine was one of THE leaders. He led, not only by
sufferance, not only because he was chosen with the full consent of a free
people to lead, but because he had in him the inherent capacity to be a
leader and the genius to vindicate his claim by many conspicuous and useful
policies and works.

As to method it is often a matter of doubt with a writer what is best to be
chosen. The method varies with the subject. In the case of, public men a
biography is necessarily deduced most largely from public affairs. It is
drawn from those records which the given character has written or helped to
record in the annals, of his age. In the case of literary men the narrative
is deduced mostly from their writings and to a considerable extent from the
personal habits and lives of the authors.

There is a strong disposition in our day to separate the public man into
two parts, and to pass over the personal half with little notice or
concern. It has been openly avowed in recent American biography as a canon
of the art that the personal life of the public man has nothing to do with
the case. Public interest, however, includes both the individual and the
civil life of the actor. This is true, if we mistake not, as a principle to
be observed in the biography of Blaine. He had a large personality, as well
as a large public career. We shall attempt to delineate both in the
following pages, though the subject will lead us to dwell more particularly
on the civic and public parts than on the personal.

In a country like the United States, where families are not established,
where the genealogical tree is less esteemed than any tree of the forest,
it must needs be that a personal and family history will be brief-this for
the reason that no record is made of the career of American boys and
youths. It cannot be known in advance that a given boy, in a republican
democracy like our own, will rise to distinction. The rule is, indeed, that
our great men proceed from obscurity. The obscurity is sometimes so dense
that it is almost impossible to discover anything about the early life,
associations and dispositions of the character in question. Life in the
United States does not go by families,' but by achievement. We have seen in
late years how difficult it is to construct a biography of Lincoln or of
Garfield. The beginnings of their lives and the whole period of youth were
so obscure that the biographer is scarcely able to find a point of light or
interest.

In America men emerge. They come not of old family stocks-not out of
baronial manors and feudal castles-but out of the undiscovered fountains of
the humble homes of the people. The American youth is properly the son of
the people. The fact is emphasized by cross-marriage, which is the rule in
American society, No doubt the principle of marriage by the preference and
desire of the parties has its drawbacks and disadvantages; but it is, at
any rate, based on affection and choice, and these must, in the long tun,
work out better results than any marriage method contrived by the interest
and selfishness of parents.

The American youth, having in his veins the cross-currents of many stocks,
becomes composite in the highest degree; but, at the same time, he becomes
strong. The old method of preparing the metal for axles and pistons was to
gather from indescribable sources the scrap-iron debris of everything, and
to throw the same together upon a sheet of the same * metal, which was
folded up around the miscellaneous mass. The ball thus prepared was cast
into the furnace, and thence taken at white heat to be kneaded and .pounded
and rolled into the required form. Thus was greatest strength secured, and
thus, by mixture of fiber, a density and endurance of the whole obtained,
which could not be reached in any other way. In the alchemy of human life
there is something like it; that is, in the alchemy of American life, where
every son born of our democratic family is a sort of son of man. These
reflections have a measure of application to Blaine.  True, his family
descent was highly reputable. But his ancestors were not so conspicuous or
so much concerned about the prospects of their descendants as to record the
events-if such they may be called--of the juvenile career of our subject.
In fact, James G. Blaine began life as other boys to make his way in the
world, and it was some time before he was able to demonstrate the
difference between his own powers and promise and the like facts in his
fellows. After the beginning of his public career the light is turned upon
him, and in course of time there is a full blaze.

In his latter years Blaine has been watched and recorded at every step.
Hardly any other character in the whole history of the American people has
been written about and mad ' e of record so' fully as has been the subject
of the biography which we here attempt to present.

In the preparation of this volume we shall first aim to give an account of
the ancestry and early life -of Blaine, passing thence to the collegiate
and trial epoch of his youth, and thence to his first appearance in public.
From his editorial career we shall follow him into Congress, and note with
admiration his rise and distinction. Already at the age of thirty-five he
was a noted man.

A number of such cases are seen in the epoch under consideration. In 1865
the young men of the great free States had become suddenly conspicuous.
They had espoused the Republican cause; voted for Fremont; gone in on the
wave that carried Lincoln to the presidency, and soon began to reap the
fruits of leadership. Oliver P. Morton was War Governor of Indiana at the
age of thirty-seven. Blaine was a leader at a still more precocious period
of his life.

From the notice of his career at this epoch we shall go forward to the
still wider career upon which he entered in the after years of his service
in the House and in the Senate. Then we shall see him as Secretary of State
and aspirant. for the presidency. It will be our purpose to adorn this
volume with copious extracts from Blaine's great speeches; also to add from
his other literary works to the extent of illustrating his capacities as a
man of letters. Finally, we shall attempt to give an adequate estimate of
the genius and career of Blaine viewed as facts in American history.

We solicit for the work here presented to the public a fair measure of
attention and appreciation. It has been our desire to make it in some
degree worthy of the subject and of the occasion which now calls forth the
publication. In common with our countrymen we share the admiration which
they have entertained for James G. Blaine, and shall have a keen regret for
any failure to portray his life and work in such manner as to merit the
approbation of that great and not undiscerning public to whom we surrender
this work with mingled pleasure and regret. 

New York, 1893.
J. C.  R.
S. C.