McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 written by Various

V >> Various >> McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

With profound respect, your friend,

W.T. SHERMAN.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER WRITTEN BY MR. BLAINE TO MR.
HALSTEAD JUST AFTER MR. BLAINE'S DEFEAT FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1884,
AND NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED--THE SAME LETTER THAT IS EMBODIED IN THE
TEXT OF THIS ARTICLE ON PAGE 169.]

[Illustration: CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF LETTER.]

[Illustration: CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF LETTER.]

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.

There is a great contrast in his favor in his manner of bearing this
disappointment with that of Clay and Webster under somewhat similar
circumstances. Clay was furious at the nomination of General William
Henry Harrison, and greeted with unmeasured denunciation those
responsible for that judicious act; and Webster was bitter when Taylor
and Scott were nominated in the first instance, but came, after a
time, grandly out of the clouds. It is an interesting coincidence that
Webster when Secretary of State was a candidate for the Presidential
nomination against his chief, President Fillmore, and died, on the
24th of October, 1852, a few months after Scott's triumph at Baltimore
and a few days before the popular election of Pierce. The enduring
memory of Mr. Blaine appeared in the last October he lived, in the
precise remark, when something was said of the death of Webster, "Ah!
day after to-morrow it will be forty years since Webster died." The
news of the nomination of Hayes, Blaine received serenely, and before
the vote was declared in the convention sent the nominee a cordial
telegram of congratulation. When he knew at Augusta in 1884 that he
was beaten, he said: "Personally I care less than my nearest friends
would believe, but for the cause and for many friends I profoundly
deplore the result." And that was the entire truth. He felt that he
had not been fairly beaten, but he gave utterance only to the public
wrong done in the unfairness, and left that expression as a warning to
the country. He did not, as we have seen, follow the example of Clay,
who persistently favored his own candidacy. On the contrary, Blaine
did not covet the Presidency, and tried to avoid the personal strife
of 1884, and not for any of the apprehensive motives attributed to
him by those who acted upon the feeling in his case that the spirit of
justice was malevolent.

I feel that I should not now deal fairly with the public if I did
not give here the letter from Blaine in my possession, that more
completely than any published gives expression to his personal bearing
when defeated.

LETTER FROM MR. BLAINE TO MR. HALSTEAD.

(Personal.)

AUGUSTA, MAINE, _16th Nov., '84._

DEAR MR. HALSTEAD:--I think there would be no harm to the
public and no personal injustice if you should insert the
three enclosed items in your editorial columns.

I feel quite serene over the result. As the Lord sent upon us
an ass in the shape of a preacher, and a rainstorm, to lessen
our vote in New York, I am disposed to feel resigned to the
dispensation of defeat, which flowed directly from these
agencies.

In missing a great honor I escaped a great and oppressive
responsibility. You know--perhaps better than any one--how
_much I didn't want_ the nomination; but perhaps, in view of
all things, I have not made a loss by the canvass. At least I
try to think not. The other candidate would have fared hard in
Maine, and would have been utterly broken in Ohio.

Sincerely,

JAMES G. BLAINE.

Of course all this is private.

_P.S._--This note was written before receipt of yours. Pray
publish nothing of the kind you intimate unless you first
permit me to see the proof. Don't be afraid of the enclosed
items. They are rock-ribbed for truth and for a good rendering
of public opinion.

Mr. Blaine refers in the closing paragraph to the proposition I made
to him to publish the true story of his candidacy--substantially the
same pressed upon the attention of General Sherman. Between them they
suppressed me, but it is due them that this chapter of history should
be known now that they are gone.

I had the privilege of walking with Mr. Blaine in the beautiful and
fragrant parks at Homburg, in Southern Germany, in the summer of 1887,
and discussing with him the question whether he should be a candidate
for the Republican nomination the next spring. He then seemed to be
very well, but exertion speedily fatigued him. He was on sight a very
striking personage, and always instantly regarded with interest by
strangers. His personal appearance was of the utmost refinement and of
irreproachable dignity. His absolute cleanliness was something dainty,
his dress simple but fitting perfectly and of the best material. His
face was very pale, but his sparkling eyes contradicted the pallor.

His form was erect, and his figure that of youth. His hair and beard
were exquisitely white. His mouth had the purity of a child's, and
he never had tasted tobacco or used spirituous liquors, save when his
physician had recommended a little whiskey, and then not enough to
color a glass. He drank sparingly of claret and champagne, caring only
for the flavor. He was gentle, kindly, genial, and in a manly sense
beautiful. There are many distinguished English people at Homburg in
the season, and they were gratified to meet Mr. Blaine, and charmed
with him. It required no ceremony to announce him as a personage--a
man who had made events--and he never posed or gave the slightest
hint, in his movements, of conscious celebrity. I never saw him
bothered by being aware of himself but once, and that was when, across
the street from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the dusk of an evening, he
shaded his face with his hand, and looked curiously at ten thousand
people who were gazing at the house, and shouting madly for him,
expecting that he would appear at a window and make acknowledgment of
their enthusiasm. Suddenly he saw in the glance of one beside him that
he was curiously yet doubtfully regarded, and hastened away in fear of
his friends, who in their delight at discovering him would have become
a mob.

In Homburg he seemed to care for others' opinions about the proper
course for him to take; and the substance of that which I had to
say--and he seemed to think me in a way representative--was that he
alone must decide for himself, as he only knew all the circumstances
and elements that must be considered in a decision. Once we walked
the main street of the town in the night--and it is then a very lonely
place, for it is the fashion to get up in the morning at six o'clock,
and take the waters and the music--and that time I was impressed, and
the impression abided, that the inner conviction of Mr. Blaine was he
had not the vitality to safely take the Presidency if he held it in
his hand; that he believed the office would wear him out--that it was
a place of dealing with persons who would worry away his existence;
that he felt he could not endure the wear and tear and pressure of
the first position, and preferred the Secretaryship of State, with
the hope of going on with his South American policy, which he had
developed in Garfield's time, brief as that was; and I conjectured
that all this had been in his mind when he wanted Sherman and Lincoln
to be the ticket in 1884. And it occurred to me with so much force as
the logic of many things he said, that I accepted it as true, and was
reminded of his weary exclamation once of a good friend whose moods
were changeable: "Now that he is right, stay with him. He takes the
health out of me with his uncertainties."

The Secretaryship of State he cared for; in that office the world was
all before him, and he was fully himself, and was not fretted by
a perpetual procession of favor-seekers. The argument his urgent
admirers used with him was that it would be easier to make up his mind
than to convince a President, and that as the Chief of State he could
throw the work on the Cabinet; but he was not satisfied. The Florence
letter to me seemed familiar, for it was a reminder of Homburg, and
its sincerity was in all the lines and between the lines; and it was
addressed to a friend in Pittsburg, that it might not be suppressed in
New York. He had very close and influential friends who did not divine
his true attitude, or would not admit that they had, and insisted that
he was really well and strong and tough, better than he had been, and
that he should not be humored in his fancy that he was an invalid.
This feeling continued even to 1892, though he had been meantime
painfully broken by a protracted illness. It will be remembered that
in the correspondence between General Harrison as President-elect and
Mr. Blaine, when the Secretaryship of State was offered and accepted,
there appeared harmony of views concerning Pan-Americanism; that Mr.
Blaine enjoyed the office and that his official labors during the
Harrison Administration were of the highest distinction, showing
his happiest characteristics. The difference as to duties that arose
between the President and the Secretary was forgotten, and their
mutual sympathies abounded, when there came upon them, in their
households, the gravest, tenderest sorrows.

[Illustration: BLAINE'S GRAVE AT WASHINGTON, D.C. THE TREE AT THE LEFT
MARKS THE HEAD OF THE GRAVE, AND THE FIRST OF THE THREE LOW STONES IN
THE FOREGROUND, NUMBERING FROM THE LEFT, MARKS THE FOOT.

From a photograph by Miss F.B. Johnston.]

When Mr. Blaine was for the last time in New York on his way to
Washington, stopping as was his habit at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
he asked me to walk with him to his room, fronting on Twenty-third
Street, on the parlor floor; and he slowly, as if it were a task,
unlocked the door. There was a sparkle of autumnal crispness in
the air, and he had a fire, that glittered and threw shadows about
fitfully. There was not much to say. It was plain at last that Mr.
Blaine was fading, that he had within a few weeks failed fast. His
great, bright eyes were greater than ever, but not so bright. His face
was awfully white; not that brainy pallor that was familiar--something
else! He seated himself in the light of the fire, on an easy-chair.
There was a knock at his door, and a servant handed him a card, and
he said: "No;" and we were alone. I could not think of a word of
consolation; and in a moment he appeared to have forgotten me, and
stared in a fixed, rapt dream at the flickering flame in the grate.
It occurred to me to get up and go away quietly, as conversation was
impossible--for there was too much to say. It came to me that I ought
not to leave him alone. Something in him reminded me of the mystical
phrases of the transcendent paragraph of his oration on Garfield,
picturing the death of the second martyred President, by the ocean,
while far off white ships touched the sea and sky, and the fevered
face of the dying man felt "the breath of the eternal morning."

Some weeks earlier Mr. Blaine and I had had a deep talk about men and
things, and he was very kind, and his boundless generosity of
nature never revealed itself with a greater or sadder charm. He now
remembered that conversation--as a word disclosed--and said: "I could
have endured all things if my boys had not died." The door opened,
and his secretary walked in--and I took Mr. Blaine's hand for the
last time, saying, "Good-night," and he said, with a look that meant
farewell--"Good-by."

His grave is on a slope that when I saw it was goldenly sunny, and
the turf was strewn by his wife's hand with lilies--for it was Easter
morning! Close at his left was a steep, grassy bank, radiantly blue
with violets, and there was in the shining air the murmurous hum
of bees, making a slumbrous, restful music. Blaine's monument is a
hickory tree whose broken top speaks of storms, and at his feet is
a stone white as new snow, and on it only--and they are enough--the
initials "J.G.B.," that were the battle-cry of millions, and are and
shall be always to memory dear.

[Footnote I: This related to a matter General Sherman had mentioned in
another letter, and did not refer to the subject I was trying to get
him to consider.]

[Footnote J: General Sherman differed in this judgment with Blaine and
many Republicans who were not unfriendly to Arthur.]

THE NEW STATUE OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.

BY FRANK B. GESSNER.

The erection of an equestrian statue of General William Henry
Harrison, in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a fitting but also a tardy
commemoration of a man who rendered his State and the nation most
distinguished services. For fifty years there has been talk of doing
him honor in some such fashion, and even the statue which as this
Magazine goes to press is being formally dedicated in Cincinnati
(in the presence of a grandson of the subject who is himself an
ex-President), has been completed for some years, and has been stowed
away in dust and darkness because there was not public interest enough
in the matter to meet the cost of setting it up.

Although now almost a forgotten figure, General Harrison was one
of the ablest and worthiest of our public men. Born in Berkeley,
Virginia, February 9, 1773, he grew to manhood with the close of
the Revolution and the establishment of the national government. His
father was the friend of Washington, and when the son went into the
Western wilds he held a commission as ensign signed by the first of
the Presidents. At the age of thirty he was a delegate in Congress
from the Northwest Territory. For a succeeding decade he was governor
of that wide stretch of country which in time he saw carved into
States all owing much to his genius as warrior and statesman. In the
second war with Great Britain he commanded the Western armies, and won
the notable victories of Tippecanoe and the Thames. The first gave him
a name which became the slogan of the Whigs in the memorable campaign
of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." At the battle of the Thames fell
Tecumseh, whose death broke the Indian power east of the Mississippi.
After the war of 1812 General Harrison was successively Congressman,
Senator of the United States, and Minister to Colombia.

[Illustration: STATUE OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, MADE FOR THE CITY OF
CINCINNATI BY MR. L.T. REBISSO.

From a photograph by Landy, Cincinnati.]

Returning in 1830 to his home at North Bend, on the line between
Indiana and Ohio, he lived more or less in retirement until 1836, when
he was made the Whig candidate for President. He was defeated; but in
1840 he was again the nominee, and, after the greatest campaign of the
century, was elected, defeating Martin Van Buren. The campaign of 1840
was called the "log-cabin and hard-cider" campaign, though the
reputed log-cabin home of the Whig candidate was in reality a spacious
mansion. General Harrison was inaugurated March 4, 1841, and on April
4, a month later, he died in the White House, a victim of exposure and
the wearing importunities of office-seeking constituents. Something of
the character of the man is disclosed in his last words, spoken four
hours before his death. To whom he thought himself speaking can only
be conjectured--Vice-President Tyler, some authorities claim; but he
was heard by his physician to say: "Sir, I wish you to understand
the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask
nothing more."

Physically, General Harrison has been described as "about six feet
high," straight and rather slender, and of "a firm, elastic gait,"
even in his last years. He had "a keen, penetrating eye," a "high,
broad and prominent" forehead, and "rather thin and compressed lips."

[Illustration: ANNA SYMMES HARRISON, WIFE OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY
HARRISON, AND GRANDMOTHER OF PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON.

From a painting in possession of the Harrison family.]

Mrs. Harrison was not with her husband at his death, and never became
an inmate of the White House. For that reason there hangs on its walls
no portrait of her, among those of the various ladies of the mansion.
She was the daughter of John Cleves Symmes, a scion of the Colonial
aristocracy. She loved better than the excitement of social life in
Washington the domestic peace of her North Bend home and the society
of her thirteen children, growing up in usefulness and honor. In her
youth she had been a great belle, and she remained a beautiful
woman even in her declining years. She was educated in that first
fashionable school for young women in America founded by Isabella
Graham in the city of New York. A sister, Polly Symmes, was also a
famous beauty. They went together to share their father's fortunes
in the unsettled West, and both found their fates in the hand of the
Miamis. Polly married Peyton Short, who became a millionaire.

Mrs. Harrison had been detained by illness from going with her husband
to witness the proudest event of his life, his inauguration; and she
had purposed following him to Washington later in the spring, when the
weather should be more favorable for the long, wearisome journey by
stage-coach. But, alas! before the spring fully opened, instead of
following him to Washington she was following his body to its silent,
stone-walled tomb, overlooking the wide sweep of the Ohio southward.
This noble woman lived to be eighty-nine and to see her grandson,
Benjamin Harrison, now ex-President, a general in the Union army.
She retained to the last much of her beauty and that sweetness of
disposition which has endeared her memory to those of her blood who
knew her best. She sleeps by the side of her husband in the old vault
at North Bend.

The Cincinnati statue of General Harrison is the work of L.T. Rebisso,
who made the statue of General McPherson which stands in one of the
circular parks in Washington, and the equestrian statue of General
Grant for the city of Chicago. Its cost, which, exclusive of the
pedestal, is twenty-seven thousand dollars, is paid by the city.
Mr. Rebisso has given a portrayal of Harrison unlike any of the more
familiar pictures. These usually present a decrepit old man, from
whose eye have vanished that fire of youth and flash of soul which
made Harrison a leader of men. The Rebisso statue, as will be seen by
the reproduction of it given herewith, presents a soldier in the full
flower of vigorous manhood. And this conception is no mere ideal of
fancy, but is taken from a portrait painted in 1812, which now hangs
in the house of a grandchild of General Harrison near the old North
Bend homestead.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13