BLAINK, JAMES GILLESPIE. 



89 



purl in debate. But he made a conspicuous ex- 

 re|ition t<> iliis when he vacated the chair to op- 

 IM.-I- a fart ion of his own party, to whom he. 

 gave i he 11:11111- nf Stalwart," that were pushing 

 a measure giving the President ((irant) trie right 

 to sn>|>end the writ, of habeas corpus at pleasure 

 in the Southern States, and to use martial law in 

 smi|>iv.-ing the Kuklux Klan. 



Hta friend. II. J. Ramsdell, for twenty years a 

 journalist of Washington, who saw his daily 

 en in so as Speaker, says of that part of Mr. 

 Blaine's career: 



K\cn excluding all regard for the man, an enemy 

 would have been fascinated and delighted, in spite 

 ni' rancor, hy the sheer intellectual force and perfect 

 self command dis]>layed. The Speaker seemed born 

 to juv.side over just such an assemblage as that in 

 which ho found himself. Patient in the tedious pas- 

 sages of debute and routine, courteous under harass- 

 ing interruptions, impartial to friend and chivalric to 

 tor, h>' rapidly rose with the rising tide of excitement 

 and activity caused by important business or personal 

 feeling, towering to his full height^ his voice, with 

 et ii i HIT of the ring of the clarion in it, penetrating 



murders and crimes of Anderson ville.' 

 he said : 



In part 



I hear it said, " We will lift Mr. Davis again into 

 iMvat consequence by refusing amnesty." That is not 

 t<>r me to consider; I only see before me, when hi* 

 mum- is presented, a man who, by the wink of h'n 

 . \<, hy a wave of his hand, by a nod of his head, 

 could have stopped the atrocity at Andersonville. 

 Some of us had kinsmen there, most of us had friends 

 there, all of us had countrymen there; and in the 

 name of those kinsmen, friends, and countrymen, I 

 here protest, and shall with my vote protest, against 

 calling back and crowning with the honors of full 

 American citizenship the man who organized that 

 murder. 



This debate strengthened Mr. Elaine's influ- 

 ence with his personal friends, but it also made 

 bitter and relentless enemies. A rumor was set 

 afloat that Mr. Blaine had received, for an un- 

 stated reason, $64,000 of Union Pacific Railroad 

 bonds, and stories of all sorts were rife. Mr. 

 Blaine denied them all from his seat in the 

 House, and made voluntary explanation of his 



MR. ELAINE'S BIRTHPLACE, WEST BROWNSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA. 



the loudest tumult, the gavel in his practiced hand 

 chiming in with varied tones that aptly enforced his 

 words, from the sharp rat-tat-tat that recalled the 

 House to decorum, to the vigorous thunder that actu- 

 ally drowned unparliamentary speech ; rulings, repar- 

 tee, translucent explanation flashing from his lips as 

 quick as lightmnir, to the discomfiture of every as- 

 sailant who tilted against him, until, with the whole 

 lionise in full cry, the waves of debate rolling and 

 surging around the base of the marble throne on 

 which the Speaker is installed, he seemed, like the 

 creature of Aadison's imagination, to " ride the whirl- 

 wind und direct the storm." 



When the final effort for universal amnesty 

 was made Mr. Blaine moved that there should 

 be one exception Jefferson Davis : not because 

 he was more guilty than many less conspicuous, 

 but because he was the author, " knowingly, de- 

 liberately, guiltily, and willfully, of the gigantic 



connection with the Little Rock and Fort Smith 

 Railroad. Another attack was made in regard 

 to Kansas Pacific bonds, and Mr. Blaine, after 

 showing that the lawsuit which was the only 

 basis for such charges was that of his elder 

 brother, many years before, ended by saying : 



Having now noticed the two that have been so ex- 

 tensively circulated, I shall refrain from calling the 

 attention of the House to any others that may be in- 

 vented. To quote the language of another : u I do not 

 propose to make my public life a perpetual and un- 

 comfortable flea hunt, in the vain effort to run down 

 stories which have no basis in truth, which are usu- 

 ally anonymous, and whose total refutation brings no 

 punishment to those who have been guilty of origi- 

 nating them." 



But it was an era of ' scandal " and ' investi- 

 gation," and the Opposition newspapers an- 



