FRANCIS PRESTON BLAIR

(1821-1875)

URING and after the Civil War the decisive balance of power was held in a territory extending from the eastern line of Ohio to the western line of Missouri and from the latitude of Springfield, Illinois, on the north to the southern boundary of Kentucky.

The question of keeping Missouri and Kentucky in the Union was the vital question of 1861, and it was decided when Frank P. Blair, with characteristic force, rallied the supporters of the Union in Missouri for the defense of the St. Louis arsenal and its 65,000 stands of arms. When, as major-general in the army of General Sherman, he led the Seventeenth army corps on the march to the sea, his services were more brilliant without being more important. The control of the Mississippi and its great confluent streams, the Ohio, the Missouri, and especially the Tennessee, was the decisive factor of the struggle in the Mississippi Valley, and hence in the entire country. The final result was really involved as a logical necessity at the very beginning when the arsenal at St. Louis was held and the State of Missouri kept in the Union.

Once more, after the close of the war, it fell to Blair to lead men whose influence conclusively and unmistakably determined the course of events, though they were in a minority, representing the views of the masses of neither of the great parties as they then were. He stood in the politics of that period for devotion to the Union, and for strong objection to the reconstruction of the government on a basis which was not contemplated during the progress of the war. In his speech on the Fifteenth Amendment he expressed the idea which controlled not only his own course after the war but that of the powerful element he represented as the Democratic nominee for vice-president on the ticket with Seymour. "Have we a Federal Union on a constitutional basis?" he asked. "Are the States equal in political rights? Is the central government acting within constitutional limitations? What is the whole system of reconstruction as it is called, this exclusion of States from their inherent and guaranteed rights? Taxation without representation, their fundamental laws set aside, the popular will suppressed, the right of suffrage taken from the States by an usurping fragment of Congress, the Federal

Constitution itself changed in its character by the same usurping fragment and in defiance of the known and expressed will of the people?»

The politics of more than a decade were directly determined by the idea which is condensed into these sentences. The Liberal Republican movement which began in Missouri and in one way or another decided the course of events until it forced the nomination of Garfield, had its real beginnings when Blair came home after the march to the sea and refused to follow the Republican party beyond the surrender at Appomattox.

In considering the work of men so earnest in their purposes and so reckless of personal considerations in carrying them out as Blair was, the critical faculties refuse to respond to the demand made upon them. We do not ask "Is he right? Is he wrong? Is he for us or against us?" but rather how he came by the intense and fiery energy which compels him in his action as it gives him strength for the struggle.

His characteristic energy showed itself when he took the lead in the fight against the test oaths which were proposed immediately after the close of the war. The case of Blair versus Ridgely, one of the most important in American history, was brought by him on the theory that the constitutional clauses and enactments requiring test oaths and providing punishments for refusal to comply with such requirement were in the nature of a bill of attainder and ex post facto. This case and others of the same nature were carried to the United States Supreme Court which upheld the theories of those who opposed test oaths as in violation of the Federal Constitution.

Blair was born in Lexington, Kentucky, February 19th, 1821. A graduate of Princeton, educated for the bar in Washington, he located in St. Louis, but ill-health and the necessity for the open air sent him to lead the life of a trapper in the Rocky Mountains. He enlisted as a private in the Mexican War and, after his return, edited the Missouri Democrat in St. Louis. From the campaign in 1848, when he sided with the Free Soil Democrats until after the close of the Civil War, he held the middle ground between the extreme South and the extreme North. Elected to Congress as a Republican in 1856, he advocated colonizing the negroes of the South under an arrangement with Spanish-American countries. In 1866, when nominated for Collector of Internal Revenue at St. Louis, and for Minister to Russia, he was rejected by the Senate for both offices- a fact which probably helped to secure his nomination on the Democratic National ticket in 1868. He was elected United States Senator from Missouri in 1871, and died July 10th, 1875.

THE CHARACTER AND WORK OF BENTON

(Delivered at the Unveiling of the Benton Statue in St. Louis)

People of Missouri:

THE

HE highest honor ever conferred on me is that of being called on by you to speak on this occasion. To express the gratitude of a great State to its greatest public benefactor; to represent a generous, proud-spirited, yet fond, affectionate community, paying its homage to the exalted genius that cherished its own infancy with a devoted feeling exceeding the instinct which attaches the parent to its new-born offspring; to express the sentiment that swells the heart of Missouri, now elevating to the view of the whole country the imperishable form of her statesman who gave his whole career to her faithful service in the most trying times,- this to me is a most grateful duty, however impossible it may be to discharge it adequately. Your indulgence in assigning me to this honor I know proceeds from the partial kindness always extended to me by the man whose memory your present ceremonies and the monument they consecrate are designed to perpetuate. It is a recollection of this, his personal partiality, that clothes me with your favor, and his great merits will, in your eyes, cover all the imperfection of my efforts to body them forth again. A keynote from my feeble voice will strike the chord in your bosoms requiring no pathos from mine.

All nations, especially free and highly-endowed, cultivated commonwealths, have raised monuments to such of their children as distinguished them by illustrious labors elevating their country to renown. The bond which leads to this so-called "heroworship" emanates from the sort of self-love which, spreading among a whole people endued with like sympathies, converges in the individual in whose character they perceive the exalted elements that signalize their own genius as a people. Hero-worship in enlightened nations is directly the reverse of the idolatry that springs up in savage ignorance and supplants intelligence by superstition. The Christian religion, in its magnificent monuments and emblems, gives the senses clear conceptions of the life, the body, the moral excellence, and even the sufferings of the Savior. By addressing the senses as well as the reasoning faculties and the sympathies of our nature, it gives embodiment to the thought and feeling which arise from our devotion, with the aspiration which enables it to incorporate with itself the

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excellence by which it is impressed. It is so, but in a less degree, of the excellencies of our fellow-men who are commemorated in history, whose forms and lineaments living in marble and painting are presented through successive ages, to animate posterity, to perpetuate virtue by example-by the presentment of the very form and features of the illustrious men who are crowned with national honors, and so to inspire the noble few in every generation to become public benefactors.

To-day, you raise from the grave and give to the light the form, the features of that model of an American Senator, whose patriotism entitled him to all the honors that the Roman Cato merited in the eyes of his countrymen. There never lived a man with more instinctive patriotism than Benton. He was a man of strong, sometimes of unruly passions, but his paramount passion was love of country. Let me open my reminiscences of this strong man of intellect and impulses with a proof of his title to this proud position. I will first touch on an important transaction with which his public life commenced.

After glorious service in the war with Great Britain, in which Benton acted as the aid of General Jackson, a bloody feud arose between them, growing out of a duel in which the brother of the former was wounded by a friend of Jackson, whom he attended as a second. This resulted in hatred, which time made inveterate. With men of such determination, who had refused all explanation at first, who would have no arbitrators but their weapons, no approach to reconciliation seemed possible. The thought of it was not welcome to either until a conjuncture arose which threatened the safety of the country. Both then perceived that their joint efforts were essential to the good of the country, and without a word spoken, without the slightest intimation from either that friendly relations would be welcomed, the Senator began his labors in the service of the President and went to him to know how his co-operation could be made most effective in defense of the Union. Not a word about bygones passed between them. The memory of the quarrel was blotted out by the danger which menaced the country. The old intimacy was revived in their devotion to the public cause. Cordial, unaffected, mutual attachment sprung up, and not a cloud remained of the black storm where rage was once welcomed as promising to end all differences in a common destruction. Patriotism, the ruling passion in both bosoms, exorcised from both every particle of anger, pride, and

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the cherished antagonism of years. Benton belonged to the generation of statesmen who followed the founders of the government; when he entered Congress, Monroe was still President, and some few of the framers of the Constitution were Members of the Senate and House. He admired the form of government which these men had assisted in making, and regarded them with a profound veneration which extended to and embraced those who belonged to the Federal school of politics as well as those who belonged to the Democratic school, to which he himself was attached. Nothing better could exemplify his respect for, his deference to these men than the account he gives in a letter to his wife of the "reproof" administered to him by Mr. Rufus King, of New York. He had made a speech in reply to some Member and had spoken with force and animation. "When it was over," he says in his letter, "Mr. King, of New York, came and sat down beside me, on a chair, and took hold of my hand and said he would speak to me as a father; that I had great powers, and that he felt a sincere pleasure in seeing me advance and rise in the world and that he would take the liberty of warning me against an effect of my temperament when heated by opposition; that under those circumstances I took an authoritative manner and a look and tone of defiance which sat ill even on the older Members; and advised me to moderate my manner." "This," says Benton, "was real friendship, enhanced by kindness of manner, and it had its effect." Twenty years afterwards, Benton met two sons of Rufus King in Congress, and he relates "that he was glad to let them both see the sincere respect he had for the memory of their father."

He not only admired and believed in our form of government, but he was of that Democratic school which insisted on restraining the government in the exercise of its powers to a strict and literal interpretation of the Constitution, not only because they believed the framers of the government were wise and sagacious men and knew how to employ language to describe the powers which they sought to confer on the government, but they were upon principles opposed to a strong government and sought in every way to limit its powers and to make each of the different branches a check upon the others. They were profoundly convinced that "the world was governed too much," and that the best government was that which least intermeddled with the affairs of the citizens.