The utilization of iron as a ship-building material, the cheapening of fuel, the superior speed, all betokened a radical change in transportation on the principal ocean routes of the world.
James Blaine
The Public Record
James Gillespie Blaine was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the United States House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, served as Speaker of the House from 1869 to 1875, and was a United States senator from 1876 to 1881. He served twice as Secretary of State, under presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur in 1881, and under Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1892. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880, and received the nomination in 1884, narrowly losing the general election to Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland. Blaine was a prominent figure in the moderate faction of the Republican Party, known as the "Half-Breeds".
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He established a financial reputation not second to that of any man in our history.
The result has proved that legislators and financiers were wisest who had the largest faith in the resources of the nation.
This class feared the effect of an exclusively gold standard, while the supply of gold, compared with the commercial demands of the world, is relatively and rapidly growing less.
A currency worth less than it purports to be worth, will in the end defraud not only creditors, but all who are engaged in legitimate business, and none more surely than those who are dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread.
He based his veto on the proposition that "the silver dollar authorized is worth eight to ten per cent less than it purports to be worth, and is made a legal tender for debts contracted when the law did not recognize such coin as lawful…
Gold is the money of monarchs, and was in open alliance with our enemies in the civil war.
Ingalls of Kansas argued "that the public debt is payable in silver, and if the money unit should be established in the metal least subject to fluctuation that metal is silver.
Nothing less than National will and power can mitigate its fall.
It resuscitates the obsolete dollar which Congress entombed in 1834, worth less than the greenback in gold, and yet to be a full legal-tender." He thought that the causes of the depreciation of silver were permanent.
He pronounced the measure a "fearful assault upon the public credit.
The interest of his constituency and his own bent of mind led him to the study of industrial questions, and he was soon recognized in the House as one of the most thorough statisticians and one of the ablest defenders of the doctrine of…
An iron will sustained him and enabled him through years of suffering to assume a leading part in the legislation of the country and in directing the policy of the Republican party.
Their joint mission was to secure the Electoral vote of the State, by purchase if need be, not quite as openly, but as directly as if they were negotiating for a cargo of cotton or offering money for an orange-grove.
Duplicity is a weapon often employed against tyranny by its victims, and there is always danger that a popular election where law is unfairly administered and violence constantly impending, will bring into play on both sides the worst…
The government of a Republic is left to all the chances of anarchy so long as there is no mode established by law for determining the election of its Chief Executive officer.
Yet with the serious admonition of 1876, Congress has neglected the duty which may well be regarded as the most important and most imperative that can devolve upon it.
It is, or it certainly should be, practicable to establish by law, before the election to which it may first apply, a permanent mode of adjudicating disputed points in the return of Presidential votes.
In the very nature of things it is impossible after an election to constitute a Commission whose decisions will be accepted by both political organizations as impartial.
The country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns.
No man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud.
Should there be any grounds of suspicion of a fraudulent count on either side it should be reported and denounced at once.
Tilden was compelled, before the close of the campaign, to put forth a letter pledging himself, in the event of his election, to enforce the Constitutional Amendments and resist Southern claims.
In spite of his personal fidelity to hard money, the equivocal position of his party was used against him with great effect.
He had positively declared against the use of official patronage in elections and removed himself from all temptation by giving the voluntary pledge that if elected he would not be a candidate for a second term.
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