Blaine amendment, but it was renewed in the senate and finally carried through both branches, and under it reconstruction was completed.
The theory that the public debt should be paid in greenbacks developed great strength in the summer of 1867 while Mr. Blaine was absent in Europe. On his return at the opening of the next session he made an extended speech against the doctrine, and was the first man in congress to give utterance to this opposition. The long unsettled question of protecting naturalized American citizens while abroad attracted special attention at this time. Costello, Warren, Burke, and other Irish-Americans had been arrested in England, on the charge of complicity in Fenian plots. Costello had made a speech in 1865 in New York, which was regarded as treasonable by the British government, and he was treated as a British subject and tried under an old law on this accusation. His plea of American citizenship was overruled, and he was convicted and sentenced to sixteen years' penal servitude. Mr. Blaine, who, with other American statesmen, resisted the English doctrine of perpetual allegiance, and maintained that a naturalized American was entitled to the same protection abroad that would be given to a native American, took active part in pressing these questions upon public attention, and, as the result of the agitation, Costello was released. The discussion of these cases led to the treaty of 1870, in which Great Britain abandoned the doctrine of “once a subject always a subject,” and accepted the American principle of equal rights and protection for adopted and for native citizens. Mr. Blaine was chosen speaker of the house of representatives in 1869, and served by successive reelections for six years. His administration of the speakership is commonly regarded as one of the most brilliant and successful in the annals of the house. He had rare aptitude and equipment for the duties of presiding officer; and his complete mastery of parliamentary law, his dexterity and physical endurance, his rapid despatch of business, and his firm and impartial spirit, were recognized on all sides. Though necessarily exercising a powerful influence upon the course of legislation, he seldom left the chair to mingle in the contests of the floor. On one of those rare occasions, in March, 1871, he had a sharp tilt with Gen. Butler, who had criticised him for being the author of the resolution providing for an investigation into alleged outrages perpetrated upon loyal citizens of the south, and for being chiefly instrumental in securing its adoption by the republican caucus. The political revulsion of 1874 placed the democrats in control of the house, and Mr. Blaine became the leader of the minority. The session preceding the presidential contest of 1876 was a period of stormy and vehement contention. A general amnesty bill was brought forward, removing the political disabilities of participants in the rebellion which had been imposed by the 14th amendment to the constitution. Mr. Blaine moved to amend by making an exception of Jefferson Davis, and supported the proposition in an impassioned speech. After asserting the great magnanimity of the government, and pointing out how far amnesty had already been carried, he defined the ground of his proposed exception. The reason was, not that Davis was the chief of the confederacy, but that, as Mr. Blaine affirmed, he was the author, “knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and wilfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes of Andersonville.” In fiery words Mr. Blaine proceeded to declare that no military atrocities in history had exceeded those for which Davis was thus responsible. His outburst naturally produced deep excitement in the house and throughout the country. If Mr. Blaine's object as a political leader was to arouse partisan feeling and activity preparatory to the presidential struggle, he succeeded. An acrid debate followed. Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, assumed the lead on the other side, and not only defended Davis against the accusations, which he pronounced unfounded, but preferred similar charges against the treatment of southern prisoners in the north. In reply, Mr. Blaine turned upon Mr. Hill with the citation of a resolution introduced by him in the confederate senate, providing that every soldier or officer of the United States captured on the soil of the confederate states should be presumed to have come with intent to incite insurrection, and should suffer the penalty of death. This episode arrested universal attention, and gave Mr. Blaine a still stronger hold as a leader of his party.
He now became the subject of a violent personal assault. Charges were circulated that he had received $64,000 from the Union Pacific railroad company for some undefined services. On 24 April, 1876, he rose to a personal explanation in the house and made his answer. He produced letters from the officers of the company and from the bankers who were said to have negotiated the draft, in which they declared that there had never been any such transaction, and that Mr. Blaine had never received a dollar from the company. Mr. Blaine proceeded to add that the charge had reappeared in the form of an assertion that he had received bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad as a gratuity, and that these bonds had been sold through the Union Pacific company for his benefit. To this he responded that he never had any such bonds except at the market price, and that, instead of deriving any profit from them, he had incurred a large pecuniary loss. A few days later another charge was made to the effect that he had received as a gift certain bonds of the Kansas Pacific railroad, and had been a party to a suit concerning them in the courts of Kansas. To this he answered by producing evidence that his name had been confounded with that of a brother, who was one of the early settlers of Kansas, and who had bought stock in the Kansas Pacific before Mr. Blaine had even been nominated for congress.
On 2 May a resolution was adopted in the house to investigate an alleged purchase by the Union Pacific railroad company, at an excessive price, of certain bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad. It soon became evident that the investigation was aimed at Mr. Blaine. An extended business correspondence on his part with Warren Fisher, of Boston, running through years and relating to various transactions, had fallen into the hands of a clerk named Mulligan, and it was alleged that the production of this correspondence would confirm the imputations against Mr. Blaine. When Mulligan was summoned to Washington, Mr. Blaine possessed himself of the letters, together with a memorandum that contained a full index and abstract. On 5 June he rose to a personal explanation, and, after denying the power of the house to compel the production of his private papers, and his willingness to go to any extremity in defence of his rights, he declared his purpose to reserve nothing. Holding up the letters he exclaimed: “Thank God, I am not ashamed to show them. There is the very original package. And with some sense of humiliation, with a mortification I do not attempt to conceal, with a sense of outrage which I think any man in my position
