Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men
home in his house, with what small educational advantages the district
school afforded, in return for such services as a boy of his build and
mettle could render. Thither he went in May, 1843, to begin to earn his
own living, and for several years his home was with Mr. Bartlett, who
treated him kindly and generously. In 1846 Mrs. Blair died, and from
that time on the boy fought the battle of life aided only by such
friends as he made for himself, and inspired by a purpose to show
himself a worthy son of his noble parents, whose memory he has always
reverently cherished. Writing of them many years after, when the people
of New Hampshire had conferred upon him the highest honor in their gift,
he said: "I owe very much to my parents, who, though poor, were among
the best that a child ever had; and to them I have always applied
Cowper's proud tribute to his own:--
'My boast is not that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth,
But higher far my proud pretensions rise,
The son of parents passed into the skies.'"
Until he was seventeen he worked hard upon a farm summers, and attended
the district school winters, and in the autumns of 1851 and 1852 the
Holmes Academy at Plymouth, of which Rev. James H. Shepard was
principal. His earnings the following winter enabled him to still
further gratify his longings for an education by going to the New
Hampshire Conference Seminary for one term in the spring of 1853. As
this exhausted his means, in the hope of obtaining more he worked for a
mechanic one year, and was expecting soon to resume his studies, when
his employer failed in business and he lost his wages. Before he could
secure another situation he was prostrated by a severe illness, which
left him broken in health, and compelled him, after a long struggle, to
abandon his purpose of obtaining a collegiate training. The next three
years he worked upon a farm, taught school in New Hampshire and
Massachusetts, tramped through this state selling books, and did
whatever honest work his health would permit, in the hope of gaining
strength and money enough to complete his academical course, studying,
in the meantime, two terms at Northfield and one at Plymouth, when it
became evident that his strength was unequal to the task he had set
himself, and he yielded to the advice of Samuel A. Burns, an eminent
scholar and teacher, who took a warm interest in him, and May 1, 1856,
entered the office of William Leverett, an able Plymouth lawyer, as a
student. Three years afterwards he was admitted to the bar, and,
associating himself with his instructor, began practice as the junior
member of the firm of Leverett & Blair; and, devoting himself to his
profession with the same industry, perseverance, and ability which
enabled him to enter it, he soon gained an enviable reputation as a
lawyer. The next year he was appointed solicitor of Grafton county,
which was his first public office.
From the first, Mr. Blair was a thorough-going Republican. An
instinctive hatred of slavery and all its attendant iniquities inspired
him as a boy to look eagerly forward to the time when he could join in
the warfare against it, and when he reached his majority he lost no
occasion to declare by voice and vote his convictions upon the subject.
When the slaveholders raised the standard of revolt against the
government, he had just begun to reap the fruits of his early struggles
and see the realization of his boyish dreams of success in his
profession; but every call for men served to render him uncomfortable at
home, and while the Twelfth Regiment was being recruited he put away his
books and briefs and tried to join it, but failed to pass the surgeon's
examination. He then enlisted as a private in the Fifteenth Regiment,
and was chosen captain of Company B. Before leaving the state he was
commissioned major by Gov. Berry, in which capacity he went to
Louisiana. Soon after his arrival there the disability of his superior
officers left him in command of the regiment, and from that time the
drill and discipline which made it one of the best in the service were
his work. In the assault upon Port Hudson, in May, 1863, he was severely
wounded by a minie-ball, in the right arm, and was carried to the
hospital to recover; but, learning a few days later that another attack
on that rebel stronghold was to be made, he insisted on disregarding the
commands of the surgeons by joining his command, and, with his arm in a
sling, led his men, who had the right of the column, in the ill-fated
charge of June 14. Here he was shot again in the same arm by a bullet,
which tore open the old wound; but he refused to leave his troops, and
remained with them until he could take them from the field. About this
time he was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, and, as
such, brought it home when its term of service had expired. He reached
Concord little more than a bodily wreck, and for some days his life hung
by a thread; but careful nursing by his devoted wife and friends
restored him to sufficient strength to warrant his removal to his old
home on the banks of the Pemigewasset.
A long season of suffering and disability from wounds and disease
contracted in the army followed his return; but he gradually regained
his health sufficiently to resume the practice of law at Plymouth, in
which the court records show him to have been remarkably successful. He
had a legal mind, had fitted himself for the bar with great
thoroughness, prepared his cases carefully and patiently, and managed
them skillfully, seldom failing to obtain a verdict. The Grafton-county
bar was at that time noted for the ability and learning of its members,
and he was rapidly working his way to a prominent place among them, when
he turned aside to enter political life,--a step which many of the
eminent men with whom he was associated in the trial of causes regard
even now as a great mistake, his brilliant success in the field of
politics failing, in their estimation, to compensate for what he was
capable of achieving in the law. For several years he practiced alone;
but in 1878 formed a partnership with Alvin Burleigh, which continued
until his election to the senate.
In 1866, Mr. Blair was elected a representative to the popular branch of
the state legislature, and there began the political service which has
since made him so widely known. The next year he was promoted to the
state senate by the voters of the eleventh district, and in 1868 was
re-elected. In 1872 the third district, composed of the counties of
Coos, Grafton, Sullivan, and Cheshire, elected a Democrat to congress;
and in 1874 the Republicans, looking about for a candidate under whose
lead they could redeem it, found him in Mr. Blair, whose reputation as a
soldier, clean record as a citizen, personal popularity, and
indefatigable industry and zeal dictated his enthusiastic nomination,
and after an exciting campaign secured his election to the forty-fourth
congress. In 1876 he was again elected, and in 1878 declined a
renomination. The next summer the term of United States Senator Wadleigh
expired, and Mr. Blair came forward as a candidate for the succession.
He was earnestly supported by the younger men of the party, by the
temperance and soldier elements; and, though his competitors were the
ablest men in the state, he bore away the great prize, and immediately
entered upon the discharge of his duties at Washington, to which he has
since devoted himself.
Mr. Blair's election to the national senate was largely due to the
record he had made in the house, and to his remarkable faculty of
winning and retaining the hearty friendship of nearly all with whom he
had ever been associated. From his youth up he had held radical views
upon public questions; and the persistency and zeal with which he
advanced and defended these under all circumstances convinced even his
opponents of his entire sincerity, and bound to him his coworkers with
locks of steel. Men liked him because he was cordial, frank, and
earnest, and respected him because he had ability, industry, and
courage; and so they rallied around him with a devotion and faith which
overcame all opposition.
During the four years he represented the third district in the house, he
served upon the committees on Railroads and Accounts, and several
special committees. In the senate of the forty-sixth congress, upon the
committees on Education and Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, Routes
to the Seaboard, Election Frauds, Pensions, and Exodus of the Colored
People: and in the present congress is chairman of the senate committee
on Education and Labor, and a member of those on Pensions, Public Lands,
Agriculture, and Woman Suffrage.
Soon after entering the house he introduced and advocated with great
ability a proposition to amend the national constitution so as to
prohibit the manufacture or sale of distilled spirits in the United
States after 1890, a measure which gave him a national reputation, and
caused him to be recognized by the temperance people of the country as
their leader and champion in the national capitol. The woman suffragists
have also found in him a vigorous and unwearying defender; and his
speeches in support of his bill to extend government aid to the common
schools of the South are among the most carefully prepared and
conclusive arguments on that subject. When the financial policy of the
country became a subject of discussion, and many of its strongest minds
were carried from their moorings by the Greenback cyclone, Senator Blair
stood sturdily for an honest currency and strict honesty in dealing with
the government creditors, and by his speeches in congress and on the
stump contributed in no small degree to the triumph of those principles
and the incidental success of the Republican party. The veteran soldier
has always found in him a friend who lost no opportunity to speak and
vote for the most liberal pension laws, and who never tired in
responding to individual calls for assistance at the department. His
other service as a senator has been most conspicuous in his speeches
against the Texas Pacific Railroad Subsidies, upon Foreign Markets and
Commerce, Election Frauds in the South, the Exodus of Colored People,
the Japanese Indemnity Fund, the Public Land Bill, and the Commission of
Inquiry into the Liquor Traffic; his eulogies upon Henry Wilson,
Zachariah Chandler, and Evarts W. Farr; and his reports on numerous
subjects which have claimed the attention of his committees. He is
rarely absent from his seat, and when present never declines to vote.
His first term expires March 3, 1885.
From this brief sketch it will be seen that Mr. Blair owes his
exceptional success in life to no extraneous or accidental aids. His
parents were poor, and their untimely death deprived him of their
counsel and example. His boyhood was a struggle with poverty, of which
his youth was only a continuance. All he had, he earned. What he became,
he made himself. As a man, he has shown great capacity for work and a
disposition to do his best in every position. He is always intensely in
earnest. He has indomitable perseverance and persistency, and never
allows his abilities to rust in idleness. He is an outspoken and
aggressive but practical reformer; a radical but sagacious Republican.
Though his early advantages were few, he has been a voracious reader and
a close student, and does not lack for the help which familiarity with
books gives. He is an easy writer and a fluent speaker. He is generous
to a fault; and his most prominent weakness is a disposition to magnify
his obligations to his friends.
Senator Blair married Eliza Nelson, the daughter of a Methodist
clergyman, of Groton, and has one son,--Henry Patterson Blair,--aged