tion to political conviction in the face of all adverse tendency of men and of the times. This act was the positive identification of himself with the Van Buren Free-Soil party of 1848. It mattered not to him that he was born in one slave State and domiciled in another. Convinced that slavery was economically, socially, and morally an evil, opposed to the spirit of the age and to the best interests of white and black alike, he pronounced against its further extension into free territory, and held, with that other great Missourian, Thomas Hart Benton, that it was purely a creature of local law. He foresaw with the prescience of a statesman that if not done away with by voluntary legislation, the system would plunge the whole nation into fratricidal strife. His remedy was, first, to stop its extension into free territory; second, to extinguish it in each State by the voluntary gradual abolition of it, with compensation to owners, by the government of each State. There he stood, and on that issue he fought, in the face of opposition, proscription, and even of violence. Mr. Van Buren was defeated, and under Mr. Fillmore, who succeeded General Taylor, was passed the fugitive-slave bill, which, with coincident legislation, marked the induction of the era which viewed slavery as national in its rights of recognition and migration. Through all those three years, Mr. Blair was the leader of the Free-Soil party in Missouri. What with the increasing numbers and the yielding sentiment of the city of St. Louis, a large portion of it became confirmed in the then anomalous faith.

Upon the opening of the Pierce-Scott campaign of

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1851-52, Mr. Blair was chosen to the State Assembly of Missouri, and at that time his official political life may be said to have begun. In the Legislature of his adopted State he served two full terms, from 1852 to 1856, and fearlessly asserted the distinctive principles of the minority he represented: He was by all admitted to be leader of the opposition, yet his strict attention to the local interests of his city and county won him the esteem, as his manliness did the respect, of every voter. During this exciting time he steadily threw his influence and voice against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and against the Lecompton Constitution of Kansas.

In 1856, closing his legislative services, Mr. Blair was advanced higher. From that date till the end of 1862, through three successive terms, he represented the St. Louis district in the House of Representatives, each time by decided and increasing majorities. His career in the National Legislature is familiar to the country. He was the leader of the Republican party in the House from the Northwest. As a debater he was the peer of any. As a worker, few were his equals. As a practical man he was prominent, and as an incorruptible representative was known as much by his associates as he was by his constituents. His identification with the leading articles of legislation of the Republican party, so long as it confined itself to the opposition to the extension of human slavery, and to non-interference with it in the States, is a matter of history. One project especially of Mr. Blair's, startled the country at the time, but commanded the assent of the leading thinkers of the period. It was

HIS ABLE SPEECH IN CONGRESS.

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this: In 1858 General Blair delivered, from his seat in the House, a very elaborate and able speech, practically proposing to end the slavery agitation by speedily and equitably ending the institution itself. His plan was to concentrate and colonize the black population then in servitude, in some suitable southern point, as the preventive of threatened mischief. His measure, and the argument he used to support it, commanded the assent at that time of the leading statesmen of the abolition party, North and West. Gerritt Smith, Theodore Parker, and others hailed it with cordial letters of thanks, as a happy harbinger of deliverance. Judge Trumbull, Judge Wade, Abraham Lincoln, in fact the whole Republican party, embraced the proposition.

The South was not then in a mood to accept this plan as a cure for the terrible malady which the sword was finally invoked to eradicate.

CHAPTER III.

HIS WAR RECORD.

LINCOLN tried, in the midst of war, the same experiment which General Blair had advocated in peace, but his own party would not support him. The beginning of the rebellion reveals to us the most distinguished, varied, and brilliant services General Blair has ever, in his career, rendered to the country. We are apt to think that the late contest, which rose to its highest tide-mark at Gettysburg, and finally was lost at Appomattox Court-House, was first foreseen and first opposed in the East. The red lane hewn through Baltimore, April 19th, was indeed the first blood shed after Sumter opened the ball. But to Frank P. Blair is due the credit of having been the very earliest to enroll in the defense of the Union. At once, following the election and preceding the inauguration of President Lincoln, Mr. Blair perceived, in advance of his party, that the South meant war, and that the western objective point would be the State of Missouri, the last of the slave, and the farthest of the border, States. The Administration of the State was committed to officials of secession sentiments. Though a majority of the people, counting in all classes, were in favor of the

HE ENROLLS A REGIMENT.

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Union, the wealth and property of the commonwealth leaned the other way, and the party that struck the first blow would carry the day. Frank Blair resolved to strike that first blow when the time was ripe, and save the State to the Union. Early in February, 1861, he secretly enrolled a full regiment of Federal volunteers, drilled them himself, and armed and uniformed them with his credit. They were 1,000 strong, were duly and fully officered, and were in the highest state of efficiency. How trustworthy the men were, can be told from the fact that ten hundred disciplined soldiers succeeded in keeping their organization a profound secret, and in meeting regularly and unnoticed in the heart of a hostile population, though environed by spies from the enemy, who were more openly organizing. A capacity for organization, a knowledge of men, a practical prescience such as this indicated, are attributes that mark the born soldier, and attributes such as General Blair demonstrated at the very beginning of the rebellion, and magnified to its close. This force was the very first organization armed against the rebellion as such. Its first enlisted man was Frank P. Blair, who wrote himself down private, and who was afterward regularly elected colonel.

When Washington was threatened, and when Baltimore had been bloodily traversed, before the Federals had established communication between the North and the Capital, and while the flushed Southern armies looked upon it as a fruit ripe to fall in their lap, the friends of the Confederacy were not less active or less daring in Missouri.