of the exhausted shell which had been the Southern Confederacy, when their march finally terminated on the plains of North Carolina. On the approach to

Savannah, General Blair had several very active skirmishes before the taking of Fort McAllister by General Hazen. But no battle of moment occurred, nor did any opportunities present themselves either through Georgia or the Carolinas for the display of any other qualities than the solid ones of persistence, promptness, patience, and admirable disciplinary traits.

On July 11th, the Seventeenth Corps, which had won laurels for itself and its commander, was disbanded at Louisville. General Blair took occasion to issue a farewell address to his force. With modest merit he "begged to thank them for the reputation which their gallantry had conferred on him." After recurring to and recounting the triumphs which the troops and their commander had won, he added: "The rebellion has been crushed, but the invasion of our sister republic of Mexico, has, in a measure, been successful. Can it be said that we have triumphed, and that our republic has been re-established on solid and immovable foundations, so long as the Hapsburgs, supported by the bayonets of France, maintain themselves in Mexico?" He closed by spiritedly annunciating his readiness to lead his old troops against the oppressors of Mexico so soon as the occasion should present. The deposition of Maximilian, and the re-establishment of the Republican system in Mexico, happily obviated the necessity of any Federal intervention in that country. The Monroe doctrine had been vindicated by itself.

CHAPTER IV.

HIS RECENT POLITICAL HISTORY.

AT the close of the war, General Blair for a year attended to his private affairs. They had been disorganized by the war and needed his immediate rearrangement. On the 16th March, 1866, President Johnson appointed him to the position of Internal Revenue Collector at St. Louis, for the district which he had so long and so ably represented in Congress. The office was one of large responsibility, but not of extended emolument. It was in spirit, however, a partial recognition of a brave soldier's claims on his country, a soldier who had periled life and sacrificed fortune and health in her defense, and whose record was only a record of victory.

Unfortunately, however, for his official advancement, General Blair had unequivocally identified himself with the restoration policy of President Lincoln, inherited and adopted by President Johnson. The party in the Senate who banded during the war against his confirmation the second time as MajorGeneral, was larger now, and on May 3, 1866, General Blair's nomination was rejected by a vote of 8 to 20. General Grant, who was then a pronounced conservative, declared his "indignation and sur

prise;" asserted that General Blair "had held Missouri in the Union by his own hand,” and that "then and since he had always rendered most important service to the country." As Slocum, McClernand, Steadman, McClellan, Pratt, and other Union generals were successively rejected by the Republican Senate, the enormity of General Blair's case grew larger in public estimation by the additions it had in these other equally illustrious examples.

At the next election ensuing after the war, in St. Louis, General Blair was confronted with the offensive test oath, adopted by the proscriptionists in that State. He refused to take it, but offered to swear that he was and ever had been loyal to the Constitution of the United States, and of the State of Missouri. The oath required a specific denial of no less than eighty-six ex post facto provisions as not then being done or having been done, and disfranchisement followed as a refusal to swear to any of them or from "the information of any loyal man," impeaching the denial of any voter. This oath ingeniously effected the disfranchisement of nearly every Conservative in the State. General Blair, though conscientiously able to swear to any number of oaths consistently and courageously refused to take the unconstitutional obligation, and appealed to the courts. Partisan prejudgment affirmed it against him at first, but the case is still in appeal; though on other suits, at the instance of lawyers and attorneys, the United States Supreme Court have decided it to be unconstitutional.

Since the war, besides exerting himself profession

ally, General Blair has labored with fine effect as a speaker for the Conservative cause. His efforts have extended through several States, especially in Connecticut, where first set in the reaction which is now sweeping over the country.

Having always had a clear purpose in his fighting, he maintained it in its unity to the end, and in the prosecution of the plans of peace. That object was the suppression of the rebellion simply and solely. The extinguishment of States, the degradation of the white below the black race, the supremacy of military over civil power, have received no countenance from him. Resuming with ripened and expanded convictions his position as statesman, and adding to it the record second to none, of eminent military qualities, he has labored with voice and pen as strenuously as he did with the sword to realize in peace the benefits he felt forced to seek by war. So orderly has been his mind, that he has always known where to stop. Believing in the negro's right to be free, he helped give him his freedom. Nothing less would suffice; nothing more was required. Devoted to the Union, zeal and intolerance never tided him over into disunion in the name of Union. He has never prostituted the name of liberty into tyranny, the name of loyalty into proscription of the white race, the name of antislavery into the enormities of negro supremacy. The issues of the war unaccomplished, made him a radical. The issues of the war finally accomplished, left him a conservative.

To speak of his magnanimity, bravery, and popu

larity would only repeat the record of his soldierly career. Sherman kept him closer to him than his own shadow during all the war, and always had him for his second in command. His officers loved him : his men worshiped him. He was never defeated. Successive promotions in rank and power flowed in on him. He gave to each advanced responsibility a more brilliant discharge than the preceding one. No fraud taints his hands. No tyranny stamps his record.

In war, he was a relentless, sleepless, always victorious enemy in peace he has proved a thorough, all-forgetting, wholly-trusting, magnanimous friend. His record is as consistent as it is patriotic. Those whom he regards as Northern rebels now, he opposes with as much fire and force as he did Southern rebels in the past.

His address is singularly popular and unaffected. He is accessible to the humblest, and serene among the highest. His personal power almost amounts to magnetism. He can mold men to the purpose he wishes. Not reticent, he is yet prudent. Emphatically, he possesses that equilibrium of all the faculties known as common sense.

His life has been almost a romance. Converting a State to freedom, and then saving it to the Union; the hero of two wars, and deservedly eminent in both; a business man of the highest integrity of mind and temperance of habit; an orator of great ability; a statesman of rare faculty and foresight; a man of indomitable will: his traits are all positive to the highest degree. In gameness, in clearness.