The chief opposing
candidate was James G. Blaine, whose unsavory reputation,
however, caused the majority of the convention which was not
pledged to Grant to repudiate Blaine and to choose Garfield as a
compromise. Then followed four years of factional bitterness in
the party, and when 1884 came round, Blaine's admirers pushed him
to the front.
Blaine himself was not a person of delicate instinct. The
repudiation which he had twice suffered by the better element of
the Republican Party, seemed only to redouble his determination
to be its candidate. He had much personal magnetism. Both in his
methods and ideals, he represented perfectly the politicians who
during the dozen years after Lincoln's death flourished at
Washington, and at every State capitol in the Union. By the luck
of a catching phrase applied to him by Robert G. Ingersoll, he
stood before the imagination of the country "as the plumed
knight," although on looking back we search in vain for any trait
of knightliness or chivalry in him.
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