York, for he was the very man who could carry it; that his personal force was far beyond his own estimation; that his intuitions were like those of a woman, but were not infallible; that his singing the campaign was a fancy; that “Marching Through Georgia” would wear out, and was of the stuff of dreams.  Mr. Blaine’s accredited friends felt that things had gone too far to permit a change to be contemplated.  They were half mad at Blaine for his Sherman and Lincoln proposal, which was confidentially in the air, regarding it as not favorable to themselves.  They said they could carry the country more certainly with Blaine than Sherman, for Sherman was an uncertain political quantity, and might turn out to be almost the devil himself.  Some of them said he would proclaim martial law and annihilate the Constitution!  They were sure the force of the celebrity of General Sherman in a campaign had been overestimated by Blaine, who had the caprice and high color in his imagination that produce schemes too fine for success.  In a word, Sherman and Lincoln were not practical politicians.  Blaine’s idea was not politics, but poetry.  What they wanted was the magnetism and magic of Blaine.  The country was at any rate safely in the hands of the Republican party.  They had nearly lost the election because they had not nominated Blaine eight years before, and won with Garfield because he was a Blaine man.  The wisdom of the Republican politicians was thus against Blaine’s ticket so far as it was known; and those favorable to President Arthur, John Sherman, John A. Logan, and George F. Edmunds did not give the least credit to the statement that Blaine did not want the nomination.  His rumored objection to making the race—­of course the real reasons were not known—­was regarded as a mere “play” in politics, if not altogether fantastic; and they pursued their own courses heedless of the real conditions.  There was a singular complication of errors of judgment in the Blaine opposition.  The friends of Arthur took the complimentary resolutions from a majority of the States to mean his nomination.  In truth, the significance of that unanimity was quite otherwise.  Ohio was not solid for Sherman.  It is a State that has been very hard to manage in national conventions—­was so in the time when Chase was the Republican leader—­divided in ’60, nominating Lincoln, and rarely presented a front without a flaw for a national candidate.  The energy of Logan’s friends was not sufficiently supported to give confidence.  The reformers by profession and of prominence were for Edmunds; and they were a body of men who had force, if judiciously applied, to have carried the convention, provided they divested themselves of the peculiarities of extreme elevation that prevent efficiency.  While they assumed to have soared above practical politics and to abhor the ways of the “toughs” in championing candidates, they subordinated their own usefulness to a sentiment that was limited to a senator—­Mr.