The Republican Presidential nomination of James G. Blaine resulted in a political revolt such as the nation had not known.  Blaine was immensely popular, but he had many enemies in his own party.  There were strong suspicions of his being connected with doubtful financiering-enterprises, more or less sensitive to official influence, and while these scandals had become quieted a very large portion of the Republican constituency refused to believe them unjustified.  What might be termed the intellectual element of Republicanism was against Blame:  George William Curtis, Charles Dudley Warner, James Russell Lowell, Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Nast, the firm of Harper & Brothers, Joseph W. Hawley, Joseph Twichell, Mark Twain—­in fact the majority of thinking men who held principle above party in their choice.

On the day of the Chicago nomination, Henry C. Robinson, Charles E. Perkins, Edward M. Bunce, F. G. Whitmore, and Samuel C. Dunham were collected with Mark Twain in his billiard-room, taking turns at the game and discussing the political situation, with George, the colored butler, at the telephone down-stairs to report the returns as they came in.  As fast as the ballot was received at the political headquarters down-town, it was telephoned up to the house and George reported it through the speaking-tube.

The opposition to Blaine in the convention was so strong that no one of the assembled players seriously expected his nomination.  What was their amazement, then, when about mid-afternoon George suddenly announced through the speaking-tube that Blaine was the nominee.  The butts of the billiard cues came down on the floor with a bump, and for a moment the players were speechless.  Then Henry Robinson said: 

“It’s hard luck to have to vote for that man.”

Clemens looked at him under his heavy brows.

“But—­we don’t—­have to vote for him,” he said.

“Do you mean to say that you’re not going to vote for him?”

“Yes, that is what I mean to say.  I am not going to vote for him.”

There was a general protest.  Most of those assembled declared that when a party’s representatives chose a man one must stand by him.  They might choose unwisely, but the party support must be maintained.  Clemens said: 

“No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote.  If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot.  If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t.  I claim that difference.  I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.”

There was a good deal of talk back and forth, and, in the end, most of those there present remained loyal to Blaine.  General Hawley and his paper stood by Blaine.  Warner withdrew from his editorship of the Courant and remained neutral.  Twichell stood with Clemens and came near losing his pulpit by it.  Open letters were published in the newspapers about him.  It was a campaign when politics divided neighbors, families, and congregations.  If we except the Civil War period, there never had been a more rancorous political warfare than that waged between the parties of James G. Blaine and Grover Cleveland in 1884.