But his enemies were at work, and on the seventh ballot,
succeeded in stampeding the convention to Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes,
however, was pledged to a single term, and Blaine was hailed as the
nominee in 1880; but when the convention assembled, there was Conkling
with a solid phalanx of over three hundred delegates for Grant. The
result was that neither Blaine nor Grant could get a majority of the
votes, and the nomination fell to Garfield. Finally, by tireless work,
Blaine laid his plans so well that he secured the nomination four years
later, only to have New York State thrown against him by Conkling and to
go down to defeat. Conkling had his revenge, and Blaine's career was
practically at an end, for he was an old and broken man.
Let us add frankly that there were many within his own party who
mistrusted him--who believed him insincere, if not actually dishonest,
and refused to support him. For a fourth time, in 1892, he attempted to
get the nomination, but his name had lost its wizardry, and he was
defeated by Benjamin Harrison. There are few more pitiful stories in
American politics than that of this brilliant and able man, consumed by
the desire for a great prize which seemed always within his grasp and
yet which always eluded him. For a quarter of a century, he chased this
will-o'-the-wisp, only to be led by it into a bog and left to perish
there.
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