electoral defeat, Saxe left his home state in 1861 for Albany, New York. Convinced extremists on both sides had pushed the nation into a fratricidal war, he composed "The Blind Man and The Elephant", his most famous poem. Mr. Saxe never fully embraced abolition, opposed the enfranchisement of black voters, and became a critic of the Federal policy on Reconstruction. He was one of the featured speakers at a mass rally in Manhattan in September 1866 opposing Reconstruction. His views clashed with those of his older brother, who had served in the New York Assembly as "War Democrat." Saxe spent his summers in Saratoga, contributed articles for the Albany Evening Journal and Albany Morning Argus, and published poems in Harper's, The Atlantic, and The Ledger, and remained popular on the lecture circuit. "The Proud Miss McBride" and "Song of Saratoga" were some of famous works in this period. However, his attempts to re-enter politics remained unsuccessful. Always mercurial, Saxe became more erratic following the death of his oldest brother in 1867. He was not temperamentally suited to assume the role of head of the family. Instead the poet's son, John Theodore Saxe, took the reins of his brother's lumber firm and managed the family's finances. The 1870s, while living in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, a series of woes befell Saxe. His youngest daughter died of tuberculosis. In 1875, he suffered head injuries in a rail accident near Wheeling, West Virginia, from which he never fully recovered, and then over the next several years his two other daughters, his eldest son, and daughter-in-law also died of tuberculosis. In 1879, his wife burst a blood vessel in her brain and collapsed and died. Including a young son who died in the 1840s, Mr. Saxe had buried five of his six children as well as his wife. Mr. Saxe sank deep into depression and spent his final years in Albany to live with his last surviving child, Charles Gordon Saxe. His decline from the rollicking poet to grieving recluse earned the sympathy of the people of Albany, and when he died in 1887, the New York State Assembly ordered his likeness to be chiseled into the "poet's corner" of the Great Western Staircase in the New York State Capitol. Legacy His best remembered poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant", a version of the ancient tale Blind men and an elephant, was not his