Life and Work of James A. Garfield

CHAPTER II. THE STRUGGLE OF BOYHOOD.

Socrates.—Alcibiades, what sayest thou that is, passing between us and yon wall?

Alcibiades.—I should call it a thing; some call it a boy.

Soc.—Nay, I call it neither a thing nor a boy, but rather a young man. By Hercules, if I should go further, I should say that that being is a god in embryo!

Alc.—You are my master, Socrates, or I should say that nature would have hard work to hatch a god out of such an object.

Soc.—Most men are fools, Alcibiades, because they are unable to discover in the germ, or even in the growing stalk, the vast possibilities of development. They forget the beauty of growth; and, therefore, they reckon not that nature and discipline are able to make yon boy as one of the immortals.

So the child James Garfield advanced into the golden age of boyhood. This period we will now briefly live over after him. Spring time deepens into early summer; the branches and the leaves are swollen with life’s young sap; what manner of fruit will this growing tree offer the creative sun to work upon?

The young lad, in whom our interest centers, was now, in the autumn of 1843, twelve years old, when something new came into his life, and gave to him his first definite and well-fixed purpose. He had always, and by nature, been industrious. In that little farm home, where poverty strove continually to carry the day against the combined forces of industry and economy, no service was without its value. And, therefore, it had doubtless been a delight to all in that narrow circle to observe in James the qualities of a good worker. He seemed a true child of that wonderful western country which is yet so young, and so able to turn its energies to advantage in every available way. So, while still too young to “make a hand” at anything, James had found his place wherever there was demand for such light duties as he was able to perform. At field, barn or cabin, in garden or in kitchen, place there was none where the little fellow’s powers were not exercised. 29Instinct with forces larger than his frame, development of them was inevitable.

GARFIELD AT SIXTEEN.

But now a great event in the family took place. Thomas, who had just attained his majority, had returned from a trip to Michigan with a sum of ready money, and wanted to build his mother a new house. Life in the cabin had, in his estimation, been endured long enough. Some of the materials for a frame building were already accumulated, and under the directions of a carpenter the work was begun and rapidly pushed to completion. In all these proceedings James took an intense interest, and developed such a liking for tools and timber as could but signify a member 30of the Builders’ Guild. He resolved to be a carpenter; and from this day on was never for a moment without an object in life.

The ambition to “be something” took many different turns, but was a force which, once created, could never be put down. The care and skill requisite to putting a house together, fitting the rafters into place, and joining part to part with mathematical precision, gave him an idea that these things were of a higher order than farm labor. Plain digging would no longer do; there must be a better chance to contrive something, to conjure up plans and ways and means in the brain, and show forth ideas by the skill of the hand. Consequently a variety of tools began to accumulate about James Garfield. There was a corner somewhere which, in imitation of the great carpenter who built their house, he called his “shop;” a rough bench, perhaps, with a few planes, and mallets, and chisels, and saws, and the like, to help in mending the gates and doors about the place. No independent farm can get along without such help, and of course these services were in constant demand.

The dexterity thus acquired soon led to earnings abroad. The first money Garfield ever received in this way was one dollar, which the village carpenter paid him for planing a hundred boards at a cent apiece. His active and earnest performance of every duty brought him plenty of offers, and between the ages of twelve and fifteen years he helped to put up a number of buildings in that district of country, some of which are standing to this day.

Thus this young life passed away the precious time of the early teens. Work and study; study and work. Hands and feet, marrow and muscle, all steadily engaged in the rugged discipline of labor, battling with nature for subsistence. But time rolls on; childhood fast recedes from that glory from the other side which fringes the dawn; and, as we move on, every rising sun wakes up a new idea. While our young friend gave his attention and strength to industry, his imagination began to live in a new world. He had been to school, and still went a few months each year; and the following incident will indicate what a good-hearted, bright school-boy he was. There was a spelling-match in the little 31log school-house, in which James, who was thirteen years old, took part. The teacher told the scholars that if they whispered she would send them home. The lad standing next to James got confused, and to help him James told him how to spell the word. The teacher saw this, and said: “James, you know the rule; you must go home.” James picked up his cap and left. In a very few seconds he returned and took his place in the class. “Why, how is this, James? I told you to go home,” said his teacher. “I know it, and I went home,” said James.

But the log school-house, with its mystery of the three R’s, was not sufficient. James was one of the boys who are born to the love of books. Whatever had an intelligent aspect, whatever thing had the color and glow of an idea, was by nature attractive to his mind, and this he sought with eagerness and zeal. Therefore, even before the boy could read, his mother had read to him; and afterwards winter evening and leisure summer hour alike went swiftly by. The scholar in him hungered for the scholar’s meat and drink; which means books, and books, and never enough of them.

These people did not have many volumes, but they used them only the more, and knew them the better. Among them all, first in their affections, was the Bible. The woman, whose staff at eighty, when bowed down under the great sorrow, was the Everlasting Word, loved the Bible in her youth, and led her children to it as to a fountain of pure water. Thus James early acquired some knowledge of the old Bible stories, and it is said was somewhat fond of showing his superior learning. This he did by asking his little friends profound questions, such as: “Who slew Absalom?” “What cities were destroyed with fire and brimstone from the sky?” And when all had professed ignorance, he would invite their admiration by a revelation of the facts.

At this period of time, however, it is likely that his lively imagination was more vividly impressed with two or three other books which had found their places on the book-shelf of the house—books of adventure, with their thrilling scenes, their deeds of danger, dashing and gallant. And accordingly it is related 32that about this time James Garfield became deeply interested in the life of Napoleon, as told by Grimshaw. How eagerly he must have followed out the magical story of that wonderful career of glory and blood through all its varied windings; seeing first a young Corsican lieutenant on the road to Paris, by sudden and brilliant successes rising quickly, step by step, but ever on the run, to be First Consul of the new French Republic, and then Emperor. Austerlitz, its carnage, its awful crisis, and its splendid victory; the terrible Russian campaign, with the untold horrors of that memorable retreat before the fierce troops of Cossack riders; on, and ever on through the changing fields of bright transfigurations and the Cimmerian darkness of defeat, down to the fell catastrophe at Waterloo,—and young Garfield lived and moved in it all, like an old soldier of the Imperial Legion. Another brave old book he knew was a “Life of Marion,” which had the added interest of telling the story of our own first great struggle for liberty. No wonder then, that, with such food for wild fancies as these at hand, James felt in his veins the hot blood of a martial hero, and resolved aloud, before his laughing relatives, that he meant to “be a soldier, and win great battles, as Napoleon did.”

But the smoke of battle was yet afar off. So on flew the winter days and nights at more than lightning speed, in hours of work and school, books and dreams, and all the myriad modes and moods of human life. So, too, passed the summer time, whose busy labors preserved the family from want. Our young farmer and carpenter kept ever at the post of duty. Pressed by necessity from without, moved from within by the growing restlessness of a spirit which fed on stories of adventure, a nervous and ceaseless activity pushed him steadily forward to the new experiences which only waited for his coming. Another motive, more to the credit of his goodness of heart, which kept James busy, was that deathless love for his mother which, from the beginning, was the chief fountain of all good in his life. He knew how the faithful widow had lived and worked only for her children; that her hopes were bound up in their fortunes; and he determined that, as for him, she should not be disappointed. With 33this high purpose in mind, he worked on,—worked on the farm, labored on the neighboring farms, exercised his carpentering skill in country and in village, till his friends proudly said: “James Garfield is the most industrious boy in his neighborhood; there is not a lazy hair on his head.”

When about fifteen years old, in the course of his trade, he was called on to assist in the building of an addition to a house, for a man who lived several miles away from the home farm. This man, whose business was that of a “black-salter,” noticed the peculiar activity and ingenuity displayed by James in his work, and took a liking to him. Being in need of such a person, he offered him his board and fourteen dollars a month to stay with him, help in the saltery, and superintend the financial part of the concern. After some meditation, and a consultation on the subject at home, James accepted the offer. This was against the judgment of Mrs. Garfield, whose advice was, at least, always respectfully heard, though not always followed. In this business he succeeded well, and was expected, by his employer, to make a first-class salter. But the spirit of adventure again revived in him. There came a new book, and a new epoch, and the old wish to become an American Napoleon took a fresh turn. He saw no way to be a soldier. The peaceful progress of the Ohio country, fast developing in agriculture and its attendant industries, did not offer very good opportunity for a great campaign, and military leadership was, therefore, not in demand.

In this unfortunate conjuncture of civil surroundings with uncivil ambitions, James began to read books about the sea. “Jack Halyard” took the place of General Marion; white sails began to spread themselves in his brain; the story of Nelson and Trafalgar, and the like men and things began to take shape in his thought as the central facts of history; and a life on the ocean wave hung aloft before him as the summit of every aspiration worth a moment’s entertainment. Through all these notions we can see only a reflection of the books he read. Give a child its first look at the world through blue spectacles, and the world will be blue to the child; give a boy his first ideas of the world 34beyond his neighborhood by means of soldiers and navies, and he will be soldier and sailor at once. James was now approaching the age of sixteen years. New force was added to the sea-fever by a work named “The Pirate’s Own Book.” New tales of adventure stirred his blood; he could even sympathize with the triumphs of a bold buccaneer, and with the Corsair sing:

While in this brittle state of mind no great provocation would he need to produce a break with the black-salter. Accordingly, an insult, which soon offered, led to a scene and a departure. Some member of the family alluded to James as a “servant.” In an instant his warm blood rose to fever heat; he refused to stay another hour where such things could be said of him. The employer’s stock of eloquence was too small to change the fiery youth’s mind; and that night he slept again beneath his mother’s roof.

Hitherto the forces and facts which rested in and about James A. Garfield had kept him near home; the outward tending movement now became powerful, and struggled for control. With the passion for the sea at its height, he began to consider the situation. At home was the dear mother with her great longing that he should love books, go to school, and become a man among men, educated, a leader, and peer of the best in character and intellect. And how could he leave her? The struggle for life had not yet become easy on the farm, and his absence would be felt. “Leave us not,” pleads the home. “The sea, land-lubber, the wide, free ocean,” says the buccaneer within. At this point, while he reflected at home on these things, being out of employment, a new incident occurred.

Our young friend had now acquired something more than the average strength of a full-grown man. Born of a hardy race, constant exercise of so many kinds was giving him extraordinary physical power. So he felt equal to the opportunity which offered 35itself, and became a wood-chopper. Twenty-five cords of wood were rapidly cut for a reward of seven dollars. The place where this was done was near Newburg, a small town close to Cleveland. During this time his mother hoped and prayed that the previous intention of her son, to go to the lake and become a sailor, would weaken, and that he would be led to remain at home; but fate decreed otherwise. The scene of his wood-cutting exploit was close to the lake shore, where the vessels passed at every hour. The excitement within him, as each sail went out beyond the horizon, never ceased. The story never grew old. The pirate had not died, but still plotted for plunder, and hungered for black flags, cutlasses and blood. No doubt Garfield would have been a good-hearted corsair—one of the generous fellows who plundered Spanish galleons just because their gain had been ill-gotten; who spared the lives and restored the money of the innocent, gave no quarter to the real villains, and never let a fair woman go unrescued.

Returning home from Newburg to see his mother, she persuaded him to remain a while longer. Harvest-time would soon approach, and his services were needed on the farm. Of course, he stayed; helped them through the season, and even spent some extra time working for a neighbor. But the facts of a boy’s future sometimes can not be changed by circumstances. A firm-set resolve may be hindered long, but not forever. James Garfield had set his head to be a sailor, and a sailor he would be. Farming was a very good business, no doubt, and just the thing for the brother Thomas, but by no means suited to a young salt like himself.

Now, bright blue waves of Erie, dash against your shores with glee, and rise to meet your coming conqueror! The last family prayer was uttered, the good-bye kiss was given; and mother Garfield stood in the low doorway, peering out through the mists of morning, to catch a last glimpse of the boy who has just received her parting blessing. The story of that memorable time is already well known. With a bundle of clothes on a stick, thrown across his sturdy shoulder, he trudged along, sometimes wearily, but always cheerily, bound for the harbor of Cleveland. The way was probably void of noteworthy incidents; and, with his thoughts 36all absorbed on what he believed to be his coming experiences on deck, he arrived at Cleveland. It was an evening in July of 1848. The next morning, after due refreshment and a walk about the city, being determined on an immediate employment, he lost no more time in hastening toward the rolling deep. Boarding the only vessel in port at the time, he strolled about and waited for the appearance of his intended captain. The experience of that hour was never forgotten. Garfield’s ideas of a sailor had thus far chiefly come out of books, and Jack, as a swearing tar, he was not prepared to meet. Presently a confused sound came up from the hold, first faintly muttering, then swelling in volume as it came nearer and nearer. Uncertainty about the matter soon ceased, however, as the “noble captain’s” head appeared, from which were issuing rapid volleys of oaths, fired into space, probably, as a salute to the glorious god of day. Rough in looks, rude in manners, a coarse and petty tyrant on the water, and a drunkard both there and on land, this bloated individual was not the one to greet a green and awkward boy with soft words. Glad to see a new object for his hitherto objectless oaths, he inquired Garfield’s business there, in language not well shaped to courtesy nor kindness. The offer of his services was made, however, as James was not disposed to back out of any thing; but he was informed that they had no use for him, and obliged to retire in confusion, amid the continued curses of a magnanimous commander, and the profane laughter of an uncouth group of the commanded.

At this moment of time the reader will pause to reflect and consider on what a delicate balance hangs the history of the world, and the men who make the world. “Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!” The results of that day’s experience at Cleveland are written in every public event that ever felt the force of Garfield’s molding influence.

Senates owed a name which raised their reputation, armies owed their victories to the drunken vulgarity of an Erie captain! That was Garfield’s first day in Cleveland. You who know the future, which has now become the past, think, and compare it with his last day there!

37Having beat an inglorious retreat from the lake, James was now forced to confront a new and unexpected difficulty. First, he became sensible that his treatment there had probably arisen principally from his rustic appearance; and the notion came close behind that the same scene was liable to be enacted if he should try again. He had plenty of pluck, but also a good stock of prudence. Go home he would not, at least till he had by some means conquered defeat. “What shall I do next?” he muttered as he sauntered along. He had already learned, by inquiries in town during the day, that work there would be difficult to get. In this perplexity, as in every doubtful situation in the world, when difficulties are met by determination, a clear way out came to him. The problem was solved thus: “I’m going to be a sailor. But the ocean is too far away, and I must make my way there by lake, meanwhile learning what I can about the business. But I can’t go on the lake now,—and there’s nothing left me but the muddy canal. I will go first by way of the canal, meanwhile learning what I can about the business.” To the canal he turned his tired steps.

It was the old Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal; and he found, by rare good fortune, a boat ready to start, and in need of a driver. The captain of this less ambitious navigating affair proved to be not quite so rich in profanity, but more wealthy in good-natured sympathy; his name was Amos Letcher, and he was Garfield’s cousin. To this man James told the story of his experience thus far, and asked employment on the boat. The result was a contract to drive mules. Letcher became much interested in his young friend, and is authority for some good stories about this “voyage.”

When the time came to start, the Evening Star was brought up to the first lock, and after some delay got through. On the other side waited the mule-team and its impatient driver, who was eager for the trip to begin. In a few hours he would be farther from home than ever in his life before, traveling a path which led he knew not whither. Practically, they were bound for Pittsburgh. To his imagination, it was a trip around the world. So the whip 38was flourished triumphantly, and this circumnavigation committee of one was on his way.

Directly a boat approached from the opposite direction. Jim bungled, in his excitement, and got his lines tangled. While he stopped to get things straight, the boat came up even with him, leaving the tow-line slack for several yards. Eased of their load, the mules trotted on quickly to the extent of the line, when, with a sudden jerk, the boat caught on a bridge they were passing, and team, driver, and all were in the canal.

The boy, however, was not disconcerted, but climbed out, and, amid loud laughter from those on board, proceeded coolly along as if it had been a regular morning bath.

The rough men of the canal were fond of a fight, and always ready at fisticuffs. One of the most frequent occasions of these difficulties was at the locks, where but one boat could pass at a time. When two boats were approaching from opposite directions each always tried to get there first, so as to have the right to go through before the other. This was a prolific source of trouble.

As the Evening Star approached lock twenty-one at Akron, one of these scenes was threatened. An opposite boat came up just as Letcher was about to turn the lock for his own. The other got in first. Letcher’s men all sprang out for a fight. Just then Jim walked up to the captain and said, “Does the right belong to us?” “No, I guess not; but we’ve started in for it, and we are going to have it anyhow.” “No, sir,” said Garfield. “I say we will not have it. I will not fight to keep them out of their rights.” This brought the captain to his senses, and he ordered his men to give room for the enemy to pass.

There was half-mutiny on board that night, and many uncomplimentary remarks about the young driver. He was a coward, they said. Was he a coward? Or simply a just, fair-minded youth, and as brave as any of them? He made up his mind to show them which he was, when a good time came.

The captain had defended Jim from these accusations of the men, for a reason unknown to them. The boy had whipped him before they came to Akron. It was after a change of teams, and 39Jim was on the boat. Letcher was a self-confident young man, who had recently been a school teacher in Steuben County, Indiana, and felt as if all knowledge was his province. He had made all his men revere him for his learning, and now was the time to overwhelm the new driver.

So, sitting down near where the lad was resting, he said: “Jim, I believe you have been to school some, and as I have not heard a class lately, I will ask you some questions to see where you are, if you don’t care.”

GARFIELD ON THE TOW-PATH.

James assented. Pedagogue Letcher thought his time had come; he searched out witty inventions; he asked deep questions; he would open this youngling’s eyes. The examination did not last long, for all questions were quickly answered, and the quizzer ran out of materials; his stock of puzzlers was exhausted.

Then the tables turned. The tailor was out-tailored in three minutes, for in that time James had asked him seven questions which he could not answer. Hence the captain’s allowance for 40the boy’s refusal to fight. Letcher knew enough to appreciate the reason.

The Evening Star had a long trip before her, as the present load consisted of copper ore consigned to Pittsburgh. This ore came down to Cleveland first in schooners from Lake Superior, where those great treasuries of ore, which still seem inexhaustible, were at that time just beginning to become important interests. The habit of the canal-boatmen was to take up the copper at Cleveland, carry it to Pittsburgh, and bring back loads of coal. Garfield’s first experience here must have given him new ideas of the growing industries of his country. This constant and immense carrying trade between distant places indicated the play of grand forces; these great iron foundries and factories at Pittsburgh betokened millions of active capital, thousands of skilled workmen, and fast-increasing cities abounding in wonders and in wealth. Whatever the immediate result of Garfield’s canal life might have been, whether the boatmen had voted him coward or general, one fact must have remained—the mental stimulus imparted from these things which he had seen. Then must have dawned upon him for the first time a sense of the unmeasured possibilities which lay before his own country. Tramp, tramp the mules; lock after lock has been left behind, each turn bringing a new landscape, and the young driver pushed bravely on, self-reliant, patient, and popular with all the men. For these rough comrades liked him from the first as a pleasant fellow, and soon admired him as well. Opportunity came to him on the way to prove himself their equal in fighting qualities, and more than their equal in generosity. The occasion was one the like of which he often knew, where he came off victor with the odds favoring his enemies. At Beaver, from a point where the boats were towed up to Pittsburgh by steamboat, the Evening Star was about to be taken in. As Garfield stood in the bow of the boat, a burly Irishman, named Dave Murphy, who stood a few feet behind, was accidentally struck by a flying piece of rope from the steamer, which had evaded Garfield and gone over his head. No harm was done, but Murphy was a bully who saw here a good chance for a fight. He was thirty-five years old, 41Garfield sixteen. Turning on the boy in a towering rage, he aimed a blow with all his strength. But as sometimes occurs to men with more brawn than brains, he soon discovered that in this case Providence was not “on the side of the heavy battalions.” By a dexterous motion James eluded his antagonist, at the same instant planting a blow behind the fellow’s ear which sent him spinning into the bottom of the boat. Before the man could recover, his young antagonist held him down by the throat. The boatmen cheered the boy on; according to their rules of pugilism, satisfaction was not complete till a man’s features were pounded to a jelly. “Give him a full dose, Jim;” “Rah fer Garfield!” The two men arise; what does this mean? The Murphy face has not been disfigured; the Murphy nose bleeds not! Slowly the astonished men take in a new fact. Generosity has won the day, and brutality itself has been vanquished before their eyes. From that hour James became one of the heroes of the tow-path; and the day he left it was a day of regret to all his new acquaintances there.

On the way back from Pittsburgh a vacancy occurred on deck; Garfield was promoted to the more responsible position of bowman, and the mules found a new master. So the ocean drew one step nearer; this was not exactly the sea, of course, but after all it was a little more like sailing. Up and down the narrow course, following all its windings, the Evening Star pursued its way without serious accident, and James Garfield stood at the bow till November of 1848. Then came a change. New things were preparing for him, and all unknown to him old things were passing away. The mother at home still watched for her boy; the mother at home still prayed for her son, and yearned for a fulfillment of her steadfast desire that he should be such a man as she had begun to dream of him when he was a little child. An accident now brought him home to her. The position of bowman on the Evening Star was rather an unsafe one. The place where James stood was narrow and often slippery, and, in a brief period of time, he had fallen into the water fourteen times. The last immersion chanced in the following manner: One night as the boat approached a lock the bowman was hastily awakened, and tumbled 42out half asleep to attend to his duty. Uncoiling a rope which was to assist in steadying the boat through, he lost his balance, and in a second found himself in a now familiar place at the bottom of the canal. The night was dark, and no help near. Struggling about, his hand accidentally clutched a section of the rope which had gone over with him. Now, James, pull for your life, hand over hand; fight for yourself, fight for another visit to home and mother. Strength began to fail. The rope slid off; swim he could not. Jerk, jerk; the rope has caught. Pulling away with a will, he climbed back to his place, and found that he had been saved by a splinter in a plank in which the rope had caught by a knot.

Such a narrow escape might well stir up the most lethargic brain to new and strange reflections; but to the active intellect and bright imagination of James A. Garfield it brought a profound impression, a fresh resolution and a new sphere of action. He saw himself rescued by a chance which might have failed him a thousand times. Might not this be in answer to a mother’s prayer? Was it possible that he had been saved for some better fortune than his present life promised? He recalled the vague ambitions which had at times stirred him for a career of usefulness, such as he knew his mother had in mind for him.

When the boat neared home again, James bade good-bye to the Evening Star. Now, farewell visions of the Atlantic; farewell swearing captain of the lake; farewell raging canal, for this sailor lad is lost to you forever. The romantic element of his character indeed was not destroyed, as it never could be; nor was the glamour of the sea quite gone. It would take the winter of sickness which was before him to remove all nautical aspirations. Arriving before the old gate one night while the stars were out in all their glory, he softly raised the latch, and walked up to the house. Never was happier mother than greeted him at that door. Mrs. Garfield felt that her triumph was now at hand; and set herself to secure it at once.

Four hard months of life on and in the canal had told heavily on the young man’s constitution. Four months more ague and fever held him fast; four months more he longed in vain for the 43vigor of health. During this dreary time one voice above all others comforted, cheered, and swayed his drooping spirits, and helped him back to a contented mood. In conversation and in song, the mother was his chief entertainer. Indeed, Mrs. Garfield had not only a singing voice of splendid quality, but also knew a marvelous number of songs; and James said, later in life, that he believed she could have sung many more songs consecutively, from memory, than her physical powers would have permitted. Songs in every kind of humor,—ballads, war songs (especially of 1812) and hymns with their sacred melody—these she had at command in exhaustless stores. And we may be sure that such sweet skill was not without its power on her children. That voice had been the dearest music James ever heard in childhood, and his ear was well fitted to its every tone; escape from its power was hopeless now if he had even wished it so.

Meanwhile the past receded, and new plans for the future were unfolding. It is interesting to notice how smoothly, and all unknown to ourselves, we sometimes pass over the lines which mark the periods of our lives. The manner of Garfield’s present experience was no exception to the rule.

Samuel D. Bates was a young man, not many years older than James A. Garfield. He was a good scholar, and had been attending a place called “Geauga Seminary,” which had grown up in the adjoining county. This winter he had taken the school on the Garfield farm, expecting to save some money and return to Geauga. With his head full of these ideas, he met Garfield, and soon had the latter interested in his plans. When the time came for the next term to begin, James was well again, and his mother and Bates proposed that he should go also. He thought the subject over carefully, but was still uncertain what to do. He was not sure of his capacity to turn an education to account, and did not wish to spoil a good carpenter for the sake of a bad professor or preacher. Before making a final decision, he therefore did a characteristically sensible thing. Dr. J. P. Robison was a physician of Bedford, a man well known for good judgment and skill in his profession. One day he was visited by an awkward country lad, 44who asked a private conversation with him, and, that favor being granted, said to him: “My name is James Garfield. My home is at Orange. Hitherto I have acquired only the rudiments of an education, and but a scanty knowledge of books. But, at this time, I have taken up the notion of getting an education, and, before beginning, I want to know what I have to count on. You are a physician, and know men well. Examine me, and say plainly whether you think I will be able to succeed.”

This frank speech was rewarded by as fair an answer. The physician sounded him well, as to both body and mind, and ended with an opinion which summed up in about this fashion: “You are well fitted to follow your ambition as far as you are pleased to go. Your brain is large and good; your physique is adapted to hard work. Go ahead, and you are sure to succeed.”

This settled the question at once and forever. Garfield the student, the thinker, the teacher, the preacher, and the statesman, are all included in this new direction, and time alone is wanting to reveal them to himself and to the world.

Geauga Seminary was situated at a place called Chester, in Geauga County. The faculty consisted of three men and as many women. They were: Daniel Branch and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Coffin, Mr. Bigelow, and Miss Abigail Curtis. In the second year of Garfield’s attendance, Mr. and Mrs. Branch retired, and were succeeded by Mr. Fowler and Mr. Beach. The students were about one hundred in number, and of both sexes. There was a library of one hundred and fifty volumes, and a literary society, which offered a chance for practice in writing and speaking. Knowing these facts, and that the seminary offered the advantages common to many such institutions, we know the circumstances under which Garfield began that course of studies which, in seven years, graduated him with honor from an Eastern college.

There went with him to Chester two other friends besides Bates—one his cousin, William Boynton, the other a lad named Orrin H. Judd. These three being all poor boys, they arranged to live cheaply. Garfield himself had only seventeen dollars, which Thomas and his mother had saved for him to begin on; 45and he expected to make that go a long way by working at his old carpenter trade at odd hours, as well as by economy in spending money. So the trio kept “bachelors’ hall” in a rough shanty, which they fitted up with some articles brought from home; and a poor woman near by cooked their meals for some paltry sum.

There came a time when even this kind of life was thought extravagant. Garfield had read an autobiography of Henry C. Wright, who related a tale about supporting life on bread and crackers. So they dismissed their French cook, and did the work themselves. This did not last long, but it showed them what they could do.

Life at college on such a scale as this lacks polish, but may contain power. The labors which James A. Garfield performed at this academy, in the one term, from his arrival on March 6, 1849, to the end, were probably more than equal to the four years’ studies of many a college graduate. He never forgot a moment the purpose for which he was there. Every recitation found his work well done; every meeting of the literary society knew his presence and heard his voice. The library was his favorite corner of the building. A new world was to be conquered in every science, a new country in every language. Thus a year passed, and Garfield’s first term at Geauga was ended. During the summer vacation he was constantly busy; first he helped his brother to build a barn at home, then turned back for a season to his old business as a wood-cutter, and then worked in the harvest-field. About the latter a good story remains to us. With two well-grown, but young, school-fellows, James applied to a farmer who needed more hands, asking employment. The farmer thought them rather too young for the business; but, as they offered to work for “whatever he thought right,” he agreed, thinking it would not be much. But they had swung the scythe before, and soon made it a warm task for the other men to keep even with 46them. The old man looked on in mute admiration for a while, and finally said to the beaten men: “You fellows had better look to your laurels; them boys are a beatin’ ye all holler.” The men, thus incited to do their best, worked hard; but they had begun a losing battle, and the Garfield crowd kept its advantage. When settling time came round, these “boys” were paid men’s full wages.

Having, in these ways, saved enough money to begin on, James began the fall term at Geauga. Here he still pursued the same plan of alternate work and study, inching along the best he could. His boarding accommodations were furnished by a family named Stiles, for one dollar and six cents a week. The landlady, Mrs. Stiles, is made responsible for a story which illustrates how nearly penniless James was all this time. He had only one suit of clothes, and no underclothing. But toward the end of the term, his well-worn pantaloons split at the knee, as he bent over one day, and the result was a rent of appalling proportions, which the pin, with which he tried to mend matters, failed to conceal. Mrs. Stiles kindly undertook to assist him out of his trouble while he was asleep that night. But the time soon came when, though still poor, Garfield was beyond danger of being put in such straights again. For, even before the time came to go home again, he had paid his expenses and purchased a few books. One piece of work which he did at this time was to plane all the boards for the siding of a house, being paid two cents a board.

About the first of November James applied for an examination, and received a certificate of fitness to teach school. One whole year was gone since the sea-vision vanished, and his means for support in the new life had been made chiefly by the unaided force of his own tough muscles. Enough capital of a new kind had now accumulated to become productive, and he determined, for the future, to make money out of the knowledge in his head, as well as out of the strength and skill of his arm. The time for opening the country schools was come, and the young man made several applications to school trustees near his home, but found no place where he was wanted. Returning home discouraged, he 47found that an offer was waiting for him. He took the contract to teach the Ledge school, near by, for twelve dollars a month and board.

This school was one of those unfortunate seats of learning so often found in rural districts, where teachers are habitually ousted each term by the big boy terrible. For James Garfield, not yet quite eighteen years old, this would be a trying situation, but we already know enough about him to feel confident that he can not easily be put down. His difficulties were, however, peculiarly great; for, though a prophet, he was in his own country, and the scholars were not likely to be forward in showing respect to “Jim Gaffil.” It was the old story, which many a man who has taught country school can parallel in his own experience. First came insubordination, then correction, then more fight, followed by a signal victory, and at last Master Garfield was master of the situation. Then came success, his reward for hard study and hard blows. The Ledge prospered, its teacher became popular; and, when the time came to close, he did so, satisfied with himself, and possessor of a neat little sum of money.

Garfield went back to Geauga that year as planned. Early in 1851 he had his first ride on a railroad train. Taking passage on a train of the Cleveland and Columbus road, then new, he went, with his mother, to Columbus. There the representative to the legislature from Geauga County, Gamaliel Kent, kindly showed him the sights of the capital; from there they went to Zanesville, and then down the Muskingum, eighteen miles, to visit some relatives. There James is said to have taught a short term of school before he returned home again; after this came the renewal of school-days at Chester; and so progressing, we may end by saying that James managed to support himself at Chester for somewhat over two years, and to save a little money to begin on when he moved a step higher. We have been thus minute in relating these incidents only because they best show the stuff that was in this heroic young fellow, and he can have no better eulogy.

Now, what were some of the elements of Garfield’s mental development at this period? During the first term he had revived 48the rusty recollections of his early acquirements, and pursued arithmetic, algebra, grammar, and natural philosophy; afterwards came more of the regular academic studies, including the rudiments of Latin and Greek; he also studied botany, and collected a good herbarium. Every step had been carefully taken, and his mind was becoming accustomed to close thinking. Probably his first political impressions of importance were at this time being made, but we have no record of any opinions formed by him at that time on the subjects which then made political affairs interesting.

At the end of the first term in Chester, the literary society gave a public entertainment; on that occasion James made a speech, which is referred to in the diary he kept at that time, with this comment: “I was very much scared, and very glad of a short curtain across the platform that hid my shaking legs from the audience.” Soon afterwards, he took some elocution lessons, which is evidence of the fact that he began to think of making some figure as a public speaker.

While Garfield taught the Ledge school another change had come to him. The old log school-house on his mother’s farm was used regularly as a church, where a good old man, eloquent and earnest in his devotion to religion, ministered to the little congregation of “Disciples” who assembled to hear him. Recent events, and serious thinking, had predisposed James to listen with a willing ear, and he began to feel drawn back again to the simple faith of childhood which had been taught him by his mother. The sect, of which his family were all members, were followers of a new religious leader. Alexander Campbell is a name familiar to all the present generation of older men. At a time of furious disputation on religious subjects, Campbell was one of the ablest of controversialists. First, a Presbyterian preacher, he had rejected the Confession of Faith, and founded a new church, called the “Disciples of Christ,” whose only written creed was the Bible. Gifted with a proselyting spirit, he soon saw his one society spread and grow into a multitude, so that soon not Virginia alone, but many surrounding States were included in the religious territory of the “Disciples,” called sometimes the “Campbellites.” It was 49one of this man’s followers and preachers who now attracted Garfield. Their fundamentals of belief have been summed up thus:

1. We call ourselves Christians or Disciples.

2. We believe in God the Father.

3. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and our only Savior. We regard the divinity of Christ as the fundamental truth in the Christian system.

4. We believe in the Holy Spirit, both as to its agency in conversion and as an indweller in the heart of the Christian.

5. We accept both the Old and New Testament Scriptures as the inspired Word of God.

6. We believe in the future punishment of the wicked and the future reward of the righteous.

7. We believe that Deity is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God.

8. We observe the institution of the Lord’s Supper on every Lord’s Day. To this table it is our practice neither to invite nor debar. We say it is the Lord’s Supper for all the Lord’s children.

9. We plead for the union of all God’s people on the Bible, and the Bible alone.

10. The Bible is our only creed.

11. We maintain that all the ordinances of the Gospel should be observed as they were in the days of the Apostles.

Aside from its adherence to the Bible, this organization did not have or profess to have any thing in the way of creed to attract a fervid young man to its acceptance.

Garfield was a man of susceptibility to influences; and peculiarly to those of religion. Nature prepared him for it, and his early influences led to it. The “wild-oats” had been sown, and the prodigal was ready to return. In March, 1850, he joined the Church, and at once became an enthusiastic worker for its interests. How this new connection came to have a potent influence in the shaping and development of his progress, will constantly appear as we observe the next few years of his life.

Garfield was always interested in any cause which still had its place to make in the world; for in that particular it would be 50like himself. He joined a young church; the first school he went to was a new one, as was also the second. He joined the Republican party before that party had ever won a national victory.

In 1851, Garfield thought he had about exhausted the advantages of Geauga, and he began to seek “fresh scenes and pastures new.” We ourselves can not do better than to take leave of that secluded spot, summing up our hero’s life there in these his own words: “I remember with great satisfaction the work which was done for me at Chester. It marked the most decisive change in my life. While there I formed a definite purpose and plan to complete a college course. It is a great point gained, when a young man makes up his mind to devote several years to the accomplishment of a definite work. With the educational facilities now afforded in our country, no young man, who has good health and is master of his own actions, can be excused for not obtaining a good education. Poverty is very inconvenient, but it is a fine spur to activity, and may be made a rich blessing.”

Alexander Campbell was not merely a zealous propagandist of religious opinions; he was an organizer of religious forces. Among these forces, education stands in the first rank. Understanding this fact, Campbell himself founded a college at Bethany, West Virginia,—then Virginia,—of which he was President until he died. Following their leader in this liberal spirit, the Disciples had established schools and colleges wherever they were able. Hiram, Portage County, Ohio, was a settlement where the new sect was numerous, and here, in 1850, was erected the first building of what is now widely known as Hiram College, but was then called the Eclectic Institute. It was toward this place that in the fall of that year James A. Garfield turned. A somewhat advanced course of study was promised, and he resolved to go there and prepare for college. Arriving there in time to begin with the first classes, he looked about as usual for something to do. One evening the trustees were in executive session, when a knock was heard at their door. The intruder was admitted. He was a tall, muscular young man, scarcely twenty years old, unpolished 51in appearance, and carrying himself awkwardly, but withal in a strikingly straightforward manner.

“Well, sir, what is your business with us?”

In firm, clear tones the answer came: “Gentlemen, I have come here from my home in Orange. I have been two years at Geauga Seminary, and am here to continue my work. Being the son of a widow, who is poor, I must work my way along; and I ask to be made your janitor.” Some hesitation was visible in the faces of the trustees, and he added: “Try me two weeks, and if you are not satisfied I will quit.”

The offer was accepted, and James A. Garfield again found himself a rich man; rich in opportunities, rich in health, rich in having some way, though a humble one, to support himself through another period of magnificent mental growth. His inflexible rule was to do every thing which fell in his way to do, and do all things well. Before the term was far gone, the entire school had become interested in him. With a pleasant word for every one, always more than willing to do a favor, earnest, frank, and a ready laugher, nobody could be more popular than Garfield. In a short time one of the teachers of Science and English, became ill, and Garfield was chosen to fill the temporary vacancy. This duty was so faithfully performed that some of the classes were continued to him, and so he was never without from three to six classes till he went away to college. As a teacher he was singularly successful; the classes never flagged in interest, for the teacher was always either drawing forth ideas on the subject in hand from some one else, or he was giving his own views in a manner which invariably held attention. By these helps, by still working as a carpenter in the village, and in various other ways, making as much and spending as little as he could, Garfield finally left Hiram, free from debt, and possessor of three hundred and fifty dollars on which to start into college.

From the time when he became a member of the church at Geauga, Garfield had continually increased in devotion to religious affairs, and at Hiram quickly became a power. He was constantly present at the social prayer-meetings, where his remarks were 52frequent, and attracted notice. In a short time he was called on to address the people, and this becoming a habit, rapidly improved, and came to be called “the most eloquent young man in the county.” For a number of years Garfield was known as a first-rate preacher; in regularity of speaking, however, he was very much like that order known among Methodists as “local preachers.”

That Garfield was at this time beginning to have political connections, appears from a story told by Father Bentley, then pastor of the church at Hiram. On one occasion an evening service was about to be held, and the pastor had invited our friend to sit with him on the platform; also expecting him to address the people. Unnoticed by Father Bentley, a young man called Garfield away, and was hastening him off to talk at a political meeting. Discovering his departure, Bentley was about to call him back; when, suddenly, he stopped, and said: “Well, I suppose we must let him go. Very likely he will be President of the United States, some day!”

Garfield’s general progress at Hiram was intimately connected with that of the people about him; and the best possible view of him must come from a knowledge of his friends, and the work they did together. In a late address to the Alumni of Hiram, Garfield has furnished a good sketch of the kind of human material that made up the “Eclectic Institute.”

“In 1850 it was a green field, with a solid, plain brick building in the center of it, and almost all the rest has been done by the institution itself. Without a dollar of endowment, without a powerful friend anywhere, a corps of teachers were told to go on the ground and see what they could make of it, and to find their pay out of the tuitions that should be received; who invited students of their own spirit to come here on the ground and find out by trial what they could make of it. The chief response has been their work, and the chief part of the response I see in the faces gathered before me to-day. It was a simple question of sinking or swimming, and I do not know of any institution that has accomplished more, with little means, than this school on Hiram hill. I know of no place where the doctrine of self-help has 53had a fuller development. As I said a great many years ago, the theory of Hiram was to throw its young men and women overboard, and let them try for themselves. All that were fit to get ashore got there, and we had few cases of drowning. Now, when I look over these faces, and mark the several geologic ages, I find the geologic analogy does not hold—there are no fossils. Some are dead and glorified in our memories, but those who are alive are ALIVE. I believe there was a stronger pressure of work to the square inch in the boilers that ran this establishment than any other I know of. Young men and women—rough, crude and untutored farmer boys and girls—came here to try themselves, and find out what manner of people they were. They came here to go on a voyage of discovery, to discover themselves, and in many cases I hope the discovery was fortunate.”

Among these brave toilers were two or three of Garfield’s more intimate friends, with whom we must become acquainted before we can come at a thorough knowledge of Garfield himself. Of his introduction to them he has said:

“A few days after the beginning of the term, I saw a class of three reciting in mathematics—geometry, I think. I had never seen a geometry, and, regarding both teacher and class with a feeling of reverential awe for the intellectual height to which they had climbed, I studied their faces so closely that I seem to see them now as distinctly as I saw them then. And it has been my good fortune since that time to claim them all as intimate friends. The teacher was Thomas Munnell, and the members of his class were William B. Hazen, George A. Baker and Almeda A. Booth.”

Afterwards he met here, for the second time, one who had been, known to him in Chester. Lucretia Rudolph was a farmer’s daughter, whose humble home was then not far from Chester. Her father was from Maryland; his uncle had been a brave soldier of the Revolution, and, as the story goes, he afterward went to France, enlisted under the banner of Napoleon, and was soon known to the world as Marshal Ney. Lucretia’s mother came from Vermont, and her name had been Arabella Mason. The Rudolph family was poor, but industrious and ambitious. Their 54daughter had, therefore, been sent to Geauga. She was a “quiet, thoughtful girl, of singularly sweet and refined disposition,” and a great reader.

In the fall of 1849 this young lady was earnestly pursuing her studies at Geauga Seminary, and, during the hours of recitation, there often sat near her the awkward and bashful youth, Garfield. There these two became acquainted; and, although the boy made but few advances at first, they soon became good friends. Her sweet, attractive ways and sensible demeanor drew his heart out toward her; and, as for James, though he may have been very rough in appearance, yet his countenance was always a good one, and his regularly brilliant leadership of the class in all discussions was well adapted to challenge such a maiden’s admiration. A backwoods idyl, ending in an early marriage, would not be a surprising result in such a case as this. But these two souls were too earnestly bent on high aims in life to trouble their hearts, or bother their heads, with making love. They were merely acquaintances, although tradition hath it, that from the day when, leaving Chester, their paths diverged awhile, a correspondence was regularly kept up. However that may be, the fact we know is, that at this time and place, James A. Garfield first met Lucretia Rudolph, the woman who was one day to become his wife. In 1852 the Rudolphs moved to Hiram, where the young lady studied at the “Eclectic,” and recited to Garfield in some of her classes. The old friendship here ripened into affection; they pursued many studies together, and, about the time he left Hiram for college, they were engaged to marry. Long after they were married, a poet of Hiram referred to her thus:

Another woman, however, one of the members of the awe-inspiring geometry class named above, had, in the Hiram days, more influence on Garfield’s intellectual life than any other person. Miss Almeda A. Booth was a woman of wonderful force of mind and character. She was the daughter of New England parents, who had come to Ohio, where her father traveled over an immense circuit of country as an itinerant Methodist preacher. Almeda very early discovered intellectual tastes, and, at twelve, read such works as Rollin’s Ancient History and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She taught her first school at seventeen. An engagement of marriage was broken by the death of her intended husband, and her life was ever afterward devoted to the business of teaching. Thus the quiet current of life was not wrecked, but went smoothly on, clear and beautiful. She was poor in what people call riches; the office of teacher gave support. She was sad because death had darkened her life; study was a never-failing solace. Her mind gloried in strength, and the opportunity for a career of useful exercise of its powers helped to make her happy. Henceforth she loved knowledge more than ever; and could freely say:

About the same time with Garfield, Miss Booth came to Hiram, and soon found her time, like his, divided between teaching in 56some classes and reciting in others. Each at once recognized in the other an intellectual peer, and they soon were pursuing many studies together. Our best idea of her comes from an address made by Garfield, on a memorial occasion, in 1876, the year after Miss Booth died. He compared her to Margaret Fuller, the only American woman whom he thought her equal in ability, in variety of accomplishments, or in influence over other minds. “It is quite possible,” says Garfield, “that John Stuart Mill has exaggerated the extent to which his own mind and works were influenced by Harriet Mills. I should reject his opinion on that subject as a delusion, did I not know from my own experience, as well as that of hundreds of Hiram students, how great a power Miss Booth exercised over the culture and opinions of her friends.”

Again: “In mathematics and the physical sciences I was far behind her; but we were nearly at the same place in Greek and Latin. She had made her home at President Hayden’s almost from the first, and I became a member of his family at the beginning of the Winter Term of 1852–’3. Thereafter, for nearly two years, she and I studied together in the same classes (frequently without other associates) till we had nearly completed the classical course.” In the summer vacation of 1853, with several others, they hired a professor and studied the classics.

“Miss Booth read thoroughly, and for the first time, the Pastorals of Virgil—that is, the Georgics and Bucolics entire—and the first six books of Homer’s Iliad, accompanied by a thorough drill in the Latin or Greek Grammar at each recitation. I am sure that none of those who recited with her would say she was behind the foremost in the thoroughness of her work, or the elegance of her translation.

“During the Fall Term of 1853, she read one hundred pages of Herodotus, and about the same amount of Livy. During that term also, Profs. Dunshee and Hull and Miss Booth and I met, at her room, two evenings of each week, to make a joint translation of the Book of Romans. Prof. Dunshee contributed his studies of the German commentators, De Wette and Tholuck; and each of the translators made some special study for each meeting. How nearly we completed the translation, I do not remember; but I do remember that the contributions 57and criticisms of Miss Booth were remarkable for suggestiveness and sound judgment. Our work was more thorough than rapid, for I find this entry in my diary for December 15, 1853: ‘Translation Society sat three hours at Miss Booth’s room, and agreed upon the translation of nine verses.’

“During the Winter Term of 1853–’4, she continued to read Livy, and also read the whole of Demosthenes on the Crown. The members of the class in Demosthenes were Miss Booth, A. Hull, C. C. Foot and myself.

“During the Spring Term of 1854, she read the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus, and a portion of Hesiod.”

These were the occupations, these the friends of James A. Garfield at Hiram, when, in the fall of 1854, he found himself ready for college. He was so far advanced that he would easily be able to graduate in two years. The best institution of advanced learning, in the “Disciples’” church, was that of which Alexander Campbell was president, at Bethany, Virginia. But Garfield, much to the surprise of his Hiram friends, made up his mind that he would not go there. The reasons he gave are summed up in a letter written by him at that time, and quoted by Whitelaw Reid in his Ohio in the War. This letter shows not only why he did not go to Bethany, but why he did go to Williams. He wrote:

“There are three reasons why I have decided not to go to Bethany: 1st. The course of study is not so extensive or thorough as in Eastern colleges. 2d. Bethany leans too heavily toward slavery. 3d. I am the son of Disciple parents, am one myself, and have had but little acquaintance with people of other views; and, having always lived in the West, I think it will make me more liberal, both in my religious and general views and sentiments, to go into a new circle, where I shall be under new influences. These considerations led me to conclude to go to some New England college. I therefore wrote to the presidents of Brown University, Yale and Williams, setting forth the amount of study I had done, and asking how long it would take me to finish their course.

“Their answers are now before me. All tell me I can graduate in two years. They are all brief, business notes, but President Hopkins 58concludes with this sentence: ‘If you come here, we shall be glad to do what we can for you.’ Other things being so near equal, this sentence, which seems to be a kind of friendly grasp of the hand, has settled the question for me. I shall start for Williams next week.”.

The next week he did go to Williams. Boyhood, with its struggles, had vanished. Garfield was now a man of twenty-three years, with much development yet before him, for his possibilities of growth were very large, and the process never stopped while he lived. What he did at Williams let the following pages reveal.

CHAPTER III. THE MORNING OF POWER.

College life, as we have it in this country, is a romance. In the midst of an age in whose thought poetry has found little lodgment; in which love has become a matter of business, and literature a trade, the American college is the home of sentiment, of ideas, and of letters. The old institutions of romance have crumbled into ruins. The armed knight, the amorous lady, the wandering minstrel, the mysterious monastery, the mediæval castle with its ghosts and legends exist only in history. But behind the academic walls there are passages-at-arms as fierce, loves as sweet, songs as stirring, legends as wonderful, secrets as well transmitted to posterity as ever existed in the brain of Walter Scott.

It was to such an enchanted life at Williams College, that Garfield betook himself in the month of June, 1854. To go through college is like passing before a great number of photographic cameras. A man leaves an indelible picture of himself printed on the mind of each student with whom he comes in contact.

When Garfield entered Williams, he was over six feet high, as awkward as he was muscular, and looking every inch a backwoodsman. He had made great progress, however, in his previous studies, and successfully passed his examination for the junior class. A young fellow, named Wilbur, a cripple, came with him from Ohio, and the couple from the first attracted much attention. A classmate writes: “Garfield’s kindness to his lame chum was remarked by every body.”

But many of the college boys were the sons of rich men. The strapping young fellow from Ohio was, in his own language, a 60“greeny” of the most verdant type. His clothes were homespun, and the idea of fitting him seemed never to have entered their maker’s head. His language was marred by uncouth provincialisms. His face had a kindly and thoughtful expression, on which the struggle of boyhood had left little trace, but this could not save him from many a cut. To a coarser-grained man, the petty indignities, the sly sarcasms, the cool treatment of the Eastern collegians would not have been annoying, but there are traces of a bitter inward anguish in Garfield’s heart at this time. To make it worse, he had not entered a lower class, where he perhaps might have had companions as green as himself, or, at least, comparative obscurity; but, entering an upper class, from whose members rusticity had long since disappeared, he was considered a legitimate target for the entire body of students.

But he had brains, and nowhere in the world, does ability rise to the top, and mediocrity sink to the bottom, so surely and swiftly, as at college. In a short time, his commanding abilities began to assert themselves. In the class-room, he was not only a profound and accurate scholar, but his large brain seemed packed with information of every sort, and all ready for use at a moment’s notice. His first summer before the regular fall term he spent in the college library. Up to that time he had never seen a copy of Shakespeare; he had never read a novel of Walter Scott, of Dickens, or of Thackeray.

The opportunity was a golden one. On the shelves of the Williams’ library were to be found the best books of all the ages. Plunging in at once, he read poetry, history, metaphysics, science, with hardly a pause for meals. He felt that his poverty had made him lose time, and that the loss must be made good. His powerful frame seemed to know no fatigue, and his voracious and devouring mind no satiety. Weaker minds would have been foundered. Not so with this western giant. Note-book in hand, he jotted down memoranda of references, mythologic, historical or literary, which he did not fully understand, for separate investigation. The ground was carefully gleaned, notwithstanding the terrific speed. This outside reading was kept up all through his stay at Williams.

61Hon. Clement H. Hill, of Boston, a classmate of Garfield, writing of his studies and reading, says: “I think at that time he was paying great attention to German, and devoted all his leisure time to that language. In his studies, his taste was rather for metaphysical and philosophical studies than for history and biography, which were the studies most to my liking; but he read besides a good deal of poetry and general literature. Tennyson was then, and has ever been since, one of his favorite authors, and I remember, too, when Hiawatha was published, how greatly he admired it, and how he would quote almost pages of it in our walks together. He was also greatly interested in Charles Kingsley’s writings, particularly in Alton Locke and Yeast. I first, I think, introduced him to Dickens, and gave him Oliver Twist to read, and he roared with laughter over Mr. Bumble.”

There are but few stories told of Garfield’s life at Williams, and there is a reason behind the fact. The college “yarn” is generally a tradition of some shrewd trick, some insubordination to discipline, or some famous practical joke. Every college has a constantly growing treasury of such legend lore. There are stories of robbed hen-roosts, pilfered orchards, and plundered watermelon patches; of ice-cream stolen from the back porch just after the guests had assembled in the parlor; of mock processions, of bogus newspapers, of wedding invitations gotten out by some rascally sophomore, for the marriage of some young couple, who were barely whispering the thought in their own imaginations. There are stories of front doors painted red; of masked mobs ranging through town on Halloween, and demanding refreshment; of the wonderful theft of the college bell, right when a watchman with loaded revolver was in the building, of hairbreadth escapes down lightning rods, and of the burning in effigy of unpopular professors. There is a story told in nearly every college in the country, of how a smart fellow, to revenge himself, sprinkled several barrels of salt on the street and sidewalk in front of a professor’s house; how he drove all the wandering cattle in the village to that part of the street, and how no digging, nor sweeping, nor scalding water, nor flourished broom handles did any good 62toward driving away the meek but persistent kine, who, with monotonous bell and monotonous bellow, for months afterward, day and night, chose that spot for their parlor.

But no such legends hung round the name of Garfield at Williams College. He was there under great pecuniary pressure, and for a high and solemn purpose. He was there for work, not play. Every thing which looked like a turning aside from the straight and narrow way, was indignantly spurned. At one time he caught the fever for playing chess. He was a superior player, and enjoyed the game immensely. But when he found it carried him to late hours, he denied himself the pleasure entirely.

But he stepped at once to the front rank as a debater in his literary society. His power of statement, his grasp of facts, his quick repartee, combined to make him the leading orator of the college. His method of preparation showed the mind of a master. The subject of debate he would divide into branches, and assign a separate topic to each of his allies for investigation, distributing each topic according to their respective qualities of mind. Each man overhauled the college library, gathering and annotating all the facts and authorities upon his particular branch of study, and submitted his notes to Garfield, who would then analyze the mass of facts, draw up the propositions, which were to bear down like Macedonian phalanxes upon the enemy, and redistribute the branches of the question to his debaters for presentation on the rostrum.

His mind never seemed foggy. Odd scraps of information, which ordinary men would have been unable or afraid to use, he wielded like a club about his adversaries’ heads. In a public debate in his junior year, the preceding speaker had used a lengthy and somewhat irrelevant illustration from Don Quixote. When Garfield’s turn for reply came, he brought down the house by saying: “The gentleman is correct in drawing analogies between his side of this question and certain passages in the life of Don Quixote. There is a marked resemblance, which I perceive myself, between his argument and the scene of the knight attacking the windmill; or, rather, it would be more appropriate to say that he resembles the windmill attacking the knight.” At the college supper, 63which followed the public entertainment, Garfield’s extensive acquaintance with standard literature was being talked about, when he laughingly told his admiring friends that he had never read Don Quixote, and had only heard a mention of the tournament between the crazy knight and the windmill.

His classmates, in writing of the impressions made on them by their college chum, speak much of his warm, social disposition, and his fondness for jokes. He had a sweet, large, wholesome nature, a hearty and cheerful manner, which endeared him most closely to the men among whom he spent the two years of college life. By the poorer and younger students he was almost worshiped for his kindliness and encouragement. He was a warm friend of every boy in the college; but for the weak, or sick, or poverty stricken, his heart overflowed with generous sympathy.

His morals were as spotless as the stars. A classmate, who knew him well, writes: “I never heard an angry word, or a hasty expression, or a sentence which needed to be recalled. He possessed equanimity of temper, self-possession, and self-control in the highest degree. What is more, I never heard a profane or improper word, or an indelicate allusion from his lips. He was in habits, speech, and example, a pure man.”

Williamstown, Massachusetts, where the college is located, is one of the most beautiful spots on the continent, and its magnificent mountain scenery made a deep impression on the mind of the tall Ohioan, who had been reared in a level country. It is only to people who live among them that mountains are unimpressive, and, perhaps, even then they make their impress on the character, giving it a religious loftiness and beauty.

An old institution of Williams College was “Mountain Day”—an annual holiday given for expeditions to some picturesque point in the vicinity. On one of these occasions, an incident revealed the courage and piety of “Old Gar,” as the boys lovingly called their leader. They were on the summit of “Old Greylock,” seven miles from the college. Although it was midsummer, the mountain top was cool; and, as the great glowing sun sank behind the western range, the air became chilly. The group of collegians 64were gathered about a camp-fire that blazed up briskly in the darkening air. Some were sitting, some standing, but all were silent. The splendor and solemnity of the scene; the dark winding valley; the circling range of mountains; the over-bending sky; the distant villages, with the picturesque old college towers; the faint tinkle of the cowbell; the unspeakable glories of the sunset,—

filled every thoughtful heart with religious awe. Just as the silence became oppressive, it was broken by the voice of Garfield: “Boys, it is my habit to read a chapter in the Bible every evening with my absent mother. Shall I read aloud?” The little company assented; and, drawing from his pocket a well-worn Testament, he read, in soft, rich tones, the chapter which the mother in Ohio was reading at the same time, and then called on a classmate to kneel on that mountain top and pray.

The two months’ vacation of Garfield’s first winter at college was spent at North Pownal, Vermont, teaching a writing-school, in a school-house where, the winter before, Chester A. Arthur had been the regular teacher. But, at that time, Garfield only knew his predecessor by name, and the men whose destinies were in the future to become so closely intertwined did not become acquainted.

At the end of his junior year Garfield’s funds were exhausted; but, after a consultation with his mother, he resolved to borrow the money to complete his course, rather than lose more time. His first arrangement for the money failed; but Dr. J. P. Robison, of Bedford, who, five years before, had prophesied so much of the widow’s son, readily assumed the burden, asking no security but his debtor’s word, but receiving a life insurance policy which Garfield, who seemed to inherit an apprehension of sudden calamity, insisted on procuring.

At the beginning of his senior year, he was elected one of the editors of the Williams Quarterly, the college paper. His associates in the work were W. R. Baxter, Henry E. Knox, E. Clarence Smith, and John Tatlock. The pages of this magazine were 65enriched by a great number of the products of his pen. His originality of thought and pleasant style is nowhere better shown than in the following extract from a brilliant article upon Karl Theodore Korner:

“The greater part of our modern literature bears evident marks of the haste which characterizes all the movements of this age; but, in reading these older authors, we are impressed with the idea that they enjoyed the most comfortable leisure. Many books we can read in a railroad car, and feel a harmony between the rushing of the train and the haste of the author; but to enjoy the older authors, we need the quiet of a winter evening—an easy chair before a cheerful fire, and all the equanimity of spirits we can command. Then the genial good nature, the rich fullness, the persuasive eloquence of those old masters will fall upon us like the warm, glad sunshine, and afford those hours of calm contemplation in which the spirit may expand with generous growth, and gain deep and comprehensive views. The pages of friendly old Goldsmith come to us like a golden autumn day, when every object which meets the eye bears all the impress of the completed year, and the beauties of an autumnal forest.”

Another article, which attracted great attention at the college, was entitled “The Province of History.” The argument was that history has two duties, the one to narrate facts with their relations and significance, the other to show the tendency of the whole to some great end. His idea was that history is to show the unfolding of a great providential plan in the affairs of men and nations. In the course of the article he said:

“For every village, State, and nation there is an aggregate of native talent which God has given, and by which, together with His Providence, He leads that nation on, and thus leads the world. In the light of these truths, we affirm that no man can understand the history of any nation, or of the world, who does not recognize in it the power of God, and behold His stately goings forth as He walks among the nations. It is His hand that is moving the vast superstructure of human history, and, though but one of the windows were unfurnished, like that of the 66Arabian palace, yet all the powers of earth could never complete it without the aid of the Divine Architect.

“To employ another figure—the world’s history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and of every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and, though there have been mingled the discord of roaring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian—the humble listener—there has been a divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come. The record of every orphan’s sigh, of every widow’s prayer, of every noble deed, of every honest heart-throb for the right, is swelling that gentle strain; and when, at last, the great end is attained—when the lost image of God is restored to the human soul; when the church anthem can be pealed forth without a discordant note, then will angels join in the chorus, and all the sons of God again ‘shout for joy.’”

This is really an oration. It is not the style of the essayist. It is the style of the orator before his audience. The boldness of the figure which would captivate an audience, is a little palling to the quiet and receptive state of the reader. The mental attitude of Garfield when he wrote that passage was not that of the writer in his study, but of the orator on the platform with a hushed assemblage before him. It will be noticed that this characteristic of style only became more marked with Garfield after he had left the mimic arena of the college.

But the idea embodied in this article is as significant and characteristic as its expression. In some form or other most of the world’s great leaders have believed in some outside and controlling influence, which really shaped and directed events. To this they attributed their own fortune. Napoleon called and believed himself to be “The Child of Destiny.” Mohammed was a fatalist:

Buddha believed in fatalism. So did Calvin. Julius Cæsar ascribed his own career to an overweening and superimposed 67destiny. William III. of England, thought men were in the grasp of an iron fate.

The idea expressed in this article of a providential plan in human things, according to which history unfolds itself, and events and men are controlled, is not seen here for the last time. It will reappear at intervals throughout the life of the man, always maintaining a large ascendancy in his mind. It is not a belief in fate, destiny, or predestination, but it is a kindred and corresponding one. Whether such beliefs are false or true, whether superstitious or religious, does not concern the biographer. It is sufficient that Garfield had such a belief, and that it was a controlling influence in his life.

But Garfield’s literary efforts in college also took the form of poetry. The affectionate nature, and lofty imagination, made his heart the home of sentiment, and poetry its proper expression. We reproduce entire a poem entitled “Memory,” written during his senior year. At that time, his intended profession was teaching, and it is possible that the presidency of a Christian college was “the summit where the sunbeams fell,” but in the light of events the last lines seem almost prophetic.

It is said that every one has in some degree a prophetic instinct; that the spirit of man reaching out into the future apprehends more of its destiny than it admits even to itself. If ever this premonition finds expression, it is in poetry. On the following page will be found a gem, torn from the setting of Garfield’s college life, which was published during his senior year, and is equally suggestive:

There is considerable poetic power here. The picture of the mountain oak, with its dead leaves shattered by the November blasts, and its bare branches uplifted to the dark unpitying heavens, is equal to Thomson. This poem, like the one on Memory, is full of sympathy with nature, and a somber sense of the sorrowful side of human nature.

But a college boy’s feelings have a long range upward and downward. Nobody can have the “blues” more intensely, and nobody can have more fun. We find several comic poems by Garfield in his paper. One of them is a parody on Tennyson’s “Light Brigade,” 70and served to embalm forever in the traditions of Williams a rascally student prank which the Freshmen played upon their Sophomore enemies. One stanza must suffice for these pages. It was called “The Charge of the Tight Brigade”:

The winter vacation of his senior year Garfield spent at Poestenkill, a little place a few miles from Troy, New York. While teaching his writing school there, he became acquainted with some members of the Christian Church and through them with the officers of the city schools in Troy. Struck by his abilities, they resolved to offer him a position in the schools at a salary of $1,500 a year. The proposition was exciting to his imagination. It meant much more money than he could hope for back in Ohio; it meant the swift discharge of his debt, a life in a busy city, where the roar of the great world was never hushed. But on the other hand, his mother and the friends among whom he had struggled through boyhood, were back in Ohio.

The conflict was severe. At last his decision was made. He and a gentleman representing the Troy schools were walking on a 71hill called Mount Olympus, when Garfield settled the matter in the following words:

“You are not Satan, and I am not Jesus, but we are upon the mountain, and you have tempted me powerfully. I think I must say, ‘Get thee behind me.’ I am poor, and the salary would soon pay my debts and place me in a position of independence; but there are two objections. I could not accomplish my resolution to complete a college course, and should be crippled intellectually for life. Then my roots are all fixed in Ohio, where people know me and I know them, and this transplanting might not succeed as well in the long run as to go back home and work for smaller pay.”

During his two years at Williams, a most important phase of Garfield’s intellectual development was his opinion upon questions of politics. It will be remembered that in 1855, the volcanic flames from the black and horrible crater of slavery began to burst through the crust of compromise, which for thirty years had hidden the smoldering fires. In Kansas, civil war was raging. Determined men from all parts of the country had gone there to help capture the State for their side, and in the struggle between the two legislatures, the slavery men resolved to drive the Free-soilers from the State. The sky was red with burning farm houses. The woods were full of corpses of antislavery men with knives sticking in their hearts. Yet the brave Free-soilers held their ground. One man who had gone there from Ohio, had two sons literally chopped to pieces. His name was John Brown. He also remained, living six weeks in a swamp, in order to live at all.

The entire country was becoming aroused. Old political parties were breaking up, and the lines reformed upon the slavery question. Garfield, though twenty-three years old, had never voted. Nominally he was an antislavery Whig. But he took little interest in any party. So far, the struggle of his own life and the study of literature had monopolized his mind.

In the fall of 1855, John Z. Goodrich, a member of Congress from the western district of Massachusetts, delivered a political address in Williamstown. Garfield and a classmate attended the 72speaking. The subject was the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, and the efforts of the antislavery minority in Congress to save Kansas for freedom. Says the classmate, Mr. Lavallette Wilson, of New York: “As Mr. Goodrich spoke, I sat at Garfield’s side, and saw him drink in every word. He said, as we passed out, ‘This subject is entirely new to me. I am going to know all about it.’”

The following day he sent for documents on the subject. He made a profound and careful study of the history of slavery, and of the heroic resistance to its encroachments. At the end of that investigation, his mind was made up. Other questions of the day, the dangers from foreign immigration, and from the Roman Catholic Church, the Crimean war, the advantage of an elective judiciary, were all eagerly debated by him in his society, but the central feature of his political creed was opposition to slavery. His views were moderate and practical. The type of his mind gave his opinions a broad conservatism, rather than a theoretical radicalism. Accordingly, when on June 17, 1856, the new-born Republican party unfurled its young banner of opposition to slavery and protection for Kansas, Garfield was ready for the party as the party was ready for him.

It was shortly before his graduation, when news of Fremont’s nomination came, the light-hearted and enthusiastic collegians held a ratification meeting. There were several speakers, but Garfield, with his matured convictions, his natural aptitude for political debate, and his enthusiastic eloquence, far outshone his friends. The speech was received with tremendous applause, and it is most unfortunate that no report of it was made. It was natural that much should have been expected of this man by the boys of Williams. He seemed to be cast in a larger mold than the ordinary. The prophecy of the class was a seat in Congress within ten years. He reached it in seven.

At graduation he received the honor of the metaphysical oration, one of the highest distinctions awarded to graduates. The subject of his address was: “Matter and Spirit; or, The Seen and Unseen.” One who was present says:

“The audience were wonderfully impressed with his oratory, 73and at the close there was a wild tumult of applause, and a showering down upon him of beautiful bouquets of flowers by the ladies;” a fitting close to the two years of privation, mortification and toil.

Speaking of his mental characteristics, as developed at Williams, Ex-President Hopkins, one of the greatest metaphysicians of the age, writes:

“One point in General Garfield’s course of study, worthy of remark, was its evenness. There was nothing startling at any one time, and no special preference for any one study. There was a large general capacity applicable to any subject, and sound sense. As he was more mature than most, he naturally had a readier and firmer grasp of the higher studies. Hence his appointment to the metaphysical oration, then one of the high honors of the class. What he did was done with facility, but by honest and avowed work. There was no pretense of genius, or alternation of spasmodic effort and of rest, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions of what was undertaken. Hence there was a steady, healthful, onward and upward progress.”

To pass over Garfield’s college life without mention of the influence of President Hopkins upon his intellectual growth, would be to omit its most important feature. No man liveth to himself alone. The intellectual life of great men is largely determined and directed by the few superior minds with which they come in contact during formative periods. The biography of almost any thinker will show that his intellectual growth was by epochs, and that each epoch was marked out and created by the influence of some maturer mind. The first person to exercise this power is, in most cases, the mother. This was the case with Garfield. The second person who left an indelible impression on his mental life, and supplied it with new nourishment and stimulant, was Miss Almeda Booth. The third person who exercised an overpowering personal influence upon him was Mark Hopkins. When Garfield came to Williams, his thought was strong, but uncultured. The crudities and irregularities of his unpolished manners were also present in his mind.

He had his mental eye-sight, but he saw men as trees walking. 74But under the influence of Hopkins, the scales fell from his eyes. The vast and powerful intellect of the man who was stepping to the front rank of the world’s thinkers, imparted its wealth of ideas to the big Ohioan. Through President Hopkins, Garfield’s thought rose into the upper sky. Under the inspiration of the teacher’s lectures and private conversation, the pupil’s mind unfolded its immense calyx toward the sun of speculative thought. From this teacher Garfield derived the great ideas of law, of the regularity and system of the Universe, of the analogy between man and nature, of God as the First Cause, of the foundation of right conduct, of the correlation of forces, of the philosophy of history. In after years, Garfield always said that whatever perception he had of general ideas came from this great man. One winter in Washington the National Teacher’s Association was in session, and Garfield frequently dropped in to take a share in the discussion. One day he said: “You are making a grand mistake in education in this country. You put too much money into brick and mortar, and not enough into brains. You build palatial school-houses with domes and towers; supply them with every thing beautiful and luxuriant, and then put puny men inside. The important thing is not what is taught, but the teacher. It is the teacher’s personality which is the educator. I had rather dwell six months in a tent, with Mark Hopkins, and live on bread and water, than to take a six years’ course in the grandest brick and mortar university on the continent.”

With graduation came separation. The favorite walks around Williamstown were taken for the last time. The last farewells were said, the last grasp of the hand given, and Garfield turned his face toward his Ohio home. He was at once elected instructor in the ancient languages at the Western Eclectic Institute, later known as Hiram College. Two years later he became president of this institution, overrun with its four hundred pupils. The activities of the man during this period were immense. Following his own ideas of teaching, he surcharged the institution with his personality. The younger student, on entering, felt the busy life which animated the place. With his teaching, Garfield kept up an enormous 75amount of outside reading; he delivered lectures on scientific and miscellaneous subjects, making some money by it; he engaged in public debates on theologic and scientific questions; he took the stump for the Republican party; on Sundays he preached in the Disciples Church; in 1857 he took up the study of the law, mastered its fundamental principles, and was admitted to practice at the Cleveland bar on a certificate of two years’ study. Yet with all this load on him, he impressed himself on each pupil in Hiram College as a personal friend. One of these, Rev. J. L. Darsie, gives a vivid picture of Garfield at this time:

“I recall vividly his method of teaching. He took very kindly to me, and assisted me in various ways, because I was poor and was janitor of the buildings, and swept them out in the morning and built the fires, as he had done only six years before, when he was a pupil at the same school. He was full of animal spirits, and he used to run out on the green almost every day and play cricket with us. He was a tall, strong man, but dreadfully awkward. Every now and then he would get a hit on the nose, and he muffed his ball and lost his hat as a regular thing. He was left-handed, too, and that made him seem all the clumsier. But he was most powerful and very quick, and it was easy for us to understand how it was that he had acquired the reputation of whipping all the other mule-drivers on the canal, and of making himself the hero of that thoroughfare when he followed its tow-path ten years earlier.

“No matter how old the pupils were, Garfield always called us by our first names, and kept himself on the most familiar terms with all. He played with us freely, scuffled with us sometimes, walked with us in walking to and fro, and we treated him out of the class-room just about as we did one another. Yet he was a most strict disciplinarian, and enforced the rules like a martinet. He combined an affectionate and confiding manner with respect for order in a most successful manner. If he wanted to speak to a pupil, either for reproof or approbation, he would generally manage to get one arm around him and draw him close up to him. He had a peculiar way of shaking hands, too, giving a twist to your arm and drawing you right up to him. This sympathetic manner has helped him to advancement. When I was janitor he used sometimes to stop me and ask my opinion about this and that, as if seriously advising with me. I can see now that my opinion could not have been of 76any value, and that he probably asked me partly to increase my self-respect, and partly to show me that he felt an interest in me. I certainly was his friend all the firmer for it.

“I remember once asking him what was the best way to pursue a certain study, and he said: ‘Use several text-books. Get the views of different authors as you advance. In that way you can plow a broader furrow. I always study in that way.’ He tried hard to teach us to observe carefully and accurately. He was the keenest observer I ever saw. I think he noticed and numbered every button on our coats.

“Mr. Garfield was very fond of lecturing to the school. He spoke two or three times a week, on all manner of topics, generally scientific, though sometimes literary or historical. He spoke with great freedom, never writing out what he had to say, and I now think that his lectures were a rapid compilation of his current reading, and that he threw it into this form partly for the purpose of impressing it on his own mind.

“At the time I was at school at Hiram, Principal Garfield was a great reader, not omnivorous, but methodical, and in certain lines. He was the most industrious man I ever knew or heard of. At one time he delivered lectures on geology, held public debates on spiritualism, preached on Sunday, conducted the recitations of five or six classes every day, attended to all the financial affairs of the school, was an active member of the legislature, and studied law to be admitted to the bar. He has often said that he never could have performed this labor if it had not been for the assistance of two gifted and earnest women,—Mrs. Garfield herself, his early schoolmate, who had followed her husband in his studies; and Miss Almeda A. Booth, a member of the faculty. The latter was a graduate of Oberlin, and had been a teacher of young Garfield when he was a pupil; and now that he had returned as head of the faculty, she continued to serve him in a sort of motherly way as tutor and guide. When Garfield had speeches to make in the legislature or on the stump, or lectures to deliver, these two ladies ransacked the library by day, and collected facts and marked books for his digestion and use in the preparation of the discourses at night.”

In the canvass of 1877, after one of his powerful stump speeches, Garfield was lying on the grass, talking to an old friend of these Hiram days. Said he:

“I have taken more solid comfort in the thing itself, and received more 77moral recompense and stimulus in after-life from capturing young men for an education than from any thing else in the world.”

“As I look back over my life thus far,” he continued, “I think of nothing that so fills me with pleasure as the planning of these sieges, the revolving in my mind of plans for scaling the walls of the fortress; of gaining access to the inner soul-life, and at last seeing the besieged party won to a fuller appreciation of himself, to a higher conception of life, and to the part he is to bear in it. The principal guards which I have found it necessary to overcome in gaining these victories are the parents or guardians of the young men themselves. I particularly remember two such instances of capturing young men from their parents. Both of those boys are to-day educators of wide reputation—one president of a college, the other high in the ranks of graded school managers. Neither, in my opinion, would to-day have been above the commonest walks of life unless I or some one else had captured him. There is a period in every young man’s life when a very small thing will turn him one way or the other. He is distrustful of himself, and uncertain as to what he should do. His parents are poor, perhaps, and argue that he has more education than they ever obtained, and that it is enough. These parents are sometimes a little too anxious in regard to what their boys are going to do when they get through with their college course. They talk to the young men too much, and I have noticed that the boy who will make the best man is sometimes most ready to doubt himself. I always remember the turning period in my own life, and pity a young man at this stage from the bottom of my heart. One of the young men I refer to came to me on the closing day of the spring term and bade me good-bye at my study. I noticed that he awkwardly lingered after I expected him to go, and had turned to my writing again. ‘I suppose you will be back again in the fall, Henry,’ I said, to fill in the vacuum. He did not answer, and, turning toward him, I noticed that his eyes were filled with tears, and that his countenance was undergoing contortions of pain.

“He at length managed to stammer out: ‘No, I am not coming back to Hiram any more. Father says I have got education enough, and that he needs me to work on the farm; that education don’t help along a farmer any.’

“‘Is your father here?’ I asked, almost as much affected by the statement as the boy himself. He was a peculiarly bright boy—one of those strong, awkward, bashful, blonde, large-headed fellows, such as make 78men. He was not a prodigy by any means. But he knew what work meant, and when he had won a thing by the true endeavor, he knew its value.

“‘Yes, father is here, and is taking my things home for good,’ said the boy, more affected than ever.

“‘Well, don’t feel badly,’ I said. ‘Please tell him that Mr. Garfield would like to see him at his study before he leaves the village. Don’t tell him that it is about you, but simply that I want to see him.’ In the course of half an hour the old gentleman, a robust specimen of a Western Reserve Yankee, came into the room, and awkwardly sat down. I knew something of the man before, and I thought I knew how to begin. I shot right at the bull’s-eye immediately.

“‘So you have come up to take Henry home with you, have you?’ The old gentleman answered: ‘Yes.’ ‘I sent for you because I wanted to have a little talk with you about Henry’s future. He is coming back again in the fall, I hope?’

“‘Wal, I think not. I don’t reckon I can afford to send him any more. He’s got eddication enough for a farmer already, and I notice that when they git too much they sorter git lazy. Yer eddicated farmers are humbugs. Henry’s got so far ’long now that he’d rother hev his head in a book than be workin’. He don’t take no interest in the stock, nor in the farm improvements. Every body else is dependent in this world on the farmer, and I think that we’ve got too many eddicated fellows settin’ round now for the farmers to support.’

“‘I am sorry to hear you talk so,’ I said; ‘for really I consider Henry one of the brightest and most faithful students I ever had. I have taken a very deep interest in him. What I wanted to say to you was, that the matter of educating him has largely been a constant out-go thus far; but, if he is permitted to come next fall term, he will be far enough advanced so that he can teach school in the winter, and begin to help himself and you along. He can earn very little on the farm in winter, and he can get very good wages teaching. How does that strike you?’

“The idea was a new and a good one to him. He simply remarked: ‘Do you really think he can teach next winter?’

“‘I should think so, certainly,’ I replied. ‘But if he can not do so then, he can in a short time, anyhow.’

“‘Wal, I will think on it. He wants to come back bad enough, and I guess I’ll have to let him. I never thought of it that way afore.’

79“I knew I was safe. It was the financial question that troubled the old gentleman, and I knew that would be overcome when Henry got to teaching, and could earn his money himself. He would then be so far along, too, that he could fight his own battles. He came all right the next fall; and, after finishing at Hiram, graduated at an Eastern college.”

“The other man I spoke of was a different case. I knew that this youth was going to leave mainly for financial reasons also, but I understood his father well enough to know that the matter must be managed with exceeding delicacy. He was a man of very strong religious convictions, and I thought he might be approached from that side of his character; so when I got the letter of the son telling me, in the saddest language that he could muster, that he could not come back to school any more, but must be content to be simply a farmer, much as it was against his inclination, I revolved the matter in my mind, and decided to send an appointment to preach in the little country church where the old gentleman attended. I took for a subject the parable of the talents, and, in the course of my discourse, dwelt specially upon the fact that children were the talents which had been intrusted to parents, and, if these talents were not increased and developed, there was a fearful trust neglected. After church, I called upon the parents of the boy I was besieging, and I saw that something was weighing upon their minds. At length the subject of the discourse was taken up and gone over again, and, in due course, the young man himself was discussed, and I gave my opinion that he should, by all means, be encouraged and assisted in taking a thorough course of study. I gave my opinion that there was nothing more important to the parent than to do all in his power for the child. The next term the young man again appeared upon Hiram Hill, and remained pretty continuously till graduation.”

One relic of his famous debates at this time, on the subject of Christianity, still exists in a letter written to President Hinsdale, which we give:

“The Sunday after the debate I spoke in Solon on ‘Geology and Religion,’ and had an immense audience. Many Spiritualists were out.... The reports I hear from the debate are much more decisive than I expected to hear. I received a letter from Bro. Collins, of Chagrin, in which he says: ‘Since the smoke of the battle has partially cleared away, we begin to see more clearly the victory we have 80gained.’ I have yet to see the first man who claims that Denton explains his position; but they are all jubilant over his attack on the Bible. What you suggest ought to be done I am about to undertake. I go there next Friday or Saturday evening, and remain over Sunday. I am bound to carry the war into Carthage, and pursue that miserable atheism to its hole.

“Bro. Collins says that a few Christians are quite unsettled because Denton said, and I admit, that the world has existed for millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that ‘the battle of the evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.’”

In the year preceding the date which this letter bears, the sweet romance of his youth reached its fruition, in the marriage of Garfield to Lucretia Rudolph. During the years which of necessity elapsed since the first-whispered vows, on the eve of his departure to Williams, the loving, girlish heart had been true. They began life, “for better for worse,” in an humble cottage fronting on the waving green of the college campus. In their happy hearts rose no picture of another cottage, fronting on the ocean, where, in the distant years, what God had joined man was to put asunder. Well for them was it that God veiled the future from them.

But the enormous activities already enumerated of this man did not satisfy his unexhausted powers. The political opinions formed at college began to bear fruit. In those memorable years just preceding the outbreak of the Rebellion—the years “when the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin territories of the West, and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage;” the years of the underground railroad and of the fugitive slave law; of the overseer and the blood-hound; the years of John Brown’s heroic attempt to incite an insurrection of the slaves themselves, such as had swept every shackle from San Domingo; of his mockery trial, paralleled only by those of Socrates and Jesus, and of his awful martyrdom,—the genius of the man, whose history this is, was not asleep. The instincts of resistance to oppression, and of sympathy for the oppressed, which he inherited from his dauntless ancestry, began to stir within him. As the times became 81more and more stormy, his spirit rose with the emergency, and he threw his strength into political speeches. Already looked upon as the rising man of his portion of the State, it was natural that the people should turn to him for leadership. In 1859, he was nominated and elected to the State Senate, as member from Portage and Summit counties.

The circumstances attending Garfield’s first nomination for office are worthy to be recounted. It was in 1859, an off year in politics. Portage County was a doubtful battle-field; generally it had gone Democratic, but the Republicans had hopes when the ticket was fortified with strong names. The convention was held in August, in the town of Ravenna. There was a good deal of beating about to find a suitable candidate for State Senator. At length a member of the convention arose and said: “Gentlemen, I can name a man whose standing, character, ability and industry will carry the county. It is President Garfield, of the Hiram school.” The proposition took with the convention, and Garfield was thereupon nominated by acclamation.

It was doubtful whether he would accept. The leaders of the church stoutly opposed his entering into politics. It would ruin his character, they said. At Chagrin Falls, at Solon, at Hiram and other places where he had occasionally preached in the Disciples’ meeting-houses, there was alarm at the prospect of the popular young professor going off into the vain struggle of worldly ambition. In this juncture of affairs, the yearly meeting of the Disciples took place in Cuyahoga County, and among other topics of discussion, the Garfield matter was much debated. Some regretted it; others denounced it; a few could not see why he should not accept the nomination. “Can not a man,” said they, “be a gentleman and a politician too?” In the afternoon Garfield himself came into the meeting. Many besought him not to accept the nomination. He heard what they had to say. He took counsel with a few trusted friends, and then made up his mind. “I believe,” said he, “that I can enter political life and retain my integrity, manhood and religion. I believe that there is vastly more need of manly men in politics than of preachers. You know I never deliberately 82decided to follow preaching as a life work any more than teaching. Circumstances have led me into both callings. The desire of brethren to have me preach and teach for them, a desire to do good in all ways that I could, and to earn, in noble callings, something to pay my way through a course of study, and to discharge debts, and the discipline and cultivation of mind in preaching and teaching, and the exalted topics for investigation in teaching and preaching, have led me into both callings. I have never intended to devote my life to either, or both; although lately Providence seemed to be hedging my way and crowding me into the ministry. I have always intended to be a lawyer, and perhaps to enter political life. Such has been my secret ambition ever since I thought of such things. I have been reading law for some time. This nomination opens the way, I believe, for me to enter into the life work I have always preferred. I have made up my mind. Mother is at Jason Robbins’. I will go there and talk with her. She has had a hope and desire that I would devote my life to preaching ever since I joined the church. My success as a preacher has been a great satisfaction to her. She regarded it as the fulfillment of her wishes, and has, of late, regarded the matter as settled. If she will give her consent, I will accept the nomination.”

He accordingly went to his mother, and received this reply: “James, I have had a hope and a desire, ever since you joined the church, that you would preach. I have been happy in your success as a preacher, and regarded it as an answer to my prayers. Of late, I had regarded the matter as settled. But I do not want my wishes to lead you into a life work that you do not prefer to all others—much less into the ministry, unless your heart is in it. If you can retain your manhood and religion in political life, and believe you can do the most good there, you have my full consent and prayers for your success. A mother’s prayers and blessing will be yours.” With this answer as his assurance, he accepted the nomination, and placed his foot on the first round in the aspiring ladder.

From this time on, Garfield ceased forever to be a private citizen, and must thereafter be looked on as a public man. Twenty-eight year 83of age, a giant in body and mind, of spotless honor and tireless industry, it was inevitable that Garfield should become a leader of the Ohio Senate. During his first winter in the legislature, his powers of debate and his varied knowledge gave him conspicuous rank. A committee report, drawn by his hand, upon the Geological Survey of Ohio, is a State document of high order, revealing a scientific knowledge and a power to group statistics and render them effective, which would be looked at with wide-eyed wonder by the modern State legislator. Another report on the care of pauper children; and a third, on the legal regulation of weights and measures, presenting a succinct sketch of the attempts at the thing, both in Europe and America, are equally notable as completely out of the ordinary rut of such papers. During this and the following more exciting winter at Columbus, he, somehow, found time to gratify his passion for literature, spending many evenings in the State library, and carrying out an elaborate system of annotation. But Garfield’s chief activities in the Ohio legislature did not lie in the direction of peace. The times became electric. Men felt that a terrible crisis upon the slavery and States-rights questions was approaching. The campaign of 1860, in which Abraham Lincoln, the Great Unknown, was put forward as the representative of the antislavery party, was in progress. In the midst of the popular alarm, which was spreading like sheet lightning over the Republic, Garfield’s faith in the perpetuity of the nation was unshaken. His oration at Ravenna, Ohio, on July 4, 1860, contains the following passage:

“Our nation’s future—shall it be perpetual? Shall the expanding circle of its beneficent influence extend, widening onward to the farthest shore of time? Shall its sun rise higher and yet higher, and shine with ever-brightening luster? Or, has it passed the zenith of its glory, and left us to sit in the lengthening shadows of its coming night? Shall power from beyond the sea snatch the proud banner from us? Shall civil dissension or intestine strife rend the fair fabric of the Union? The rulers of the Old World have long and impatiently looked to see fulfilled the prophecy of its downfall. Such philosophers as Coleridge, Alison and Macaulay have, severally, set forth the reasons for this prophecy—the 84chief of which is, that the element of stability in our Government will sooner or later bring upon it certain destruction. This is truly a grave charge. But whether instability is an element of destruction or of safety, depends wholly upon the sources whence that instability springs.

“The granite hills are not so changeless and abiding as the restless sea. Quiet is no certain pledge of permanence and safety. Trees may flourish and flowers may bloom upon the quiet mountain side, while silently the trickling rain-drops are filling the deep cavern behind its rocky barriers, which, by and by, in a single moment, shall hurl to wild ruin its treacherous peace. It is true, that in our land there is no such outer quiet, no such deceitful repose. Here society is a restless and surging sea. The roar of the billows, the dash of the wave, is forever in our ears. Even the angry hoarseness of breakers is not unheard. But there is an understratum of deep, calm sea, which the breath of the wildest tempest can never reach. There is, deep down in the hearts of the American people, a strong and abiding love of our country and its liberty, which no surface-storms of passion can ever shake. That kind of instability which arises from a free movement and interchange of position among the members of society, which brings one drop to glisten for a time in the crest of the highest wave, and then gives place to another, while it goes down to mingle again with the millions below; such instability is the surest pledge of permanence. On such instability the eternal fixedness of the universe is based. Each planet, in its circling orbit, returns to the goal of its departure, and on the balance of these wildly-rolling spheres God has planted the broad base of His mighty works. So the hope of our national perpetuity rests upon that perfect individual freedom, which shall forever keep up the circuit of perpetual change. God forbid that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death—the ocean grave of individual liberty.”

Meanwhile blacker and blacker grew the horizon. Abraham Lincoln was elected President, but it brought no comfort to the anxious North. Yet, even then, but few men thought of war. The winter of 1860–’61 came on, and with it the reassembling of the State legislatures. Rising with the emergency Garfield’s statesmanship foresaw the black and horrible fate of civil war. The following letter by him to his friend, President 85Hinsdale, was prophetic of the war, and of the rise of an Unknown to “ride upon the storm and direct it”:

“My heart and thoughts are full almost every moment with the terrible reality of our country’s condition. We have learned so long to look upon the convulsions of European states as things wholly impossible here, that the people are slow in coming to the belief that there may be any breaking up of our institutions, but stern, awful certainty is fastening upon the hearts of men. I do not see any way, outside a miracle of God, which can avoid civil war, with all its attendant horrors. Peaceable dissolution is utterly impossible. Indeed, I can not say that I would wish it possible. To make the concessions demanded by the South would be hypocritical and sinful; they would neither be obeyed nor respected. I am inclined to believe that the sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. All that is left us as a State, or say as a company of Northern States, is to arm and prepare to defend ourselves and the Federal Government. I believe the doom of slavery is drawing near. Let war come, and the slaves will get the vague notion that it is waged for them, and a magazine will be lighted whose explosion will shake the whole fabric of slavery. Even if all this happen, I can not yet abandon the belief that one government will rule this continent, and its people be one people.

“Meantime, what will be the influence of the times on individuals? Your question is very interesting and suggestive. The doubt that hangs over the whole issue bears touching also. It may be the duty of our young men to join the army, or they may be drafted without their own consent. If neither of these things happen, there will be a period when old men and young will be electrified by the spirit of the times, and one result will be to make every individuality more marked, and their opinions more decisive. I believe the times will be even more favorable than calm ones for the formation of strong will and forcible characters.

“Just at this time (have you observed the fact?) we have no man who has power to ride upon the storm and direct it. The hour has come, but not the man. The crisis will make many such. But I do not love to speculate on so painful a theme. I am chosen to respond to a toast on the Union at the State Printers’ Festival here next Thursday evening. It is a sad and difficult theme at this time.”

86This letter is the key to Garfield’s record in the Ohio Senate. On the 24th of January he championed a bill to raise and equip 6,000 State militia. The timid, conservative and politically blind members of the legislature he worked with both day and night, both on and off the floor of the Senate, to prepare them for the crisis which his genius foresaw. But as his prophetic vision leaped from peak to peak of the mountain difficulties of the future, he saw not only armies in front, but traitors in the rear. He drew up and put through to its passage a bill defining treason—“providing that when Ohio’s soldiers go forth to maintain the Union, there shall be no treacherous fire in the rear.”

In the hour of darkness his trumpet gave no uncertain sound. He was for coercion, without delay or doubt.

He was the leader of what was known as the “Radical Triumvirate,” composed of J. D. Cox, James Monroe, and himself—the three men who, by their exhaustless efforts, wheeled Ohio into line for the war. The Ohio legislature was as blind as a bat. Two days after Sumter had been fired on, the Ohio Senate, over the desperate protests of the man who had for months foreseen the war, passed the Corwin Constitutional Amendment, providing that Congress should have no power ever to legislate on the question of slavery! Notwithstanding this blindness, through the indomitable zeal of Garfield and his colleagues, Ohio was the first State in the North to reach a war footing. When Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men reached the legislature, Senator Garfield was on his feet instantly, moving, amid tumultuous cheers, that 20,000 men and $3,000,000 be voted as Ohio’s quota. In this ordeal, the militia formerly organized proved a valuable help.

The inner history of this time will probably never be fully written. Almost every Northern legislative hall, particularly in border States, was the scene of a coup d’état. Without law or precedent, a few determined men broke down the obstacles with which treason hedged the path of patriotism. As we have said, the inner history of those high and gallant services, of the midnight counsels, the forced loans, the unauthorized proclamations, will never be written. All that will be known to history will be that, 87when the storm of treason broke, every Northern State wheeled into line of battle; and it is enough.

Of Garfield it is known that he became at once Governor Dennison’s valued adviser and aid. The story of one of his services to the Union has leaked out. After the attack on Sumter, the State capital was thronged with men ready to go to war, but there were no guns. Soldiers without guns were a mockery. In this extremity it was found out that at the Illinois arsenal was a large quantity of muskets. Instantly, Garfield started to Illinois with a requisition. By swift diplomacy he secured and shipped to Columbus five thousand stand of arms, a prize valued at the time more than so many recruits. But while the interior history of the times will never be fully known, the exterior scenes are still fresh in memory. The opening of the muster-rolls, the incessant music of martial bands, the waving of banners, the shouts of the drill-sergeant, the departure of crowded trains carrying the brave and true to awful fields of blood and glory,—all this we know and remember. The Civil War was upon us, and James A. Garfield, in the morning of his power, was to become a soldier of the Union.

CHAPTER IV. A SOLDIER OF THE UNION.

Honor to the West Point soldier! War is his business, and, wicked though wars be, the warrior shall still receive his honor due. By his devotion to rugged discipline, the professional soldier preserves war as a science, so that armies may not be rabbles, but organizations. He divests himself of the full freedom of a citizen, and puts himself under orders for all time.

One of our ablest leaders in the Civil War was General George H. Thomas. Of Thomas we learn, from an address of Garfield, that “in the army he never leaped a grade, either in rank or command. He did not command a company until after long service as a lieutenant. He commanded a regiment only at the end of many years of company and garrison duty. He did not command a brigade until after he had commanded his regiment three years on the Indian frontier. He did not command a division until after he had mustered in, organized, disciplined, and commanded a brigade. He did not command a corps until he had led his division in battle, and through many hundred miles of hostile country. He did not command the army until, in battle, at the head of his corps, he had saved it from ruin.” This is apprenticeship with all its hardships, but with all its benefits.

In our popular praises of the wonders performed by the great armies of citizens which sprang up in a few days, let it never be forgotten that the regular army, with its discipline, was the “little leaven” which spread its martial virtues through the entire forces; that the West Point soldier was the man whose skill organized 89these grand armies, and made it possible for them to gain their victories.

GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS.

Honor to the volunteer soldier! He is history’s greatest hero. What kind of apprenticeship for war has he served? To learn this, let us go back to the peaceful time of 1860, when the grim-visaged monster’s “wrinkled front” was yet smooth. Now, look through the great ironworking district of Pennsylvania, with its miles of red-mouthed furnaces, its thousand kinds of manufactures, and its ten thousands of skilled workmen. Number the civil engineers; count the miners; go into the various places where crude metals and other materials are worked up into every shape known, to meet the necessities of the modern arts. These are the sources of military power. Here are the men who will build bridges, and equip railroads for army transportation, almost in the twinkling of an eye. Cast your mind’s eye back into all the corners of the land, obscure or conspicuous, and in every place you shall see soldiers being trained. They are not yet in line, and it does not look like a military array; the farmer at his plow, the scholar and the professional man at 90the desk, are all getting ready to be soldiers. No nation is better prepared for war than one which has been at peace; for war is a consumer of arts, of life, of physical resources. And we had a reserve of those very things accumulating, as we still have all the time.

Europe, with its standing armies, stores gunpowder in guarded magazines. America has the secret of gunpowder, and uses the saltpeter and other elements for civil purposes; believing that there is more explosive power in knowing how to make an ounce of powder than there is in the actual ownership of a thousand tons of the very stuff itself. The Federal army had not gone through years of discipline in camp, but it was no motley crowd. Its units were not machines; they were better than machines; they were men.

James A. Garfield became a volunteer, a citizen soldier. The manner of his going into the army was as strikingly characteristic of him as any act of his life. In a letter written from Cleveland, on June 14, 1861, to his life-long friend, B. A. Hinsdale, he said:

“The Lieutenant-Colonelcy of the Twenty-fourth Regiment has been tendered to me, and the Governor urges me to accept. I am greatly perplexed on the question of duty. I shall decide by Monday next.”

But he did not then go. For such a man, capable of so many things, duty had many calls, in so many different directions, that he could not easily decide. How Garfield was affected by the temptation to go at once may be seen in a letter of July 12, 1861, written from Hiram, to Hinsdale, wherein he says: “I hardly knew myself, till the trial came, how much of a struggle it would cost me to give up going into the army. I found I had so fully interested myself in the war that I hardly felt it possible for me not to be a part of the movement. But there were so many who could fill the office tendered to me, and would covet the place, more than could do my work here, perhaps, that I could not but feel it would be to some extent a reckless disregard of the good of others to accept. If there had been a scarcity of volunteers I should have accepted. The time may yet come when I shall feel 91it right and necessary to go; but I thought, on the whole, that time had not yet come.”

But the time was at hand. Garfield had become known and appreciated, and he was wanted. On July 27, Governor Dennison wrote to him: “I am organizing some new regiments. Can you take a lieutenant-colonelcy? I am anxious you should do so. Reply by telegraph.” Garfield was not at home when this letter was sent, but found it waiting for him on his return, August 7. That night was passed in solemn thought and prayer; face to face with his country’s call, this man began to realize as he had not before done, what “going to war” meant. He began to consider the sacrifice which must be made, and found that in his case there was more to give up than with most men. How many thousands of volunteers have thought the same! Garfield’s prospects in life were very fine in the line of work for which he had prepared himself. He was a fine scholar, and on the road to distinguished success. Moreover, he had a dearly loved wife and a little child, his soul’s idol. Who would provide for them after the war if he should fall victim to a Southern bullet? He had only three thousand dollars to leave them. After all, willing as he was, it was no easy thing to do. So it took a night of hard study; a night of prayer, a night of Bible reading, a night of struggle with the awful call to arms; but when the morning dawned, a great crisis had passed, and a final decision had been made. The letter of Governor Dennison was answered that he would accept a lieutenant-colonelcy, provided the colonel of the regiment was a Wrest Point graduate. The condition was complied with already. On the 16th of August, Garfield reported for duty, and received his commission. His first order was to “report in person to Brigadier-General Hill, for such duty as he may assign to you in connection with a temporary command for purposes of instruction in camp-duty and discipline.” In pursuance of these instructions he went immediately to Hill’s head-quarters at Camp Chase, near Columbus. Here he staid during the next four months, studying the art of war; being absent only at short periods when in the recruiting service. In the business of raising troops he was very successful. The Forty-second O. V. I. was about 92to be organized, and Garfield raised the first company. It was in this wise: Late in August he returned to Hiram and announced that at a certain time he would speak on the subject of the war and its needs, especially of men. A full house greeted him at the appointed hour. He made an eloquent appeal, at the close of which a large enrollment took place, including sixty Hiram students. In a few days the company was full, and he took them to Camp Chase, where they were named Company A, and assigned to the right of the still unformed regiment. On September 5th, Garfield was made Colonel, and pushed forward the work, so that in November the requisite number was secured.

Meanwhile the work of study and discipline was carried on at Camp Chase with even more than Garfield’s customary zeal. The new Colonel was not an unwilling citizen in a soldier’s uniform. He had been transformed through and through into a military man. He himself shall tell the story:

“I have had a curious interest in watching the process in my own mind, by which the fabric of my life is being demolished and reconstructed, to meet the new condition of affairs. One by one my old plans and aims, modes of thought and feeling, are found to be inconsistent with present duty, and are set aside to give place to the new structure of military life. It is not without a regret, almost tearful at times, that I look upon the ruins. But if, as the result of the broken plans and shattered individual lives of thousands of American citizens, we can see on the ruins of our old national errors a new and enduring fabric arise, based on larger freedom and higher justice, it will be a small sacrifice indeed. For myself I am contented with such a prospect, and, regarding my life as given to the country, am only anxious to make as much of it as possible before the mortgage upon it is foreclosed.”

During the fall of 1861, Colonel Garfield had to perform three duties. First, to learn the tactics and study the books on military affairs; second, to initiate his officers into the like mysteries, and see that they became well informed; and, finally, to so discipline and drill the whole regiment that they would be ready at an early day to go to the front. In pursuance of these objects he devoted to their accomplishment his entire time. At night, when alone, he 93studied, probably even harder than he had ever done as a boy at Hiram. For there he had studied with a purpose in view, but remote; here the end was near, and knowledge was power in deed as well as word. Every-day recitations were held of the officers, and this college President in a few weeks graduated a well-trained military class. The Forty-second Regiment itself, thus well-officered, and composed of young men of intelligence, the very flower of the Western Reserve, was drilled several hours every day with the most careful attention. Every thing was done promptly, all things were in order, for the Colonel had his eye on each man, and the Colonel knew the equipments and condition of his regiment better than any other man. After all, great events generally have visibly adequate causes; and when we see Garfield’s men win a victory the first time they see the enemy, we shall not be surprised, for we can not think how it could be otherwise.

On December 15th an order came which indicated that the Forty-second was wanted in Kentucky. General Buell was Commander of the Department of the Ohio. His head-quarters were at Louisville. At nine o’clock on the evening of the 16th they reached Cincinnati. From this point, in compliance with new orders received, the regiment was sent on down the Ohio to Catlettsburg, where a few hundred Union troops were gathered already; and Garfield himself went to Louisville to learn the nature of the work he had before him. Arriving on the evening of the 16th, he reported to his superior at once.

Don Carlos Buell was at this time forty-three years of age; a man accomplished in military science and experienced in war. He had first learned the theory of his business at West Point, where he had graduated in 1842; and besides other service to his country he had distinguished himself in the war with Mexico. What a contrast to Garfield! The latter was only thirty years of age, and just five years out of college. The only knowledge he possessed to prepare him for carrying out the still unknown duty, had been gathered out of books; which, by the way, are not equal to West Point nor to a war for learning how to fight. Now what could be the enterprise in which the untried Forty-second should 94bear a part? And who is the old head, the battle-scarred hero, to lead the expedition? We shall see.

Taking a map of Kentucky, Buell briefly showed Garfield a problem, and told him to solve it. In a word, the question was, how shall the Confederate forces be chased out of Kentucky? The rebels badly needed Kentucky; so did the Union. Having shown Garfield what the business was, Buell told him to go to his quarters for the night, and at nine o’clock next morning be ready to submit his plan for a campaign. Garfield immediately shut himself up in a room, with no company but a map of Kentucky. The situation was as follows: Humphrey Marshall, with several thousand Confederate troops, was rapidly taking possession of eastern Kentucky. Entering from Virginia, through Pound Gap, he had quickly crossed Pike County into Floyd, where he had fortified himself, somewhere not far from Prestonburg, and was preparing to increase his force and advance farther. His present situation was at the head of the Big Sandy River. Catlettsburg, where the Forty-second had gone, is at the mouth of this river.

Also, on the southern border, an invasion from Tennessee was being made by a body of the Confederates, under Zollicoffer. These were advancing toward Mill Spring, and the intention was that Zollicoffer and Marshall should join their forces, and so increase the rebel influence in the State that secession would immediately follow. For Kentucky had refused to secede, and this invasion of her soil was a violation of that very cause of State’s Rights for which they were fighting.

Garfield studied this subject with tireless attention, and when day dawned he was also beginning to see daylight. At nine o’clock he reported. The plan he recommended was, in substance, that a regiment be left, first, some distance in the interior, say at Paris or Lexington, this mainly for effect on the people of that section. The next thing was to proceed up the Big Sandy River against Marshall, and run him back into Virginia; after which it would be in order to move westward, and, in conjunction with other forces, keep the State from falling into hostile hands. Meanwhile, Zollicoffer would have to be taken off by a separate expedition.

95Buell stood beside his young Colonel and listened. He glanced at the outline of the proposed campaign and saw that it was wisely planned. As a result—for Buell did nothing hastily—Colonel Garfield was told that his instructions would be prepared soon, and he might call at six that evening. That evening he came, and learned the contents of Order No. 35, Army of the Ohio, which organized the Eighteenth Brigade, under the command of James A. Garfield, Colonel of the Forty-second O. V. I. The brigade itself was made up of the last-named regiment, the Fortieth O. V. I., Colonel J. Cranor; Fourteenth K. V. I., Colonel L. D. F. Moore; Twenty-second K. V. I., Colonel D. W. Landsay, and eight companies of cavalry.

Buell’s instructions were contained in the following letter:

“Sir: The brigade organized under your command is intended to operate against the rebel force threatening, and, indeed, actually committing depredations in Kentucky, through the valley of the Big Sandy. The actual force of the enemy, from the best information I can gather, does not probably exceed two thousand, or twenty-five hundred, though rumors place it as high as seven thousand. I can better ascertain the true state of the case when you get on the ground.

“You are apprised of the condition of the troops under your command. Go first to Lexington and Paris, and place the Fortieth Ohio Regiment in such a position as will best give a moral support to the people in the counties on the route to Prestonburg and Piketon, and oppose any further advance of the enemy on the route. Then proceed with the least possible delay to the mouth of the Sandy, and move with the force in that vicinity up that river and drive the enemy back or cut him off. Having done that, Piketon will probably be in the best position for you to occupy to guard against future incursions. Artillery will be of little, if any, service to you in that country. If the enemy have any it will incumber and weaken rather than strengthen them.

“Your supplies must mainly be taken up the river, and it ought to be done as soon as possible, while navigation is open. Purchase what you can in the country through which you operate. Send your requisitions to these head-quarters for funds and ordnance stores, and to the quartermasters and commissary at Cincinnati for other supplies.

96“The conversation I have had with you will suggest more details than can be given here. Report frequently on all matters concerning your command. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

On receipt of these instructions, Garfield began instantly to carry them out. He telegraphed his forces at Catlettsburg to advance up the Big Sandy towards Paintville, Marshall’s advance post. This he did that no delay should be occasioned by his absence. He then visited Colonel Cranor’s regiment, and saw it well established at Paris. Returning thence, he proceeded to hasten after his own regiment, and reached Catlettsburg on the 20th of December. Here he stopped to forward supplies up the river to Louisa, an old half-decayed village of the Southern kind, where he learned that his men were waiting for him.

It was on this march from Catlettsburg to Louisa that the Forty-second Ohio began, for the first time, that process of seasoning which soon made veterans out of raw civilians. The hardships of that march were not such as an old soldier would think terrible; but for men who but five days before had left Columbus without any experience whatever, it was very rough. On the morning of the eighteenth the first division started, twenty-five mounted on horses, and one hundred going by boat. The cavalry got on very well; but the river was quite low, and after a few miles of bumping along, the old boat finally stuck fast. Leaving this wrecked concern, the men started to tramp it overland. The country was exceedingly wild; the paths narrow, leading up hill and down hill with monotonous regularity. That night when the tired fellows stopped to rest, they had advanced only eight miles. The next day, however, they reached Louisa, where the mounted company had taken possession and prepared to stay; meanwhile the remaining companies were on the road. Rain set in; the north wind blew, and soon it was very cold. The steep, rocky paths scarcely afforded room for the wagon-train, whose conveyances were lightened of their loads by throwing off many articles of comfort which these soldiers, with their unwarlike notions of life, hated 97to lose. But advance they must, if only with knapsacks and muskets; and on the twenty-first all were together again. About this time Garfield arrived.

Paintville, where it was intended to attack Marshall, is on Painter Creek, near the west fork of the Big Sandy, about thirty miles above Louisa. The first thing to be done, therefore, was to cross that intervening space, very quickly, and attack the enemy without delay. A slow campaign would result in disaster. While this advance was being made, it would also be necessary to see to the matter of reinforcements; for Marshall had thirty-five hundred, Garfield not half as many. The only possible chance would be to communicate an order to the Fortieth Ohio, under Colonel Cranor, at Paris, one hundred miles away; that hundred miles was accessible to Marshall, and full of rebel sympathizers. The man who carried a dispatch to Cranor from Garfield, would carry his life in his hand, with a liberal chance of losing it. To find such an one, both able and willing for the task, would be like stumbling over a diamond in an Illinois corn-field. In his perplexity, Garfield went to Colonel Moore, of the Fourteenth Kentucky, and said to him: “I must communicate with Cranor; some of your men know this section of country well; have you a man we can fully trust for such a duty?” The Colonel knew such a man, and promised to send him to head-quarters. Directly the man appeared. He was a native of that district, coming from the head of the Baine, a creek near Louisa, and his name was John Jordan. What kind of a man he was has been well told by a writer in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1865:

“He was a tall, gaunt, sallow man of about thirty, with small gray eyes, a fine falsetto voice, pitched in the minor key, and his speech was the rude dialect of the mountains. His face had as many expressions as could be found in a regiment, and he seemed a strange combination of cunning, simplicity, undaunted courage, and undoubting faith; yet, though he might pass for a simpleton, he had a rude sort of wisdom, which, cultivated, might have given his name to history.

“The young Colonel sounded him thoroughly, for the fate of the little army might depend on his fidelity. The man’s soul was as clear as 98crystal, and in ten minutes Garfield saw through it. His history is stereotyped in that region. Born among the hills, where the crops are stones, and sheep’s noses are sharpened before they can nibble the thin grass between them, his life had been one of the hardest toil and privation. He knew nothing but what Nature, the Bible, the Course of Time, and two or three of Shakespeare’s plays had taught him; but, somehow, in the mountain air he had grown up to be a man—a man, as civilized nations account manhood.

“‘Why did you come into the war?’ at last asked the Colonel.

“‘To do my sheer fur the kentry, Gin’ral,’ answered the man. ‘And I didn’t druv no barg’in wi’ th’ Lord. I guv him my life squar’ out; and ef he’s a mind ter tack it on this tramp, why, it’s a his’n; I’ve nothin’ ter say agin it.’

“‘You mean that you’ve come into the war not expecting to get out of it?’

“‘That’s so, Gin’ral.’

“‘Will you die rather than let the dispatch be taken?’

“‘I will.’

“The Colonel recalled what had passed in his own mind when poring over his mother’s Bible that night at his home in Ohio, and it decided him. ‘Very well,’ he said; ‘I will trust you.’”

Armed with a carbine and a brace of revolvers, Jordan mounted the swiftest horse in the regiment, and was off at midnight. The dispatch was written on tissue paper, then folded closely into a round shape, and coated with lead to resemble a bullet. The carrier rode till daylight, then hitched his horse in the timber, and went to a house where he knew he would be well received. The lord of that house was a soldier in Marshall’s little army, who served the Union there better than he could have done with a blue coat on. The lady of the house was loyal in a more open manner. Of course, the rebels knew of this mission, as they had spies in Garfield’s camp, and a squad of cavalry were on Jordan’s trail. They came up with him at this house; hastily giving the precious bullet to the woman, he made her swear to see that it reached its destination, and then broke out toward the woods. Two horsemen were guarding the door. To get the start of them, as the door opened, he brandished a red garment before the horses, 99which scared them so that they were, for a moment, unmanageable. In an instant he was over the fence. But the riders were gaining. Flash, went the scout’s revolver, and the one man was in eternity! Flash, again, and the other man’s horse fell! Before the rest of the squad could reach the spot, Jordan was safely out of their power. That night the woman who had sheltered him carried the dispatch, and a good meal, to a thicket near by, whither she was guided by the frequent hooting of an owl! And, after a ride of forty miles more, with several narrow escapes, the Colonel of the Forty-second at last read his orders from a crumpled piece of tissue paper. As for Jordan, he was back in Garfield’s tent again two weeks later; but the faithful animal that carried him had fallen, pierced by a rebel ball.

What, meanwhile, had been the progress of Garfield’s forces in their attempt to reach Paintville? On the morning of December 23d, the first day’s march began. The rains of the preceding days had been stopped by extreme cold, and the hills were icy and slippery. The night before this march very few of the men had slept; but, instead of that, had crouched around camp-fires to keep from freezing. During the day they only advanced ten miles. In half that distance, one crooked little creek, which wound around in a labyrinth of coils, was crossed no less than twenty-six times. This was slow progress, but the following days were slower still. Provisions were scarce. Most of the wagon-train and equipments had been loaded on boats to be taken up the river, and the supplies that had started with them were far in the rear. To meet their necessities, the men captured a farmer’s pigs and poultry without leave. But Garfield was no plunderer; he was a true soldier; and, after reprimanding the offenders, he repaid the farmer.

On the 27th, a squad of Marshall’s men were encountered, and two men captured. The next day the compliment was returned, and three Union soldiers became unwilling guests of the too hospitable South. Thus slowly advancing, in spite of bad weather and bad roads, skirmishing daily with the enemy, as the opposing forces neared each other, on the 6th day of January, 1862, the Eighteenth Brigade, except that portion which was coming from 100Paris, was encamped within seven miles of Paintville; and at last it had become possible to bring things to a crisis, and determine, by the solemn wager of battle, who was entitled to this portion of Kentucky.

Up to this time, Garfield had been moving almost in the dark. He did not know what had become of his message to Cranor; he did not know the exact position of his enemy; he did not know the number of the enemy. Now we shall see good fortune and good management remedy each of these weaknesses in a single day.

Harry Brown had been a canal hand with Garfield in 1847, and the latter, with his genial ways, had made Brown his friend. At this time, Brown was a kind of camp-follower, and not very well trusted by the officers. But he knew the region well where these operations were going on, and hearing that his old comrade was commander, he hastened to offer his services as a scout. Garfield accepted, told him what he wanted, and through him learned very accurately the situation of the Confederate forces. On the night of the sixth, Jordan also appeared on the scene, with the information that Cranor was only two days’ march behind. To crown all, a dispatch came from Buell, on the morning of the seventh, with a letter which had been intercepted. This letter was from Humphrey Marshall to his wife, and revealed the fact that his force was less than the country people, with their rebel sympathies, had represented. It was determined to advance that day and attack the enemy at Paintville, where about one-third of them were posted.

OPERATIONS IN WEST VIRGINIA.

This attack on Paintville was a hazardous enterprise. In main strength, Marshall was so superior that Garfield’s only hope was in devising some plan to outwit him. From the point of starting, there were three accessible paths; one on the west, striking Painter Creek opposite the mouth of Jenny Creek, three miles to the right, from the place to be attacked; one on the east, approaching that point from the left; and a third road, the most difficult of the three, straight across. Rebel pickets were thrown out on each road. Marshall was prepared to be attacked on one road, but never dreamed of a simultaneous approach of the enemy on all at 101once; and it was this misapprehension which defeated him. First, a small detachment of infantry, supported by cavalry, attacked on the west, whereupon almost the entire rebel force was sent out to meet them. Shortly, a similar advance was made on the east, and the enemy retraced their steps for a defense in that direction. While they were thus held, the remaining Union force drove in the pickets of the central path, who, finding the village empty, rushed on three miles further, to a partially fortified place where Marshall himself was waiting. Thinking that Paintville was lost, he hastily ordered all his forces to retreat, which they did, as far as this fortified camp. Garfield entered Paintville at the same time, having with him the Forty-second Ohio, Fourteenth Kentucky, and four hundred Virginia cavalry.

A portion of the cavalry were chasing the rebel horse, whom they followed five miles, killing three and wounding several. The Union force lost two killed and one wounded. The next day, the eighth of January, a few hours rest was taken, while preparations were being made for another fight. But towards evening it was determined to advance. Painter Creek was too high to ford. But there was a saw-mill near by, and in an hour a raft was made upon which to cross. Marshall, being posted concerning this movement, was deliberating what to do, when a spy came in with the information that Colonel Cranor was approaching, with 3,300 men. Alarmed at such an overpowering enemy, he burnt his stores and fled precipitately toward Petersburg. At nine o’clock that night, the Eighteenth Brigade was snugly settled in the late Confederate camp. Here it appeared that every thing had been left suddenly, and in confusion; meat was left cooking before the fire, and all preparations for the evening meal abandoned. This place 102was at the top of a hill, three hundred feet high, covering about two acres, and would soon have been a strong fortification.

On the ninth, Colonel Cranor did at last arrive, with his regiment, eight hundred strong, completely worn out with the long march. But Colonel Garfield felt that the present advantage must be pursued, or no permanent gain could result. So he raised 1,100 men, who stepped from the ranks as volunteers, and immediately started on the trail of the enemy.

The action which followed is known as the battle of Middle Creek. Eighteen miles further up the West Fork, along which they marched, two parallel creeks flow in between the hills; the northernmost one is Abbott’s Creek, the next Middle Creek. It was evident that Marshall would place himself behind this double barrier and make a stand there, if he should endeavor to turn the tide of defeat at all. Toward this point the weary troops, therefore, turned their steps. The way was so rough and the rains so heavy that they did not near the place until late in the day. But about nine o’clock in the evening they climbed to the top of a hill, whose further slope led down into the valley of Abbott’s Creek. On this height the enemy’s pickets were encountered and driven in. Further investigation led to the conclusion that the enemy was near, in full force. That night the men slept on their arms in this exposed position; the rain had turned to sleet, and any degree of comfort was a thing they ceased to look for. Perceiving the necessity for reinforcements, Colonel Garfield sent word to Colonel Cranor to send forward all available men. Meanwhile, efforts were made to learn Marshall’s position, and arrange for battle. Our old friend John Jordan visited the hostile camp in the mealy clothes of a rebel miller, who had been captured, and returned with some very valuable information. Morning dawned, and the little Federal army proceeded cautiously down into the valley, then over the hills again, until, a mile beyond, they were ready to descend into the valley of Middle Creek, and charge against the enemy on the opposite heights. Garfield’s plan was to avoid a general engagement, until about the time for his reinforcements to appear, because otherwise it was plainly suicidal to attack such a 103large force. On this plan skirmishing continued from eight till one o’clock, the only result being a better knowledge of the situation. Now it was high time to begin in earnest. In the center of the strip of meadow-land, which stretched between Middle Creek and the opposite hills, was a high point of ground, crowned by a little log church and a small graveyard. The first movement would be to occupy that place, in order to have a base of operations on that side. The rebel cavalry and artillery were each in position to control the church. But the guns were badly trained, and missed their mark; the cavalry made some show, but, for some reason, retired without much fighting.

Keeping a reserve here, a portion of the brave eleven hundred were now to strike a decisive blow; but the enemy’s infantry was hidden, and they did not know just how to proceed. On the south side of Middle Creek, to the right of the place where the artillery was stationed, rose a high hill. Around it wound the creek, and following the creek ran a narrow, rocky road. The entire force of Marshall, except his reserve, was in fact hidden in the fastnesses of that irregular, forest-covered hill, and so placed as to command this road, by which it was expected that the Federal troops would approach. But “the best laid plans” sometimes go wrong. The Yankee was not to be entrapped. Suspecting some such situation, Garfield sent his escort of twelve men down the road; around the hill they clattered at a gallop, in full view of the enemy. The ruse worked well, and the sudden fire of several thousand muskets revealed the coveted secret. The riders returned safely, and then the battle began. Four hundred men of the Fortieth and Forty-second Ohio, under Major Pardee, quickly advanced up the hill in front, while two hundred of the Fourteenth Kentucky, under Lieutenant-Colonel Monroe, went down the road some distance and endeavored, by a flank movement, to so engage a portion of the rebels that not all of them could be turned against Pardee. The latter now charged up the hill under a heavy fire. They were inferior in numbers, but determined to reach the summit some way. So they broke ranks at the cry of “Every man to a tree,” and fought after the Indian fashion. After all, the Union boys were 104not altogether at a disadvantage. Their opponents were raw troops, and after the manner of inexperienced men they aimed too high, while the Federals did much better execution. But Marshall meant business at this important hour, and sent his reserve to swell the number. A charge was made down the hill. Now the boys in blue retreat; but not far. Garfield goes in with his reserves. Captain Williams calls, “To the trees again, my boys;” they rally; the fight grows hotter and whistling death is in the air. The critical moment is here, and those poor fellows down below are about to be crushed. The exultant Confederates rush down in swelling volume, the wolf is about to seize his prey.

But now a faint, though cheerful shout rings across the narrow valley; then louder it grows while the echoes clatter back from hillside to hillside like the tumult of ten thousand voices. The Confederates above peer out through the branches and view the opposite road. Every face, just flushed with hopes of victory, now turns pale at the sight. The force from Paintville has come at last. The hard-pressed men of Pardee can see nothing, but they catch new inspiration from the sound. They answer back; while to the thousand voices and the ten thousand echoes on the Union side, one word of reply is given from the rebel commander’s mouth. And the word he utters is—Retreat.

This ended the struggle. Lieutenant-Colonel Sheldon, with his seven hundred men, after a hard day’s march of twenty miles, came down on the scene of action at a run, and found that their approach had saved the day. Garfield and his men were already occupying the hill-top, and a detachment was following the fleeing troops of the enemy. The policy adopted, however, was to not follow the enemy very far, as it was not known in how bad a condition they were. The Union loss in this battle was two killed and twenty-five wounded. The rebels left twenty-seven dead on the field, and had carried off about thirty-five more.

The captures were, twenty-five men, ten horses, and a quantity of army supplies. Toward midnight a bright light appeared in the sky in the direction Marshall had taken. It was the light of his blazing wagons and camp equipments, burned by his men to keep them from doing any body else any good, while they made their enforced visit to Virginia by way of Pound Gap. The field was won; and Buell’s commission to Garfield had been faithfully performed.

105

Garfield drives Humphrey Marshall out of Kentucky.

106On the following day Colonel Garfield addressed his victorious men as follows:

“Soldiers of the Eighteenth Brigade: I am proud of you all! In four weeks you have marched, some eighty and some a hundred miles, over almost impassable roads. One night in four you have slept, often in the storm, with only a wintry sky above your heads. You have marched in the face of a foe of more than double your number—led on by chiefs who have won a national renown under the Old Flag—intrenched in hills of his own choosing, and strengthened by all the appliances of military art. With no experience but the consciousness of your own manhood, you have driven him from his strongholds, pursued his inglorious flight, and compelled him to meet you in battle. When forced to fight, he sought the shelter of rocks and hills. You drove him from his position, leaving scores of his bloody dead unburied. His artillery thundered against you, but you compelled him to flee by the light of his burning stores, and to leave even the banner of his rebellion behind him. I greet you as brave men. Our common country will not forget you. She will not forget the sacred dead who fell beside you, nor those of your comrades who won scars of honor on the field.

“I have recalled you from the pursuit that you may regain vigor for still greater exertions. Let no one tarnish his well-earned honor by any act unworthy an American soldier. Remember your duties as American citizens, and sacredly respect the rights and property of those with whom you may come in contact. Let it not be said that good men dread the approach of an American army.

“Officers and soldiers, your duty has been nobly done. For this I thank you.”

On this day, January 11th, the troops took possession of Prestonburg, and the remaining duties of the campaign were only the working out in detail of results already secured. As to the merits of the decisive little fight at Middle Creek, Garfield said at a later time: “It was a very rash and imprudent affair on my part. If 107I had been an officer of more experience, I probably should not have made the attack. As it was, having gone into the army with the notion that fighting was our business, I didn’t know any better.” And Judge Clark, of the Forty-second Ohio, adds: “And during it all, Garfield was the soldiers’ friend. Such was his affection for the men that he would divide his last rations with them, and nobody ever found any thing better at head-quarters than the rest got.”

Indeed, there was one occasion, I believe just after this engagement, when the Eighteenth Brigade owed to its brave commander its possession of any thing at all to eat. The roads had become impassable, rations were growing scarce, and the Big Sandy, on which they relied, was so high that nothing could be brought up to them; at least the boatmen thought so. But our old acquaintance, the canal boy, still survived, in the shape of a gallant colonel, and with his admirer and former canal companion, Brown, Garfield boldly started down the raging stream in a skiff. Arriving at Catlettsburg, he found a small steamer, the Sandy Valley, which he loaded with provisions, and ordered captain and crew to get up steam and take him back. They all refused, on the ground that such an attempt would end in failure, and probably in loss of life. But they did not know their man. His orders were repeated, and he went to the wheel himself. It was a wild torrent to run against. The river was far out of its natural limits, rushing around the foot of a chain of hills at sharp curves. In some places it was over fifty feet deep, and where the opposite banks rose close together the half-undermined trees would lean inward, their interlocking branches making the passage beneath both difficult and dangerous. But the undaunted leader pressed on, himself at the wheel forty hours out of the forty-eight. Brown stood steadfastly at the bow, carrying a forked pole, with which to ward off the big logs and trees which constantly threatened to strike the boat and stave in the bottom. The most exciting incident of all occurred the second night. At a sharp turn the narrow and impetuous flood whirled round and round, a boiling whirlpool; and in spite of great care the boat turned sidewise, 108and stuck fast in the muddy bank. Repeated efforts to pry the boat off were unavailing, and at last a new plan was suggested. Colonel Garfield ordered the men to lower a small boat, carry a line across, and pull the little steamer out of difficulty. They said no living mortal could attempt that feat and not die. This was just what they had said about starting the steamer from Catlettsburg, and the answer was similar. Our hero leaped into the skiff himself, the faithful Brown following.

GARFIELD’S EXPLOIT ON THE BIG SANDY.

109Sturdily and steadily they pulled away, and in half an hour were on terra firma once more. Line in hand, they walked up to a place opposite the Sandy Valley, fixed the rope to a rail, and standing at the other end with an intervening tree to give leverage, soon had the satisfaction of seeing, or rather in the darkness feeling, the steamer swing out again into the current. After this impossibility had been turned into history, there was no more doubting from the incredulous crew. They concluded that this man could do any thing, and henceforth helped him willingly. At the end of three days, amid prolonged and enthusiastic cheering from the half-starved waiting brigade, the Sandy Valley arrived at her destination, and James A. Garfield had finished one more of his great life’s thousand deeds of heroism.

Immediately after the battle of Middle Creek great consternation filled the minds of that ignorant population which filled the valley of the Big Sandy. The flying rebels, the dead and the debris of a fugitive army, and wild stories of savage barbarities practiced by an inhuman Yankee soldiery, had been more than enough for their fortitude. They fled like frightened deer at the blast of a hunter’s horn, and sought safety in mountain fastnesses. It was therefore necessary by some means to gain their confidence, and for this purpose the following proclamation was issued from the Federal head-quarters:

“Citizens of the Sandy Valley: I have come among you to restore the honor of the Union, and to bring back the Old Banner which you all once loved, but which, by the machinations of evil men, and by mutual misunderstandings, has been dishonored among you. To those who are in arms against the Federal Government I offer only the alternative of battle or unconditional surrender; but to those who have taken no part in this war, who are in no way aiding or abetting the enemies of the Union, even to those who hold sentiments adverse to the Union, but yet give no aid and comfort to its enemies, I offer the full protection of the Government, both in their persons and property.

“Let those who have been seduced away from the love of their country, 110to follow after and aid the destroyers of our peace, lay down their arms, return to their homes, bear true allegiance to the Federal Government, and they also shall enjoy like protection. The army of the Union wages no war of plunder, but comes to bring back the prosperity of peace. Let all peace-loving citizens who have fled from their homes return, and resume again the pursuits of peace and industry. If citizens have suffered from any outrages by the soldiers under my command, I invite them to make known their complaints to me, and their wrongs shall be redressed, and the offenders punished. I expect the friends of the Union in this valley to banish from among them all private feuds, and to let a liberal-minded love of country direct their conduct toward those who have been so sadly estranged and misguided. I hope that these days of turbulence may soon end, and the better days of the Republic may soon return.

After the true character of the invaders became known, the natives were as familiar as they had been shy, and multitudes of them came into camp. From their reports, and from the industry of the small parties of cavalry which scoured the country in all directions, it was established beyond doubt that the rebel army had no more foot-hold in the State; although sundry small parties still remained, endeavoring to secure recruits for the forces in Virginia, and destroying many things which could be of use to the Union soldiers. In order to be nearer the scene of these petty operations, Colonel Garfield moved his head-quarters to Piketon, thirty miles further up the river. From this point he effectually stopped all further depredations, except in one locality. And it was in removing this exception to their general supremacy that the Eighteenth Brigade performed its last notable exploit in Eastern Kentucky.

The principal pathway between Virginia and South-Eastern Kentucky is by means of Pound Gap. This is a rugged pass in the Cumberland Mountains, through which Marshall had in the fall of 1861 made his loudly-heralded advance, and, later, his inglorious retreat. Here one Major Thomas had made a stand, with 111about six hundred men. Log huts were built by them for shelter, the narrow entrance to their camp was well fortified, and for snug winter-quarters they could want nothing better. When in need of provisions a small party would sally forth, dash down into the valleys, and return well laden with plunder. Garfield soon determined to break up this mountain nest; and early in March was incited to immediate action by a report that Humphrey Marshall was making that place the starting point for a new expedition. He had issued orders for all available forces to be gathered there on the 15th of March, preparatory to the intended re-invasion of Kentucky. To frustrate this scheme, Garfield started for Pound Gap with six hundred infantry and a hundred cavalry. It was a march of forty-five miles from Piketon in a south-westerly direction. Deep snows covered the ground, icy hillsides were hard to climb, and progress was difficult. On the evening of the second day, however, they reached the foot of the ascent which led up to the object for which they had come. Here they stopped until morning, meanwhile endeavoring to discover the number and condition of the mountain paths. The information obtained was meager, but sufficient to help form a plan of attack. One main path led directly up to the Gap. When morning came, Garfield sent his cavalry straight up in this direction, to occupy the enemy’s attention, while with the infantry he was climbing the mountains and endeavoring to surprise them in the rear. After a long and perilous scramble, they reached a point within a quarter of a mile of the rebel camp. They were first apprised of their nearness to it by the sight of a picket, who fired on them and hastened to give the alarm. But the eager troops were close after him, and the panic-stricken marauders vanished hastily without a struggle, and were chased by the Union cavalry far into Virginia.

After resting a day and night in these luxurious quarters, the huts were burned, the fortifications destroyed, and in less than five days from the start, the successful Colonel was back again in Piketon.

This was the end of Garfield’s campaign in East Kentucky. There was no more fighting to be done; and after a few days he was called into another field of action.

112When Colonel Garfield’s official report of the battle of Middle Creek reached Louisville, General Buell replied by the following, which tells the story of his delight at the result:

“The General Commanding takes occasion to thank Colonel Garfield and his troops for their successful campaign against the rebel force under General Marshall, on the Big Sandy, and their gallant conduct in battle. They have overcome formidable difficulties in the character of the country, the condition of the roads, and the inclemency of the season; and, without artillery, have in several engagements, terminating with the battle on Middle Creek on the 10th inst., driven the enemy from his intrenched positions, and forced him back into the mountains with the loss of a large amount of baggage and stores, and many of his men killed or captured.

“These services have called into action the highest qualities of a soldier—fortitude, perseverance, courage.

But this was not the only reward. The news went on to Washington, and in a few days Garfield received his commission as a Brigadier-General, dated back to January 10th.

The defeat of Marshall was conspicuous on account of its place and time. Since the defeat of the Union army at Bull Bun, in July of the preceding year, no important victory had been gained. The confidence of the North in its military leaders had began to waver. General McClellan had turned himself and his army into a gigantic stumbling block, and patriots were getting discouraged. No wonder that Lincoln and Buell were grateful for a man who was willing to wade through difficulties, and disturb the stagnant pool of listless war!

On the night of January 10, an interview occurred between the President and several persons, one of whom, General McDowell, has preserved the knowledge of what occurred in a memorandum made at the time. He says:

113“The President was greatly disturbed at the state of affairs. Spoke of the exhausted condition of the treasury; of the loss of public credit; of the Jacobinism of Congress; of the delicate condition of our foreign relations; of the bad news he had received from the West, particularly as contained in a letter from General Halleck on the state of affairs in Missouri; of the want of coöperation between Generals Halleck and Buell; but, more than all, the sickness of General McClellan. The President said he was in great distress; and, as he had been to General McClellan’s house, and the General did not ask to see him, and as he must talk to somebody, he had sent for General Franklin and myself to obtain our opinion as to the possibility of soon commencing active operations with the Army of the Potomac. To use his own expression, if something was not soon done, the bottom would be out of the whole affair; and if General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something.”

This shows how necessary some decisive action now was to the safety of the Union. And to Garfield belonged the honor of ushering in an era of glorious successes.

On the 19th of January, General Thomas defeated Zollicoffer’s army, killed its general, and chased the remnants into Tennessee. This gave us Kentucky, and completed the break in the extreme right wing of Johnston’s Confederate army. Just after this came Grant’s successful move on the left wing of that army. Proceeding rapidly up the Tennessee, he took Fort Henry, then crossed over to the Cumberland, and, on February 16th, captured Fort Donelson. Other actions followed in quick succession. The South, fallen into false security during our long inactivity, was completely astonished. The North, thoroughly aroused, believed in itself again; and, with exultant tread, our armies began to march rapidly into the enemy’s country.

Colonel Garfield’s career in the Sandy Valley was not the cause of all these good things. The first faint light which warns a watcher of the dawn of day, is not the cause of day. But that early light is looked for none the less eagerly. Middle Creek was greeted by a Nation with just such sentiments.

Historians of the Civil War will not waste much time in considering 114this Kentucky campaign. Its range was too small; the student’s attention is naturally drawn to the more striking fortunes of the greater armies of the Republic. But, as we have seen, the intrinsic merits of Colonel Garfield’s work here were such as forced it upon the attention of his official superiors. As we have also seen, this campaign occurred at a time when small advantages could be appreciated, because no great ones were being secured. And the hand of Time, which obliterates campaigns, and effaces kingdoms, and sinks continents out of sight, will never quite neglect to keep a torch lighted here, until the starry light of all our triumphs shall go out in the darkness together.

CHAPTER V. HERO AND GENERAL.

On the 23d of March, 1862, orders reached General Garfield, in Eastern Kentucky, to report at once, with his command, to General Buell at Louisville. It had been determined to concentrate the Army of the Ohio under Buell, move southward to Savannah, Tennessee, there effect a junction with the Army of the Tennessee, which, under General Grant, was on its way up the Tennessee River, after the victories at Forts Donelson and Henry, and, with the united force, move forward to Corinth, Mississippi. Garfield ceased, from that time, to be a commander of an independent force, and became merged, with others of his rank, in the great Army of the Ohio. He proceeded to Louisville with all possible dispatch. But Buell was already far on the road to Savannah. Finding orders, he at once hurried southward, and overtook Buell at Columbia, where the army had to construct a bridge over Duck River. The rebels had burned the old bridge; and, at that stage of the war, pontoon bridges were not to be had. Garfield was at once assigned to the command of the Twentieth Brigade, of General Thomas J. Wood’s division. During this delay at Duck River, General Nelson, hearing that Grant had already reached Savannah, asked permission of Buell to let his division ford or swim the river and hurry on to Grant. As there was no known reason for hurrying to Grant, who sent word that he was in no danger of attack, the 116permission was coldly given. But it was this impatience of Nelson which saved Grant’s army at Shiloh. With Nelson’s division a day in advance, the remainder of the army followed at intervals—with Crittenden’s division second, McCook’s third, then Wood’s—to which Garfield belonged—and last Thomas’s. It had been intended to halt at Waynesboro for a day’s rest, but the impetuous Nelson was beyond the town before he had heard of it, and his speed had communicated itself to the succeeding divisions. In this way Nelson reached Savannah on the 5th of April. Grant’s army was at Pittsburg Landing, ten miles up the river. The world knows of the unexpected and terrific battle, beginning on the 6th and lasting two days. Nelson reached Grant at 5 P. M. of the first day’s fight, Crittenden during the night, and McCook about 9 A. M. of the next day. These reinforcements alone saved Grant’s army from destruction. Wood, impeded by the baggage trains abandoned in the road by the preceding divisions, who were straining every nerve to reach Grant in time, only reached the battle-field as the fighting closed. Garfield’s brigade and some other troops were sent in pursuit of the flying enemy; but their great fatigue from continuous marching, and the darkness of the night, soon recalled the pursuit. On the following morning, Garfield’s brigade took part in a severe fight with the enemy’s cavalry, but it was only a demonstration to cover retreat.

Halleck, Commander-in-Chief, reached Pittsburg Landing April 11th, and began a remarkably slow advance upon Corinth, the objective point of the campaign. The army was required to construct parallels of fortification to cover each day’s advance; and, in this way, it took six weeks to march the thirty miles which lay between the army and Corinth. While lying before Corinth, as throughout his career in the army, Garfield gratified, as much as possible, his love of literature. He had with him several small volumes of the classics, which he read every day. He rather preferred Horace, as being “the most philosophic of the pagans.”

During this time an incident occurred which showed well the character of Garfield. One day a Southern ruffian, a human blood-hound, came riding into camp, demanding that the soldiers hunt 117and deliver to him a wretched fugitive slave who had preceded him. The poor negro, who was badly wounded from the blows of the bully’s whip, had sought the blue-coats for protection, and had succeeded in concealing himself from his relentless pursuer among Garfield’s command. The swearing braggart, being misled and foiled by the soldiers, who not only sympathized with the slave, but enjoyed the swaggerer’s wrath, at length demanded to be shown to the head-quarters of the division commander. The latter, after hearing the complaint, wrote an order to Garfield to require his men to hunt out and surrender the trembling vagabond. Garfield took the order from the aid, read it, quietly refolded it, and indorsed on it the following reply:

“I respectfully, but positively, decline to allow my command to search for, or deliver up, any fugitive slaves. I conceive that they are here for quite another purpose. The command is open, and no obstacle will be placed in the way of the search.”

It was a courageous act, but he had never known fear. A court-martial, with a swift sentence of death, was the remedy for refusals to obey orders. When told of his danger, he said:

“The matter may as well be tested first as last. Right is right, and I do not propose to mince matters at all. My soldiers are here for far other purposes than hunting and returning fugitive slaves. My people on the Western Reserve of Ohio did not send my boys and myself down here to do that kind of business, and they will back me up in my action.”

But no court-martial was held. A short time afterwards the War Department issued a general order embodying the principle of Garfield’s refusal; and from that time it was the rule in all the armies of the Republic that no soldier should hound a human being back to fetters.

After the six weeks’ preparation for the siege of Corinth, Halleck found that only the hull of the nut was left for him. The wily enemy had evacuated the place without a struggle. The vast Union army, which had been massed for this campaign, having no foe to oppose it, was resolved into its original elements. The Army of the Ohio, under Buell, was ordered to East Tennessee, preparatory to an attack 118on Chattanooga. The advance to the east, was along the line of the Memphis and Chattanooga Railroad. This road had to be almost entirely rebuilt, as the supplies for the army were to come along its line. This work of rebuilding was assigned to Wood’s division, and Garfield’s brigade laid down the musket to handle the spade and hammer. Here, Garfield’s boyhood experience with tools, was of incalculable value. If a culvert was to be built, his head planned a swift, but substantial way, to build it. If a bridge had been burned, his eye saw quickly how to shape the spans, and secure the braces. His mind was of the rare sort which combines speculative with practical powers. His spirit electrified his men, as it had the school at Hiram; and, in the drudgery of the work, from which the inspiration of battle was wholly wanting, it was he who cheered and encouraged their unwonted toil. The work, for the time being, having been finished, Garfield’s head-quarters were established at Huntsville, Alabama, the most beautiful town in America. But the exposures of army life, the tremendous exertions put forth in rebuilding the railroad, and the fierce rays of the summer sun, in the unaccustomed climate, laid hold on his constitution, in which the old boyhood tendency to ague was all the time dormant; and in the latter part of July, 1862, he was attacked by malarial fever. In the rough surroundings of the camp, as he tossed on his feverish couch, his thoughts turned longingly to the young wife and child in that humble northern home. Procuring sick-leave, he started north about the first of August.

The War Department had an eye upon Garfield, and determined to give his abilities free scope. Five divisions of Buell’s army we have followed to Corinth, and thence, along the tedious march to Chattanooga. A sixth division had been sent on a separate expedition to Northern Mississippi, and a seventh, under General Geo. W. Morgan, to occupy East Tennessee, and, in particular, Cumberland Gap. In the early part of August, orders reached Garfield to proceed to Cumberland Gap and take command of the seventh division of the Army of the Ohio, relieving General Morgan. But when the order reached Garfield, he was already on his way north, fast held by the malignant clutch of low fever.

119While Garfield had been with the army before Corinth, and on the line of march toward Chattanooga, the general discipline was very loose. The army camp is the most demoralizing place in the world. The men lose all self-restraint, and lapse into ferocious and barbarous manners. The check for this is discipline; but the volunteer troops, in the early stages of the war, utterly scouted the idea of discipline. To render it effective, the Army of the Ohio had to be reduced to a basis of strict military order. Courts-martial were frequent. Garfield’s judicial mind and sound judgment, combined with the knowledge of discipline which his experience as a teacher had given him, caused him to be sought for eagerly, to conduct these courts-martial. He was idolized by his own men, but his ability in the drum-head courts spread his fame throughout the division. The trial of Colonel Turchin, for conduct unbecoming an officer, was the one which attracted most attention.

The report of the trial to the War Department, prepared by Garfield, had served to still further heighten the opinion of his abilities entertained there. Garfield had been at home, on his sick leave, about a month, and had begun to rally from the fever, when he received orders to report at Washington City as soon as his health would permit. Shortly after this he again bade farewell to his girlish wife, and started to the Capital. The service for which he was required there, was none other than to sit on the memorable court-martial of Fitz-John Porter, the most important military trial of the war. The charges against Porter are well known. He was accused of having disobeyed five distinct orders to bring his command to the front in time to take part in the second battle of Bull Run. The trial lasted nearly two months. Garfield was required to pass upon complicated questions, involving the rules of war, the situation and surroundings of Porter’s command previous to the battle, the duties of subordinate commanders, and the military possibilities of the situation. In such a trial, the common sense of a strong, but unprofessional mind, was more valuable than the technical training of a soldier. The question at issue was, whether Porter had kept his own opinions to himself and cheerfully obeyed his superior’s orders, even if he did 120not approve them, or whether, through anger or jealousy, he had sulked in the rear, so as to insure the defeat which he prophesied. Garfield threw all his powers into the investigation, and at last was convinced that Porter was guilty. Such was the verdict of the Court; such, the opinion of Presidents Lincoln and Grant, and such will be the opinion of posterity.

During this trial, Garfield became a warm friend of Major-General Hunter, the presiding officer of the court, and in command of our forces in South Carolina. After the adjournment, Hunter made an application to Secretary Stanton to have Garfield assigned to the Army of South Carolina. The appointment was made. It was gratifying to Garfield, because Hunter was one of the strong antislavery generals, whom, at that time, were few enough. Garfield felt that the war, though being fought on the technical question of a State’s right to secede, was really a war to destroy the hideous and bloody institution of slavery, and he wished to see it carried on with that avowed purpose. As he afterwards expressed it: “In the very crisis of our fate, God brought us face to face with the alarming truth, that we must lose our own freedom or grant it to the slave.”

In the same address from which the above is taken, which was delivered before the war had actually closed, he declared that slavery was dead, and the war had killed it:

“We shall never know why slavery dies so hard in this Republic and in this hall till we know why sin has such longevity and Satan is immortal. With marvelous tenacity of existence, it has outlived the expectations of its friends and the hopes of its enemies. It has been declared here and elsewhere to be in all the several stages of mortality, wounded, moribund, dead. The question has been raised, whether it was indeed dead, or only in a troubled sleep. I know of no better illustration of its condition than is found in Sallust’s admirable history of the great conspirator Catiline, who, when his final battle was fought and lost, his army broken and scattered, was found far in advance of his own troops, lying among the dead enemies of Rome, yet breathing a little, but exhibiting in his countenance all that ferocity of spirit which had characterized his life. So, sir, this body of slavery lies before us 121among the dead enemies of the Republic, mortally wounded, impotent in its fiendish wickedness, but with its old ferocity of look, bearing the unmistakable marks of its infernal origin.”—House of Representatives, January 13, 1865.

But in war it is always the unexpected which happens. Pending Garfield’s departure to Hunter’s command, his old army, then merged with the Army of the Cumberland, under the command of General Rosecrans, who relieved Buell, had, on the last day of the year of 1862, plunged into the battle of Stone River. During the day a cannon-ball took off the head of the beloved Garesché, chief of General Rosecrans’s staff. The place was important, and hard to fill. It required a man of high military ability to act as chief confidential adviser of the commanding general, both as to the general plan of a campaign, and the imperious exigencies of battle. Rosecrans had relied much on Garesché, and, just when so much was expected of the Army of the Cumberland, the War Department feared the testy General might become unmanageable, and, though well versed in the practice of warfare, give way just at the crisis. The chief of staff also had to be a man of pleasant social qualities to fit him for the intimate relation.

Much as the War Department at Washington thought of Rosecrans at this time, his violent temper and invincible obstinacy rendered it imperative that some one should be with him who would prevent an absolute rupture upon trifling grounds. But in addition to these things, the chief of staff had to be a man of faultless generosity and unselfishness; he had to be a man who would exert his own genius for another’s glory; he had to be willing to see the plans of brilliant campaigns, which were the product of his own mind, taken up and used by another; he had to be willing to see reports of victories, which were the results of his own military skill, sent to Washington over the name of the commanding general, in which his own name was never mentioned. He was to do the work and get no glory for it. All this he had to do cheerfully, and with a heart loyal to his superior. There must be no division of counsel, no lukewarm support, no heart-burnings 122at head-quarters. To the army and the world there was but one man—the general. In reality there were two men—the general and his chief of staff.

A prime minister sometimes succeeds in erecting for himself a fame separate, and not merged in the splendor of his sovereign. Wolsey and Richelieu and Talleyrand all did so. But the chief of staff was to know no fame, no name for himself. His light was merged and lost in the corruscations of the man above him. To find a man who united the highest military ability with a genial nature, and who was willing to go utterly without glory himself, was a difficult task. In a moment Stanton fixed his eye on Garfield. Without warning, the commission to South Carolina was revoked. Garfield was ordered to report at once to General Rosecrans, whose head-quarters were at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as a result of the victory at Stone River.

Rosecrans has said that he was prejudiced against Garfield before his arrival. He had heard that he was a Campbellite preacher, and fond of theological debate, and a school teacher. These three things were enough to spoil any man for Rosecrans. So he gave Garfield a cool enough reception on the January morning when the latter presented himself at head-quarters. Rosecrans, of course, had the option of taking the man whom the Department had sent him, to be his confidential adviser or not. Garfield’s appearance, to be sure, was not that of the pious fraud, or the religious wrangler, or the precise pedagogue. In the book, Down in Tennessee, we find the following superb description of his appearance at this time, by one who saw him:

“In a corner by the window, seated at a small pine desk—a sort of packing-box, perched on a long-legged stool, and divided into pigeonholes, with a turn-down lid—was a tall, deep-chested, sinewy-built man, with regular, massive features, a full, clear blue eye, slightly tinged with gray, and a high, broad forehead, rising into a ridge over the eyes, as if it had been thrown up by a plow. There was something singularly engaging in his open, expressive face, and his whole appearance indicated, as the phrase goes, ‘great reserve power.’ His uniform, though cleanly brushed and sitting easily upon him, had a sort of democratic 123air, and every thing about him seemed to denote that he was ‘a man of the people,’ A rusty slouched hat, large enough to have fitted Daniel Webster, lay on the desk before him; but a glance at that was not needed to convince me that his head held more than the common share of brains. Though he is yet young—not thirty-three—the reader has heard of him, and if he lives he will make his name long remembered in our history.”

After some conversation, Rosecrans concluded to go a little slow before he rejected his services. He kept Garfield around head-quarters for a day or two, quizzing him occasionally, and trying to make up his estimate of the man. This sort of dancing attendance for a position he did not want, would have galled a man of less ability and cheaper pride than Garfield; but he had the patience of a planet. “Rosey,” as his soldiers called him, soon found himself liking this great whole-souled Ohioan, and, what was still more significant, he began to reverence the genius of the man. He was unable to sink a plumb-line to the bottom of Garfield’s mind. After each conversation, the depths of reserve power seemed deeper than before. Rosecrans decided within himself to take him, if possible. Only one thing stood in the way. If Garfield preferred to go to the field, as he had himself prophesied from his name (Guard-of-the-field) just before leaving college in 1856, Rosecrans was not the man to chain him up at head-quarters. The choice was open to Garfield to take a division or accept the position of chief of staff. The latter had fifty times the responsibility, and no opportunity whatever for fame. But without a moment’s struggle, Garfield quietly said: “If you want my services as chief of staff, you can have them.”

The opinion in the army of the selection of General Garfield to succeed the lamented Garesché, may be gathered from a volume called: “Annals of the Army of the Cumberland,” published shortly after Garfield’s appointment, and written by an officer in the army. “With the selection of General Garfield, universal satisfaction is everywhere expressed. Possessed of sound natural sense, an excellent judgment, a highly cultivated intellect, and the deserved reputation of a successful military leader, he is not only the 124Mentor of the staff, but his opinions are sought and his counsels heeded by many who are older, and not less distinguished than himself.”

An incident which occurred soon after his appointment, illustrates well the aspect of his many-sided character, as presented to the common soldier. Civilians have little idea of the gulf which military discipline and etiquette places between the regular army officer and the private soldier. Never was a Russian czar more of a despot and autocrat than a West Point graduate. It seems to be an unavoidable outgrowth of the profession of arms and military discipline that the officer should be a sultan and the private a slave. One night, at Rosecrans’s head-quarters in Murfreesboro, the officers’ council lasted till the small hours of the morning. The outer hall, into which the room used by the council opened, was occupied by a dozen orderly sergeants, who were required to be there, ready for instant service all the time. As the hours advanced, and there was no indication of an adjournment within, this outer council got sleepy, and selecting one of its number to keep watch, rolled itself up in various ragged army blankets and tumbled on the floor. It was not long till the air trembled with heavy blasts from the leaden trumpet of sleep. The unlucky fellow, who was left to guard, was envious enough of his sleeping comrades. Tilting his seat back against the wall, he sank into deep meditation upon the pleasures of sleep. A few minutes later, sundry sudden jerks of his head, from side to side, told that he, too, had found surcease from sorrow in sonorous slumber. Just at this unlucky moment the door opened, and General Garfield stepped out into the dimly-lighted passage, on his way to his quarters. The sleeper’s legs were stretched out far in front of him with lofty negligence; his arms hung by his side; his head, from which the cap was gone, hung down in an alarming manner, as if he were making a profound and attentive investigation of his boots. At this unlucky moment, Garfield stumbled over the sergeant, and fell with his full weight upon the frightened orderly. Military discipline required that Garfield should fire a volley of oaths at the poor fellow, supplemented by a heavy cannonade of 125kicks in the enemy’s rear, and the cutting down of his supplies to bread and water for a week. Orderlies at head-quarters knew this to be the plan of battle. General Garfield rose to his feet as quickly as possible, gave the unfortunate and trembling sergeant his assistance to rise, and after a kindly “excuse me, Sergeant, I did not see you. I’m afraid you did not find me very light,” passed on his way. It is easy to see why the common soldiers loved a chief of staff in whom the gentleman was stronger than the officer.

During the tedious delay at Murfreesboro, the officers and men exercised their ingenuity in inventing games to pass away the time. Phil. Sheridan, out at his quarters in the forest surrounding the town, had invented a game which he called Dutch ten-pins. Out in front of his cabin, from the limb of a lofty tree, was suspended a rope. At the end was attached a cannon-ball, small enough to be easily grasped by the hand. Underneath the rope were set the ten-pins, with sufficient spaces between them for the ball to pass without hitting. At first the fun-loving little General only tried to throw the ball between the pins without knocking any. But as his skill increased, he enlarged the opportunity for it by making the game to consist not only in avoiding the pins on the throw, but in making the ball hit them on the return. Sheridan became very fond of the exercise, and in the three throws allowed each player for a game, he could bring down twenty pins out of the thirty possible. The reputation of the novel game and Sheridan’s skill reached the commanding General’s head-quarters. One day Rosecrans, Garfield, and a few brother officers, rode out to see “little Phil,” as Sheridan was called, and take a hand in the game which had made for itself such a name. The guests were cordially received, and after a good many jokes and much bantering, Sheridan began the game. At the first throw the returning ball brought down six pins; at the second, seven; and the third the same number, making a score of twenty. Several tried with more or less success, but not approaching the host’s score. When Rosecrans took the ball, the merry company laughed at his nervous way of handling it. After a lengthy aim, he threw 126and knocked down every pin by the throw. Again he tried it, and again the ball failed even to get through the wooden line. Sheridan nearly exploded with laughter. A third time he met with the same ill-luck, failing to make a single tally. Then General Garfield stepped forward, saying: “It’s nothing but mathematics. All you need is an eye and a hand.” So saying, he carelessly threw the ball, safely clearing the pins on the forward swing, and bringing down seven on the return. Every body shouted “Luck! luck! Try that again.” The chief of staff laughed heartily, and with still greater indifference, tossed the ball, making eight; the third throw had a like result, scoring Garfield twenty-three, and giving him the game. It was no wonder that an officer said of him, “That man Garfield beats every thing. No matter what he does, he is the superior of his competitors, without half trying.”

On the 25th of April, 1863, Garfield issued a circular to the Army of the Cumberland, upon the barbarities and unspeakable outrages of the Southern prison-pens. The circular contained a verbatim statement by an escaped prisoner of his treatment by the rebels. After a few burning words, General Garfield concluded: “We can not believe that the justice of God will allow such a people to prosper. Let every soldier know that death on the battle-field is preferable to a surrender followed by such outrages as their comrades have undergone.”

Every word of the circular was true. The time may come, when the South will be forgiven for fighting for principles which it believed to be right. The time may come when the sorrows of the North and South will become alike the sorrows of each other, over the ruin wrought by human folly. The right hand of fellowship will be extended. The Southern people, as a people, may be relieved of the fearful charge of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and posterity may come to look at it as the infernal offspring of a few hell-born hearts. The day is upon us when much of this is already true. But the men who directly or indirectly caused or countenanced the starvation, the torture, the poisoned and rotten food, the abandonment to loathsome disease, the crowding of thousands of Union prisoners into stockades, opening only 127heavenward, and all the other unparalleled atrocities of the Southern prisons, atrocities that violated every rule of warfare; atrocities, to find the equals of which the history of barbarous and savage nations, without the light of religion, or the smile of civilization, will be ransacked in vain, shall be handed down to an eternity of infamy. They shall take rank with the Caligulas, the Neros, the inquisitors, all the historic monsters in human form, whose names and natures are the common dishonor and disgrace of mankind.

About this time there appeared in Rosecrans’s camp, with drooping feathers, but brazen face, the thing which patriotism denominated “a copperhead.” He was a northern citizen by the name of Vallandigham, from Garfield’s own State, who had been ostracised by his neighbors for his treason, and compelled to leave the community of patriots to seek congenial company within the rebel lines. He was to have an escort to the enemy’s camp. A squad waited outside to perform this touching task, under the cover of a flag of truce. Vallandigham, who had the mind, if not the heart, of a man, in forced jocularity dramatically spoke the lines from Romeo and Juliet—

Quick as thought Garfield completed the quotation—

The joke was funny to every one but Vallandigham, but he was the only man in the room who laughed aloud.

A little later President Hinsdale wrote to General Garfield about the treasonable views of some copperhead students at Hiram. Above all things Garfield detested a foe in the rear. He respected a man who avouched his principles on the crimsoned field, but a traitor, a coward, was to his candid nature despicable beyond language. His letter in reply is characteristic:

“Tell all those copperhead students for me that, were I there in charge of the school, I would not only dishonorably dismiss them from the 128school, but, if they remained in the place and persisted in their cowardly treason, I would apply to General Burnside to enforce General Order No. 38 in their cases....

“If these young traitors are in earnest they should go to the Southern Confederacy, where they can receive full sympathy. Tell them all that I will furnish them passes through our lines, where they can join Vallandigham and their other friends till such time as they can destroy us, and come back home as conquerors of their own people, or can learn wisdom and obedience.

“I know this apparently is a small matter, but it is only apparently small. We do not know what the developments of a month may bring forth, and, if such things be permitted at Hiram, they may anywhere. The rebels catch up all such facts as sweet morsels of comfort, and every such influence lengthens the war and adds to the bloodshed.”

It was about the same time the above letter was written that a letter was brought to Rosecrans’s head-quarters, detailing an extensive plan for a universal insurrection of the slaves throughout the South. The rising was to take place August 1st. The slaves were to arm themselves with whatever they could get, and their especial work was to cut off the supplies of the rebel forces. “An army is dependent on its belly,” said Napoleon. To destroy the bridges and railroads within the Confederacy would swiftly undermine the rebel armies, whose rations and ammunition came along those routes. With the universal coöperation of the Union forces, it was thought the Rebellion might be crushed. To secure the coöperation of Rosecrans was the apparent object of the letter. General Garfield talked it over with his chief, and denounced the plan in the most unmeasured terms. He said that if the slaves wanted to revolt that was one thing. But for the Union army to violate the rules of warfare by encouraging and combining with a war upon non-combatants was not to be thought of. The colored people would have committed every excess upon the innocent women and children of the South. The unfortunate country would not only be overrun with war, but with riot. Rosecrans resolved to have nothing to do with it. But Garfield still was not satisfied. The letter said that several commanders had already given their 129assent. He sent the letter to President Lincoln with a statement of the results which would follow such irregular warfare. A letter of Garfield, written on the subject, says:

“I am clearly of opinion that the negro project is in every way bad, and should be repudiated, and, if possible, thwarted. If the slaves should, of their own accord, rise and assert their original right to themselves, and cut their way through rebeldom, that is their own affair; but the Government could have no complicity with it without outraging the sense of justice of the civilized world. We would create great sympathy for the rebels abroad, and God knows they have too much already.”

Lincoln gave the matter his attention, and the slave revolt never took place in any magnitude. It was an ambitious scheme on paper, and yet was not utterly impracticable. It was a thing to be crushed in its infancy, and Garfield’s action was the proper way to do it.

While Garfield was with Rosecrans, he was addressed by some prominent Northerners upon the subject of running Rosecrans for the Presidency. Greeley and many leading Republicans were dissatisfied with Lincoln in 1862–’63, and wanted to work up another candidate for the campaign of ’64. Attracted by Rosecrans’s successes, they put the plan on foot by opening communication with Garfield, in whom they had great confidence, upon the feasibility of defeating Mr. Lincoln in the convention, with Rosecrans. Garfield, however, put his foot on the whole ambitious scheme. He said that no man on earth could equal Lincoln in that trying hour. To take Rosecrans was to destroy both a wonderful President and an excellent soldier. So effectually did he smother the plan, that it is said Rosecrans never heard a whisper of it.

A most important work of General Garfield, as chief of staff, was his attack upon the corrupting vice of smuggling, and his defense of the army police. When an army is in an active campaign, marching, fighting, and fortifying, there is but little corruption developed. But in a large volunteer army, with its necessarily lax discipline when lying idle for a long time, its quarters become infested with all the smaller vices. The men are of every sort; 130and, as soon as they are idle, their heads get full of mischief. The Army of the Cumberland, during its long inactivity at Murfreesboro, soon began to suffer. The citizens were hostile, and had but two objects—one to serve the Confederacy, the other to make money for themselves. They thus all became spies and smugglers. Smuggling was the great army vice. The profits of cotton, smuggled contraband through the Union lines to the North, and of medicines, arms, leather, whisky, and a thousand Northern manufactures, through to the South, were simply incalculable. Bribery was the most effective, but not the only way of smuggling articles through the lines. The Southern women, famous the world over for their beauty and their captivating and passionate manners, would entangle the officers in their meshes in order to extort favors. To break up this smuggling, and get fresh information of any plots or pitfalls for the Union army, a system of army police had been organized at Nashville and Murfreesboro. This was in a fair state of efficiency when Garfield was appointed chief of staff. To improve it and make its work more available, General Garfield founded a bureau of military information, with General D. G. Swaim for its head. For efficiency, it was never again equaled or approached during the war. Shortly after the establishment of this bureau of information, a determined attack was made on the whole institution. “It marshaled its friends and enemies in almost regimental numbers. Even in the army it has been violently assailed, not only by the vicious in the ranks, but by officers whose evil deeds were not past finding out.” The accusations which were laid before Garfield were always investigated immediately, and always to the vindication of the police department. A special officer was at last detailed to investigate the entire department. His report of the wonderful achievements of the army police is monumental. Garfield was inexorable. Every officer guilty of smuggling had to come down, no matter how prominent he was. The chief of staff set his face like brass against the corruptions. The opportunities open to him for wealth were immense. All that was necessary for him to do was to wink at the smuggling. He had absolute power in the matter. 131But he fought the evil to its grave. He broke up stealing among the men. He established a system of regular reports from spies on the enemy. His police furnished him with the political status of every family in that section of the State. He knew just the temper of Bragg’s troops, and had a fair idea of their number. He knew just what corn was selling at in the enemy’s lines. Located in a hostile country, honeycombed with a system of rebel spies, he out-spied the enemy, putting spies to watch its spies. In every public capacity, civil or military, virtue is more rare and more necessary than genius. General Garfield’s incorruptible character alone saved the army police from destruction, and restored the Army of the Cumberland to order and honesty. He had, long before entering the army, shown wonderful ability for using assistants to accumulate facts for him. The police institution was an outcropping of the same thing. No commander during the war had more exact and detailed information of the enemy than Garfield had at this time.

When General Garfield reached the Army of the Cumberland, it was in a shattered and exhausted condition. It had no cavalry, the arms were inferior, and the terrible pounding at Stone River had greatly weakened it. General Rosecrans insisted on its recuperation and reinforcement before making another advance. The Department at Washington and Halleck, Commander-in-chief of the Union forces, were of the opinion that an advance should be made. Rosecrans, though possessing some high military skill, was sensitive, headstrong, absorbed in details, and violent of speech. He demanded cavalry, horses, arms, equipments. Dispatch after dispatch came insisting on an advance. Sharper and sharper became the replies. Garfield undertook to soften the venomous correspondence. Angry messages were sometimes suppressed altogether. But he could not control the wrathy commander. Rosecrans held a different, and, as it turned out, an erroneous theory of the best military policy. At first, Garfield’s views harmonized with those of his superior; but, as the month of April passed without movement, as his secret service informed him of the condition and situation of the enemy, he joined his own urgent advice 132to that of the Department for an advance. Rosecrans was immovable. The army of 60,000 men had been in quarters at Murfreesboro since January 6th without striking a blow at the rebellion. The month of May, with its opening flowers, its fragrant breezes and blue skies, came and went without a move. General Garfield was sick at heart, but he could do nothing. The more Rosecrans was talked to, the more obstinate he became. Garfield had certain information that Bragg’s army had been divided by sending reinforcements to Richmond, but nobody believed it. Besides, Rosecrans was supported in his position by all the generals of his army. Two of these were incompetent—Crittenden and McCook. They had behaved shamefully at Stone River. General Garfield urged their removal, and the substitution of McDowell and Buell. Rosecrans admitted their inefficiency, but said he hated to injure “two such good fellows.” He kept them till the “good fellows” injured him.

At last, on the 8th of June, 1863, Rosecrans, yielding somewhat to the pressure without, and still more to the persuasion of his chief of staff, laid the situation before the seventeen corps, division and cavalry generals of his army, and requested a written opinion from each one upon the advisability of an advance. It is to be remembered that among the seventeen generals were Thomas, Sheridan, Negley, Jeff. C. Davis, Hazen and Granger. Each of these studied the situation, and presented a written individual opinion. With astonishing unanimity, every one of the seventeen opposed an advance. Rosecrans read the opinions. They coincided with his own. But there was a man of genius at his side. Garfield, his confidential adviser, looked at the opinions of the generals in utter dismay. He saw that a crisis had arrived. The Department of War peremptorily demanded an advance; and to let the vast army, with its then excellent equipment, lie idle longer, meant not only the speedy removal of Rosecrans from command, but the greatest danger to the Union cause. He asked Rosecrans time to prepare a written reply to the opinions opposing an advance. Permission was given, though Rosecrans told him it would be wasted work. Collecting all his powers, he began his 133task. Four days and nights it occupied him. At the end of that time, on June 12th, he presented to Rosecrans the ablest opinion known to have been given to a commanding officer by his chief of staff during the entire war. The paper began with a statement of the questions to be discussed. Next it contained, in tabulated form, the opinions of the generals upon each question. Then followed a swift summary of the reasons presented in the seventeen opinions against the advance. Then began the answer. He presented an elaborate estimate of the strength of Bragg’s army, probably far more accurate and complete than the rebel general had himself. It was made up from the official report of Bragg after the battle of Stone River, from facts obtained from prisoners, deserters, refugees, rebel newspapers, and, above all, from the reports of his army police. The argument showed a perfect knowledge of the rules of organization of the Confederate army. The mass of proofs accompanying the opinion was overwhelming. Then followed a summary and analysis of the Army of the Cumberland. Summing up the relative strength of the two armies, he says, after leaving a strong garrison force at Murfreesboro, “there will be left sixty-five thousand one hundred and thirty-seven bayonets and sabers to throw against Bragg’s forty-one thousand six hundred and eighty.”

He concludes with the following general observations:

“1. Bragg’s army is now weaker than it has been since the battle of Stone River, or is likely to be again for the present, while our army has reached its maximum strength, and we have no right to expect reinforcements for several months, if at all.

“2. Whatever be the result at Vicksburg, the determination of its fate will give large reinforcements to Bragg. If Grant is successful, his army will require many weeks to recover from the shock and strain of his late campaign, while Johnston will send back to Bragg a force sufficient to insure the safety of Tennessee. If Grant fails, the same result will inevitably follow, so far as Bragg’s army is concerned.

“3. No man can predict with certainty the result of any battle, however great the disparity in numbers. Such results are in the hands of God. But, viewing the question in the light of human calculation, I refuse to entertain a doubt that this army, which in January last defeated 134Bragg’s superior numbers, can overwhelm his present greatly inferior forces.

“4. The most unfavorable course for us that Bragg could take would be to fall back without giving us battle; but this would be very disastrous to him. Besides, the loss of matériel of war and the abandonment of the rich and abundant harvest now nearly ripe in Middle Tennessee, he would lose heavily by desertion. It is well known that a widespread dissatisfaction exists among his Kentucky and Tennessee troops. They are already deserting in large numbers. A retreat would greatly increase both the desire and the opportunity for desertion, and would very materially reduce his physical and moral strength. While it would lengthen our communications, it would give us possession of McMinnville, and enable us to threaten Chattanooga and East Tennessee; and it would not be unreasonable to expect an early occupation of the former place.

“5. But the chances are more than even that a sudden and rapid movement would compel a general engagement, and the defeat of Bragg would be in the highest degree disastrous to the rebellion.

“6. The turbulent aspect of politics in the loyal States renders a decisive blow against the enemy at this time of the highest importance to the success of the Government at the polls, and in the enforcement of the conscription act.

“7. The Government and the War Department believe that this army ought to move upon the enemy. The army desires it, and the country is anxiously hoping for it.

“8. Our true objective point is the rebel army, whose last reserves are substantially in the field; and an effective blow will crush the shell, and soon be followed by the collapse of the rebel government.

“9. You have, in my judgment, wisely delayed a general movement hitherto, till your army could be massed and your cavalry could be mounted. Your mobile force can now be concentrated in twenty-four hours; and your cavalry, if not equal in numerical strength to that of the enemy, is greatly superior in efficiency. For these reasons I believe an immediate advance of all our available forces is advisable, and, under the providence of God, will be successful.”

Rosecrans read the opinion, examined the proofs, and was convinced. “Garfield,” said he, “you have captured me, but how shall the advance be made?”

The situation was about as follows: Imagine an isosceles triangle, 135with its apex to the north at Murfreesboro. Here the Army of the Cumberland was situated. The base of the triangle was about fifty miles long, and constituted the enemy’s front, with its right terminating at McMinnville, the south-east corner of the triangle, and its left at Columbia, the south-west corner of the figure. At the middle of the base was the village of Wartrace; and almost due west of Wartrace, but a little below the base of the triangle, was Shelbyville, where the enemy’s center was situated, behind massive fortifications. Between Shelbyville and Wartrace was massed the enemy’s infantry, the extreme wings being composed of cavalry. At a little distance north of the enemy’s front, and forming the base of the triangle, was a “range of hills, rough and rocky, through whose depressions, called gaps, the main roads to the South passed. These gaps were held by strong detachments with heavy columns within supporting distance.” Any one can see the enormous strength of the enemy’s position for defense. But it had still other sources of strength. Behind the enemy’s left and center was Duck River, a deep torrent, with tremendous banks. If they were pressed in front, the rebel army could fall back south of the river, burn the bridges, and gain ample time for retreat to the lofty range of the Cumberland Mountains, which were only a day’s march to the rear. On a direct line with Murfreesboro and Wartrace, and at the same distance south of Wartrace, as Murfreesboro was north of it, was Tullahoma, the dépôt of the enemy’s supplies, and hence the key to the situation. Posted in this almost impregnable situation, Bragg’s army was the master of Central Tennessee. It is evident that the campaign, which Garfield so powerfully urged, was a great undertaking. The narrow mountain gaps heavily fortified; behind the range of hills the great body of the rebel army intrenched in heavy fortifications; behind them the natural defense of Duck River, and still to the south, the Cumberland Mountains, formed an aggregation of obstacles almost insuperable. The plan of the campaign which followed must, in military history, be accredited to Rosecrans, because he was the General in command; but biography cares not for military custom, and names its author and originator the chief of staff. The reason Garfield 136urged the advance, was that he had a plan, the merits of which we will examine hereafter, by which he was convinced it might be successfully made.

There were substantially three ways by which the Union army might advance: one lay along the west side of the triangle to Columbia, there attacking the enemy’s left wing; another to march directly south to Shelbyville, and fall upon the enemy’s center; a third, to advance by two roads, cutting the base of the triangle about midway between the enemy’s center and extreme right. A fourth route was possible, along the eastern side of the triangle to McMinnville; but if the enemy’s right was to be attacked, the Manchester roads were every way preferable, as being more direct. General Garfield’s selection was the third route. His plan was to throw a heavy force forward on the road to Shelbyville, as if intending to attack the rebel center. Then, under cover of this feint, swiftly throw the bulk of the army upon the enemy’s right, turn the flank, cross Duck River, and march swiftly to the enemy’s rear, threatening his supplies, thus compelling Bragg to fall back from his tremendous stronghold at Shelbyville, and either give battle in the open country or abandon the entire region.

On the 23d of June the movement was begun by the advance of General Granger’s division toward Shelbyville. At the same time a demonstration was made toward the enemy’s left, to create the belief that feints were being made to distract the enemy’s attention from what would be supposed the main attack on Shelbyville. Meanwhile the bulk of the army was advanced along the two roads leading to the middle of the enemy’s right—the east road leading through Liberty Gap, and the west through Hoover’s Gap, a defile three miles long. On the twenty-fourth a terrible rain began, continuing day and night, for over a week. It rendered the wretched roads almost impassable, and terribly increased the difficulties of the army. The artillery sunk hub-deep in the almost bottomless mire. Great teams of twelve and fourteen powerful horses “stalled” with small field-pieces. Never a minute did the rain let up. The men’s clothing was so drenched that it was not dry for two weeks. The army wagons, hundreds in number, 137carrying the precious bacon and hard-tack, stuck fast on the roads. So fearful was the mire that on one day the army only advanced a mile and a-half.

But the advance was pushed as rapidly as possible. Liberty Gap and Hoover’s were both captured. The demonstrations on the enemy’s left and center were kept up with great vigor. Bragg was wholly deceived by the numerous points of attack. On the twenty-seventh the entire army was concentrated, and passed rapidly through Hoover’s Gap, and on to Manchester. While the army was concentrating at Manchester, General Thomas, on the twenty-eighth, began the final move in the game—the advance upon Tullahoma. Bragg had retreated from Shelbyville, owing to the danger which threatened his supplies. On the twenty-ninth he evacuated Tullahoma for the same reason. An attempt was made to intercept his retreat and force him to battle. But the terrible condition of the roads and rivers rendered the effort futile. Bragg crossed the Cumberland Mountains, and Central Tennessee was once more in the hands of the Union army. Had the Tullahoma campaign been begun a week earlier, before the rains set in, Bragg’s army would inevitably have been destroyed. The rebel army, of 50,000 veterans, had been driven from a natural stronghold of the most formidable character; and had lost all the fruits of a year’s victories by a single campaign of nine days, conducted in one of the most extraordinary rains ever known in Tennessee. There were 1,700 rebel prisoners taken, several parks of artillery, and an enormous amount of Confederate army stores at Tullahoma. This campaign and its victory was not the result of battle, but of pure strategy, confessedly the highest art in war.

As to whom the credit of the plan of the campaign belonged, there could be no question. As we have shown, it is impossible to separate the double star of Garfield and Rosecrans by military etiquette. But aside from the facts that the campaign was begun as a result of Garfield’s argument, in the face of unanimous opposition, the following fact is conclusive as to whom belongs the glory. On the morning of the twenty-third, when the movement was begun, General Thomas L. Crittenden, one of the corps 138commanders, went to head-quarters and said to General Garfield: “It is understood, sir, by the general officers of the army that this movement is your work. I wish you to understand that it is a rash and fatal move, for which you will be held responsible.”

The lips of an enemy are now made to bear unwilling testimony to the glory and the credit of the chief of staff. In his report to the War Department, just as this campaign was getting started, General Rosecrans says: “I hope it will not be considered invidious if I specially mention Brigadier-General James A. Garfield, an able soldier, zealous, devoted to duty, prudent and sagacious. I feel much indebted to him both for his counsel and assistance in the administration of this army. He possesses the instincts and energy of a great commander.”

Historians are unanimous in their opinion that the Tullahoma campaign was one of the most masterly exhibitions of strategic genius possible to the commander of a great army. Mahan, author of the Critical History of the Civil War, who is ever ready to attack and expose the blunders of the Union generals, declares that this Tullahoma campaign shows “as skillful combinations as the history of war presents.”

But the Tullahoma campaign was not the conclusion of the advance which General Garfield had so persistently urged, and the success of which had been so triumphantly demonstrated. An important line of defense had been broken through; an enormous piece of territory had been captured. But Bragg still held Chattanooga, which was the objective point of the Army of the Cumberland. In his argument of June 12, to induce an advance, Garfield had said: “While it would lengthen our communications, it would give us possession of McMinnville, and enable us to threaten Chattanooga and East Tennessee; and it would not be unreasonable to expect an early occupation of the former place.” It is yet to be seen what fulfillment there was of this prophecy.

After the Tullahoma victory, and Bragg’s retreat behind the Tennessee River, Rosecrans stopped. Again, the War Department ordered an advance. Again, the commander-in-chief refused. Again, Garfield urged that no delay take place. Rosecrans was 139immovable. The Department waited; the army waited; the country waited. At last the following dispatch was received:

“The orders for the advance of your army, and that its progress be reported daily, are peremptory.

The thing required was stupendous, but the results show it was not impossible. Sixty miles from the Union army was the Tennessee River and Cumberland Mountains. Both run from north-east to south-west. There are in these lofty mountain ranges occasional gaps, through which the great east and west traffic of the country takes place. Chattanooga, in 1863 a town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, is in the most important of these gaps—the one through which passes the Tennessee River and an important net-work of railroads. The town is right in the mountains, twenty-five hundred feet above the sea-level, and was strongly fortified, and practically impregnable to assault. Along the north-west front of the town runs the river, which would have to be crossed by the Union forces. On the southern side of the river, below Chattanooga, are three parallel ranges: Sand Mountain, Lookout Mountain, and Pigeon Ridge,—the valleys between the ridges running up to the gap at Chattanooga. North-east of the town the ridges begin again, and the general configuration of the country is similar. Chattanooga was south-east from where the Union army was situated. The town was the lock, and Bragg’s army the key, to the door to Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas. To unlock this door was the task before the Army of the Cumberland.

But the problem of Rosecrans’s advance contained other complications beside the deep river, the lofty mountains, and the heavy fortifications. His army had to depend for its supplies upon Louisville, Kentucky, and the slender line of railway from that place. Every advance necessitated the weakening of his army by leaving strong detachments to preserve this communication; while, on the other hand, Bragg, already reinforced, would grow stronger all the time as he fell back on his reserves.

It is reasonable to suppose that the reason Garfield had urged 140the advance toward Chattanooga was that he saw a way in which it could be made. When the peremptory order came, a plan for the advance was projected, which, though vaster and more complicated than that of the Tullahoma campaign, contains the same elements, and shows itself to have been the work of the same mind. It was, indeed, a continuation of the same campaign. The plan was Rosecrans’s, because he adopted it. It was Garfield’s, because he originated it. The theory of the advance was to pass the enemy’s flank, march to his rear, threaten his line of supplies and compel him, by military strategy, to evacuate Chattanooga, as he had Shelbyville and Tullahoma. The door would thus be unlocked, and Bragg’s army driven from its last fortification to the open country. The details of the plan, as prepared by Garfield, will appear as the advance is explained. On August 16th began the movement of the army across the mountains toward the Tennessee River. The paramount effort in the manner of the advance was to deceive the enemy as to the real intention.

The army made the movement along three separate routes. Crittenden’s corps, forming the left, was to advance by a circuitous route, to a point about fifteen miles south-west of Chattanooga, and make his crossing of the Tennessee River there. Thomas, as our center, was to cross a little farther down stream, and McCook, thirty miles farther to the right. These real movements were to be made under the cover of an apparent one. About seven thousand men marched directly to the river shore, opposite Chattanooga, as if a direct attack were to be made on the place. “The extent of front presented, the show of strength, the vigorous shelling of the city by Wilder’s artillery, the bold expression of the whole movement, constituted a brilliant feint.” Bragg was deceived again. Absorbed in the operations in front of the place, he offered no resistance to the crossing of the Tennessee River by the main army.

By September 3d, the Union forces were all on the southern side of the Tennessee. Sand Mountain, the first of the ridges on that side of the river, rises abruptly from the bank. The repair and construction of roads occupied a little time; but Thomas and McCook pushed forward vigorously, and by the evening of the 6th of September 141had crossed Sand Mountain, and occupied the valley between it and the Lookout Range. Each of these corps had crossed the range at points opposite their crossings of the river, and, though in the same valley, were thirty-five miles apart. Crittenden, instead of crossing, turned to his left, and marched up the river bank toward Chattanooga, and crossed into the Lookout Valley by a pass near the town. On the 7th the next stage of the movement began, viz: the crossing of Lookout Range, in order to pass to the enemy’s rear, and, by endangering his supplies, compel him to abandon Chattanooga.

As soon as Bragg’s spy-glasses on Lookout Mountain, at Chattanooga, disclosed this movement, the order to evacuate the place was given. Shelbyville and Tullahoma were repeated, and on the morning of September 9th Crittenden marched in and took the place without the discharge of a gun. Strategy had again triumphed. The door was unlocked. The fall of Chattanooga was accomplished. The plan of the campaign had been carried out successfully. The North was electrified. The South utterly discomfited. Of the fall of Chattanooga, which, as we have shown, was but the continuation of the plan of the Tullahoma campaign, and was predicted by Garfield, even to the manner of its accomplishment, in his argument to Rosecrans in favor of an advance, Pollard, the Confederate historian, writes:

“Thus we were maneuvered out of this strategic stronghold. Two-thirds of our niter beds were in this region, and a large proportion of the coal which supplied our foundries. It abounded in the necessaries of life. It was one of the strongest mountain countries in the world; so full of lofty mountains that it has been not inaptly called the Switzerland of America. As the possession of Switzerland opened the door to the invasion of Italy, Germany, and France, so the possession of East Tennessee gave easy access to Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.”

It is easy to see that behind this masterly strategy there was a masterly strategist. That man was Rosecrans’s chief of staff.

What had become of Bragg’s army of fifty thousand men? Rosecrans thought it was in full retreat. Halleck, Commander-in-chief, 142telegraphed from Washington, on the 11th, that information had been received that Bragg’s army was being used to reinforce Lee, a certain indication of retreat. The fact was that Lee was reinforcing Bragg. Halleck also telegraphed on the same day that reinforcements were coming to Rosecrans, and that it would be decided whether he should move further into Georgia and Alabama. This telegram completed the delusion of Rosecrans. He believed Bragg was many miles to the south. The campaign planned by Garfield had been completed. But Rosecrans made a fatal blunder. Instead of marching the corps of Thomas and McCook up the Lookout Valley to Chattanooga, and uniting them with Crittenden’s, he ordered the crossing of the range as a flank movement to be continued in order to intercept Bragg’s supposed retreat. Accordingly, on the 11th and 12th, Thomas recommenced to push over Lookout Mountain through a pass, twenty-five miles south-east of Chattanooga; and thirty-five miles beyond Thomas, McCook was doing the same thing.

With the Union army thus divided, Bragg was waiting his terrible opportunity. Instead of being in full retreat, many miles away, his entire army occupied Pigeon Ridge along the valley on the southern side of Lookout Range, into which Thomas and McCook must descend from the Mountain passes. Down the center of this valley runs a little river, the Chickamauga. On the southern side of this stream, just opposite the pass from which Thomas’s corps of eighteen thousand devoted men would emerge, was concentrated the entire rebel army, waiting to destroy the isolated parts of the Army of the Cumberland in detail. The region occupied by Bragg was covered with dense forests, and he was further concealed by the low heights of Pigeon Ridge. When Thomas’s corps should have debouched from the pass through Lookout Range, and crossed the Chickamauga to ascend Pigeon Ridge, it was to be overwhelmed. Then McCook and Crittenden, sixty-five miles apart, would be separately destroyed. It fortunately happened that General Negley’s division descended from the gap on the 12th, and crossed the Chickamauga several miles in advance of the main body of Thomas’s corps. Unexpectedly, 143finding the enemy in great force on the opposite ridge, he swiftly withdrew, checked Thomas from further advance, and enabled the corps to take up an impregnable position in the gap through Lookout Range.

Thus foiled, Bragg then resolved to strike Crittenden, but eventually failed in this also. These failures gave the alarm. Bragg’s army was not ready for flight but for fight. It was now a matter of life and death for Rosecrans to concentrate his army before battle. Couriers were dispatched at break-neck speed to McCook, sixty-five miles away, and to Crittenden who had pushed on twenty miles beyond Chattanooga, in imaginary pursuit of Bragg. In some absolutely inexplicable way, Bragg failed for four days to make the attack. In those precious days, from September 13th to 17th, Garfield worked night and day, as chief of staff, to reach the scattered divisions, explore the shortest roads through those lofty mountains, and hasten that combination which alone could save the army from destruction. The suspense was terrible. But Bragg lost his opportunity by delaying too long. Heavy reinforcements for him were arriving, and he thought he was growing stronger. On the 17th and 18th Bragg was found to be moving his army up the valley toward Chattanooga, thus extending his right far beyond Rosecrans’s left, with the evident object of throwing his army upon the roads between the Union army and Chattanooga. To meet this, the Union army was moved in the same direction.

These movements of both armies up the valley, Bragg being south of the Chickamauga and Rosecrans north, were continued until the position was almost south of Chattanooga, instead of south-west. Parallel with our army, and immediately in its rear, were two roads leading to Chattanooga,—the one immediately in the rear known as the Lafayette or Rossville road; the other a little further back, as the Dry Valley road. At the junction of these roads, half way to Chattanooga, itself eight miles distant, was the town of Rossville. These roads were the prizes for which was to be fought one of the most bloody and awful battles of the war. The loss of either was equally fatal, but the main Rossville road, 144being the most exposed, was the principal object of the enemy’s attacks. The efforts of the enemy at first were to overlap or turn the left flank. This would have given them the Rossville road. Failing in this they drove the center back, the center and left turning like a door upon the hinge at the extreme left, until the line of battle was formed directly across the roads instead of parallel with them. This was accomplished during the second day’s fight.

General Thomas commanded the left wing, Crittenden the center, and McCook the right. The front of the army, facing almost east, was ranged up and down the valley from north to south, with the river in front and the roads in their rear. The whole valley was covered with dense forests, except where a farm had been made, and was full of rocky hills and ridges. So much concealed was one part of the valley from another, that the rebel army of fifty thousand men was formed in line of battle within a mile of the union lines on the same side of the river, without either army suspecting the other’s presence.

Such was the situation on the morning of September 19th, 1863. The world knows of the awful conflict which followed. General Garfield was located at Widow Glenn’s house, in the rear of the right wing. This was Rosecrans’s head-quarters. General Thomas located himself at Kelley’s farm-house in the rear of the left wing. For three nights General Garfield had not slept as many hours. Every anxious order, for the concentration of the army, had come from him; every courier and aid during those days and nights of suspense reported to him in person; before him lay his maps; each moment since the thirteenth he had known the exact position of the different corps and divisions of our vast army. Looking for the attack at any moment, it was necessary to constantly know the situation of the enemy among those gloomy mountains and sunless forests. When the red tide of battle rolled through the valley, each part of the line was ignorant of all the rest of the line. The right wing could not even guess the direction of the left wing. The surrounding forests and the hills shut in the center so completely that it did not know where either of 145the wings were. Every division commander simply obeyed the orders from head-quarters, took his position, and fought. The line of battle was formed in the night. To misunderstand orders and take the wrong position was easy. But so lucid were the commands, so particular the explanations which came from the man at head-quarters, that the line of battle was perfect. Many battles of the war were fought with but few orders from head-quarters; some without any concerted plan at all. Pittsburgh Landing, of the latter sort; Gettysburg, of the former sort. At Gettysburg, the commander-in-chief, General Meade, had little to do with the battle. The country was open, the enemy’s whereabouts was visible, and each division commander placed his troops just where they could do the most good. Not so at Chickamauga. No battle of the war required so many and such incessant orders from head-quarters. The only man in the Union army who knew the whole situation of our troops was General Garfield. Amid the forests, ravines and hills along the five miles of battle front, the only possible way to maintain a unity of plan and a concert of action was for the man at head-quarters to know it all. General Garfield knew the entire situation as if it had been a chess-board, and each division of the army a man. At a touch, by the player, the various brigades and divisions assumed their positions.

Every thing thus far said has been of the combatants. But there were others on the battle-field. There were the inhabitants of this valley, non-combatants, inviolate by the rules of civilized warfare. Of this sort were the rustic people at Widow Glenn’s, where General Garfield passed the most memorable days of his life. The house was a Tennessee cabin. Around it lay a little farm with small clearings. Here the widow lived with her three children, one a young man, the others a girl and boy of tender age. As General Garfield took up his head-quarters there it is said to have reminded him powerfully of his own childhood home with his toiling mother. All the life of these children had been passed in this quiet valley. Of the outside world they knew little, and cared less. They did not know the meaning of the word war. They were ignorant and poverty-stricken, but peaceful. Shut in by the 146mountains of ignorance, as well as the lofty ranges along the valley, they had known no event more startling than the flight of birds through the air or the rustle of the wind through the forest. The soil was rocky and barren like their minds; yet, unvisited by calamity, they were happy.

But suddenly this quiet life was broken into. The forests were filled with armed men. The cabin was taken possession of by the officers. A sentinel stood at the door. Outside stood dozens of horses, saddled and bridled. Every moment some one mounted and dashed away; every moment some other dismounted from his breathless and foam-flecked steed and rushed into the cabin. The widow, stunned and frightened, sat in the corner with an arm around each of her children. The little girl cried, but the boy’s curiosity got somewhat the better of his fear. A time or two General Garfield took the little fellow on his knee, and quieted his alarm. The fences were torn down and used for camp fires. Great trees were hastily felled for barricades. In front of the house passed and repassed bodies of troops in uniform, and with deadly rifles. Now and then a body of cavalry dashed by in a whirlwind of dust. Great cannon, black and hideous, thundered down the rocky road, shaking the solid earth in their terrible race. The cabin-yard was filled with soldiers. The well was drained dry by them to fill their canteens. It was like a nightmare to the trembling inhabitants of the cabin. Their little crops were tramped into dust by the iron tread of war. On a hill in front of the cabin, where nothing more dangerous than a plow had ever been, a battery frowned. The valley which had never been disturbed by any thing more startling than the screech of an owl, or the cackle of the barn-yard, was filled with a muffled roar from the falling trees and the shouts of men.

When morning broke on the 19th of September, 1863, on this secluded spot, the clarion of the strutting cock was supplanted by the bugle-call. The moaning of the wind through the forest was drowned in the incessant roll of the drums. The movement of troops before the cabin from right to left became more rapid. The consultations within became more eager and hurried. Mysterious 147notes, on slips of white paper, were incessantly written by General Garfield and handed to orderlies, who galloped away into the forest. Spread out before him, on an improvised table, lay his maps, which he constantly consulted. At one time, after a long study of the map, he said to General Rosecrans: “Thomas will have the brunt of the battle. The Rossville road must be held at all hazards.” Rosecrans replied: “It is true. Thomas must hold it, if he has to be reinforced by the entire army.” At another time, a messenger dashed into the room, and handed the chief of staff an envelope. Quietly opening it, he calmly read aloud: “Longstreet has reinforced Bragg with seventeen thousand troops from Lee’s Virginia army.”

Toward nine o’clock in the morning, the movement of troops along the road ceased. The roar in the forest subsided. No more orders were sent by General Garfield. There was suspense. It was as if every one were waiting for something. The drums no longer throbbed; the bugle-call ceased from echoing among the mountains. A half hour passed. The silence was death-like. As the sun mounted upward it seemed to cast darker shadows than usual. The house-dog gave utterance to the most plaintive howls. The chickens were gathered anxiously together under a shed, as if it were about to rain. It was. But the rain was to be red. Passing over through the forest, one saw that the troops were drawn up in lines, all with their backs toward the road and the cabin, and facing the direction of the river. That was half a mile away, but its gurgle and plashing could be easily heard in the silence. It sent a shudder through one’s frame, as if it were the gurgle and plashing of blood. The only other sound that broke the quiet was the whinnying of cavalry horses far off to the right. The dumb brutes seemed anxious, and nervously answered each other’s eager calls.

Just as the hand of the clock reached ten there was a report from a gun. It came from the extreme left, miles away. General Garfield stepped quickly to the door, and listened. There was another gun, and another, and fifty more, swelling to a roar. Turning to Rosecrans, Garfield said: “It has begun.” To which 148the commander replied: “Then, God help us.” Heavier and heavier became the roar. The engagement on the left was evidently becoming heavier. A quarter of an hour later messengers began to arrive. The enemy was endeavoring to turn the left-flank, but was being repulsed with heavy loss. A few moments later came the word that the enemy had captured ten pieces of artillery. The order had been given for one division of the troops to fall back. It was obeyed. But the artillerymen had been unable to move the guns back in time. The heavy undergrowth in the forest, the fallen and rotting logs, had made it slow work to drag back the ponderous cannon. The red-shirted cannoneers were still bravely working to move their battery to the rear after the line had fallen back from them a long distance. Suddenly, with a fierce yell, the rebel column poured in upon them. Guns and gunners were captured.

At 11:30 came a call from General Thomas for reinforcements. General Garfield swiftly wrote an order for divisions in the center to march to the left and reinforce General Thomas. Another courier was dispatched to the right, ordering troops to take the place of those removed from the center. At half-past twelve these movements were completed. So far, the only attack had been on the left, though the tide of battle was rolling slowly down the line. General Rosecrans and General Garfield held an earnest consultation. It was decided to order an advance on the right center, in order to prevent the enemy from concentrating his whole army against our left wing.

Before long the din of conflict could be heard opposite the cabin. The advance was being fiercely contested. Messengers one after another came asking for reinforcements. General Garfield received their messages, asked each one a question or two, turned for a few moments to his map, and then issued orders for support to the right center. As the battle raged fiercer in front of the cabin, the sounds from the extreme left grew lighter. At two o’clock they ceased altogether. The battery had been recaptured, and the enemy silenced for the time being. Meanwhile, the battle at the center became more terrible. Ambulances hurried 149along. Poor fellows, pale and bleeding, staggered back to the road. Occasionally a shell dropped near the cabin, exploding with frightful force. The roar was deafening. General Garfield had to shout to General Rosecrans in order to be understood. The domestic animals around the cabin were paralyzed with fright. No thunder-storm, rattling among the mountain peaks, had ever shaken the earth like the terrific roar of the shotted guns. A half mile in front of the cabin, a dense smoke rose over the tops of the trees. All day long it poured upward in black volumes. The air became stifling with a sulphurous smell of gunpowder. The messengers hurrying to and from the cabin had changed in appearance. The bright, clean uniforms of the morning were torn and muddy. Their faces were black with smoke; their eyes bloodshot with fever. Some of them came up with bleeding wounds. When General Garfield called attention to the injury, they would say: “It is only a scratch.” In the excitement of battle men receive death wounds without being conscious that they are struck. Some of the messengers sent out came back no more forever. Their horses would gallop up the road riderless. The riders had found the serenity of death. “They were asleep in the windowless palace of rest.”

It was impossible to predict the issue of the conflict in the center. At one minute, a dispatch was handed Garfield, saying that the line was broken, and the enemy pouring through. Before he had finished the reading, another message said that our troops had rallied, and were driving the enemy. This was repeated several times.

The scene of this conflict was Vineyard’s farm. It was a clearing, surrounded on all sides by the thickest woods. The troops of each army, in the alternations of advance and retreat, found friendly cover in the woods, or fatal exposure in the clearing. It was this configuration of the battle-field which caused the fluctuations of the issue. Time after time a column of blue charged across the clearing, and was driven back to rally in the sheltering forest. Time after time did the line of gray advance from the shade into the sunlight only to retire, leaving half their number stretched 150lifeless on the field. It was a battle within a battle. The rest of the army could hear the terrific roar, but were ignorant of the whereabouts of the conflict. The farm and the surrounding woods was a distinct battle-field. The struggle upon it, though an important element in a great battle on a vast field, was, during the later hours of its continuance, a separate battle, mapped upon the open field and forest in glaring insulation by the bodies of the slain.

Meanwhile, in hurrying reinforcements to this portion of the line of battle, a chasm was opened between the center and left. Troops were thrown forward to occupy it, but the enemy had discovered the weakness, and hurled forward heavy columns against the devoted Union lines. The struggle here was the counterpart of the one at the Vineyard farm. At the latter place the line was, at one time in the afternoon, driven back to the Lafayette road; but, towards evening, the divisions which had repulsed the attack on General Thomas’s extreme left were shifted down to the scene of these other conflicts, and the enemy was finally driven back with heavy loss.

When this was accomplished, the sun had already sunk behind the western range. Night swiftly drew her mantle over the angry field, and spread above the combatants her canopy of stars. The firing became weaker; only now and then a sullen shot was fired into the night. The first day of Chickamauga was done. In a little while ten thousand camp-fires blazed up in the forest, throwing somber shadows back of every object. At every fire could be seen the frying bacon and the steaming coffee-pot, singing as merrily as if war and battle were a thousand miles away. The men had eaten nothing since five o’clock in the morning. They had the appetites of hungry giants. Many a messmate’s place was empty. Many a corpse lay in the thicket, with a ball through the heart. But in the midst of horror the men were happy. The coffee and bacon and hard-tack tasted to the heroes like a banquet of the gods. With many a song and many a jest they finished the meal, rolled up in their blankets, and, lying down on the ground, with knapsacks for pillows, were fast asleep in the darkness. The red 151embers of the camp-fires gradually went out. The darkness and the silence were unbroken, save by the gleam of a star through the overarching branches, or the tramp of the watchful sentinels among the rustling leaves.

But at Widow Glenn’s cabin there was no sleep. General Garfield dispatched messengers to the different generals of the army to assemble for a council of war. It was eleven o’clock before all were present. Long and anxious was the session. The chief of staff marked out the situation of each division of the army upon his map. The losses were estimated, and the entire ground gone over. On the whole, the issue of the day had been favorable. The army having been on the defensive, might be considered so far victorious in that it had held its own. The line of battle was now continuous, and much shorter than in the morning. The general movement of troops during the day had been from right to left. The battle front was still parallel with the Chattanooga roads. General Thomas still held his own. The losses had been heavy, but not so severe as the enemy’s. But it was evident that the battle would be renewed on the morrow. The troops, already exhausted by forced marches in the effort to concentrate before attack, had all been engaged during the day. It was tolerably certain, General Garfield thought, from the reports of his scouts, that the enemy would have fresh troops to oppose to the wearied men. This would necessitate all the army being brought into action again on the next day. In case the enemy should succeed in getting the roads to Chattanooga, there was no alternative but the entire destruction of the splendid Army of the Cumberland. Still further concentration of the forces on the left, to reinforce General Thomas, was decided on. Many of the tired troops had to be roused from their sleep for this movement. There was no rest at head-quarters. When morning dawned the light still shone from the cabin window.

On the morning of September 20, 1863, a dense fog rose from the Chickamauga River, and, mixing with the smoke from the battle of the day before, filled the valley. This fact delayed the enemy’s attack. The sun rose, looking through the fog like a vast 152disk of blood. General Garfield noticed it, and, pointing to the phenomenon, said: “It is ominous. It will indeed be a day of blood.” By nine o’clock the fog lifted sufficiently for the attack. As on the day before, it began on the left, rolling down the line. From early morning General Thomas withstood the furious assaults of the constantly reinforced enemy. The change of the line in the night had been such that it was the right wing instead of the center which was now in front of the Widow Glenn’s. The battle was fierce and more general than the day before. The demands for reinforcements on the left came faster and faster. Division after division was moved to the left. In the midst of a battle these movements are dangerous. A single order, given from head-quarters without a perfect comprehension of the situation of the troops, a single ambiguous phrase, a single erroneous punctuation mark in the hastily-written dispatch, may cost thousands of lives in a few minutes. In a battle like Chickamauga, where the only unity possible is by perfect and swift obedience to the commands from head-quarters, a single misunderstood sentence may change the destiny of empires.

The information received at Widow Glenn’s up to ten o’clock of the 20th showed that the troops, though wearied, were holding their own. Up to this time General Garfield, appreciating each emergency as it occurred, had directed every movement, and written every order during the battle. Not a blunder had occurred. His clear, unmistakable English, had not a doubtful phrase or a misplaced comma. Every officer had understood and executed just what was expected of him. The fury of the storm had so far spent itself in vain.

At half-past ten, an aid galloped up to the cabin and informed General Rosecrans that there was a chasm in the center, between the divisions of General Reynolds on the left and General Wood on the right. Unfortunate moment! Cruel fate! In a moment a blunder was committed which was almost to destroy our heroic army. In the excitement of the crisis, Rosecrans varied from his custom of consulting the chief of staff. General Garfield was deeply engaged at another matter. Rosecrans called another aid 153to write an order instantly directing Wood to close the gap by moving to his left. Here is the document as it was dashed down at that memorable and awful moment:

“The general commanding directs that you close up on Reynolds as fast as possible, and support him. Respectfully, etc.,

Had General Garfield been consulted that order would never have been written. Wood was not next to Reynolds. General Brannan’s division was in the line between them. Brannan’s force stood back from the line somewhat. The aid, galloping rapidly over the field, did not know that a little farther back in the forest stood Brannan’s division. It looked to him like a break in the line. General Rosecrans was either ignorant, or forgot that Brannan was there. General Garfield alone knew the situation of every division on the battle-field. This fatal order was the only one of the entire battle which he did not write himself. On receipt of the order, General Wood was confused. He could not close up on Reynolds because Brannan was in the way. Supposing, however, from the words of the order, that Reynolds was heavily pressed, and that the intention was to reinforce him, and knowing the extreme importance of obeying orders from head-quarters, in order to prevent the army from getting inextricably tangled in the forest, he promptly marched his division backward, passed to the rear of Brannan, and thus to the rear of and support of Reynolds.

The fatal withdrawal of Wood from the line of battle was simultaneous with a Confederate advance. Failing in his desperate and bloody attacks upon the left, Bragg ordered an advance all along the line. Right opposite the chasm left by Wood was Longstreet, the most desperate fighter of the Confederacy, with seventeen thousand veteran troops from Lee’s army. Formed in solid column, three-quarters of a mile long, on they came right at the gap. Two brigades of Federal troops, under General Lytle, reached 154the space first, but were instantly ground to powder beneath this tremendous ram. Right through the gap came the wedge, splitting the Union army in two. In fifteen minutes the entire right wing was a rout. One-half the army was in a dead run toward Rossville. Guns, knapsacks, blankets, whatever could impede them, was hastily thrown away.

So sudden was the rout that the stream of fugitives, swarming back from the woods, was the first information received at Widow Glenn’s that the line had been pierced. There was no time to be lost. Behind the fleeing troops came the iron columns of the enemy. In five minutes more the cabin would be in their hands. Hastily gathering his precious maps, Garfield followed Rosecrans on horseback, over to the Dry Valley road. Here General Garfield dismounted, and exerted all his powers to stem the tide of retreat. Snatching a flag from a flying color-bearer, he shouted at the deaf ears of the mob. Seizing men by their shoulders he would turn them around, and then grasp others to try and form a nucleus to resist the flood. It was useless. The moment he took his hands off of a man he would run.

Rejoining Rosecrans, who believed that the entire army was routed, the commander said: “Garfield, what can be done?” Undismayed by the panic-stricken army crowding past him, which is said to be the most demoralizing and unnerving sight on earth, Garfield calmly said, “One of us should go to Chattanooga, secure the bridges in case of total defeat, and collect the fragments of the army on a new line. The other should make his way, if possible, to Thomas, explain the situation, and tell him to hold his ground at any cost, until the army can be rallied at Chattanooga.” “Which will you do?” asked Rosecrans. “Let me go to the front,” was General Garfield’s instant reply. “It is dangerous,” said he, “but the army and country can better afford for me to be killed than for you.” They dismounted for a hurried consultation. With ear on the ground, they anxiously listened to the sound of Thomas’s guns. “It is no use,” said Rosecrans. “The fire is broken and irregular. Thomas is driven. Let us both hurry to Chattanooga, to save what can be saved.” But General Garfield 155had a better ear. “You are mistaken. The fire is still in regular volleys. Thomas holds his own, and must be informed of the situation. Send orders to Sheridan, and the other commanders of the right wing, to collect the fragments of their commands and move them through Rossville, and back on the Lafayette road, to Thomas’s support.” There were a few more hurried words; then a grasp of the hand and the commander and his chief of staff separated, the one to go to the rear, the other to the front. Rosecrans has said that he felt Garfield would never come back again.

GARFIELD AT THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.

Then began that world-famous ride. No one knew the situation of the troops, the cause of the disaster, and the way to retrieve it like the chief of staff. To convey that priceless information to Thomas, Garfield determined to do or to die. He was accompanied by Captain Gano, who had come from General Thomas before the disaster, and knew how to reach him; besides these two, each 156officer had an orderly. On they galloped up the Dry Valley road, parallel with, but two miles back of, the morning’s line of battle. After reaching a point opposite the left wing, they expected to cross to General Thomas. But Longstreet’s column, after passing the Union center, had turned to its right at Widow Glenn’s, to march to the rear of General Thomas, and thus destroy that part of the army which still stood fighting the foe in its face. The course of Longstreet was thus parallel with the road along which Garfield galloped. At every effort to cross to the front he found the enemy between him and General Thomas.

It was a race between the rebel column and the noble steed on which Garfield rode. Up and down along the stony valley road, sparks flying from the horse’s heels, two of the party hatless, and all breathless, without delay or doubt on dashed the heroes. Still the enemy was between them and Thomas. They were compelled to go almost to Rossville. At last General Garfield said: “We must try to cross now or never. In a half hour it will be too late for us to do any good.” Turning sharply to their right, they found themselves in a dark-tangled forest. They were scratched and bleeding from the brier thickets and the overhanging branches. But not a rider checked his horse. General Garfield’s horse seemed to catch the spirit of the race. Over ravines and fences, through an almost impenetrable undergrowth, sometimes through a marsh, and then over broken rocks, the smoking steed plunged without a quiver.

Suddenly they came upon a cabin, a Confederate pest-house. A crowd of unfortunates, in various stages of the small-pox, were sitting and lying about the lonely and avoided place. The other riders spurred on their way, but General Garfield reined in sharply, and, calling in a kind tone to the strongest of the wrecks, asked, “Can I do any thing for you, my poor fellow?” In an instant the man gasped out, “Do not come near. It is small-pox. But for God’s sake give us money to buy food.” Quick as thought the great-hearted chief of staff drew out his purse and tossed it to the man, and with a rapid but cheerful “good-bye” spurred after his companions. Crashing, tearing, plunging, rearing through the 157forest dashed the steed. Poet’s song could not be long to celebrate that daring deed.

Twice they stopped. They were on dangerous ground. At any moment they might come upon the enemy. They were right on the ground for which Longstreet’s column was headed. Which would get there first? A third time they stopped. The roar of battle was very near. They were in the greatest peril. Utterly ignorant of the course of events, since he had been driven from Widow Glenn’s, General Garfield did not know but what the rebel column had passed completely to Thomas’s rear and lay directly in front of them. They changed their course slightly to the left. Of his own danger Garfield never thought. The great fear in his mind was that he would fail to reach Thomas, with the order to take command of all the forces, and with the previous information of the necessity of a change of front. At last they reached a cotton field. If the enemy was near, it was almost certain death. Suddenly a rifle-ball whizzed past Garfield’s face. Turning in his saddle he saw the fence on the right glittering with murderous rifles. A second later a shower of balls rattled around the little party. Garfield shouted, “Scatter, gentlemen, scatter,” and wheeled abruptly to the left. Along that side of the field was a ridge. If it could be reached, they were safe. The two orderlies never reached it. Captain Gano’s horse was shot through the lungs, and his own leg broken by the fall. Garfield was now the single target for the enemy. His own horse received two balls, but the noble animal kept straight on at its terrific speed. General Garfield speaking of it afterwards said that his thought was divided between poor Thomas and his young wife and child in the little home at Hiram. With a few more leaps he gained the ridge, unhurt. Captain Gano painfully crawling on the ground finally gained the ridge himself.

General Thomas was still a mile away. In ten minutes Garfield was at his side, hurriedly explaining the catastrophe at noon. They stood on a knoll overlooking the field of battle. The horse which had borne Garfield on his memorable ride, dropped dead at his feet while the chief of staff told Thomas the situation. 158There was no time to be lost. Hurrying down to his right, General Thomas found that a considerable portion of the center had swung around like a door to oppose Longstreet’s advance. For an hour or more his columns had flung themselves with desperate fury on this line so unexpectedly opposed to them. Hour after hour these lines had held him at bay. The slaughter was terrible. But this could not last. There was no uniform plan in this accidental battle front. There were great chasms in it. The Confederate forces were diverging to their left toward the Dry Valley road, and would soon flank this line. But Thomas was a great commander. Without a moment’s delay his line of battle was withdrawn to a ridge in the form of a horse-shoe. The main front was now at right angles with that of the morning; that is, it lay across the Rossville road instead of parallel with it. Thomas’s troops were now arranged in a three-quarter circle. They scarcely numbered twenty-five thousand. Around this circle, as around a little island, like an ocean of fire, raged a Confederate army of sixty thousand troops. Overwhelmed by numbers, General Thomas still held the horse-shoe ridge, through which lay the Rossville road. The storm of battle raged with fearful power. The line of heroes seemed again and again about to be swallowed up in the encircling fire. Again and again Longstreet’s troops charged with unexampled impetuosity, and as many times were beaten back bruised and bleeding. The crisis of the battle at half past four in the afternoon, when Longstreet hurled forward his magnificent reserve corps, is said to have rivaled, in tragic importance and far-reaching consequences, the supreme moment in the battle of Gettysburg, when Pickett’s ten thousand Virginians, in solid column, charged upon Cemetery Ridge.

But all the valor and all the fury was in vain. “George A. Thomas,” in the words of Garfield, “was indeed the ‘rock of Chickamauga,’ against which the wild waves of battle dashed in vain.”

General Garfield, from the moment of his arrival, had plunged into the thickest of the fray. When at last the thinned and shattered lines of gray withdrew, leaving thousands of their dead 159upon the bloody field, smoked and powder-grimed, he was personally managing a battery of which the chief gunners had been killed at their post. Towards the close of the fight Thomas’s ammunition ran very low. His ammunition trains had become involved with the rout of the right, and were miles in the rear at Rossville. This want of ammunition created more fear than the assaults of the enemy. The last charge was repelled at portions of the line with the bayonet alone.

But the hard-earned victory was won. The Rossville road was still held. The masterly skill and coolness of Thomas, when General Garfield reached him with information as to the rest of the army, which, it must be remembered, was never visible through the dense forests and jagged ridges of the valley, had saved the Army of the Cumberland from destruction. After night the exhausted men withdrew to Rossville and subsequently to Chattanooga.

A great battle is a memorable experience to one who takes part. There is nothing like it on earth. Henceforth the participant is different from other men. All his preceding life becomes small and forgotten after such days as those of Chickamauga. From that day he feels that he began to live. When the flames of frenzy with which he was possessed subside, they have left their mark on his being. Ordinarily the flames of battle have burnt out many sympathies. His nature stands like a forest of charred and blackened trunks, once green and beautiful, waving in their leafy splendor, but through which the destroying tempest of fire has passed in its mad career of vengeance. He can neither forget nor forgive the murderous foe. Before the battle he might have exchanged tobacco plugs with the man with whom he would have, with equal readiness, exchanged shots. But after the carnage of the battle, after the day of blood and fury, all this is passed. The last gun is fired on the field of battle. The last shattered line of heroes withdraws into the night. The earth has received its last baptism of blood for the time-being. Only burial parties, with white flags, may be seen picking their way among the fallen brave. The actual battle is over forever. Not so is it with the combatant. In his mind the battle goes on and on. He is perpetually training masked batteries on the foe. 160The roar of conflict never ceases to reverberate in his brain. Throughout his life, whenever recalled to the subject of the war, his mental attitude is that of the battle-field. In his thought the columns are still charging up the hill. The earth still shakes with an artillery that is never silenced. The air is still sulphurous with gunpowder smoke. The ranks of the brave and true still fall around him. Forever is he mentally loading and firing; forever charging bayonets across the bloody field; forever burying the fallen heroes under the protection of the flag of truce.

This is the law of ordinary minds. The red panorama of the Gettysburg and the Chickamauga is forever moving before his eyes. The wrench or strain given to his mental being by those days is too terrific, too awful, for any reaction in the average mind. This fact has been abundantly proven in the history of the last twenty years. Chickamauga thus became a new birth to many a soldier. His life, henceforward, seemed to date from the 19th of September, 1863. His life was ever afterward marked off by anniversaries of that day. It is found that many soldiers die on the anniversary of some great battle in which they were participants. Such is the influence mental states bear upon the physical organism.

Chickamauga was all this to General Garfield. It was more than this to him. He was not merely a participant in the battle of bullets. He was also in the battle of brains. The field soldier certainly feels enough anxiety. His mental experience has enough of torture to gratify the monarch of hell himself. But the anxieties of the man at head-quarters are unspeakable. He sees not merely the actual horrors and the individual danger. He carries on his heart the responsibility for an army. He is responsible for the thousands of lives. A single mistake, a single blunder, a single defective plan, will forever desolate unnumbered firesides. More than this he feels. Not only the fate of the army, but the fate of the country rests in his hand. The burden is crushing. It may be said this is only upon the Commander-in-chief. But General Garfield, as chief of staff, we have seen, was no figure-head, no amanuensis. He took the responsibilities of that campaign and 161battle to his own heart. At every step his genius grappled with the situation. Rosecrans was a good soldier; but in nothing was his ability so exhibited as in selecting Garfield for his confidential adviser and trusting so fully to his genius.

DIAGRAM OF THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.

Thus the battle of Chickamauga entered into Garfield’s mental experience in its greatest aspects. His profoundly sympathetic nature was subjected to an incalculable strain. The struggle of the first day, the beginning of the second, the fatal order, the appalling catastrophe, the fearful ride, the invincible courage of Thomas, the costly victory, all these things were incorporated into his life. He lived years in a single hour. He was only thirty-one years old. It was only nine years since the boys at Williams College had laughed at him as a green-horn; only seven years since he had graduated. But the education of Chickamauga gave him age. The maturity of the mind is not measured by time, but by experience. Previous to the Chattanooga campaign, General Garfield was a clever man. After the battle of Chickamauga he was a great man.

Of the general results of the battle, we quote from Van Horn’s magnificent but critical History of the Army of the Cumberland: “Whatever were the immediate and more local consequences of the battle, in its remote relations and significance, it has claims to historic grandeur. The Army of the Cumberland, without support on either flank, had leaped across the Tennessee River and the 162contiguous mountains, and yet escaped destruction, though the armies of the enemy, east and west, were made tributary to a combination of forces to accomplish this end. Paroled prisoners from Vicksburg, regular troops from Mississippi and Georgia, a veteran corps from Lee’s army in Virginia, and Buckner’s corps from East Tennessee, joined Bragg on the banks of the Chickamauga, not simply to retake Chattanooga, but to annihilate the Army of the Cumberland. Nearly half of Bragg’s army consisted of recent reinforcements, sent to Northern Georgia while the authorities at Washington, perplexed with the military situation, were resting under the delusion that General Bragg was reinforcing Lee. But this heavy draft upon the resources of the Confederacy was burdened with the fatality which clung to all the grander efforts of the insurgents in the west. And General Bragg’s broken and exhausted army was a symbol of the fast-coming exhaustion of the Confederacy itself. The issue of the battle was not thus defined to the consciousness of the Southern people, but was, doubtless, one of the most emphatic disappointments of the struggle, and intensified the gloom produced by previous defeats.”

In his report of the battle to the Department of War, General Rosecrans said:

“To Brigadier-General James A. Garfield, chief of staff, I am especially indebted for the clear and ready manner in which he seized the points of action and movement, and expressed in orders the ideas of the general commanding.”

In relating the history of General Garfield’s military career, no mention has been made of a fact which was destined to affect his future. In the fall of 1862, he had been nominated and elected to Congress from his own district. The thing had been accomplished in his absence, and almost without his knowledge. His term did not begin till December, 1863, and his constituents supposed the war would be over before that time. Garfield himself looked at the thing with indifference. It did not interfere with his service in the army, could not do so for a long time, and there was nothing to hurry his decision in the matter. After the Tullahoma 163campaign, in the summer of 1863, when he had had a taste of successful military strategy, the Congressional question began to force itself to the surface of his thought. There was no prospect of peace. All his inclinations persuaded him to remain in the army. But Congress met in December, and he would have to decide.

In this frame of mind, he had a long confidential talk with Rosecrans on the subject. Rosecrans told him he ought to enter Congress.

“I am glad for your sake,” said Rosecrans, “that you have a new distinction, and I certainly think you can accept it with honor; and, what is more, I deem it your duty to do so. The war is not over yet, nor will it be for some time to come. There will be, of necessity, many questions arising in Congress which will require not alone statesman-like treatment, but the advice of men having an acquaintance with military affairs. For this, and other reasons, I believe you will be able to do equally good service to your country in Congress as in the field.”

Still General Garfield was undecided, except on one thing: that was to wait. Meantime the Chattanooga campaign came on, terminating at Chickamauga. Garfield was consumed with military zeal. He could hardly bear to think of chaining himself up to a desk for the monotonous sessions of Congress. All the military spirit which had blazed in his ancestors reasserted itself in him. His mind was absorbed with the stupendous problems of war which the Rebellion presented. Recognizing within himself an ability superior to many around and above him for grappling with questions of strategy, he was loath to abandon its exercise. It was evident, too, that in the presence of the commanding proportions of the military fame of successful Union generals, any merely Congressional reputation would be dwarfed and overshadowed.

On the other hand, his brother officers urged him to go to Congress. There was a painful need of military men there. The enormous necessities of the army seemed too great to be comprehended by civilians. All men of soldierly instincts and abilities 164were at the front, and there was danger that the fountain of supplies in the Lower House of Congress would dry up.

In the midst of these doubts, two weeks after the battle of Chickamauga, he was summoned to Washington. The War Department demanded a full explanation of the battle which had cost so many thousand lives. Garfield was known at Washington, and they determined to have from him the complete history of the campaign, and an explanation of the necessities of the situation.

On his way to the Capital he, of course, went by the vine-covered cottage at Hiram. After the carnage and havoc of war, the peaceful fireside seemed a thousand times more dear than ever, worth all the blood and all the tears that were being shed for it. During his brief stay at home, his first born, “Little Trot,” only three years of age, was seized with a fatal illness, and carried to the quiet village cemetery. Oppressed with the private as well as the public sorrow, he continued on his journey to Washington. In New York City he staid over night with an old college friend, Henry E. Knox. Again he talked over the Congressional question in all its bearings. The conversation lasted far into the night. The friend knew the feeling of the country; he knew the need for military men in Congress, and he was well acquainted with Garfield’s ability. His advice to General Garfield was to accept the Congressional seat as a public duty.

But never was a man so unwilling to accept a place in Congress. General Garfield felt that he had a career before him if he remained in the army, and he wanted to do so. At last he agreed to submit the question to Mr. Lincoln. “I will lay it before him when I reach Washington, and let his decision settle the matter,” said he. Garfield felt that his mission to the Capital was to save Rosecrans. When he called on Secretary Stanton, he was notified of his promotion to the rank of major-general, “for gallant and meritorious services at Chickamauga.” This added further complexity to the Congressional question. Every detail of the movements of the Army of the Cumberland was gone through with by him before the War Department. With the aid of maps he made 165an elaborate presentation of the facts, from the long delay at Murfreesboro clear through the Tullahoma and Chattanooga campaigns. His exposé was masterly. Every thing he could do was done to save his chief. Montgomery Blair, one of the ablest men at the Capital, after listening to General Garfield’s presentation of the facts, said to a friend, “Garfield is a great man.” President Lincoln said: “I have never understood so fully and clearly the necessities, situation, and movements of any army in the field.”

But it was in vain. Stanton was firm. Rosecrans had to go. His obstinate refusals to advance from Murfreesboro; his testy and almost insulting letters; his violent temper, and uncontrollable stubbornness had ruined him long before Chickamauga. He had broken with the Commander-in-chief as well as with Secretary Stanton. He had said that he regarded certain suggestions from the Department “as a profound, grievous, cruel, and ungenerous official and personal wrong.” The powerful enemies which he thus made only waited for an opportunity to destroy him. That opportunity came with the fatal order at Chickamauga, the rout of the right wing, the loss of presence of mind, and the ride to the rear. This last stood in painful contrast with General Garfield’s dangerous and heroic ride to the front. It was admitted that the strategy of the campaigns was splendid, Napoleonic. It could not be denied that the mistake as to the enemy’s whereabouts after the evacuation of Chattanooga originated in the dispatches from Washington. No matter. Rosecrans was relieved, and the chief of staff, whom Stanton correctly believed to have been very largely the originator of the strategic advance, was promoted.

His immediate duty at Washington being discharged, General Garfield laid the question of the seat in Congress before the man who, perhaps, felt more sympathy and appreciation for and with him than any other, because, like himself, Garfield sprang from poverty, Abraham Lincoln. The great, grave President thought it over, and finally said:

“The Republican majority in Congress is very small, and it is often doubtful whether we can carry the necessary war measures; and, besides, 166we are greatly lacking in men of military experience in the House to regulate legislation about the army. It is your duty, therefore, to enter Congress, at any rate for the present.”

This, for the time being, settled the matter. With the understanding that his rank would be restored if he desired to return to the army, General Garfield reluctantly resigned his new major-generalship, a position whose salary was double that of a Congressman, in order to enter on the following day the House of Representatives.

The greatest men seem often to have been those who were suddenly lifted out of the career of life which they had chosen, and to which they seemed to be preëminently adapted, and forced, as it were, by the exigencies of the times, into a new channel. Julius Cæsar, whose lofty character, unapproachable genius, and sorrowful death, are hardly equalled in the annals of any age or country, had chosen for himself the career of a civil and religious officer of state. His chosen field was in the stately sessions of the Roman Senate, or before the turbulent multitudes of the forum. It was said of him by his enemies, that in speaking he excelled those who practiced no other art. It was said that, had he continued in his chosen career, he would have outshone, in his eloquence, every orator whose name and fame has been transmitted by Rome to later generations. But from this career he was unexpectedly taken. The dangers to the state from the Gallic tribes, and the restless Roman appetite for conquest, required a military leader. Almost by accident Cæsar was drawn away from the senate and the forum to take up the profession of arms.

Unlike the great Roman, Garfield, under the stress of public necessity, was almost by accident withdrawn from the career of arms, in which it may be truly said of him that he, too, excelled those who practiced no other art, to enter upon the career of a legislator. Cæsar exchanged the assembly for the camp, while the great American left the camp for the assembly. Each did so at the call of the state, and each was to become, in his new field, the master spirit of his generation.

CHAPTER VI. IN THE ASCENDANT.

On the 5th of December, 1863, General Garfield took his seat in the Thirty-Eighth Congress. The reader who has gone over the preceding chapter will know in part what brought him there, and will be prepared to judge what was expected of him. But in order clearly to understand what actually was to be looked for from this Congressional neophyte, it will be of advantage to consider who sent Garfield to the House. Congressmen generally represent their districts; and a people may not unfairly be judged by their average representation in Congress.

What kind of a constituency, then, was that which, for nine times the space that measures the term of a Congressman, and an equal number of times the space that measures the political life of many a Congressman, kept James A. Garfield in that place without a moment’s intermission? We would probably make no mistake if we should describe them from our knowledge of him. But let us take the mathematician’s method and verify our conclusion by a reverse process.

Twelve counties in the north-eastern corner of the State of Ohio are popularly grouped together and called the Western Reserve. They are the very Canaan of that great commonwealth; or, at least, come so near it that they can be described as a land flowing with wine and milk,—for grape culture is one of their important industries, and their dairies are famous. Of the nearly twenty-five million pounds of cheese annually produced in Ohio, ninety-five per cent. is made in the Western Reserve.

The Greeks had a story that their god Jupiter, when an infant, 168was tumbled down from the heavens to a secluded place on earth, where he was carefully watched while he grew. It shall be our easy task to show that the Western Reserve is a good place for a public man to grow in and make preparation to rule in a higher sphere.

The Reserve is a place of great natural resources, and, under almost any conditions, would have a well-to-do population. But it is not advantages of this kind which make it an unusually good place for the growth of a great man. If we should presume to say so, all the facts of history would rise to protest its falsity. The arts and literature and eloquence and political glory of Athens and her sister states clung close to barren hillsides. Switzerland rose to be the first free state of Europe among the wild fastnesses of her unfertile mountains. The American Revolution was fought out and the Union established by the finest generation of statesmen and warriors ever produced on the continent, before the extent or the wealth of our broad, level empire was dreamed of. New England and Virginia were not rich; but they were great, and they were free, and so were their statesmen in those days.

The Western Reserve was largely settled by people of New England. And, since it is not the character of the soil, but the composition of the people, which chiefly influences the man who grows there, it will be profitable to see of what sort these settlers and their descendants were.

One of the first things the first settlers of the Western Reserve did was to build a church. They brought the plan of their altars with them. Religion was the corner-stone of their new civilization. Religion was the solid rock on which they built a high morality and an earnest intelligence. Somehow or other they rested calmly on a God who made the forest his temple, and walked through it with them to the very end of the earth. They have their religion with them to this day, and it seems to round out their lives to a fuller completeness, and gives them solidity of character, and with its divinely sanctioned maxims creates such a standard of morality as a good man would aspire to to make his rule of life. This kind of community is a good place in which 169to grow a public man, if you want him to hold fast to principle unchangeably at all times.

The very next thing after a church, when this district was settled, came the common school. The race of which the settlers came was brainy. Their families always had more than a thimbleful of sense apiece. Hence the demand for education, and, therefore, a school-house and a school-teacher. These schools have grown and multiplied. The Reserve has not only common-schools, but colleges, which are already first-class, and are destined to become famous seats of learning. The nation itself has come to recognize in the people of the Reserve a higher average of intelligence than exists anywhere in the Union, except in a very few sections. Here is a very good place to seek for a public man who shall have the kind of intellect to grapple with great questions of statesmanship, and master them.

The Reserve was first peopled by a set of men who were not only religious, moral, and intelligent; but who possessed in themselves two requisites of a great people—courage and strength. Their own ancestors had braved untold dangers in coming to the American shores, and had endured hardships and privations innumerable to gain a footing on the rocky coast. Upborne by the tradition of these experiences, the pilgrimage and the work of founding a new State had been gone over by them again. They were a race who sailed unknown seas, climbed unexplored mountains to get into a new country, and cut down a primeval forest. Their descendants would be neither pigmies nor poltroons. This would certainly be a fine place for the production of a statesman who would have the courage to stand by his convictions and the power to successfully push his measures through.

The political institutions and political habits of this people deserve consideration. They brought their ideas of how to construct and conduct a State from New England, where the town is a political unit, and the town-meeting a great event. So, from the very earliest time, the Reserve has been a region where every body was personally interested in public affairs. They put a man in office because they thought, on actual investigation, that he was 170equal to its duties. And, more than that, they held their appointees to strict account. The unfortunate man who proved incapable or dishonest never got their support again, and never heard the last of their censures. These causes have made their political history good reading. Its chapters are pure and strong and healthy.

The Nineteenth Congressional District of Ohio, at the time of Garfield’s election, included six counties—Portage, Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga, Trumbull, and Mahoning. They are the eastern half of the Western Reserve. Before Garfield’s first election this district had been represented for many years by Joshua R. Giddings, one of the ablest antislavery leaders of the period just before the war.

In 1858, Giddings was displaced. Overconfidence in his hold on the people had made him a little reckless, and an ambitious politician took advantage of the opportunity. A flaw, very slight indeed, was searched out in Giddings’s record. It was proved that his mileage fees were in excess of what the shortest route to Washington required. He had made the people pay his expenses to New York. The convention having been skillfully worked up on this peccadillo of its old favorite, a Mr. Hutchins was sent to Congress in his stead.

A little time only was required to display the difference between Mr. Hutchins and his predecessor. Mr. Giddings was requested at the next election to return. But that old patriot had been rewarded by the Government with a consulate at Montreal, and preferred to remain there; which he did until his death in 1864. In this situation the people of the Nineteenth District began to search for a man who could represent them according to their desire. They felt that it was due to themselves and to the Nation that they send to Congress a leader; some man with ability and force sufficient to deal with the great questions of the day, and solve the problems of the war.

At such a time as this, all eyes turned to the brilliant young General, James A. Garfield. His legislative abilities had been tested in the Ohio legislature just before the war, and his record there was an assurance of his fitness. He was a scholarly man; a 171forcible speaker; and one whose experience in the field was not only honorable to himself, but gave him a knowledge of military affairs which would be exceedingly useful in the condition of national affairs at that time. The election occurred in 1862, more than a year before the man elected could take his place. The war, they supposed, would be over by that time, so that Garfield’s service in the field would not be left incomplete. He was himself a perfect illustration of his own saying, “Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing.” And thus it happened that, without the least expression of such a desire, General Garfield was sent to Congress by the general and hearty wishes of his constituents.

Now into what kind of an arena was it that these people sent their champion to stand for them? What was its composition, and what had been its character in past times? In answering these questions, we are helped by an article written by Garfield for the Atlantic Monthly of July, 1877, wherein he says:

“The limits of this article will not allow me to notice the changes in manners and methods in Congress since the administration of the elder Adams. Such a review would bring before us many striking characters and many stirring scenes.

“In the long line of those who have occupied seats in Congress, we should see, here and there, rising above the undistinguished mass, the figures of those great men whose lives and labors have made their country illustrious, and whose influence upon its destiny will be felt for ages to come. We should see that group of great statesmen whom the last war with England brought to public notice, among whom were Ames and Randolph, Clay and Webster, Calhoun and Benton, Wright and Prentiss, making their era famous by their statesmanship, and creating and destroying political parties by their fierce antagonisms. We should see the folly and barbarism of the so-called code of honor, destroying noblemen in the fatal meadow of Bladensburgh. We should see the spirit of liberty awaking the conscience of the nation to the sin and danger of slavery, whose advocates had inherited and kept alive the old anarchic spirit of disunion. We should trace the progress of that great struggle from the days when John Quincy Adams stood in the House of Representatives, like a lion at bay, defending the sacred right of petition; when, after his death, Joshua R. Giddings continued the good fight, standing 172at this post for twenty years, his white locks, like the plume of Henry of Navarre, always showing where the battle for freedom raged most fiercely; when his small band in Congress, reinforced by Hale and Sumner, Wade and Chase, Lovejoy and Stevens, continued the struggle amid the most turbulent scenes; when daggers were brandished and pistols were drawn in the halls of Congress; and, later, when, one by one, the senators and representatives of eleven States, breathing defiance and uttering maledictions upon the Union, resigned their seats and left the Capitol to take up arms against their country. We should see the Congress of a people long unused to war, when confronted by a supreme danger, raising, equipping, and supporting an army greater than all the armies of Napoleon and Wellington combined: meeting the most difficult questions of international and constitutional law; and, by new forms of taxation, raising a revenue which, in one year of the war, amounted to more than all the national taxes collected during the first half century of the Government.”

All this we should see, and more. And it was to help complete the gigantic tasks of Congress during this momentous time that Garfield was sent there. The House of Representatives contained many able men, but most of these belonged to a closing period. They had grown up in opposition, not in administration. A new group of men was now about to take the lead, and reconstruct the Union on a foundation whose corner-stone should be Union and Liberty, instead of Slavery and State Rights. The old generation of leaders were still there with their wisdom and valuable experience; but the spirit of a new era now came in, which should outlive Thaddeus Stevens and his compeers. About this time there came into Congress, Blaine and Boutwell and Conkling and—Garfield, destined to do more than any of them in restoring prosperity, peace, public justice, and, above all, a harmonious Union, which this age shall not again see broken.

The usefulness of a legislator has in all times been popularly ascribed to his work in the open assembly. But this was never wholly true, and in no existing legislature in the world is it even half true at this day. Public business of this sort is so vast and so complicated that no assembly can give it all a fair consideration. To remedy this trouble we have the committee system, 173whereby special study by a few informs the many who rely upon their reports and merely pass upon their recommendations.

A member of Congress can not be judged by the figure he presents on the floor of the House. He may say nothing there, and yet be author of important measures the mere public advocacy of which is making some other man a national reputation. James A. Garfield was, from the first of his Congressional career, a leader in debate; but the story would be only half told if mention were omitted of the wonderful industry displayed by him on the various great committees where his abilities gave him place.

When the Thirty-Eighth Congress opened, the war was not yet ended—a fact which many an utterer of unfulfilled prophecy and many a broken heart deplored. The most important committee of all was still the Military Committee. It was composed as follows: Robert C. Schenck, of Ohio; John F. Farnsworth, of Illinois; George H. Yeaman, of Kentucky; James A. Garfield, of Ohio; Benjamin Loan, of Missouri; Moses F. Odell, of New York; Henry C. Deming, of Connecticut; F. W. Kellogg, of Michigan; Archibald McAllister, of Pennsylvania.

Although Garfield’s name comes fourth here, he really was intended as second by the Chairman. Mr. Schenck had requested Speaker Colfax to put him on, under a belief that he would be an invaluable help to himself. We have been several times required to notice a happy faculty which Garfield had of inspiring the faith in himself of those with whom he came in contact, by some striking act which showed them that he was not an ordinary man. This was not intentional, but simply the spontaneous shining forth of light which was in the man. Almost the first session of the Committee on Military Affairs brought out just such an incident:

It had then been only a short time since the science of anæsthetics had grown into some importance by the use of chloroform and ether. In the hospitals of the army it was very common. As is usual with inventions and discoveries, there was a struggle going on for the profit and honor of the discovery. Dr. Morton, a dentist, and others, were petitioning Congress, each as the discoverer 174of chloroform, for some kind of appropriation or arrangement by which they might be rewarded for the services they had done for our soldiers in thus alleviating their sufferings. The petitions were referred to this committee. The members all, except Garfield, declined to investigate it, on the ground that they knew nothing about such an obscure topic. Garfield only observed that he thought the claim remarkable. Not knowing what else to do, the Chairman referred it to him, expecting not to hear of it again.

At the next meeting he had a scientific and thoroughly written report ready, exhausting the whole subject. On request, the matter was explained. Garfield had a way of supplementing his regular line of studies by having always some unusual and out-of-the-way topic on hand to amuse his leisure hours. Not long before this he had accidentally come across a book on anæsthesia, and his investigations had made him ready for the unforeseen report in committee. All knowledge is useful. After this the committee was not afraid of strange topics. They were given over to the man who knew anæsthesia, and then they considered the subject settled. As one man said,—“Good Lord! what would he not know?”

General Garfield’s time was now devoted to public business. Every subject likely to come before his committee was investigated through all the avenues of information. He set himself a wide course of reading on finance, on constitutional law, and a great group of kindred subjects. These were studied in the Garfield way, which was to read all the literature he could find on a topic, or that could in any way affect the discussion thereof. It was this prodigious labor, matching his capacity for keeping the run of what would have overwhelmed most men with confusion, that made him at the same time a remarkably ready and a wonderfully reliable man, either in committee or as a speaker on the floor of the House.

General Garfield had not been in Congress two weeks before his occasional brief statements began to attract attention. Of course it was not till after a considerable period that he became a recognized leader; but his force began to be felt very soon, and 175grew every day until, by steady development of his abilities and his influence, he finally reached the summit of power, as leader of his party in the Lower House of Congress.

We have seen that he was not a politician in the popular meaning of the word. He had been sent to Congress rather against than with his inclinations, and was above posturing and plotting for reëlection. Even after he had reluctantly given up his commission as Major-General in the army, he was ready to return on call. In fact, he did once almost determine on going back. General Thomas, having succeeded Rosecrans in his command, wrote a private letter asking Garfield to accept the command of a corps in his army. The offer was tempting, and duty seemed to point the way. Mr. Lincoln, however, was having trouble to get his measures through Congress, and needed support. On his statement that Garfield would confer a personal favor by remaining where he was, the change was not made.

This was not the kind of man to stultify himself for the sake of public favor; and therefore it is not surprising to find his first speech on record opposed to the whole House. It was on the “Bounty Question.” At this time in the war, volunteering had become so rare a thing that new measures had to be devised to keep up the ever-dwindling ranks of the army. Two methods were advocated. One was to draft men forcibly, and put them into the service; the other was to induce men to volunteer by payment of a bonus for enlistment. Out of these two principles a hybrid policy had been formed, resulting in the Conscription Act, of March 3, 1863. This act provided for a draft, but allowed a commutation in money, which was fixed at three hundred dollars. In addition, thirteen exceptions were allowed by which the draft could be escaped. To compensate for these losses, three hundred dollars bounty money was given to every raw recruit, and four hundred dollars to every reënlisted veteran. The result of all which was a rapidly decreasing army. The Government urged stronger measures; and it was before these measures had been perfected that an incident occurred in which General Garfield first indicated his opinions on the subject.

176According to a law passed, the bounties above mentioned could be paid only up to January 5, 1864. On January 6th, the Military Committee reported a joint resolution to continue this limit over till March 1st. Mr. Garfield did not approve of the resolution, although every man in the House seemed against him. His reasons are given in the Congressional Globe, wherein the following is reported:

Mr. Garfield.—“Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was not able to meet with the Military Committee when this resolution was under consideration. I did not reach the city until a few hours before the House met this morning; but if I understand the matter correctly from the public journals, the request of the President and the War Department was to continue the payment of bounties until the 1st of February next; but the resolution before the House proposes to extend the payment until the 1st of March. And while the President asks us to continue the payment of bounties to veteran volunteers only, the resolution extends it to all volunteers, whether veterans or raw recruits. If the resolution prevails, it seems to me we shall swamp the finances of the Government before the 1st of March arrives. I can not consent to a measure which authorizes the expenditure of so vast a sum as will be expended under this resolution, unless it be shown absolutely indispensable to the work of filling up the army. I am anxious that veterans should volunteer, and that liberal bounties should be paid to them. But if we extend the payment to all classes of volunteers for two months to come, I fear we shall swamp the Government.

“Before I vote for this resolution, I desire to know whether the Government is determined to abandon the draft. If it be its policy to raise an army solely by volunteering and paying bounties, we have one line of policy to pursue. If the conscription law is to be any thing but a dead letter on the statute book, our line of policy is a very different one. I ask the gentleman from Illinois to inform me what course is to be adopted. I am sorry to see in this resolution the indication of a timid and vacillating course. It is unworthy the dignity of our Government and our army to use the conscription act as a scarecrow, and the bounty system as a bait, to alternately scare and coax men into the army.

“Let us give liberal bounties to veteran soldiers who may reënlist, and for raw recruits use the draft.”

177After some further discussion the vote was taken, resulting in yeas 112, nays 2. Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa, made the second negative, changing his vote after Garfield had voted.

Soon afterwards a letter came to General Garfield, signed by twenty of his constituents, censuring his action, and demanding his resignation. They were only answered that he held their letter, and that within a year they would all agree with what he had done. Before the year closed, there was a cross opposite each man’s name, denoting the fulfillment of the General’s prophecy.

This action also attracted the admiring attention of Salmon P. Chase, who soon afterward congratulated him, but at the same time coupled his praises with a good piece of advice. Mr. Chase liked to see a man exhibit great firmness, but warned his young friend that such antagonism to his party would better be indulged sparingly. It would seem that the advice was unnecessary to Garfield, however, as he was not a factious man. He simply had the courage of his convictions. On this point we find that Garfield never fails to meet our expectations, no matter what the opposition:

Legislation on the enrollment of soldiers was yet to come, which should be more severe than any we had known. The system of bounties proved a failure. We had attempted coercion on the States, and the only way to succeed was by further coercion of our own citizens. It was a hard thing to come to, and the people were unwilling. Congressmen were afraid of the coming fall election of 1864. Finally, early in June, Mr. Lincoln sought an interview with the Military Committee. He told them that the army had in it only three-quarters of a million men; three hundred and eighty thousand were within a few months of the end of their term of service. These places must be filled, and a law framed for the purpose at once. The committee expressed its opinion of the political danger: “Mr. Lincoln, such a law will defeat you for President.” Then a light shone out from that great homely countenance, the 178tall form was drawn grandly to its full height, as the answer was given. Mr. Lincoln said that his business was to put down the Rebellion, no matter what the danger. Grant and Sherman were on the verge of victory; their strength must be kept up, and the struggle ended quickly.

Accordingly, a bill was prepared after the President’s own plan. Many of the draft exemptions of the existing law were taken away by it; commutation-money was no longer to be received, and every possible facility was to be afforded for compelling men to enlist. But peace Democrats, united with cowardly Congressmen of the Republican party, together voted out the most effective clauses of the new bill.

This would never do. The friends of the bill reconstructed it, and determined to put it through. On the 21st of June, the effort was made. General Garfield was, perhaps, more intensely wrought up on the subject, than any man except Lincoln; and he made a great speech, a speech replete with learning, logic, and eloquence. This bill was the result of conditions in national affairs which he had long foreseen; he had prophesied, at the time of his vote against extending bounties, that the end of such extension would be ruin to the Union cause. That ruin was now impending, and all his energies were bent toward averting the evil. Hear this closing appeal:

“I ask gentlemen who oppose this repeal, why they desire to make it easy for citizens to escape from military duty? Is it a great hardship to serve one’s country? Is it a disgraceful service? Will you, by your action here, say to the soldiers in the field, ‘This is a disreputable business; you have been deceived; you have been caught in a trap, and we will make no law to put any body else in it’? Do you thus treat your soldiers in the field? They are proud of their voluntary service, and if there be one wish of the army paramount to all others, one message more earnest than all the others which they send back to you, it is that you will aid in filling up their battle-thinned ranks by a draft which will compel lukewarm citizens who prate against the war to go into the field. They ask that you will not expend large bounties in paying men of third-rate patriotism, while they went with no other bounty than their 179love of country, to which they gave their young lives a free offering, but that you will compel these eleventh-hour men to take their chances in the field beside them. Let us grant their request, and, by a steady and persistent effort, we shall, in the end, be it near or remote, be it in one year or ten, crown the nation with victory and enduring peace.”

In the sequel, this bill passed; a grand reinforcement of five hundred thousand men soon secured the supremacy of the Union, and Father Abraham was thus enabled to finish his immortal work.

Early in the first session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress, the subject of confiscation was pretty thoroughly discussed. House Resolution No. 18 was offered, so amending a resolution of the preceding Congress that no punishment or proceeding under it should be so construed as to make a forfeiture of the estate of the offender, except during his life. Out of this little motion there grew a great crop of controversy, and among others, General Garfield took part. His main speech, the first lengthy address he ever made in Congress, was delivered on January 28, 1864. Mr. Finck, of Ohio, had just sat down at the close of a long set speech, when Garfield arose and began in these words:

“Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to ask the attention of the House or to occupy its time on this question of confiscation at all, but some things have been said, touching its military aspects, which make it proper for me to trespass upon the patience of the House. Feeling that, in some small degree, I represent on this floor the Army of the Republic, I am the more emboldened to speak to this subject before us.

“I have been surprised that in so lengthy and able a discussion, so little reference has been made to the merits of the resolution itself. In the wide range of discussion, the various theories of the legal and political status of the rebellious States have been examined. It is, perhaps, necessary that we take ground upon that question, as preliminary to the discussion of the resolution itself. Two theories, widely differing from each other, have been proposed; but I can not consider either of them as wholly correct. I can not agree with the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Stevens,) who acknowledges that these States are out of the Union, and now constitute a foreign people; nor can I, on the 180other hand, agree with those who believe that the insurgent States are not only in the Union, but have lost none of their rights under the Constitution and laws of the Union.

“When the Government of the United States declared that we were in a state of war, the rebel States came under the laws of war. By their acts of rebellion and war, they had swept away every vestige of their civil and political rights under the Constitution of the United States. Their obligations still remained; but the reciprocal rights, which usually accompany obligations, they had forfeited.

“The question then lies open before us: In a state of war, under the laws of war, is this resolution legal and politic? I insist, Mr. Speaker, that the question involved in the resolution before this House, is whether this Government, in its exercise of its rights of a belligerent under the laws of war, can not punish these rebels and confiscate their estates, both personal and real, for life and forever. That is the only question before us.

“I conclude by returning once more to the resolution before us. Let no weak sentiments of misplaced sympathy deter us from inaugurating a measure, which will cleanse our nation and make it the fit home of freedom and glorious manhood. Let us not despise the severe wisdom of our revolutionary fathers when they served their generation in a similar way. Let the Republic drive from its soil the traitors that have conspired against its life, as God and His angels drove Satan and his host from heaven. He was not too merciful to be just, and to hurl down in chains and everlasting darkness the ‘traitor angel’ who rebelled against Him.”

In these clear words we may find already a development of that independent, yet always moderate way of regarding things which no reader of Garfield’s great speeches of later date can fail to notice. While other men wasted time in reasoning on the words of the Constitution, and their effect on the status of the Southern States, this incisive intellect cut right through all extremes, and from a plain view of the facts, he said that the South was not out of the Union; and although it was in the Union, it did not have “the reciprocal rights which usually accompany obligations.” And this was statesmanship.

181In March, 1864, the Committee on Military Affairs reported a bill “to declare certain roads military roads, and post roads, and to regulate commerce.” Its principal object, as far as the Government was concerned, was to enlarge its facilities of communication between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. The only existing postal route between the commercial Capital and the political Capital, was by the Camden and Amboy Railroad. This bill was presented on petition of the Raritan and Delaware Bay Railroad Company, asking that it be given similar rights to those held by the Camden and Amboy; which latter road of course used all its influence to defeat the measure. Both the power and the duty of Congress to pass the bill were violently assailed and denied.

Mr. Garfield favored its passage, and made a speech on the subject which ran through parts of two days, March 24 and 31. This address was very powerful, and was called by some members “the speech of the session.”

The main question, as raised by the friends of that road themselves, was whether Congress could rightfully interfere with a State railroad monopoly which did not confine its operations within the limits of that State. The Governor of New Jersey had issued a proclamation referring to this matter, and speaking of his State as “sovereign.” These were but the first mutterings of a great storm which was to follow. Their significance was recognized.

It was to these points that Mr. Garfield addressed himself. The Camden and Amboy Company he named as a sweeping and complete monopoly, made so by the State of New Jersey. The State’s right to create corporations was undoubted. But it could have no sovereignty sufficient to destroy the power of the United States, and especially so outside of the State limits. Equal rights with this monopoly should be given to the Raritan and Delaware Bay Company at any time on petition, and certainly now when the facilities for transportation were not equal to the needs of the Government.

182Surely the Government, at such a time as this, had paramount authority to provide for its own necessities.

On the 8th of April, 1864, the House of Representatives resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole upon the State of the Union, whereupon Mr. Alexander Long, of Cincinnati, Ohio, took the floor, and, in a speech of much bitterness, arraigned the administration, not for its conduct of the war, but for carrying on the war at all. “An unconstitutional war can only be carried on in an unconstitutional manner,” said Mr. Long. His demand now was for peace. This was the first sound of Democratic preparation for the Presidential election, the key-note of their campaign.

Mr. Long said:

“Mr. Chairman, I speak to-day for the preservation of the Government. In the independence of a representative of the people I intend to proclaim the deliberate convictions of my judgment in this fearful hour of the country’s peril.

“The brief period of three short years has produced a fearful change in this free, happy, and prosperous government,—so pure in its restrainments upon personal liberty, and so gentle in its demands upon the resources of the people, that the celebrated Humboldt, after traveling through the country, on his return to Europe said, ‘The American people have a government which you neither see nor feel.’ So different is it now, and so great the change, that the inquiry might well be made to-day, ‘Are we not in Constantinople, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna, in Rome, or in Paris?’ Military governors and their provost marshals override the laws, and the echo of the armed heel rings forth as clearly now in America as in France or Austria; and the President sits to-day guarded by armed soldiers at every approach leading to the Executive Mansion. So far from crushing the rebellion, three years have passed away, and from the day on which the conflict began, up to the present hour, the Confederate army has not been forced beyond the sound of their guns from the dome of the Capitol in which we are assembled.”

The remainder of the speech continued in the same spirit. The war could not be put down. Moreover, it was wrong and ought not to be put down:

“Can the Union he restored by war? I answer most unhesitatingly 183and deliberately: No, never. War is final and eternal separation. My first and highest ground against its further prosecution is, that it is wrong. It is a violation of the Constitution and of the fundamental principles on which this Union was founded. My second objection is, that as a policy, it is not reconstructive, but destructive, and will, if continued, result speedily in the destruction of the Government and the loss of civil liberty, to both the North and the South, and it ought therefore to immediately cease....”

These were the sentiments of a Democratic politician in Congress; they would be scattered broadcast over the whole land. Some of the arguments were specious; they would be echoed from a thousand platforms during the summer. It was incumbent on the opposition to furnish a speedy and strong reply. When Mr. Long took his seat, Mr. Garfield arose and said:

“Mr. Chairman: I should be obliged to you if you would direct the sergeant-at-arms to bring a white flag and plant it in the aisle between myself and my colleague who has just addressed you.

“I recollect on one occasion when two great armies stood face to face, that under a white flag just planted, I approached a company of men dressed in the uniform of the rebel Confederacy, and reached out my hand to one of the number, and told him I respected him as a brave man. Though he wore the emblems of disloyalty and treason, still, underneath his vestments I beheld a brave and honest soul.

“I would produce that scene here this afternoon. I say, were there such a flag of truce—but God forbid me if I should do it under any other circumstances—I would reach out this right hand and ask that gentleman to take it; because I honor his bravery and his honesty. I believe what has just fallen from his lips are the honest sentiments of his heart, and in uttering it he has made a new epoch in the history of this war; he has done a new thing under the sun; he has done a brave thing. It is braver than to face cannon and musketry, and I honor him for his candor and frankness.

“But now, I ask you to take away the flag of truce; and I will go back inside the Union lines and speak of what he has done. I am reminded by it of a distinguished character in Paradise Lost. When he had rebelled against the glory of God, and ‘led away a third part of 184heaven’s sons, conjured against the Highest;’ when, after terrible battles in which mountains and hills were hurled down ‘nine times the space that measures day and night,’ and after the terrible fall lay stretched prone on the burning lake,—Satan lifted up his shattered bulk, crossed the abyss, looked down into Paradise, and, soliloquizing, said:

it seems to me in that utterance he expressed the very sentiments to which you have just listened; uttered by one not less brave, malign, and fallen. This man gathers up the meaning of this great contest, the philosophy of the moment, the prophecies of the hour, and, in sight of the paradise of victory and peace, utters them all in this wail of terrible despair, ‘Which way I fly is hell.’ He ought to add, ‘Myself am hell.’

“For the first time in the history of this contest, it is proposed in this hall to give up the struggle, to abandon the war, and let treason run riot through the land! I will, if I can, dismiss feeling from my heart and try to consider only what bears upon the logic of the speech to which we have just listened.

“First of all, the gentleman tells us that the right of secession is a constitutional right. I do not propose to enter into the argument. I have hitherto expressed myself on State sovereignty and State rights, of which this proposition of his is the legitimate child.

“But the gentleman takes higher ground—and in that I agree with him, namely, that five million or eight million people possess the right of revolution. Grant it; we agree there. If fifty-nine men can make a revolution successful, they have the right of revolution. If one State wishes to break its connection with the Federal Government, and does it by force, maintaining itself, it is an independent State. If the eleven Southern States are resolved and determined to leave the Union, to secede, to revolutionize, and can maintain that revolution by force, they have revolutionary right to do so. I stand on that platform with the gentleman.

“And now the question comes, is it our constitutional duty to let them do it? That is the question. And, in order to reach it, I beg to call your attention, not to argument, but to the condition of affairs that would result from such action—the mere statement of which becomes the strongest possible argument. What does this gentleman propose? Where will he draw the line of division? If the rebels carry into secession 185what they desire to carry; if their revolution envelops as many States as they intend it shall envelop; if they draw the line where Isham G. Harris, the rebel governor of Tennessee, in the rebel camp near our lines, told Mr. Vallandigham they would draw it,—along the line of the Ohio and Potomac,—if they make good their statement to him, that they will never consent to any other line, then I ask, what is the thing the gentleman proposes to do?

“He proposes to leave to the United States a territory reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and one hundred miles wide in the center! From Wellsville on the Ohio to Cleveland on the lakes, is one hundred miles. I ask you, Mr. Chairman, if there be a man here so insane as to suppose that the American people will allow their magnificent national proportions to be shorn to so deformed a shape as this?

“Suppose the policy of the gentleman were adopted to-day. Let the order go forth; sound the ‘recall’ on your bugles, and let it ring from Texas to the far Atlantic, and tell the armies to come back. Call the victorious legions back over the battle-field of blood forever now disgraced. Call them back over the territory which they have conquered. Call them back, and let the minions of secession chase them with derision and jeers as they come. And then tell them that the man across the aisle, from the free State of Ohio, gave birth to the monstrous proposition.

“Mr. Chairman, if such a word should be sent forth through the armies of the Union, the wave of terrible vengeance that would sweep back over this land could never find a parallel in the records of history. Almost in the moment of final victory, the ‘recall’ is sounded by a craven people not desiring freedom. We ought, every man, to be made a slave should we sanction such a sentiment.

“The gentleman has told us there is no such thing as coercion justifiable under the Constitution. I ask him for one moment to reflect, that no statute ever was enforced without coercion. It is the basis of every law in the universe,—God’s law as well as man’s. A law is no law without coercion behind it. When a man has murdered his brother, coercion takes the murderer, tries him, and hangs him. When you levy your taxes, coercion secures their collection; it follows the shadow of the thief and brings him to justice; it accompanies your diplomacy to foreign courts, and backs a declaration of the nation’s right by a pledge of the nation’s power. Again, he tells us that oaths taken under the amnesty 186proclamation are good for nothing. The oath of Galileo was not binding upon him. I am reminded of another oath that was taken; but perhaps it was an oath on the lips alone to which the heart made no response.

“I remember to have stood in a line of nineteen men on that carpet yonder on the first day of the session, and I remember that another oath was passed round and each member signed it as provided by law, utterly repudiating the rebellion and its pretenses. Does that gentleman not blush to speak of Galileo’s oath? Was not his own its counterpart?

“He says that the Union can never be restored because of the terrible hatred engendered by the war. To prove it, he quotes what some Southern man said a few years ago, that he knew no hatred between people in the world like that between the North and the South. And yet that North and South have been one nation for eighty-eight years!

“Have we seen in this contest any thing more bitter than the wars of the Scottish border? Have we seen any thing more bitter than those terrible feuds in the days of Edward, when England and Scotland were the deadliest foes on earth? And yet for centuries those countries have been cemented in an indissoluble union that has made the British nation one of the proudest of the earth!

“I said a little while ago that I accepted the proposition of the gentleman that rebels had a right of revolution; and the decisive issue between us and the rebellion is, whether they shall revolutionize and destroy, or we shall subdue and preserve. We take the latter ground. We take the common weapons of war to meet them; and if these be not sufficient, I would take any element which will overwhelm and destroy; I would sacrifice the dearest and best beloved; I would take all the old sanctions of law and the Constitution and fling them to the winds, if necessary, rather than let the nation be broken in pieces and its people destroyed with endless ruin.

“What is the Constitution that these gentlemen are perpetually flinging in our faces whenever we desire to strike hard blows against the rebellion? It is the production of the American people. They made it; and the creator is mightier than the creature. The power which made the Constitution can also make other instruments to do its great work in the day of dire necessity.”

The Presidential campaign of 1864 involved, in its tremendous issues, the fate of a Republic. All the forces which had ever antagonized 187the war for the Union were arrayed on the one side; those which demanded that the war be vigorously pursued until rebellion was forever put down, withstood them on the other side. It was a hand-to-hand struggle. Garfield took the stump and ably advocated the Republican cause. He traveled nearly eight thousand miles, and made sixty-five speeches. Late in the season his constituents met to nominate a Congressman. Garfield was very popular in the district, which had been pleased with his ability and the patriotic spirit of his conduct.

But, after the adjournment of Congress, an incident occurred which caused trouble in the Republican ranks, and seemed likely to drive him out of the field. The subject of the readmission of conquered Southern States to the full enjoyment of their political rights, had occupied the attention of the Thirty-Eighth Congress; and that body, on the day of its adjournment, had passed and sent for the President’s approval, a bill providing for the government of such States. Mr. Lincoln had let the bill go over unsigned till after adjournment; and soon issued a proclamation referring to the subject, which offended many of the friends of the bill. Among these were Ben. Wade and Winter Davis, who issued to the public a reply to Mr. Lincoln, censuring him in very severe language. The President was therein charged with favoring a policy subversive of human liberty, unjust to the friends of the administration, and dangerous to the Republic. This Wade-Davis manifesto caused a great furore of excitement. Wade and Davis were denounced; the people would hear nothing against Mr. Lincoln.

When the convention met at Warren, Mr. Garfield was sent for. He had been charged by some with the authorship of the Wade-Davis paper, and by many with holding to its views. When he appeared before them, the chairman stated to him the charge, with a strong intimation that if he cared for a renomination he must declare war against all disagreement with the President’s policy.

Then the young general and statesman arose, and stepped forward to face the assembly. They listened to hear their former 188hero explain away the terrible opinion attributed to him, and, like the fawning politician he was not, trim his sails according to the popular pleasure.

Mr. Garfield said that he was not the author of the manifesto which the chairman had mentioned. Only of late had he read that great protest. But, having read, he approved; and only regretted that there had been any necessity for such a thing. The facts alleged were truly asserted. This was his belief. If they preferred a representative not of the same mind as himself, they should by all means hasten to nominate their man.

Having somewhat haughtily spoken these brave words, Garfield took his hat and strode out, with the intention of returning to his hotel. As he reached the street, a great shout was heard. “That sound, no doubt, means my defeat and another’s nomination,” he muttered. But, with nothing to regret, he went his way.

Meanwhile, what did the convention actually do? They were dumb with astonishment for a moment; a heroic deed had been done before them, and admiration for the chief actor was the uppermost sentiment in every heart. Then a young man from Ashtabula called out: “Mr. Chairman, I say that the man who has courage enough to oppose a convention like that ought not to be discarded. I move that James A. Garfield be nominated by acclamation.” Without a dissenting voice it was done. When election day came, his majority was nearly twelve thousand.

The session of Congress which met in December of 1864 was marked by the great debates on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was presented to the States for ratification on the first of February, 1865. Perhaps the strongest opposition to that amendment was from George H. Pendleton, of Ohio. He spoke against it on the 13th of January. The chief argument was that purely State institutions could not properly be interfered with by the Nation, without the consent of the State or States concerned. That this right of a State was reserved in the spirit of the Constitution, just as equal representation in the Senate was secured, beyond recall, by the letter of that instrument.

To this speech Mr. Garfield made a reply. So much of this 189reply as touched upon the constitutional power of making such an amendment may be given further on; the remainder is such a denunciation of slavery, as an institution, as has rarely been equaled by any of those eloquent men who devoted their lives to its extermination.

On taking the floor, Mr. Garfield began:

“Mr. Speaker: We shall never know why slavery dies so hard in this Republic and in this hall till we know why sin is long-lived and Satan is immortal. With marvelous tenacity of existence, it has outlived the expectations of its friends and the hopes of its enemies. It has been declared here and elsewhere to be in the several stages of mortality—wounded, moribund, dead. The question was raised by my colleague [Mr. Cox] yesterday whether it was indeed dead, or only in a troubled sleep. I know of no better illustration of its condition than is found in Sallust’s admirable history of the great conspirator, Catiline, who, when his final battle was fought and lost, his army broken and scattered, was found, far in advance of his own troops, lying among the dead enemies of Rome, yet breathing a little, but exhibiting in his countenance all the ferocity of spirit which had characterized his life. So, sir, this body of slavery lies before us among the dead enemies of the Republic, mortally wounded, impotent in its fiendish wickedness, but with its old ferocity of look, bearing the unmistakable marks of its infernal origin.

“Who does not remember that thirty years ago—a short period in the life of a nation—but little could be said with impunity in these halls on the subject of slavery? We can hardly realize that this is the same people and these the same halls, where now scarcely a man can be found who will venture to do more than falter out an apology for slavery, protesting in the same breath that he has no love for the dying tyrant. None, I believe, but that man of more than supernal boldness, from the city of New York [Mr. Fernando Wood], has ventured, this session, to raise his voice in favor of slavery for its own sake. He still sees in its features the reflection of beauty and divinity, and only he. ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!’ Many mighty men have been slain by thee; many proud ones have humbled themselves at thy feet! All along the coast of our political sea these victims of slavery lie like stranded wrecks, broken on the headlands of freedom. 190How lately did its advocates, with impious boldness, maintain it as God’s own, to be venerated and cherished as divine? It was another and higher form of civilization. It was the holy evangel of America, dispensing its mercies to a benighted race, and destined to bear countless blessings to the wilderness of the West. In its mad arrogance it lifted its hand to strike down the fabric of the Union, and since that fatal day it has been a ‘fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.’ Like the spirit that Jesus cast out, it has, since then, ‘been seeking rest and finding none.’

“It has sought in all the corners of the Republic to find some hiding-place in which to shelter itself from the death it so richly deserves.

“It sought an asylum in the untrodden territories of the west, but, with a whip of scorpions, indignant freemen drove it thence. I do not believe that a loyal man can now be found who would consent that it should again enter them. It has no hope of harbor there. It found no protection or favor in the hearts or consciences of the freemen of the Republic, and has fled for its last hope of safety behind the shield of the Constitution. We propose to follow it there, and drive it thence, as Satan was exiled from heaven. But now, in the hour of its mortal agony, in this hall, it has found a defender.

“My gallant colleague [Mr. Pendleton], for I recognize him as a gallant and able man, plants himself at the door of his darling, and bids defiance to all assailants. He has followed slavery in its flight, until at last it has reached the great temple where liberty is enshrined—the Constitution of the United States—and there, in that last retreat, declares that no hand shall strike it. It reminds me of that celebrated passage in the great Latin poet, in which the serpents of the Ionian sea, when they had destroyed Laocoon and his sons, fled to the heights of the Trojan citadel and coiled their slimy lengths around the feet of the tutelar goddess, and were covered by the orb of her shield. So, under the guidance of my colleague [Mr. Pendleton], slavery, gorged with the blood of ten thousand freemen, has climbed to the high citadel of American nationality, and coiled itself securely, as he believes, around the feet of the statue of Justice and under the shield of the Constitution of the United States. We desire to follow it even there, and kill it beside the very altar of liberty. Its blood can never make atonement for the least of its crimes.

“But the gentleman has gone further. He is not content that the snaky sorceress shall be merely under the protection of the Constitution. In his view, by a strange metamorphosis, slavery becomes an invisible 191essence, and takes up its abode in the very grain and fiber of the Constitution, and when we would strike it he says, ‘I can not point out any express clause that prohibits you from destroying slavery; but I find a prohibition in the intent and meaning of the Constitution. I go under the surface, out of sight, into the very genius of it, and in that invisible domain slavery is enshrined, and there is no power in the Republic to drive it thence.’

“But he has gone even deeper than the spirit and intent of the Constitution. He has announced a discovery, to which I am sure no other statesman will lay claim. He has found a domain where slavery can no more be reached by human law than the life of Satan by the sword of Michael. He has marked the hither boundary of this newly discovered continent, in his response to the question of the gentleman from Iowa.

“Not finding any thing in the words and phrases of the Constitution that forbids an amendment abolishing slavery, he goes behind all human enactments, and far away among the eternal equities, he finds a primal law which overshadows States, nations, and constitutions, as space envelops the universe, and by its solemn sanctions one human being can hold another in perpetual slavery. Surely, human ingenuity has never gone farther to protect a malefactor, or defend a crime. I shall make no argument with my colleague on this point, for in that high court to which he appeals, eternal justice dwells with freedom, and slavery has never entered.

“On the justice of the amendment itself no arguments are necessary. The reasons crowd in on every side. To enumerate them would be a work of superfluity. To me it is a matter of great surprise that gentlemen on the other side should wish to delay the death of slavery. I can only account for it on the ground of long continued familiarity and friendship. I should be glad to hear them say of slavery, their beloved, as did the jealous Moor:

“Has she not betrayed and slain men enough? Are they not strewn over a thousand battle-fields? Is not this Moloch already gorged with the bloody feast? Its best friends know that its final hour is fast approaching. The avenging gods are on its track. Their feet are not now, as of old, shod with wool, for slow and stately stepping, but winged, like Mercury’s, to bear the swift message of vengeance. No human power can avert the final catastrophe.”

192Five days after this address, Mr. Garfield, together with Henry Winter Davis, made a lively attack on the War Department. At this time the writ of habeas corpus was suspended, and the art of imprisoning men without warrant or accusation was reaching a high state of perfection. The Carroll and Old Capital prisons were full of victims who could not find out why they were thus arbitrarily confined.

This tyrannical practice having been brought before the committee on military affairs, some of them investigated the subject. As a result, a resolution was offered calling for a public inquiry, which resolution passed. The next day Thaddeus Stevens attempted to get it rescinded, whereupon he was met by a fiery speech from Mr. Garfield, which saved the resolution; and in a few days there was a general freeing of all prisoners against whom no sufficient charges could be made.

In his speech, Mr. Garfield graphically told of the great injustice which was being done, especially to men who had served the country in the field. One of these was a colonel in the Union army, who had been wounded and discharged from the service, but now, for some unknown reason, perhaps maliciously, had been deprived of his liberty. Mr. Garfield had been an admirer of Stanton, and recognized the great Secretary’s ability and patriotism; but this could not save either him or his subordinates from just censures.

This action was the occasion of much admiring notice from the public, and even from Stanton himself. For such was the reputed roughness of Stanton’s temper that few men ever had enough temerity to criticise him.

On the night of April 14, 1865, the war-heated blood of this nation was frozen with sudden horror at a deed which then had no parallel in American history—the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

That night General Garfield was in New York City.

In the early morning hours a colored servant came to the door of his room at the hotel, and in a heart-broken voice announced that Mr. Lincoln, the emancipator of his race from bondage, had been shot down by a traitor to the country.

193Morning came; but dark were the hours whose broken wings labored to bring the light of day. Soon the streets were filled with people. Every body seemed to have come out and left the houses empty. It was not a holiday, and yet all seemed to be doing nothing. No business was transacted, yet mirth and laughter were unheard. Such silence and such multitudes never before were met together.

Garfield wandered out into the streets, and noted these ominous appearances. The city was like Paris, just before its pavements are to be torn up for a barricade battle in some revolutionary outbreak.

Great posters, fixed in prominent places, called for a nine o’clock meeting of citizens at Wall Street Exchange Building. The newspaper bulletins, black, brief recorders of fate as they are, were surrounded with crushing crowds waiting for the latest word from Washington.

Arriving in the region of Wall Street, General Garfield made his way through the mass of men who surrounded the Exchange Building, until he reached the balcony. Here Benjamin F. Butler was making an address. Fifty thousand people were crowding toward that central figure, from whose left arm waved a yard of crape which told the terrible story to multitudes who could not hear his words.

General Butler ceased speaking. What should be done with this great crowd of desperate men? What would they do with themselves?

Lincoln was dead; word came that Seward, with his throat cut, was dying. Men feared some dread conspiracy which would redden the North with innocent blood, and hand over the Government to treason and traitors.

Two men in this crowd said that “Lincoln ought to have been shot long ago.” A minute later one of them was dead; the other lay in the ditch, bleeding and dying. Thousands of men clutched, in their pockets, revolvers and knives, to be used on whoever said a word against the martyred President.

Suddenly from the extreme right wing of the crowd rose a cry: 194“The World!” “The office of the World!” “The World!”—and the mass began to move as one man toward that office. Where would this end? Destruction of property, loss of life, violence and anarchy, were in that movement, and apparently no human power could now check its progress.

Then a man stepped to the front of the balcony and held his arm aloft. His commanding attitude arrested universal attention. Perhaps he was going to give them the latest news. They waited. But while they listened, the voice—it was the voice of General Garfield—only said:

“Fellow-citizens: Clouds and darkness are around about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow-citizens: God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!”

The tide of popular fury was stayed. The impossible had been accomplished. “The World” was saved; but that was not much. The safety of a great city was secured; and that was much.

Other meetings were held in New York City on that memorable day, and the magnetic speaker of the morning was called out again. In the course of an address that afternoon he uttered these words:

“By this last act of madness, it seems as though the Rebellion had determined that the President of the soldiers should go with the soldiers who have laid down their lives on the battle-field. They slew the noblest and gentlest heart that ever put down a rebellion upon this earth. In taking that life they have left the iron hand of the people to fall upon them. Love is on the front of the throne of God, but justice and judgment, with inexorable dread, follow behind; and when law is slighted and mercy despised, when they have rejected those who would be their best friends, then comes justice with her hoodwinked eyes, and with the sword and scales. From every gaping wound of your dead chief, let the voice go up from the people to see to it that our house is swept and garnished. I hasten to say one thing more, fellow-citizens. For mere 195vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for security of the future I would do every thing.”

It is a remarkable fact that when the nation gave expression to its sorrow over Lincoln’s death, Garfield should have been so notably the voice which spoke that sorrow.

A year passed on. In April of 1866, Congress, busy with the important legislation of that period, neglected to remember the approaching anniversary. On the morning of April 14, the newspapers announced that, according to President Johnson’s order, the Government offices would be closed that day out of respect to murdered Lincoln.

Congressmen at the breakfast table read this announcement, and hurried to the Capitol, inquiring what corresponding action should be taken by the two Houses of Congress.

General Garfield was in the committee room, hard at work on the preparation of a bill, when, shortly before time for the House to come to order, Speaker Colfax came hurriedly in, saying that Mr. Garfield must be in the House directly and move an adjournment. At the same time Garfield should make an address appropriate to such an anniversary. That gentleman protested that the time was too short, but Colfax insisted, and left the room.

Remaining there alone for a quarter of an hour, the General thought of the tragic event, and what he should say. Is there not something weirdly prophetic, to us who live under the reign of Arthur, in the picture of that silent man of serious mien and thoughtful brow, sitting alone, and thinking of our first assassinated President?

Just as the clerk finished reading the previous day’s Journal of the House, Mr. Garfield arose and said:

“Mr. Speaker: I desire to move that this House do now adjourn; and before the vote upon that motion is taken, I desire to say a few words.

“This day, Mr. Speaker, will be sadly memorable so long as this nation shall endure, which, God grant, maybe ‘till the last syllable of recorded time,’ when the volume of human history shall be sealed up and delivered to the Omnipotent Judge.

196“In all future time, on the recurrence of this day, I doubt not that the citizens of this Republic will meet in solemn assembly to reflect on the life and character of Abraham Lincoln, and the awful tragic event of April 14, 1865,—an event unparalleled in the history of nations, certainly unparalleled in our own. It is eminently proper that this House should this day place upon its records a memorial of that event.

“The last five years have been marked by wonderful developments of human character. Thousands of our people before unknown to fame, have taken their places in history, crowned with immortal honors. In thousands of humble homes are dwelling heroes and patriots whose names shall never die. But greatest among all these developments were the character and fame of Abraham Lincoln, whose loss the nation still deplores. His character is aptly described in the words of England’s great laureate—written thirty years ago—in which he traces the upward steps of some

“Such a life and character will be treasured forever as the sacred possession of the American people and of mankind. In the great drama of the rebellion, there were two acts. The first was the war, with its battles and sieges, victories and defeats, its sufferings and tears. That act was closing one year ago to-night, and just as the curtain was lifting on the second and final act, the restoration of peace and liberty,—just as the curtain was rising upon new events and new characters,—the evil spirit of the rebellion, in the fury of despair, nerved and directed the hand of the assassin to strike down the chief character in both.

197“It was no one man who killed Abraham Lincoln; it was the embodied spirit of treason and slavery, inspired with fearful and despairing hate, that struck him down in the moment of the nation’s supremest joy.

“Ah, sirs, there are times in the history of men and nations when they stand so near the veil that separates mortals from immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite! Through such a time has this nation passed. When two hundred and fifty thousand brave spirits passed from the field of honor through that thin veil to the presence of God, and when at last its parting folds admitted the martyr President to the company of the dead heroes of the Republic, the nation stood so near the veil that the whispers of God were heard by the children of men.

“Awe-stricken by His voice, the American people knelt in tearful reverence and made a solemn covenant with Him and with each other that this nation should be saved from its enemies, that all its glories should be restored, and on the ruins of treason and slavery the temples of freedom and justice should be built, and should survive forever. It remains for us, consecrated by that great event, and under a covenant with God, to keep that faith, to go forward in the great work until it shall be completed.

“Following the lead of that great man, and obeying the high behests of God, let us remember that—

“I move, sir, that this House do now adjourn.”

The motion being agreed to, the House was declared adjourned.

It is now necessary to hasten on to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, wherein General Garfield, no longer under the disadvantages of a new member, continued to develop rapidly as an able worker.

General Garfield was a thorough-going temperance man. On returning to his house in Painesville, Ohio, in the summer of 1865, he found the good people of that place in trouble on account of a brewery which had been established in their midst. All efforts 198to have it removed had been unavailing. Public meetings were held. Garfield attended one of these, and while there announced that he would that day remove the brewery.

He just went over to the brewer and bought him out for $10,000. The liquor on hand, and such brewing machinery as could not be used for any thing else, he destroyed. When autumn came he used his new establishment as a cider-mill. The cider was kept till it became good vinegar, and then sold. The General thus did a good thing for the public, and, it is said, made money out of the investment, until, after several years, he sold the building.

When Congress met in December, 1865, it had to face a great task. The rebellion had been put down, but at great cost; and they had an enormous debt to provide for. Four years of war had disorganized every thing, and great questions of finance, involving tariffs, and taxation, and a thousand vexed themes of public policy, hung with leaden weight over the heads of our national legislators.

Garfield was one of the few men who were both able and willing to face the music and bury themselves in the bewildering world of figures which loomed in the dusky foreground of coming events. The interest alone on our liabilities amounted to $150,000,000.

When Speaker Colfax made up his committees, he asked Garfield what he would like. Garfield replied that he would like to have a place which called for the study of finance. Justin S. Morrill, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, also asked for him.

He was, accordingly, put upon that committee, and immediately began to study the subjects which were connected with its prospective work.

Conceiving that our financial condition was in some respects parallel to that of England at the close of the Napoleonic wars, he carefully investigated the conditions, policy, and progress of that Government from the time of Waterloo until the resumption of specie payments. The most remarkable periods of our own financial history were also studied, especially that wherein the great Alexander Hamilton appears the master mind.

These pursuits, and a wide-reaching knowledge of the existing 199conditions in our own country, were the foundations on which Garfield built the structure of a set of opinions which were then received as good, and which still withstand the test of time.

Garfield was a splendid lawyer. It is only because his course was pushed aside into the great lines of war and of politics that his history is not largely the story of great triumphs at the bar. When he was examined for admission to the bar of Ohio, the lawyers who examined him pronounced his legal knowledge phenomenal for a man to have acquired in the short time he had been reading.

But he never practiced in any court until 1866. In this place there can be mentioned only his first case, in which he argued before the United States Supreme Court. Afterwards he had about thirty cases in that court, and often appeared in State courts. At one time Judge Jeremiah S. Black, a lawyer of National reputation, offered him a partnership. Financially it would have been a good thing for Garfield, but fortunately for his constituents and for the country, he refused. Yet, in the language of Stanley Matthews, now of the U. S. Supreme Court, Mr. Garfield actually ranked “as one of the very best lawyers at the bar of the whole country.”

In 1864, L. P. Milligan, W. A. Bowles, and Stephen Horsey, three citizens of Indiana, were arrested in that State on charges of treason. There was no doubt that they were guilty of the crime. But, unfortunately, they were not tried according to law. No government can long hold such absolute powers as were given to our government during the rebellion, without developing in some degree a carelessness of the forms of law which is fatal to liberty. Indiana was not the scene of war. Her courts, and the United States courts there were open for the prosecution of criminals. Yet these men were arrested by the military department, tried by a military commission, and condemned to be hanged. Lincoln commuted their sentence to imprisonment for life, and they were sent to the State penitentiary. At this juncture a petition was presented to the U. S. Circuit Court for a writ of habeas corpus, to test the legality of these arbitrary proceedings. 200The judges of that court not agreeing, the points on which they disagreed were certified up to the Supreme Court. These points were:

“1. On the facts stated in said petition and exhibits, ought a writ of habeas corpus to be issued according to the prayer of said petition? 2. On the facts stated in said petition and exhibits, ought the petitioners to be discharged from custody, as in said petition prayed? 3. On the facts stated in said petition and exhibits, had the military commission mentioned therein jurisdiction legally to try and sentence said petitioners in manner and form as in said petition and exhibits is stated?”

This was the case. On March 6, 1866, it was to be argued. The eminent counsel engaged therein were: Hons. Joseph E. McDonald, Jere. S. Black, James A. Garfield, and David D. Field, for petitioners; Hons. Benjamin F. Butler, James Speed, and Henry Stanbery, for the Government.

Garfield had been invited to appear in this case by Mr. Black, who had observed that, although a patriotic friend of the Administration, Garfield had often sternly opposed its tendency to break all restraints of law in the exercise of its powers. So he expected,—and found it true,—that Garfield’s judgment would be with his side of the Milligan case. Of course that was the unpopular side. For Mr. Garfield to defend Milligan and his fellow-traitors would perhaps again endanger his reëlection; but he was not the man to hesitate when he saw himself in the right.

One of Garfield’s Democratic co-counsel in this case has called this act the greatest and bravest of Garfield’s life. Like old John Adams, defending British soldiers for the Boston massacre, storms of obloquy and the sunshine of favor he alike disregarded for the sake of principle.

After two days and nights of preparation, Mr. Garfield had decided upon the points of his argument. Needless to say, it was a complete and unanswerable presentation of those great English and American constitutional principles which secure the free people of those countries from star chambers and military despotisms. It showed forth clearly the limits of military power, and demonstrated 201the utter want of jurisdiction of a military court over civilian citizens.

When Garfield finished, he had established every essential point of his case beyond a peradventure. His speech closed with these eloquent words, in appeal to the court:

“Your decision will mark an era in American history. The just and final settlement of this great question will take a high place among the great achievements which have immortalized this decade. It will establish forever this truth, of inestimable value to us and to mankind, that a Republic can wield the vast enginery of war without breaking down the safeguards of liberty; can suppress insurrection and put down rebellion, however formidable, without destroying the bulwarks of law; can, by the might of its armed millions, preserve and defend both nationality and liberty. Victories on the field were of priceless value, for they plucked the life of the Republic out of the hands of its enemies; but

and if the protection of law shall, by your decision, be extended over every acre of our peaceful territory, you will have rendered the great decision of the century.

“When Pericles had made Greece immortal in arts and arms, in liberty and law, he invoked the genius of Phidias to devise a monument which should symbolize the beauty and glory of Athens. That artist selected for his theme the tutelar divinity of Athens, the Jove-born Goddess, protectress of arts and arms, of industry and law, who typified the Greek conception of composed, majestic, unrelenting force. He erected on the heights of the Acropolis a colossal statue of Minerva, armed with spear and helmet, which towered in awful majesty above the surrounding temples of the gods. Sailors on far-off ships beheld the crest and spear of the Goddess, and bowed with reverent awe. To every Greek she was the symbol of power and glory. But the Acropolis, with its temples and statues, is now a heap of ruins. The visible gods have vanished in the clearer light of modern civilization. We can not restore the decayed emblems of ancient Greece, but it is in your power, O Judge, to erect in this citadel of our liberties a monument more lasting than brass; invisible, indeed, to the eye of flesh, but visible to the eye of the spirit 202as the awful form and figure of Justice crowning and adorning the Republic; rising above the storms of political strife, above the din of battle, above the earthquake shock of rebellion; seen from afar and hailed as protector by the oppressed of all nations; dispensing equal blessings, and covering with the protecting shield of law the weakest, the humblest, the meanest, and, until declared by solemn law unworthy of protection, the guiltiest of its citizens.”

Other and very able arguments were made on both sides of the case; but the law was sustained and the prisoners set free.

For this act Garfield was denounced by many newspapers and many individuals in his own State and elsewhere. But, as usual, he weathered it all, and was reëlected to Congress in the fall; for the Reserve people had come to the point of believing in Garfield, though he did not follow their opinions. In from one to three years afterwards they generally discovered that he had been right from the start.

On February 1, 1866, Garfield made that masterly address on the Freedmen’s Bureau, in which he so clearly set forth his views on the nature of the Union, and the States of which it is composed. This speech will be more fully mentioned in another place. On March 16, 1866, he made a remarkably able speech on “The Currency and Specie Payments,” farther reference to which must, for the present, be deferred.

A man of Mr. Garfield’s intellect and scholarly acquirements, could not fail to be interested in the cause of education, always and every-where. He was himself a splendid result of the free-school system of Ohio, and had been an enthusiastic teacher. What, then, more natural than that as a public man he should try to interest Congress in the condition of American schools?

At the request of the American Association of School Superintendents, Mr. Garfield, in February, 1866, prepared a bill for the establishment of a National Bureau of Education. The principal object of this bureau was to collect statistics and other facts, and so to arrange and to publish them as to enlighten the people as to our progress in the means of education. The bill was opposed on 203account of the expense, as it called for an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars!

Speaking on this bill, June 8, 1866, Mr. Garfield called attention to the subject of national expenditures for extra governmental purposes. We had expended millions on a Coast Survey Bureau, on an Astronomical Observatory, on a Light-House Board, on Exploring Expeditions, on the Pacific Railroad Survey, on Agriculture, on the Patent Office,—why not a few dollars on Education? “As man is greater than the soil, as the immortal spirit is nobler than the clod it animates, so is the object of this bill of more importance than any mere pecuniary interest.”

The National Bureau of Education was established, and the results of its work have fully vindicated the opinions of its founders.

Garfield’s idea of what should be taught in our schools and colleges was as broad and deep as the domain of knowledge; but, withal, very practical. That he loved the classics, his own study of them demonstrates; but he saw that something better adapted to the scientific and practical character of our country was needed. In an address at Hiram, on June 14, 1867, he gave emphatic expression to this idea.

“A finished education is supposed to consist mainly of literary culture. The story of the forges of the Cyclops, where the thunderbolts of Jove were fashioned, is supposed to adorn elegant scholarship more gracefully that those sturdy truths which are preaching to this generation in the wonders of the mine, in the fire of the furnace, in the clang of the iron-mills, and the other innumerable industries, which, more than all other human agencies, have made our civilization what it is, and are destined to achieve wonders yet undreamed of. This generation is beginning to understand that education should not be forever divorced from industry; that the highest results can be reached only when science guides the hand of labor. With what eagerness and alacrity is industry seizing every truth of science and putting it in harness!”

Moreover, Mr. Garfield believed strongly in a liberal political education for the youth of the land. On this point, in the address above mentioned, he said:

204“It is well to know the history of these magnificent nations, whose origin is lost in fable, and whose epitaphs were written a thousand years ago; but, if we can not know both, it is far better to study the history of our own nation, whose origin we can trace to the freest and noblest aspirations of the human heart—a nation that was formed from the hardiest, purest, and most enduring elements of European civilization; a nation that by its faith and courage has dared and accomplished more for the human race in a single century than Europe accomplished in the first thousand years of the Christian era. The New England township was the type after which our Federal Government was modeled; yet it would be rare to find a college student who can make a comprehensive and intelligible statement of the municipal organization of the township in which he was born, and tell you by what officers its legislative, judicial, and executive functions are administered. One half of the time which is now almost wholly wasted in district schools on English grammar, attempted at too early an age, would be sufficient to teach our children to love the Republic, and to become its loyal and life-long supporters. After the bloody baptism from which the Nation has risen to a higher and nobler life, if this shameful defect in our system of education be not speedily remedied, we shall deserve the infinite contempt of future generations. I insist that it should be made an indispensable condition of graduation in every American college, that the student must understand the history of this continent since its discovery by Europeans, the origin and history of the United States, its constitution of government, the struggles through which it has passed, and the rights and duties of citizens who are to determine its destiny and share its glory.

“Having thus gained the knowledge which is necessary to life, health, industry, and citizenship, the student is prepared to enter a wider and grander field of thought. If he desires that large and liberal culture which will call into activity all his powers, and make the most of the material God has given him, he must study deeply and earnestly the intellectual, the moral, the religious, and the æsthetic nature of man; his relations to nature, to civilization past and present; and, above all, his relations to God. These should occupy, nearly, if not fully, half the time of his college course. In connection with the philosophy of the mind, he should study logic, the pure mathematics, and the general laws of thought. In connection with moral philosophy, he should study political and social ethics—a science so little known either in colleges or Congresses. Prominent 205among all the rest, should be his study of the wonderful history of the human race, in its slow and toilsome march across the centuries—now buried in ignorance, superstition, and crime; now rising to the sublimity of heroism and catching a glimpse of a better destiny; now turning remorselessly away from, and leaving to perish, empires and civilizations in which it had invested its faith and courage and boundless energy for a thousand years, and, plunging into the forests of Germany, Gaul, and Britain, to build for itself new empires better fitted for its new aspirations; and, at last, crossing three thousand miles of unknown sea, and building in the wilderness of a new hemisphere its latest and proudest monuments.”

When the Fortieth Congress met, in December of 1867, Mr. Garfield was, contrary to his wishes, taken off the Committee on Ways and Means and made Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. In the line of this work he pursued some very important investigations of both military and political character.

Among his most important speeches, in this connection, were that on the “Military Control of the Rebel States” made in February, 1867 (during the Thirty-Ninth Congress), and that delivered January 17, 1868, on the then all-absorbing theme, “Reconstruction.”

In the conflict between President Johnson and the majority in Congress, about the government of the late rebel States, Mr. Garfield was, of course, sternly opposed to that outrageous policy of the President, whose main object seemed to be the undoing of all the beneficial results of the war.

When the articles of impeachment against Johnson were passed, Garfield was not in Washington; but on his return, February 29, 1868, he took occasion to say that if he had been present he should have voted for them. He had formerly opposed such action because he thought it would be unsuccessful. Johnson’s later actions, however, especially his arbitrary dismissal of Secretary Stanton, were such clear violations of the Constitution that he supposed the President’s guilt could be judicially established, and therefore he favored the attempt.

On the 15th of May of this same year, Mr. Garfield delivered another address on the currency. His financial views were still 206in advance of his party, and the unsound views advanced by various politicians gave opportunity for many a well-directed shot from his well-stored armory of facts, figures, and principles. His speeches on this topic alone would fill a large volume.

In 1868 occurred one of the many attempts made by politicians to reduce the public debt by extorting money from the Nation’s creditors. On July 15, 1868, Mr. Garfield discussed, at considerable length and with all his usual clearness and ability, one of these measures, which, in this case, was a bill for the taxation of bonds. He was too honest a man, and, at the same time, too sound a financier, to be blind to the wrong as well as the impolitic character of such a law. Two paragraphs will suffice to exhibit these two points:

“Nobody expects that we can pay as fast as the debt matures, but we shall be compelled to go into the market and negotiate new loans. Let this system of taxation be pursued; let another Congress put the tax at twenty per cent., another at forty per cent., and another at fifty per cent., or one hundred per cent.; let the principle once be adopted—the rate is only a question of discretion—and where will you be able to negotiate a loan except at the most ruinous sacrifice? Let such legislation prevail as the gentleman urges, and can we look any man in the face and ask him to loan us money? If we do not keep faith to-day, how can we expect to be trusted hereafter?

“There was a declaration made by an old English gentleman in the days of Charles II. which does honor to human nature. He said he was willing at any time to give his life for the good of his country; but he would not do a mean thing to save his country from ruin. So, sir, ought a citizen to feel in regard to our financial affairs. The people of the United States can afford to make any sacrifice for their country, and the history of the last war has proved their willingness; but the humblest citizen can not afford to do a mean or dishonorable thing to save even this glorious Republic.”

It was in 1867 that Garfield made his only trip to Europe. When the summer of that year came, the hard year’s work, just finished, had made considerable inroad on his health, and he thought a sea voyage would bring back his strength. On July 13, Mr. and 207Mrs. Garfield sailed from New York in the “City of London,” which carried them across the Atlantic in thirteen days.

Remembering the ambitions of his boyhood to become a sailor, Garfield enjoyed his voyage as few men do who cross the sea. They reached Liverpool on the 26th, and as they steamed up the Mersey, General Garfield significantly remarked, looking down into its muddy waters,

From Liverpool they went to London, stopping at two or three interesting places by the way. At London he visited both Houses of Parliament, heard debates on the great reform bill which passed at that time; saw Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, and other great Englishmen, and after a week of sight-seeing and studying here, visited other parts of England, and then went to Scotland. Mr. Blaine and Mr. Morrill, were with them in Scotland. There the General visited the home of Burns and re-read “Tam O’Shanter.”

Leaving Scotland at Leith, they crossed the North Sea to Rotterdam, went to Brussels and Cologne, and thence up the Rhine to Mayence.

Thence by various stages, reveling in old world glories, he reached Italy—Florence and Rome. Here a year of life was crowded into a week, while Garfield lived amid the wrecks of antiquity and the decayed remnants of that dead empire whose splendid history can not be forgotten till “the last syllable of recorded time.”

On October first they proceeded, by a circuitous route, to make their way to Paris, where they met several American friends, among them the artist, Miss Ransom. After a short stay there, and a few excursions to other places, they finally started for home, and by November 6th they were once more standing on American soil.

General Garfield’s health was by this means thoroughly restored, and he had realized in some degree one of the sincerest wishes of his life,—a more familiar acquaintance with some places across the sea than books could give.

208On May 30, 1868, occurred the first general observance of that beautiful national custom, the annual decoration of the soldiers’ graves. On that day, the President and his Cabinet, with a large number of Congressmen and other distinguished persons, and about fifteen thousand people, met on Arlington Heights to pay their respects to the Nation’s dead, and listen to an address. The orator of the day was Garfield.

No more touching and sincere expression of patriotic sentiments was ever uttered than he spoke there that day. Indeed, his reverence for the time and place was deeper than his words could tell. To this he referred in the beginning, saying:

“If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue may be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death; and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.

“For the noblest man that lives there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune; must still be assailed with temptations before which lofty natures have fallen. But with these, the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.”

This memorable address closed thus:

“And now, consider this silent assembly of the dead. What does it represent? Nay, rather, what does it not represent? It is an epitome of the war. Here are sheaves reaped, in the harvest of death, from every battle-field of Virginia. If each grave had a voice to tell us what its silent tenant last saw and heard on earth, we might stand, with uncovered heads, and hear the whole story of the war. We should hear that one perished when the first great drops of the crimson shower began to fall, when the darkness of that first disaster at Manassas fell like an 209eclipse on the Nation; that another died of disease while wearily waiting for winter to end; that this one fell on the field, in sight of the spires of Richmond, little dreaming that the flag must be carried through three more years of blood before it should be planted in that citadel of treason; and that one fell when the tide of war had swept us back, till the roar of rebel guns shook the dome of yonder Capitol, and re-echoed in the chambers of the Executive Mansion. We should hear mingled voices from the Rappahannock, the Rapidan, the Chickahominy, and the James; solemn voices from the Wilderness, and triumphant shouts from the Shenandoah, from Petersburg, and the Five Forks, mingled with the wild acclaim of victory and the sweet chorus of returning peace. The voices of these dead will forever fill the land, like holy benedictions.

“What other spot so fitting for their last resting-place as this, under the shadow of the capitol saved by their valor? Here, where the grim edge of battle joined; here, where all the hope and fear and agony of their country centered; here let them rest, asleep on the Nation’s heart, entombed in the Nation’s love!

“The view from this spot bears some resemblance to that which greets the eye at Rome. In sight of the Capitoline Hill, up and across the Tiber, and overlooking the city, is a hill, not rugged or lofty, but known as the Vatican Mount. At the beginning of the Christian Era, an imperial circus stood on its summit. There, gladiator slaves died for the sport of Rome, and wild beasts fought with wilder men. In that arena, a Galilean fisherman gave up his life, a sacrifice for his faith. No human life was ever so nobly avenged. On that spot was reared the proudest Christian temple ever built by human hands. For its adornment, the rich offerings of every clime and kingdom had been contributed. And now, after eighteen centuries, the hearts of two hundred million people turn toward it with reverence when they worship God. As the traveler descends the Apennines, he sees the dome of St. Peter rising above the desolate Campagna and the dead city, long before the Seven Hills and ruined palaces appear to his view. The fame of the dead fisherman has outlived the glory of the Eternal City. A noble life, crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.

“Seen from the western slope of our Capitol, in direction, distance, and appearance, this spot is not unlike the Vatican Mount, though the river that flows at our feet is larger than a hundred Tibers. Seven years ago 210this was the home of one who lifted his sword against the life of his country, and who became the great imperator of the rebellion. The soil beneath our feet was watered by the tears of slaves, in whose hearts the sight of yonder proud Capitol awakened no pride, and inspired no hope. The face of the goddess that crowns it was turned toward the sea, and not toward them. But, thanks be to God, this arena of rebellion and slavery is a scene of violence and crime no longer! This will be forever the sacred mountain of our capital. Here is our temple; its pavement is the sepulcher of heroic hearts; its dome, the bending heaven; its altar candles, the watching stars.

“Hither our children’s children shall come to pay their tribute of grateful homage. For this are we met to-day. By the happy suggestion of a great society, assemblies like this are gathering at this hour in every State in the Union. Thousands of soldiers are to-day turning aside in the march of life to visit the silent encampments of dead comrades who once fought by their sides.

“From many thousand homes, whose light was put out when a soldier fell, there go forth to-day, to join these solemn processions, loving kindred and friends, from whose hearts the shadow of grief will never be lifted till the light of the eternal world dawns upon them.

“And here are children, little children, to whom the war left no father but the Father above. By the most sacred right, theirs is the chief place to-day. They come with garlands to crown their victor fathers. I will delay the celebration no longer.”

CHAPTER VII. LEADER AND STATESMAN. — BLACK FRIDAY. — THE RAILWAY PROBLEM.

As a politician, General Garfield was peculiar. In fact, he was scarcely a politician at all. The title of this chapter tells what he was. While he was in Europe the inflation cry was raised. Greenbacks were good. The Government printing-presses were idle. Why not put the presses at work making more greenbacks? There were plenty of worthy, industrious men, who were poor. Why not have money enough to place every one in comfortable circumstances? What a capital idea! Why had no one thought of it before? The West, and particularly Ohio, laughed aloud with pleasure at the new fountain of wealth which had been right under the people’s noses all the time, and no one ever suspected it. In order to make things even all around, it was the thing to do to make the bondholders take greenbacks instead of gold for their bonds. If they objected, no matter; they could stand it. Ohio Republicans took up this battle cry. General Garfield’s constituents were for inflation with all their hearts. As for himself he had, in March, 1866, declared for hard money, and for the payment of the bonds in gold. Congressmen have to go to the country every two years, so that the popular sentiment may be constantly represented in the Lower House of Congress. Garfield had been reëlected three times. To secure another election, most men would have found their political opinions, about election time, gradually coming around to those of the people. Read the following extract from a letter by General Garfield to his confidential friend, Hinsdale, written March 8, 1868:

“The State convention at Columbus has committed itself to some financial doctrines that, if I understand them, I can not and will not indorse. If my 212constituents approve them, they can not approve me. Before many weeks my immediate political future will be decided. I care less about the result than I have ever cared before.”

How is that for independence?

But the private letter was only the preface to an expression of the same thing in public. When General Garfield came home his friends found that he was immovable on the financial question. A short time before the nominating convention he was about to return to Washington. Some friends at Jefferson arranged to give him a reception on the eve of his departure. There was to be some speech-making. His friends had urged him to let the financial question alone. The welcoming address contained some broad hints. The speaker hinted at the greenback platform, and delicately intimated that General Garfield’s return was conditioned upon his indorsement of the platform. Then the thunderer let fly. Garfield took up the question of finance, and, in the boldest terms, denounced the party platform as dishonest and despicable. He declared that if a life-time of office were offered him, with the understanding that he was to support the platform, he would refuse it at once. Then he took himself off to Washington. When the time for the convention came he was renominated, and a short time later elected.

It is impossible to even sketch the varied activities of the man from this time on, in Congress. His voluminous reports, his comprehensive debates on every leading subject, his immense and varied committee work, comprise a vast field, the very outline of which would surpass the limits of this work. No subject of national importance escaped his attention. Reconstruction, pensions, navigation, tariff, internal improvements, the census, education, the Indian question, corporations, the currency, national banks, public expenditures, civil service reform, railways, civil rights, polygamy, the Chinese—these are only a few of the great subjects which he mastered. His speeches are incomparable for their profound learning, their exhaustive research, their glowing rhetoric. They might serve as text-books upon the great governmental problems of the age. In looking over the record of the proceedings 213in Congress at this period, one can but be impressed with the marked superiority of his efforts over those of the large majority of his compeers. However worthy the utterances of these latter may be viewed alone, they are dwarfed by the forced comparison with the productions of his majestic mind. These speeches mark the man as a carefully trained intellectual giant, perfectly at home and a terror in the field of debate. They are of inestimable value now, as giving his intellectual biography.

On December 14, 1868, he introduced a bill “To strengthen the public credit.” This subsequently became a part of the great bill making our bonds payable in gold. Around this fortification of the public credit, for ten years, political warfare raged the fiercest, but the rampart was never taken; and, in 1879, when resumption was accomplished, the law still remained on the statute book. Every attempt to repeal it was fought by Garfield on the principles of political science, and his name must be placed with those of Grant and Sherman on this question.

February 26, 1869, General Garfield, as Chairman of the Military Committee, made the monster report upon the reorganization of the army. It contains one hundred and thirty-seven printed pages. The stupendous problem of readjusting the armies of the republic to a peace footing, had occupied Garfield for years. His report was the result of examinations of all the leading army officers. It contained the history of each department of the army. It illuminated all the dark corners, the secret channels, the hidden chambers of corruption which had been constructed in the military policy of the country, and was the product of enormous labor.

In the spring of 1869 General Garfield introduced a resolution for the appointment of a committee to examine into the necessities for legislation upon the subject of the ninth census, to be taken the following year. He was appointed chairman. His speeches on the great subject of statistics are most characteristic. They are wholly out of the rut of Congressional speeches. They show Garfield in the light of a political scientist. Nothing could more strikingly prove the enormous reach of his mind. He showed himself 214abreast of the scientific thought of the age. Volume after volume of the Congressional Globe will be searched in vain to find speeches from any other man which even approximate these studies in the region of social science. Nowhere in or out of Congress can be found so succinct and admirable a statement of the importance of statistics. Here is an extract from his first speech, made April 6, 1869:

“This is the age of statistics, Mr. Speaker. The word ‘statistics’ itself did not exist until 1749, whence we date the beginning of a new science on which modern legislation must be based, in order to be permanent. The treatise of Achenwall, the German philosopher who originated the word, laid the foundation of many of the greatest reforms in modern legislation. Statistics are state facts, facts for the consideration of statesmen, such as they may not neglect with safety. It has been truly said that ‘statistics are history in repose; history is statistics in motion.’ If we neglect the one, we shall deserve to be neglected by the other. The legislator without statistics is like the mariner at sea without the compass. Nothing can safely be committed to his guidance. A question of fearful importance, the well-being of this Republic, has agitated this House for many weeks. It is this: Are our rich men growing richer, and our poor growing poorer? And how can this most vital question be settled, except by the most careful and honest examination of the facts? Who can doubt that the next census will reveal to us more important truths concerning the situation of our people than any census ever taken by any nation? By what standard could we measure the value of a complete, perfect record of the condition of the people of this country, and such facts as should exhibit their burdens and their strength? Who doubts that it would be a document of inestimable value to the legislator and the nation? How to achieve it, how to accomplish it, is the great question.

“We are near the end of a decade that has been full of earthquakes, and amid the tumult we have lost our reckoning. We do not yet comprehend the stupendous changes through which we have passed, nor can we until the whole field is resurveyed. If a thousand volcanoes had been bursting beneath the ocean, the mariner would need new charts before he could safely sail the seas again. We are soon to set out on our next decade with a thousand new elements thrown in upon us by the war. 215The way is trackless. Who shall pilot us? The war repealed a part of our venerable census law. One schedule was devoted to slaves. Thank God! it is useless now. Old things have passed away, and a multitude of new things are to be here recorded; and not only the things to be taken, but the manner of taking them, requires a thorough remodeling at our hands. If this Congress does not worthily meet the demands of this great occasion, every member must bear no small share of the odium that justly attaches to men who fail to discharge duties of momentous importance, which once neglected can never be performed.”

On December 16, 1867, General Garfield made a second speech on the subject, so elaborate and remarkable, so unlike any thing to be found elsewhere in all the annals of the American Congress, that we yield large space to it. The latter part of the speech relates to the defects of the old law, and the advantages of the proposed new one:

“The modern census is so closely related to the science of statistics that no general discussion of it is possible without considering the principles on which statistical science rests and the objects which it proposes to reach.

“The science of statistics is of recent date, and, like many of its sister sciences, owes its origin to the best and freest impulses of modern civilization. The enumerations of inhabitants and the appraisements of property made by some of the nations of antiquity were practical means employed sometimes to distribute political power, but more frequently to adjust the burdens of war, but no attempt was made among them to classify the facts obtained so as to make them the basis of scientific induction. The thought of studying these facts to ascertain the wants of society had not then dawned upon the human mind, and, of course, there was not a science of statistics in this modern sense.

“It is never easy to fix the precise date of the birth of any science, but we may safely say that statistics did not enter its scientific phase before 1749, when it received from Professor Achenwall, of Göttingen, not only its name, but the first comprehensive statement of its principles. Without pausing to trace the stages of its growth, some of the results of the cultivation of statistics in the spirit and methods of science may be stated as germane to this discussion:

“1. It has developed the truth that society is an organism, whose elements 216and forces conform to laws as constant and pervasive as those which govern the material universe; and that the study of these laws will enable man to ameliorate his condition, to emancipate himself from the cruel dominion of superstition, and from countless evils which were once thought beyond his control, and will make him the master rather than the slave of nature. Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe—that the world is a cosmos and not a chaos.

“The assertion of the reign of law has been stubbornly resisted at every step. The divinities of heathen superstition still linger in one form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one supreme will acting regularly, not fortuitously, through laws beautiful and simple rather than through a fitful and capricious system of intervention.

“Lecky tells us that in the early ages it was believed that the motion of the heavenly bodies, as well as atmospheric changes, was affected by angels. In the Talmud, a special angel was assigned to every star and every element, and similar notions were general throughout the Middle Ages.

“The scientific spirit has cast out the demons, and presented us with nature clothed and in her right mind and living under the reign of law. It has given us, for the sorceries of the alchemist, the beautiful laws of chemistry; for the dreams of the astrologer, the sublime truths of astronomy; for the wild visions of cosmogony, the monumental records of geology; for the anarchy of diabolism, the laws of God. But more stubborn still has been the resistance against every attempt to assert the reign of law in the realm of society. In that struggle, statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

“We no longer hope to predict the career and destiny of a human being by studying the conjunction of planets that presided at his birth. We study rather the laws of life within him, and the elements and forces of nature and society around him. We no longer attribute the untimely death of infants wholly to the sin of Adam, for we know it is the result of bad nursing and ignorance. We are beginning to acknowledge that—

Governments are only beginning to recognize these truths.

217“In 1853 the Presbytery of Edinburgh petitioned the British ministry to appoint a day of national fasting and prayer, in order to stay the ravages of cholera in Scotland. Lord Palmerston, the Home Secretary, replied in a letter which a century before no British statesman would have dared to write. He told the clergy of Scotland that: ‘The plague being already upon them, activity was preferable to humiliation; that the causes of disease should be removed by improving the abodes of the poor, and cleansing them from those sources of contagion which would infallibly breed pestilence and be fruitful in death in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a united but inactive nation.’ Henry Thomas Buckle expressed the belief that this letter will be quoted in future ages as a striking illustration of the progress of enlightened public opinion. But that further progress is possible is seen in the fact that within the last three years an English bishop has attributed the rinderpest to the Oxford essays and the writings of Colenso.

“In these remarks I disclaim any reference to the dominion of the Creator over his spiritual universe, and the high and sacred duty of all his intelligent creatures to reverence and worship him. I speak solely of those laws that relate to the physical, intellectual, and social life of man.

“2. The development of statistics is causing history to be rewritten. Till recently the historian studied nations in the aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges, and battles. Of the people themselves—the great social body with life, growth, sources, elements, and laws of its own—he told us nothing. Now statistical inquiry leads him into the hovels, homes, workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all places where human nature displays its weakness and its strength. In these explorations he discovers the seeds of national growth and decay, and thus becomes the prophet of his generation.

“Without the aid of statistics, that most masterly chapter of human history, the third of Macaulay’s first volume, could never have been written.

“3. Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statues not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics. He must study society rather than black-letter learning. He must learn the truth ‘that society usually prepares the crime, and the criminal is only the instrument that 218accomplishes it;’ that statesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in punishing or evading results.

“Light is itself a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that grow in the darkness disappear like owls and bats before the light of day. For example, who can doubt that before many months the press of this country will burn down the whipping-posts of Delaware as effectually as the mirrors of Archimedes burned the Roman ships in the harbor of Syracuse?

“I know of no writer who has exhibited the importance of this science to statesmanship so fully and so ably as Sir George Cornwall Lewis, in his treatise On the Methods of Observation and Reasoning on Politics.

“After showing that politics is now taking its place among the sciences, and as a science its superstructure rests on observed and classified facts, he says of the registration of political facts, which consists of history and statistics, that ‘it may be considered as the entrance and propylæa to politics. It furnishes the materials upon which the artificer operates, which he hews into shape and builds up into a symmetrical structure.’

“In a subsequent chapter, he portrays the importance of statistics to the practical statesman in this strong and lucid language:

“‘He can hardly take a single safe step without consulting them. Whether he be framing a plan of finance, or considering the operation of an existing tax, or following the variations of trade, or studying the public health, or examining the effects of a criminal law, his conclusions ought to be guided by statistical data.’—Vol. i, p. 134.

“Napoleon, with that wonderful vision vouchsafed to genius, saw the importance of this science when he said:

“‘Statistics is the budget of things; and without a budget there is no public safety.’

“We may not, perhaps, go as far as Goethe did, and declare that ‘figures govern the world;’ but we can fully agree with him that ‘they show how it is governed.’

“Baron Quetelet, of Belgium, one of the ripest scholars and profoundest students of statistical science, concludes his latest chapter of scientific results in these words:

“‘One of the principal results of civilization is to reduce more and more the limits within which the different elements of society fluctuate. The more intelligence increases the more these limits are reduced, and the nearer we approach the beautiful and the good. The perfectibility of the 219human species results as a necessary consequence of all our researches. Physical defects and monstrosities are gradually disappearing; the frequency and severity of diseases are resisted more successfully by the progress of medical science; the moral qualities of man are proving themselves not less capable of improvement; and the more we advance, the less we shall have need to fear those great political convulsions and wars and their attendant results, which are the scourges of mankind.’

“It should be added that the growing importance of political science, as well as its recent origin, is exhibited in the fact that nearly every modern nation has established within the last half century a bureau of general statistics for the uses of statesmanship and science. In the thirty states of Europe they are now assiduously cultivating the science. Not one of their central bureaus was fully organized before the year 1800.

“The chief instrument of American statistics is the census, which should accomplish a two-fold object. It should serve the country by making a full and accurate exhibit of the elements of national life and strength, and it should serve the science of statistics by so exhibiting general results that they may be compared with similar data obtained by other nations.

“In the light of its national uses and its relations to social science, let us consider the origin and development of the American census.

“During the colonial period, several enumerations of the inhabitants of the Colonies were made by the order of the British Board of Trade; but no general concerted attempt was made to take a census until after the opening of the Revolutionary War. As illustrating the practical difficulty of census-taking at that time, a passage in a letter, written in 1715 to the Lords of Trade, by Hunter, the colonial governor of New York, may be interesting:

“‘The superstition of this people is so unsurmountable that I believe I shall never be able to obtain a complete list of the number of inhabitants of this province.’—New York Colonial MSS., vol. v, p. 459.

“He then suggests a computation, based upon returns of militia and of freemen, afterward the women and children, and then the servants and slaves.

“William Burnet, colonial governor of New Jersey, to the Lords of Trade, June 26, 1726, after mentioning returns made in 1723, says:

“‘I would have then ordered the like accounts to be taken in New 220Jersey, but I was advised it might make the people uneasy, they being generally of a New England extraction, and thereby enthusiasts; and that they would take it for a repetition of the same sin that David committed in numbering the people, and might bring on the like judgments. This notion put me off from it at the time, but since your lordships desire it, I will give the orders to the sheriffs, that it may be done as soon as may be.’

“That this sentiment has not wholly disappeared, may be seen from the following: At a public meeting held on the evening of November 12, 1867, in this city, pending the taking of the census of the District of Columbia by the Department of Education and the municipal authorities, a speaker, whose name is given in the reported proceedings, said:

“‘I regard the whole matter as illegal. Taking the census is an important matter. In the Bible we are told David ordered Joab to take the census when he had no authority to do so, and Joab was punished for it.’ He thought these parties, the Metropolitan police, should be enjoined from asking questions, and he advised those who had not returned the blank, not to fill it up or answer a single question.

“As early as 1775 the Continental Congress resolved that certain of the burdens of the war should be distributed among the Colonies, ‘according to the number of inhabitants of all ages, including negroes and mulattoes, in each colony;’ and also recommended to the several colonial conventions, councils, or committees of safety, to ascertain the number of inhabitants in each colony, and to make returns to Congress as soon as possible. Such responses as were made to this recommendation, were probably of no great value, and are almost wholly lost.

“The Articles of Confederation, as reported by John Dickinson, in July, 1776, provided for a triennial enumeration of the inhabitants of the States, such enumeration to be the basis of adjusting the ‘charges of war and all other expenses that should be incurred for the common defense or general welfare.’ The eighth of the articles, as they were finally adopted, provided that these charges and expenses should be defrayed out of a common treasury, to be supplied by the several States in ‘proportion to the value of land within each State granted to or surveyed for any person; and such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States, in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.’

“The ninth article gave Congress the authority ‘to agree upon the 221numbers of land forces, and to make requisitions from each of its quota in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State.’ These articles, unquestionably contemplated a national census, to include a valuation of land and an enumeration of population, but they led to no substantial results. When the blanks in the revenue report of 1783 were filled, the committee reported that they had been compelled to estimate the population of all the States except New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland.

“The next step is to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The charter of Government, framed by that body, provided for a national census to be taken decennially. Moreau de Jonnés, a distinguished French writer on statistics, in his ‘Elements de Statistique,’ refers to the constitutional provision in the following elevated language:

“‘The United States presents in its history a phenomenon which has no parallel. It is that of a people who instituted the statistics of their country on the very day when they formed their Government, and who regulated in the same instrument the census of their citizens, their civil and political rights, and the destinies of the country.’

“De Jonnés considers the American census the more remarkable because it was instituted at so early a date by a people very jealous of their liberties; and he gives emphasis to his statement by referring to the heavy penalties imposed by the first law of Congress to carry these provisions into effect.

“It must be confessed, however, that the American founders looked only to practical ends. A careful search through the ‘Madison Papers’ has failed to show that any member of the Convention considered the census in its scientific bearings. But they gave us an instrument by which those ends can be reached. ‘They builded wiser than they knew.’

“In pursuance of the requirements of the Constitution, an act providing for an enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States was passed March 1, 1790.

“As illustrating the growth of the American census, it is worth observing that the report of the first census was an octavo pamphlet of fifty-two pages, and that of 1800, a folio of seventy-eight pages.

“On the 23d of January, 1800, a memorial of the American Philosophical Society, signed by Thomas Jefferson as its President, was laid before the Senate. In this remarkable paper, written in the spirit and interest of science, the memorialists prayed that the sphere of the census might be greatly extended; but it does not appear to have made any impression on the Senate, for no trace of it is found in the annals of Congress.

222

THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON.—THE SCENE OF GARFIELD’S LABORS FOR SIXTEEN YEARS.

223“The results attained by the first six censuses were meager for the purposes of science. That of 1790 embraced population only, its single schedule containing six inquiries. That of 1800 had only a population schedule with fourteen inquiries. In 1810, an attempt was made to superadd statistics of manufactures, but the results were of no value. In 1820 the statistics of manufactures were again worthless. In 1830 the attempt to take them was abandoned. In 1840 there were schedules of population and manufactures, and some inquiries relating to education and employment.

“The law of May 23, 1850, under which the seventh and eighth censuses were taken, marks an important era in the history of American statistics. This law owes many of its wisest provisions and much of the success of its execution to Mr. Joseph C. G. Kennedy, under whose intelligent superintendence the chief work of the last census was accomplished. This law marks the transition of the American census from the merely practical to the scientific phase. The system thus originated needs correction to make it conform to the later results of statistical science and to the wants of the American people. Nevertheless, it deserves the high commendations passed upon it by some of the most eminent statisticians and publicists of the Old World.”

In continuing his speech, General Garfield considered the defects in the method of taking the census. Among the many improvements suggested are the following:

“The war has left us so many mutilated men, that a record should be made of those who have lost a limb or have been otherwise disabled, and the committee have added an inquiry to show the state of public health and the prevalence of some of the principal diseases. Dr. Jarvis, of Massachusetts, one of the highest living authorities on vital statistics, in a masterly paper presented to the committee, urged the importance of measuring as accurately as possible the effective physical strength of the people.

“It is not generally known how large a proportion of each nation is wholly or partially unfitted by physical disability for self-support. The statistics of France show that, in 1851, in a population of less than 224thirty-six millions, the deaf, dumb, blind, deformed, idiotic, and those otherwise mutilated or disabled, amounted to almost two millions. We thus see that in a country of the highest civilization the effective strength of its population is reduced one-eighteenth by physical defects. What general would venture to conduct a campaign without ascertaining the physical qualities of his soldiers as well as the number on his rolls? In this great industrial battle, which this nation is now fighting, we ought to take every available means to ascertain the effective strength of the country.”

Farther on he says:

“An inquiry was also added in regard to dwellings, so as to exhibit the several principal materials for construction, as wood, brick, stone, etc., and the value of each. Few things indicate more fully the condition of the people than the houses they occupy. The average home is not an imperfect picture of the wealth, comfort, refinement, and civilization of the average citizen.”

The next paragraph is devoted to the question of determining the number of voters. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution reduced a State’s representation in Congress to the measure of its votes. This was thought at the time to refer merely to the States where negroes were not allowed to vote, but Garfield found that in all the States, there were eighty restrictions in the right to vote, besides color and crime, ranging all the way from residence to education and character.

Under the topic of agricultural products, he said:

“It is believed that the schedule thus amended will enable us to ascertain the elements of those wonderful forces which have made our country the granary of the civilized world; will exhibit also the defects of our agricultural methods, and stimulate our farmers to adopt those means which have doubled the agricultural products of England since the days of the Stuarts, and have more than doubled the comforts of her people. The extent of that great progress can be seen in such facts as these: that ‘in the reign of Henry VII. fresh meat was never eaten even by the gentleman attendant on a great earl, except during the short interval between midsummer and Michaelmas,’ because no adequate means were 225known of fattening cattle in the winter, or even of preventing the death of one-fifth of their whole number each year; that Catharine, queen of Charles II. sent to Flanders for her salad, which the wretched gardening of England did not sufficiently provide.”

Under the head of corporation statistics, he makes the following significant statement:

“Now that the great question of human slavery is removed from the arena of American politics, I am persuaded that the next great question to be confronted, will be that of corporations, and their relation to the interests of the people and to the national life. The fear is now entertained by many of our best men, that the National and State legislatures of the Union, in creating these vast corporations, have evoked a spirit which may escape and defy their control and which may wield a power greater than legislatures themselves. The rapidity with which railroad corporations have been consolidated and placed within the power of a few men, during the past year, is not the least alarming manifestation of this power. Without here discussing the right of Congress to legislate on all the matters suggested in this direction, the committee have provided in this bill to arm the census office with the power to demand from these corporations a statement of the elements of which they are composed and an exhibit of their transactions.”

The learning, the philosophic and advanced views, the masterly grouping of social phenomena throughout this speech are absolutely novel and unique in the wilderness of Congressional oratory. After all the wealth of industry and thought expended on the subject, the bill failed to pass the Senate, so that the ninth census had to be taken under the old law. The body of the bill, however, eventually became the law under which the unequaled census of 1880 was taken.

As we advance through the multitude of General Garfield’s congressional speeches, selecting here and there some typical extract, his report on “Black Friday” attracts attention. Every one remembers the gold panic of September 24, 1869. It was the greatest financial conspiracy known to history. Wall Street, the scene of innumerable frauds, snares, conspiracies, and panics, never saw any thing to compare with the historic “Black Friday.” The House of Representatives appointed 226the Committee of Banking and Currency of which General Garfield had been made chairman at the opening of the Forty-First Congress, to investigate the causes of that financial convulsion. He went to New York, incog., managed to get into the private room of the Gold Board, where the matter was undergoing a secret investigation. Here General Garfield made notes, and got his clue. When he could stay no longer, he left a clever substitute. Each witness was attached as he left the building and hurried down to Washington before he could be primed. General Garfield’s examination of the witnesses was adroit and successful. The taciturn and self-poised Gould, the wily and exuberant Jim Fisk, alike were compelled to lay open the full details of the scheme. General Garfield’s report, made March 1,1870, goes to the bottom of this the darkest conspiracy ever planned. It reads like a novel, and contains the material for a whole library of fiction. Some idea of the foul plot may be had from the following summary and extracts:

“On the first of September, 1868, the price of gold was one hundred and forty-five. During the autumn and winter it continued to decline, interrupted only by occasional fluctuations, till in March, 1869, it touched one hundred and thirty and one-fourth (its lowest point for three years), and continued near that rate until the middle of April, the earliest period to which the evidence taken by the committee refers. At that time, Mr. Jay Gould, president of the Erie Railroad Company, bought seven millions of gold, and put up the price from one hundred and thirty-two to one hundred and forty. Other brokers followed his example, and by the twentieth of May had put up the price to one hundred and forty-four and seven-eighths, from which point, in spite of speculation, it continued to decline, and on the last day of July stood at one hundred and thirty-six.

“The first indication of a concerted movement on the part of those who were prominent in the panic of September was an effort to secure the appointment of some person who should be subservient to their schemes, as Assistant Treasurer at New York, in place of Mr. H. H. Van Dyck, who resigned in the month of June. In this effort Mr. 227Gould and Mr. A. R. Corbin, a brother-in-law of President Grant, appear to have been closely and intimately connected. If the testimony of the witnesses is to be believed, Mr. Corbin suggested the name of his stepson-in-law, Robert B. Catherwood, and Mr. Gould joined in the suggestion.

“On what grounds Mr. Catherwood declined to be a candidate does not appear. The parties next turned their attention to General Butterfield, and, both before and after his appointment, claimed to be his supporters. Gould and Catherwood testify that Corbin claimed to have secured the appointment, though Corbin swears that he made no recommendation in the case. General Butterfield was appointed Assistant Treasurer, and entered upon the duties of that office on the first of July. It is, however, proper to state that the committee has no evidence that General Butterfield was in any way cognizant of the corrupt schemes which led the conspirators to desire his appointment, nor that their recommendations had any weight in securing it. In addition to these efforts, the conspirators resolved to discover, if possible, the purposes of the President and the Secretary of the Treasury in regard to the sales of gold. The first attempt in this direction, as exhibited in the evidence, was made on the 15th of June, when the President was on board one of Messrs. Fisk and Gould’s Fall River steamers, on his way to Boston. At nine o’clock in the evening, supper was served on board, and the presence at the table of such men as Cyrus W. Field, with several leading citizens of New York and Boston, was sufficient to prevent any suspicion that this occasion was to be used for the benefit of private speculation; but the testimony of Fisk and Gould indicates clearly the purpose they had in view. Fisk says:

“‘On our passage over to Boston with General Grant, we endeavored to ascertain what his position in regard to finances was. We went down to supper about nine o’clock, intending, while we were there, to have this thing pretty thoroughly talked up, and, if possible, to relieve him from any idea of putting the price of gold down.’”

“Mr. Gould’s account is as follows:

“‘At this supper the question came up about the state of the country, the crops, prospects ahead, etc. The President was a listener; the other gentlemen were discussing; some were in favor of Boutwell’s selling gold, and some opposed to it. After they had all interchanged views, some one asked the President what his view was. He remarked that he 228thought there was a certain amount of fictitiousness about the prosperity of the country, and that the bubble might as well be tapped in one way as another. We supposed, from that conversation, that the President was a contractionist. His remark struck across us like a wet blanket.’

“It appears that these skillfully-contrived efforts elicited from the President but one remark, and this opened a gloomy prospect for the speculators. Upon their return to New York, Fisk and Gould determined to bring a great pressure upon the administration, to prevent, if possible, a further decline in gold, which would certainly interfere with their purposes of speculation. This was to be effected by facts and arguments presented in the name of the country and its business interests; and a financial theory was agreed upon, which, on its face, would appeal to the business interests of the country, and enlist in its support many patriotic citizens, but would, if adopted, incidentally enable the conspirators to make their speculations eminently successful. That theory was, that the business interests of the country required an advance in the price of gold; that, in order to move the fall crops and secure the foreign market for our grain, it was necessary that gold should be put up to 145. According to Mr. Jay Gould, this theory, for the benefit of American trade and commerce, was suggested by Mr. James McHenry, a prominent English financier, who furnished Mr. Gould the data with which to advocate it.”

This plan was tried vigorously. Hired newspapers filled their editorial pages with arguments. Every mail brought pamphlets, papers, memorials, arguments, etc., to the silent President. Wherever he turned, some one was at hand to pour into his ear a plea for the poor country. If the Government would sell no gold, the conspirators would have the market in their own hands. Men having contracts to furnish gold would have to buy of them at any price. There was no word from Grant, but the conspirators continued to buy up gold. Gould took in a partner:

“Fisk was told that Corbin had enlisted the interests of persons high in authority, that the President, Mrs. Grant, General Porter, and General Butterfield were corruptly interested in the movement, and that the Secretary of the Treasury had been forbidden to sell gold. Though these declarations were wickedly false, as the evidence abundantly shows, yet 229the compounded villainy presented by Gould and Corbin was too tempting a bait for Fisk to resist. He joined the movement at once, and brought to its aid all the force of his magnetic and infectious enthusiasm. The malign influence which Catiline wielded over the reckless and abandoned youth of Rome, finds a fitting parallel in the power which Fisk carried into Wall Street, when, followed by the thugs of Erie and the debauchees of the Opera House, he swept into the gold-room and defied both the Street and the Treasury. Indeed, the whole gold movement is not an unworthy copy of that great conspiracy to lay Rome in ashes and deluge its streets in blood, for the purpose of enriching those who were to apply the torch and wield the dagger.

“With the great revenue of the Erie Railway Company at their command, and having converted the Tenth National Bank into a manufactory of certified checks to be used as cash at their pleasure, they terrified all opponents by the gigantic power of their combination, and amazed and dazzled the dissolute gamblers of Wall Street by declaring that they had in league with them the chief officers of the National Government.

“They gradually pushed the price of gold from one hundred and thirty-five and one-half, where it stood on the morning of the thirteenth of September, until, on the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second, they held it firm at one hundred and forty and one-half.

“The conspirators had bought sixty millions of gold up to that date. Every thing depended on Grant’s preventing the sale of gold by the Treasury. Brother-in-law Corbin was to manage that. Every cent advance in gold added $15,000 to Corbin’s profit. On the 17th, it was determined to have Corbin write a long letter to the President.

“The letter contained no reference to the private speculation of Corbin, but urged the President not to interfere in the fight then going on between the bulls and bears, nor to allow the Secretary of the Treasury to do so by any sales of gold. The letter also repeated the old arguments in regard to transportation of the crops.

“While Corbin was writing it, Gould called upon Fisk to furnish his most faithful servant to carry the letter. W. O. Chapin was designated as the messenger, and early on the following morning went to Mr. Corbin’s house and received it, together with a note to General Porter. He was instructed to proceed with all possible haste, and telegraph Fisk as soon as the letter was delivered. He reached Pittsburgh a little after midnight, and, proceeding at once by carriage to Washington, Pennsylvania, 230thirty miles distant, delivered the letter to the President, and, after waiting some time, asked if there was any answer. The President told him there was no answer, and he hurried away to the nearest telegraph office and sent to Mr. Fisk this dispatch: ‘Letters delivered all right,’ and then returned to New York. Mr. Fisk appears to have interpreted the ‘all right’ of the dispatch as an answer to the doctrine of the Corbin letter, and says he proceeded in his enormous purchases upon that supposition. This letter, which Corbin had led his co-conspirators to trust as their safeguard against interference from Mr. Boutwell, finally proved their ruin. Its effect was the very reverse of what they anticipated. The letter would have been like hundreds of other letters received by the President, if it had not been for the fact that it was sent by a special messenger from New York to Washington, Pennsylvania, the messenger having to take a carriage and ride some twenty-eight miles from Pittsburgh. This letter, sent in that way, urging a certain policy on the administration, taken in connection with some rumors that had got into the newspapers at that time as to Mr. Corbin’s having become a great bull in gold, excited the President’s suspicions, and he believed that Mr. Corbin must have a pecuniary interest in those speculations; that he was not actuated simply by a desire to see a certain policy carried out for the benefit of the administration. Feeling in that way, he suggested to Mrs. Grant to say, in a letter she was writing to Mrs. Corbin, that rumors had reached her that Mr. Corbin was connected with speculators in New York, and that she hoped that if this was so he would disengage himself from them at once; that he (the President) was very much distressed at such rumors. She wrote a letter that evening. It was received in New York on the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second. Late that night Mr. Gould called at Corbin’s house. Corbin disclosed the contents of the letter, and they sat down to consider its significance. This letter created the utmost alarm in the minds of both of these conspirators. The picture of these two men that night, as presented in the evidence, is a remarkable one. Shut up in the library, near midnight, Corbin was bending over the table and straining with dim eyes to decipher and read the contents of a letter, written in pencil, to his wife, while the great gold gambler, looking over his shoulder, caught with his sharper vision every word.”

Corbin tried to get Gould to buy him out, so as to tell the President he had no interest in the market. Gould, too, plotted to save 231himself by ruining his co-conspirators. They held a meeting. Gould secretly sold to Fisk and his associates. The latter, of course, had no idea that it was Gould they were buying out. The meeting resolved to force gold up to 160 on the next day (“Black Friday”), publish a list of all firms who had contracts to furnish gold, offer to settle with them at the price named before three o’clock, but threatening higher prices to all who delayed:

“While this desperate work was going on in New York, its alarming and ruinous effects were reaching and paralyzing the business of the whole country, and carrying terror and ruin to thousands. Business men everywhere, from Boston to San Francisco, read disaster in every new bulletin. The price of gold fluctuated so rapidly that the telegraphic indicators could not keep pace with its movement. The complicated mechanism of these indicators is moved by the electric current carried over telegraphic wires directly from the gold-room, and it is in evidence that in many instances these wires were melted or burned off in the efforts of the operators to keep up with the news.

“The President returned from Pennsylvania to Washington on Thursday, the twenty-third, and that evening had a consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury concerning the condition of the gold market. The testimony of Mr. Boutwell shows that both the President and himself concurred in the opinion that they should, if possible, avoid any interference on the part of the Government in a contest where both parties were struggling for private gain; but both agreed that if the price of gold should be forced still higher, so as to threaten a general financial panic, it would be their duty to interfere and protect the business interests of the country. The next morning the price advanced rapidly, and telegrams poured into Washington from all parts of the country, exhibiting the general alarm, and urging the Government to interfere, and, if possible, prevent a financial crisis.”

At 11:42 A. M. came the crack of doom.

“Sell four millions (4,000,000) gold to-morrow, and buy four millions (4,000,000) bonds.

“Within the space of fifteen minutes the price fell from one hundred 232and sixty to one hundred and thirty-three, and in the language of one of the witnesses, half of Wall Street was involved in ruin.

“It was not without difficulty that the conspirators escaped from the fury of their victims and took refuge in their up-town stronghold—the office of the Erie Railroad Company.

“During the day and morning previous, the conspirators had succeeded in forcing many settlements at rates ruinous to their victims.”

On March 14, 1870, General Garfield spoke on the subject of the civil service. The speech abounded in details, and was pointed with references to classes of salaries which were too high. On April 1st of the same session, he delivered a great speech on the tariff question. It was characterized by its conservative avoidance of extremes, and will stand as the best expression of modern scholarship, practical statesmanship on this most important public question. It is probable that there can nowhere be found an argument on the subject of the tariff which more nearly approaches perfect legislative wisdom.

In 1870, the total amount of national bank circulation being limited by law to $300,000,000 and largely absorbed in the East, a cry arose in the South and West against this injustice. General Garfield drew up and presented a bill which became a law, increasing the limit $54,000,000, and providing for the cancellation of the surplus of notes in States having more than their quota, as fast as the Southern and Western States, having less than their quota, organized national banks and commenced to issue currency. It was a just measure, and was exactly in the line of future legislation, but the Western and Southern States had no capital to invest for banking purposes, and consequently availed themselves but slightly of the opportunity. The measure, however, was of a character to allay public clamor, demonstrate the folly of the outcry against the existing law, and facilitate the progress toward resumption. It was the forerunner of the law, removing all limit to national bank circulation, and making the volume of the currency adjustable to the demand. General Garfield’s great speech on the bill, delivered June 7, 1870, has been the inexhaustible quiver from which most of the arrows of financial discussion have since been drawn 233by all smaller marksmen. A second speech on the same subject on June 15th, was but little its inferior.

The last day of the Forty-First Congress witnessed a remarkable attempt of the Senate to encroach upon the constitutional prerogative of the House to originate all bills for raising revenues, the claim being that the measure was one to reduce revenue instead of raising it. It was a bill to abolish the income tax. Garfield favored the reduction, but an encroachment which might become a dangerous precedent had to be resisted. His argument covered the vast field of the history of the House of Commons, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, and the precedents of Congress. His conclusions were:

First.—That the exclusive right of the House of Commons of Great Britain to originate money bills, is so old that the date of its origin is unknown; it has always been regarded as one of the strongest bulwarks of British freedom against usurpation of the King and of the House of Lords, and has been guarded with the most jealous care; that in the many contests which have arisen on this subject between the Lords and Commons, during the last three hundred years, the Commons have never given way, but have rather enlarged than diminished their jurisdiction of this subject; and that since the year 1678, the Lords have conceded, with scarcely a struggle, that the Commons had the exclusive right to originate, not only bills for raising revenue, but for decreasing it; not only for imposing, but also for repealing taxes; and that the same exclusive right extended also to all general appropriations of money.

Second.—The clause of our Constitution, now under debate, was borrowed from this feature of the British Constitution, and was intended to have the same force and effect in all respects as the corresponding clause of the British Constitution, with this single exception, that our Senate is permitted to offer amendments, as the House of Lords is not.

Third.—In addition to the influence of the British example, was the further fact, that this clause was placed in our Constitution to counterbalance some special privileges granted to the Senate. It was the compensating weight thrown into the scale to make the two branches of Congress equal in authority and power. It was first put into the Constitution to compensate the large States for the advantages given to the small States in allowing them an equal representation in the Senate; 234and, when subsequently it was thrown out of the original draft, it came near unhinging the whole plan.

“It was reinserted in the last great compromise of the Constitution, to offset the exclusive right of the Senate to ratify treaties, confirm appointments, and try impeachments. The construction given to it by the members of the Constitutional Convention, is the same which this House now contends for. The same construction was asserted broadly and fully, by the First Congress, many of the members of which were framers of the Constitution. It has been asserted again and again, in the various Congresses, from the First till now; and, though the Senate has often attempted to invade this privilege of the House, yet in no instance has the House surrendered its right whenever that right has been openly challenged; and, finally, whenever a contest has arisen, many leading Senators have sustained the right of the House as now contended for.

“Again, if the Senate may throw their whole weight, political and moral, into the scale in favor of the repeal or reduction of one class of taxes, they may thereby compel the House to originate bills, to impose new taxes, or increase old ones to make up the deficiency caused by the repeal begun in the Senate, and thus accomplish by indirection, what the Constitution plainly prohibits. What Mr. Seward said in 1856, of the encroachment of the Senate, is still more strikingly true to-day.

“The tendency of the Senate is constantly to encroach,—not only upon the jurisdiction of the House, but upon the rights of the Chief Executive of the nation. The power of confirming appointments is rapidly becoming a means by which the Senate dictates appointments. The Constitution gives to the President the initiative in appointments, as it gives to the House the initiative in revenue legislation. Evidences are not wanting that both these rights are every year subjected to new invasions. If, in the past, the Executive has been compelled to give way to the pressure, and has, in some degree yielded his constitutional rights, it is all the more necessary that this House stand firm, and yield no jot or tittle of that great right intrusted to us for the protection of the people.”

This speech was absolutely conclusive on the question, and must take its place with all the immortal arguments and efforts put 235forth in the past to preserve the rights of the popular branch of national legislature. February 20, 1871, General Garfield delivered a powerful speech against the McGarraghan claim, one of the many jobs of which Congress was the victim.

General Garfield was by this time recognized as the highest authority on the intricate subjects of finance, revenue, and expenditure, in the House. It will be seen that these topics fall within the general head of political economy, “the dismal science.” Of these he was the acknowledged master. Accordingly, at the beginning of the Forty-Second Congress, in 1871, Garfield was made chairman of the Committee of Appropriations. It is probable that in this capacity he never had an equal. Something must be said of his work.

In order to master the great subject of public expenditures, he studied the history of those of European nations. He read the “budget speeches” of the English chancellors of the exchequer for a long period. He refreshed his German, and studied French, in order to read the best works in the world on the subjects, the highest authorities being in those languages. He examined the British and French appropriations for a long period. After an exhaustive study of the history of foreign nations, he commenced with our own country at the time of the Revolution. Charles Sumner was the greatest reader, and had the longest book list at the Congressional Library of any man in Washington. The library records show that General Garfield’s list was next to Sumner’s, being but slightly below it. After Sumner’s death, the man who was second became first. This gathering of facts was followed by wide inductions. National expenditures were found by him to be subject to a law as fixed as that of gravitation. There was a proportion between population, area of country, and the necessary outlay for public expenses, which was fixed. Any thing beyond this was waste. No covering could hide official robbery from the reach of such a detective as the establishment of this law. Every miscreant left a tell-tale track.

The results of his studies were embodied in an elaborate speech 236on January 22, 1872, in the introduction of his appropriation bill. The close study of political economy, however, did not divert him from other questions. He kept himself thoroughly versed on every question of public importance and was always equal to every demand.

On April 4, 1871, he delivered a speech in opposition to a Republican bill for the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time it brought down upon him the censure of his party. But he was firm. There could be no doubt of his loyalty to the nation, and his distrust of the malignant South. But he was too conservative for the war leaders and politicians. A compromise was effected, with which, however, his opponents were much dissatisfied.

Another notable speech was made on the bill to establish an educational fund from the proceeds of the sale of public lands. The speech abounded in citations from English, French, and German authorities on the subject of education. One doctrine enunciated was that matters of education belong to the State governments, not to the nation; that Congress made no claim to interfere in the method, but only to assist in the work.

In the summer of 1872, General Garfield undertook a delicate mission to the Flat-Head Indians. Their removal was required by the Government. But the noble red man refused to stir an inch from his ancestral hunting-grounds. Garfield’s mission was to be the last pacific effort. He was successful when the department had given up hope in any resource but war.

On his return from the West, General Garfield found the Credit Mobilier scandal looming up like a cyclone in the Congressional sky. Living a life of study, research, and thought, of spotless character and the purest intention, he was inexpressibly pained. A private letter of December 31, 1872, to his bosom friend Hinsdale, is indicative of his feelings:

“The Credit Mobilier scandal has given me much pain. As I told you last fall, I feared it would turn and that the company itself was a bad thing. So I think it will, and perhaps some members of Congress were conscientiously parties to its plans. It has been a new form of trial 237for me to see my name flying the rounds of the press in connection with the basest of crimes. It is not enough for one to know that his heart and motives have been pure and true, if he is not sure but that good men here and there, who do not know him, will set him down among the lowest men of doubtful morality. There is nothing in my relation to the case for which the tenderest conscience of the most scrupulous honor can blame me. It is fortunate that I never fully concluded to accept the offer made me; but it grieves me greatly to have been negotiating with a man who had so little sense of truth and honor as to use his proposals for a purpose in a way now apparent to me. I shall go before the committee, and in due time before the House, with a full statement of all that is essential to the case, so far as I am concerned. You and I are now nearly in middle life, and have not yet become soured and shriveled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us.”

His correspondence at this time with President Hinsdale, in which he uncovers his secret heart, is full of expressions of disgust with politics, “where ten years of honest toil goes for naught in the face of one vote,” as he says. Once he declares: “Were it not for the Credit Mobilier, I believe I would resign.” How plainly his character appears in the following little extract:

“You know that I have always said that my whole public life was an experiment to determine whether an intelligent people would sustain a man in acting sensibly on each proposition that arose, and in doing nothing for mere show or for demagogical effect. I do not now remember that I ever cast a vote of that latter sort. Perhaps it is true that the demagogue will succeed when honorable statesmanship will fail. If so, public life is the hollowest of all shams.”

In another letter to Colonel Rockwell, he speaks from his heart:

“I think of you as away, and in an elysium of quiet and peace, where I should love to be, out of the storm and in the sunshine of love and books. Do not think from the above that I am despondent. There is life and hope and fight in your old friend yet.”

It is hardly possible to understand the tortures which his sensitive nature underwent at this time. To an honest man the worst 238pain comes from the poisoned dagger of mistrust. At a later day, General Garfield was to make his defense to his constituents.

During this plague of heart and brain, there was no remission of the enormous activity in the chosen field of finance, revenue, and expenditure. But we can only plant foot upon the mountain peaks as we pass over the Alps of General Garfield’s Congressional labors. March 5, 1874, he delivered another great speech on “Revenues and Public Expenditures.”

On April 8, 1874, the first great “inflation” bill, by which the effects of the terrible panic of 1873 were to be relieved or cured, came up for discussion. General Garfield exhausted history in his opposition to the bill. It must be remembered that his constituents were clamoring for the passage of this bill which was to make money plenty. Taking his political life in his hand, he fought it with all his power. As in 1866, 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871, so, in 1874, he said that “next to the great achievements of the nation in putting down the rebellion, destroying its cause, and reuniting the Republic on the principle of liberty and equal rights to all, is the task of paying the fabulous expenses of the war, the funding of the debt, the maintenance of public credit, and the launching of the nation on its career of prosperity.” The speech contains citations of authority against inflation and irredeemable paper currency from John Stuart Mill, Benjamin Franklin, R. H. Lee, Washington, Adams, Peletiah Webster, Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Webster, Gonge, Calhoun, and Chase. The reader will remember that the measure passed the House and the Senate by overwhelming majorities, but was struck dead by the veto of President Grant.

On June 23, 1874, General Garfield spoke at length on the subject of appropriations for the year. In this address, as in all others upon this topic, he handled figures and statistics with the greatest skill and familiarity. The House had come to rely upon his annual speech on this subject for its information on the expenses of the Government.

Almost at the same time he delivered a speech on the Railway Problem. The pending question was upon making certain appropriations 239for River, Harbor, and Canal Surveys, as a preliminary to cheaper transportation. General Garfield endeavored to have a similar commission organized on the Railway question. He felt that any investigation of cheap transportation was lame which did not include “the greatest of our modern means of transportation, the Railway.” We quote a part of his discussion, which must be of interest to every reader:

“We are so involved in the events and movements of society that we do not stop to realize—what is undeniably true—that during the last forty years all modern societies have entered upon a period of change, more marked, more pervading, more radical than any that has occurred during the last three hundred years. In saying this, I do not forget our own political and military history, nor the French Revolution of 1793. The changes now taking place have been wrought, and are being wrought, mainly, almost wholly, by a single mechanical contrivance, the steam locomotive. There are many persons now living who well remember the day when Andrew Jackson, after four weeks of toilsome travel from his home in Tennessee, reached Washington and took his first oath of office as President of the United States. On that day, the railway locomotive did not exist. During that year, Henry Clay was struggling to make his name immortal by linking it with the then vast project of building a national road—a turnpike—from the national capital to the banks of the Mississippi.

“In the autumn of that very year George Stephenson ran his first experimental locomotive, the ‘Rocket,’ from Manchester to Liverpool and back. The rumble of its wheels, redoubled a million times, is echoing to-day on every continent.

“In 1870, there were about 125,000 miles of railroad on the two hemispheres, constructed at a cost of little less than $100,000 per mile, and representing nearly $12,000,000,000 of invested capital.

“A parliamentary commission found that during the year 1866 the railway cars of Great Britain carried an average of 850,000 passengers per day; and during that year the work done by their 8,125 locomotives would have required for its performance three and a half million horses and nearly two million men.

“What have our people done for the locomotive, and what has it 240done for us? To the United States, with its vast territorial area, the railroad was a vital necessity.

“Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that ‘the United States was a giant without bones.’ Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening. Sixty-seven thousand miles of iron track is a tolerable skeleton, even for a giant. When this new power appeared, our people everywhere felt the necessity of setting it to work; and individuals, cities, States, and the nation lavished their resources without stint to make a pathway for it. Fortunes were sunk under almost every mile of our earlier roads in the effort to capture and utilize this new power. If the State did not head the subscription for a new road, it usually came to the rescue before the work was completed.

“The lands given by the States and by the national Government to aid in the construction of railroads, reach an aggregate of nearly two hundred and fifty million acres—a territory equal to nine times the area of Ohio. With these vast resources we have made paths for the steam giant; and to-day nearly a quarter of a million of our business and working men are in his immediate service. Such a power naturally attracts to its enterprise the brightest and strongest intellects. It would be difficult to find in any other profession so large a proportion of men possessed of a high order of business ability as those who construct, manage, and operate our railroads.

“The American people have done much for the locomotive; and it has done much for them. We have already seen that it has greatly reduced, if not wholly destroyed, the danger that the Government will fall to pieces by its own weight. The railroad has not only brought our people and their industries together, but it has carried civilization into the wilderness, has built up States and Territories, which but for its power would have remained deserts for a century to come. ‘Abroad and at home,’ as Mr. Adams tersely declares, ‘it has equally nationalized people and cosmopolized nations.’ It has played a most important part in the recent movement for the unification and preservation of nations.

“It enabled us to do what the old military science had pronounced impossible—to conquer a revolted population of eleven millions, occupying a territory one-fifth as large as the continent of Europe. In an able essay on the railway system, Mr. Charles F. Adams, Jr., has pointed out some of the remarkable achievements of the railroad in our recent history. For example, a single railroad track enabled Sherman to maintain 241eighty thousand fighting men three hundred miles beyond his base of supplies. Another line, in a space of seven days, brought a reinforcement of two fully-equipped army corps around a circuit of thirteen hundred miles, to strengthen an army at a threatened point. He calls attention to the still more striking fact that for ten years past, with fifteen hundred millions of our indebtedness abroad, an enormous debt at home, unparalleled public expenditures, and a depreciated paper currency, in defiance of all past experience, we have been steadily conquering our difficulties, have escaped the predicted collapse, and are promptly meeting our engagements; because, through energetic railroad development, the country has been producing real wealth, as no country has produced it before. Finally, he sums up the case by declaring that the locomotive has ‘dragged the country through its difficulties in spite of itself.’

“In discussing this theme, we must not make an indiscriminate attack upon corporations. The corporation limited to its proper uses is one of the most valuable of the many useful creations of law. One class of corporations has played a most important and conspicuous part in securing the liberties of mankind. It was the municipal corporations—the free cities and chartered towns—that preserved and developed the spirit of freedom during the darkness of the Middle Ages, and powerfully aided in the overthrow of the feudal system. The charters of London and of the lesser cities and towns of England made the most effective resistance to the tyranny of Charles II. and the judicial savagery of Jeffries. The spirit of the free town and the chartered colony taught our own fathers how to win their independence. The New England township was the political unit which formed the basis of most of our states.

“This class of corporations have been most useful, and almost always safe, because they have been kept constantly within the control of the community for whose benefit they were created. The State has never surrendered the power of amending their charters.

“Under the name of private corporations organizations have grown up, not for the perpetuation of a great charity, like a college or hospital, not to enable a company of citizens more conveniently to carry on a private industry, but a class of corporations unknown to the early law writers has arisen, and to them have been committed the vast powers of the railroad and the telegraph, the great instruments by which modern communities live, move, and have their being.

242“Since the dawn of history, the great thoroughfares have belonged to the people, have been known as the king’s highways or the public highways, and have been open to the free use of all, on payment of a small uniform tax or toll to keep them in repair. But now the most perfect and by far the most important roads known to mankind are owned and managed as private property by a comparatively small number of private citizens.

“In all its uses the railroad is the most public of all our roads; and in all the objects to which its work relates, the railway corporation is as public as any organization can be. But in the start it was labeled a private corporation; and, so far as its legal status is concerned, it is now grouped with eleemosynary institutions and private charities, and enjoys similar immunities and exemptions. It remains to be seen how long the community will suffer itself to be the victim of an abstract definition.

“It will be readily conceded that a corporation is strictly and really private when it is authorized to carry on such a business as a private citizen may carry on. But when the State has delegated to a corporation the sovereign right of eminent domain, the right to take from the private citizen, without his consent, a portion of his real estate, to build its structure across farm, garden, and lawn, into and through, over or under, the blocks, squares, streets, churches, and dwellings of incorporated cities and towns, across navigable rivers, and over and along public highways, it requires a stretch of the common imagination and much refinement and subtlety of the law to maintain the old fiction that such an organization is not a public corporation.

“In view of the facts already set forth, the question returns, what is likely to be the effect of railway and other similar combinations upon our community and our political institutions? Is it true, as asserted by the British writer quoted above, that the state must soon recapture and control the railroads, or be captured and subjugated by them? Or do the phenomena we are witnessing indicate that general breaking-up of the social and political order of modern nations so confidently predicted by a class of philosophers whose opinions have hitherto made but little impression on the public mind?

“The analogy between the industrial condition of society at the present time and the feudalism of the Middle Ages is both striking and instructive.

“In the darkness and chaos of that period the feudal system was the 243first important step toward the organization of modern nations. Powerful chiefs and barons intrenched themselves in castles, and in return for submission and service gave to their vassals rude protection and ruder laws. But as the feudal chiefs grew in power and wealth they became the oppressors of their people, taxed and robbed them at will, and finally in their arrogance, defied the kings and emperors of the mediæval states. From their castles, planted on the great thoroughfares, they practiced the most capricious extortions on commerce and travel, and thus gave to modern language the phrase, ‘levy black-mail.’

“The consolidation of our great industrial and commercial companies, the power they wield and the relations they sustain to the state and to the industry of the people, do not fall far short of Fourier’s definition of commercial or industrial feudalism. The modern barons, more powerful than their military prototypes, own our greatest highways and levy tribute at will upon all our vast industries. And as the old feudalism was finally controlled and subordinated only by the combined efforts of the kings and the people of the free cities and towns, so our modern feudalism can be subordinated to the public good only by the great body of the people, acting through the government by wise and just laws.

“I shall not now enter upon the discussion of methods by which this grand work of adjustment may be accomplished. But I refuse to believe that the genius and energy which have developed these tremendous forces will fail to make them, not the masters, but the faithful servants of society.”

This chapter has so far been devoted to General Garfield’s public life during this period. One would think that what has been recounted occupied all his time and powers. Not so. With his political and financial studies he kept up his literary life. On June 29, 1869, he delivered an oration, before the Commercial College in Washington City, on the “Elements of Success.” We select a few thought-flowers from the blooming garden of the address. At the outset he said:

“I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than a man. I never meet a ragged boy on the street without feeling that I owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his shabby coat. When I meet you in the full flush of mature life, I see nearly all there is of you; but among these boys are the great men of the future—the 244heroes of the next generation, the philosophers, the statesmen, the philanthropists, the great reformers and molders of the next age. Therefore, I say, there is a peculiar charm to me in the exhibitions of young people engaged in the business of education.”...

Speaking of the modern college curriculum, he said:

“The prevailing system was established at a time when the learning of the world was in Latin and Greek; when, if a man would learn arithmetic, he must first learn Latin; and if he would learn the history and geography of his own country, he could acquire that knowledge only through the Latin language. Of course, in those days it was necessary to lay the foundation of learning in a knowledge of the learned languages. The universities of Europe, from which our colleges were copied, were founded before the modern languages were born. The leading languages of Europe are scarcely six hundred years old. The reasons for a course of study then are not good now. The old necessities have passed away. We now have strong and noble living languages, rich in literature, replete with high and earnest thought,—the language of science, religion, and liberty,—and yet we bid our children feed their spirits on the life of dead ages, instead of the inspiring life and vigor of our own times.

“The present Chancellor of the British Exchequer, the Right Honorable Robert Lowe, one of the brightest minds in that kingdom, said, in a recent address before the venerable University of Edinburgh: ‘I was a few months ago in Paris, and two graduates of Oxford went with me to get our dinner at a restaurant, and if the white-aproned waiter had not been better educated than all three of us, we might have starved to death. We could not ask for our dinner in his language, but fortunately he could ask us in our own language what we wanted.’ There was one test of the insufficiency of modern education....

“Let me beg you, in the outset of your career, to dismiss from your minds all idea of succeeding by luck. There is no more common thought among young people than that foolish one that by-and-by something will turn up by which they will suddenly achieve fame or fortune. No, young gentlemen; things don’t turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up. Inertia is one of the indispensable laws of matter, and things lie flat where they are until by some intelligent spirit (for nothing but spirit makes motion in this world) they are endowed with activity 245and life. Luck is an ignis fatuus. You may follow it to ruin, but not to success. The great Napoleon, who believed in his destiny, followed it until he saw his star go down in blackest night, when the Old Guard perished round him, and Waterloo was lost. A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck....

“Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard, and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance I have never known one to be drowned who was worth saving. This would not be wholly true in any country but one of political equality like ours. The editor of one of the leading magazines of England told me, not many months ago, a fact startling enough in itself, but of great significance to a poor man. He told me that he had never yet known, in all his experience, a single boy of the class of farm-laborers (not those who own farms, but mere farm-laborers) who had ever risen above his class. Boys from the manufacturing and commercial classes had risen frequently, but from the farm-labor class he had never known one.

“The reason is this: in the aristocracies of the Old World, wealth and society are built up like the strata of rock which compose the crust of the earth. If a boy be born in the lowest stratum of life, it is almost impossible for him to rise through this hard crust into the higher ranks; but in this country it is not so. The strata of our society resembles rather the ocean, where every drop, even the lowest, is free to mingle with all others, and may shine at last on the crest of the highest wave.”

His correspondence is full of glimpses of literary life. At one time he breaks into glee over a new book. At another he solemnly urges the necessity of his friend Hinsdale and himself mastering French and German. Again he sighs for more time to read, and, with the reader’s inconsistency, gives an elaborate criticism of some book he had just finished. Once he says:

“I can’t see that John Stuart Mill ever came to comprehend human life as a reality from the actual course of human affairs beginning with Greek life down to our own. Men and women were always, with him, more or less of the nature of abstractions; while, with his enormous mass of books, he learned a wonderful power of analysis, for which he was by nature surprisingly fitted. But his education was narrow just where his own mind was originally deficient. He was educated solely through 246books; for his father was never a companion. His brothers and sisters bored him. He had no playfellows, and of his mother not a word is said in his autobiography.”

The last fact mentioned must have seemed remarkable to Garfield. In another letter, he says:

“Permit me to transcribe a metrical version which I made the other day of the third ode of Horace’s first book. It is still in the rough.”

And then he actually gives a full translation of the poem: “To the Ship which carried Virgil to Athens.” At the close, he naively says: “I can better most of the verses.” Every peep of his private life has an exquisite charm. It perpetually surprises one with its frankness, its simplicity, and artless affection. In Homer’s Iliad, the great Hector, clad in dazzling armor and helmet, stoops to kiss his child before going forth to mortal combat. But the child drew back, afraid of his strange and terrible aspect. Swiftly the father removed the panoply of war, and then stooped to the child to be received with outstretched arms. In the fierce arena of debate we see Garfield clad with the stern helmet and buckler of battle. But in his private life he laid aside the armor, and stood forth in all the beauty of a grand, simple, and affectionate nature.

During the period covered by this chapter his home remained at Hiram, Ohio, where he spent his vacations from Congress. Here he lived in a very modest manner, keeping neither carriage nor horse, and borrowing or hiring when he desired to be conveyed to the railroad station, four miles off.

Mr. Frederick E. Warren, an attorney of Cincinnati, Ohio, was a student at Hiram College from 1869 to 1875. During this time he became acquainted with General Garfield. Of his impressions and acquaintance he furnishes a vivacious narrative. He says:

“General Garfield’s return home was always an event with the college boys, by whom he was greatly admired and beloved. My earliest impressions of him, as he came one morning striding up the old plank walk that stretched across the college campus, realized all that I had heard 247spoken of him as to his appearance and bearing. Even God had seemed to set his seal upon him, ‘to give the world assurance of a man.’ Subsequent acquaintance merely ripened this impression. None of us required a formal introduction to him. The boys and he instinctively knew each other. He took the stranger cordially by the hand, gave him a kindly and encouraging word, and made him feel at once that he was his friend, and you may rest assured that the boy was forever his.

“We learned much from the General’s ‘talks,’ as he styled them. Whenever at home, he regularly attended the chapel exercises each morning. As soon as the religious services were concluded, he invariably was called upon to say something; to give us a ‘talk.’ He never failed to respond. His remarks were usually brief, but delightfully instructive, and there was a freshness and novelty which characterized them that I have never met with in any other public speaker or teacher.

“On one occasion, when going to chapel, he saw a horse-shoe lying at the side of the path, which he picked up, and carried along with him. After prayer, when asked, as usual, to say something to us (I must sorrowfully confess that a majority of the boys were impatient of prayers when the General was about), he produced the horse-shoe, and proceeded to explain its history and use from the remotest period, in so entertaining a manner that I am sure that no one who was present has ever forgotten it. At another time he delivered a similar off-hand lecture upon the hammer, suggested by one he had found somewhere about the college premises. In all he said to the students he was eminently practical, and it seemed to us that he could convey more information in fifteen minutes’ talk than the combined faculty could have done in an hour.

“The general effect of these frequent brief discourses can readily be imagined. The more thoughtful vacated the playground, and gathered in groups about the boarding places, to discuss some question of interest suggested by the General, or retired to their rooms for reading and reflection upon the subject, inspired with a renewed love of knowledge, and desire for improvement.

“His application to business and study was extraordinary. It appeared to make no difference at what hour of the day or night one called upon him, he would be found in his library at work. If there was a ‘night owl’ par excellence in Hiram College from the winter of 1869 until the winter of 1875, it was myself, yet however late the hour I retired might be, I had but to look three doors westward to see the light still burning 248in General Garfield’s window, and he was nearly always up with the sun. It was often asked if he ever slept.

“Apropos of this, I am able to recall a very agreeable incident, and one highly characteristic of the man. I was reading late one night Momssen’s ‘History of Rome,’ and several times came across the word ‘symmachy,’ which I failed to find in the English dictionary. Somewhat puzzled with its frequent recurrence, and seeing that the General was still up, I decided, although it was two o’clock in the morning, to call upon him for the meaning of the word. I found him hard at work, and after excusing myself for the interruption, explained the object of my unseasonable visit. He immediately replied: ‘It is coined from the Greek, a frequent practice with Momssen;’ and taking from a book-case a Greek lexicon, he quickly furnished me with the information I was in quest of. He then insisted upon my sitting down, and for a couple of hours entertained me with an account of a recent trip to Europe.

“Leaving this topic, he returned to Momssen, whom he pronounced eccentric and tedious, and indulged in a lengthy and learned comparison between him and Niebuhr.

“I noticed upon his shelves a copy of Bryant’s translation of Homer. He complained that the book-seller had sent him an imperfect copy, there being one hundred and ninety lines at the beginning of the first volume omitted through the carelessness of the binder. He repeated some of the omitted lines, and spoke of them in terms of high critical eulogy. It was quite daylight before he allowed me to depart.

“The General was very peculiar in the discipline of his children. One evening an agent for a Babcock Fire Extinguisher was exhibiting the machine on a pile of lighted tarred boxes, on the public square, in the presence of a large crowd, among them General Garfield and his little son Jim, who is a chip off the old block, as the saying is. A gentleman accidentally stepped on the boy’s foot. He did not yell, as most boys might have done under such a pressure, but savagely sprang at the gentleman and dealt him a blow with his fist somewhere in the region of the abdomen, about as high as he could reach. The father observed it, and immediately had the crowd open and ordered the fireman to turn the hose upon Jim, which was done, and the boy was extinguished in less than a minute.

“When he was in Washington, and we wanted—as frequently happened—any public documents or any facts to aid us in our society debates, 249which were not accessible from any other source, all we had to do was to write to the General for them, and it was flattering to us how promptly he complied with these requests.

“While apparently of the most amiable temper, he taught us the duty of self-defense, and the right to resist aggression. He was not by any means a non-combatant, and when aroused must have borne some resemblance to an enraged lion. I understand he entered the war as a soldier with extraordinary zeal, and the country knows with what gallantry he fought its battles. He was naturally a belligerent, but discipline, the habitual practice of self-command, and a strong religious sense, enabled him to keep this warlike disposition under perfect control. He was an excellent boxer and fencer, a good shot with both rifle and pistol, and took a lively interest in all manly exercises. He was a skillful croquet player, and enlivened the game with constant conversation, which made it a most agreeable pastime to the other players and lookers on.”

Can biography anywhere present a more simple, manly nature? Is there a better sign of it than to be beloved by college boys?

In Washington, up to 1869, he boarded a part of the time, and lived in a rented house for the remainder. In that year he built the comfortable residence on the corner of Thirteenth and I Streets, opposite Franklin Square, which he continued to occupy till his election to the Presidency. The whole house overflowed with books, but the library was the most characteristic room. General Garfield’s reading was in special fields of investigation. At one time he explored and studied the entire subject of Goethe and his contemporaries and critics. Horace was also the subject of enormous study. Of all that he read he made elaborate notes. He made a whole library of scrap books, all perfectly indexed. The habit was begun on his first entrance into public life. These were supplemented by prodigious diaries. Probably no man ever left such a complete record of his intellectual life upon paper. In addition to all this, he kept a series of labeled drawers, in which were filed away newspaper cuttings, items, pamphlets, and documents. This collection was most carefully classified and 250indexed by subjects. It is easy to see why Garfield was known as the best posted and readiest man in Congress. His marvelous memory and splendid system enabled him, on short notice, to open the drawer containing all the material on almost any subject, and equip himself in an hour for battle. No encyclopedia could compare in value with this collection to its owner. It made Garfield absolutely terrible in debate. A charge would be made, a historical reference indicated by some poorly-posted antagonist; at the next session Garfield was on hand with the documents to overwhelm his opponent.

Among the many literary and other miscellaneous addresses delivered during this period, was one of November 25, 1870, before the Army of the Cumberland, on the “Life and Character of George H. Thomas,” and one on “The Future of the Republic,” delivered July 2d, 1873, before the students of Hudson College. From the former we give extracts, although to give any thing less than the entire address is spoliation. As an argument defending Thomas from Robert E. Lee’s charge of disloyalty, it is overwhelming. Garfield loved Thomas as a brother; and with the dead hero for a theme, the orator rose to the loftiest heights. Among his opening remarks were the following:

“There are now living not less than two hundred thousand men who served under the eye of General Thomas; who saw him in sunshine and storm—on the march, in the fight, and on the field when the victory had been won. Enshrined in the hearts of all these, are enduring images and most precious memories of their commander and friend. Who shall collect and unite into one worthy picture, the bold outlines, the innumerable lights and shadows which make up the life and character of our great leader? Who shall condense into a single hour the record of a life which forms so large a chapter of the Nation’s history, and whose fame fills and overfills a hemisphere? No line can be omitted, no false stroke made, no imperfect sketching done, which you, his soldiers, will not instantly detect and deplore. I know that each of you here present sees him in memory at this moment, as we often saw him in life; erect and strong, like a tower of solid masonry; his broad, square shoulders and massive head; his abundant hair and full beard of light brown, sprinkled with 251silver; his broad forehead, full face, and features that would appear colossal, but for their perfect harmony of proportion; his clear complexion, with just enough color to assure you of robust health and a well-regulated life; his face lighted up by an eye which was cold gray to his enemies, but warm, deep blue to his friends; not a man of iron, but of live oak. His attitude, form, and features, all assured you of inflexible firmness, of inexpugnable strength; while his welcoming smile set every feature aglow with a kindness that won your manliest affection. If thus in memory you see his form and features, even more vividly do you remember the qualities of his mind and heart. His body was the fitting type of his intellect and character; and you saw both his intellect and character tried, again and again, in the fiery furnace of war, and by other tests not less searching. Thus, comrades, you see him; and your memories supply a thousand details which complete and adorn the picture.”

In closing what might be called more particularly the biographical portion of the address he said:

“Thomas’s life is a notable illustration of the virtue and power of hard work; and in the last analysis the power to do hard work is only another name for talent. Professor Church, one of his instructors at West Point, says of his student life, that ‘he never allowed any thing to escape a thorough examination, and left nothing behind that he did not fully comprehend.’ And so it was in the army. To him a battle was neither an earthquake nor a volcano, nor a chaos of brave men and frantic horses, involved in vast explosions of gunpowder. It was rather a calm, rational concentration of force against force. It was a question of lines and positions; of weight of metal and strength of battalions. He knew that the elements and forces which bring victory are not created on the battle-field, but must be patiently elaborated in the quiet of the camp, by the perfect organization and outfit of his army. His remark to a captain of artillery, while inspecting a battery, is worth remembering, for it exhibits his theory of success: ‘Keep every thing in order, for the fate of a battle may turn on a buckle or a linch-pin.’ He understood so thoroughly the condition of his army, and its equipment, that when the hour of trial came, he knew how great a pressure it could stand, and how hard a blow it could strike.

“His character was as grand and as simple as a colossal pillar of chiseled granite. Every step of his career as a soldier was marked by the most loyal and unhesitating obedience to law—to the laws of his government 252and to the commands of his superiors. The obedience which he rendered to those above him he rigidly required of those under his command.

“His influence over his troops grew steadily and constantly. He won his ascendancy over them, neither by artifice nor by any one act of special daring, but he gradually filled them with his own spirit, until their confidence in him knew no bounds. His power as a commander was developed slowly and silently; not like volcanic land lifted from the sea by sudden and violent upheaval, but rather like a coral island, where each increment is a growth—an act of life and work.

“Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms—strength and force—each possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain. Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, the thunderbolt. The great tragic poet of Greece, in describing the punishment of Prometheus for rebellion against Jupiter, represented Vulcan descending from heaven, attended by two mighty spirits, Strength and Force, by whose aid he held and bound Prometheus to the rock.

“In subduing our great rebellion, the Republic called to its aid men who represented many forms of great excellence and power. A very few of our commanders possessed more force than Thomas—more genius for planning and executing bold and daring enterprises; but, in my judgment, no other was so complete in embodiment and incarnation of strength—the strength that resists, maintains, and endures. His power was not that of the cataract which leaps in fury down the chasm, but rather that of the river, broad and deep, whose current is steady, silent, and irresistible.”

From the peroration the following is taken:

“The language applied to the Iron Duke, by the historian of the Peninsular War, might also be mistaken for a description of Thomas. Napier says:

“‘He held his army in hand, keeping it, with unmitigated labor, always in a fit state to march or to fight.... Sometimes he was indebted to fortune, sometimes to his natural genius, always to his untiring industry; for he was emphatically a painstaking man.’

“The language of Lord Brougham, addressed to Wellington, is a fitting description of Thomas:

“‘Mighty captain! who never advanced except to cover his arms with 253glory; mightier captain! who never retreated except to eclipse the glory of his advance.’

“If I remember correctly, no enemy was ever able to fight Thomas out of any position he undertook to hold.

“On the whole, I can not doubt that the most fitting parallel to General Thomas is found in our greatest American, the man who was ‘first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.’ The personal resemblance of General Thomas to Washington was often the subject of remark. Even at West Point, Rosecrans was accustomed to call him General Washington. He resembled Washington in the gravity and dignity of his character; in the solidity of his judgment; in the careful accuracy of all his transactions; in his incorruptible integrity, and in his extreme, but unaffected, modesty....

“But his career is ended. Struck dead at his post of duty, a bereaved nation bore his honored dust across the continent and laid it to rest on the banks of the Hudson, amidst the tears and grief of millions. The nation stood at his grave as a mourner. No one knew until he was dead how strong was his hold on the hearts of the American people. Every citizen felt that a pillar of state had fallen; that a great and true and pure man had passed from earth.

“There are no fitting words in which I may speak of the loss which every member of this society has sustained in his death.

“The general of the army has beautifully said, in his order announcing the death of Thomas:

“‘Though he leaves no child to bear his name, the Old Army of the Cumberland, numbered by tens of thousands, called him father, and will weep for him in tears of manly grief.’

“To us, his comrades, he has left the rich legacy of his friendship. To his country and to mankind, he has left his character and his fame as a priceless and everlasting possession.

CHAPTER VIII. THE NOONTIDE. — THE CREDIT MOBILIER. — THE COMMITTEE OF INVESTIGATION. — THEIR REPORT — THE INCREASE OF OFFICIAL SALARIES, — THE SO-CALLED DE GOLLYER PAVEMENT.

James Abram Garfield was an honest man. You could not have known him and thought otherwise; you can not know the story of his life, and think him ever dishonored. His character was as clear as crystal; truth illumined his soul alway, and there the shadows of insincerity never fell.

Nevertheless, General Garfield could not escape the slime of the mud-slingers. Charges were made against him which, if true, would have made our Hyperion a degraded and filthy Satyr.

The time has come when Garfield’s character needs no defense. To-day the whole world believes in him. When the hurricane came he boldly and successfully vindicated himself. Then the people ratified his declarations by their suffrages. Finally, History has set her great seal upon the judgment in his favor.

The three principal accusations made against Mr. Garfield were in their day known respectively as the Credit Mobilier Steal, the Salary Grab, and the De Gollyer Bribery. A formidable array!

There was a time when the biographer of Garfield would have been forced to devote a volume to these charges in order to refute them. Now a few pages will suffice; and their chief purpose, indeed, must only be to show how Garfield himself treated them.

The charges all came upon him at once. When elected to Congress in 1872, for the sixth time, Garfield seemed to have a life estate in his office. Before the next election came, it looked as if he never could be elected again.

255In the winter of 1872–3, came the Credit Mobilier exposure; early in ’73, followed the Salary Grab; and finally, in 1874, the De Gollyer scandal appeared.

These troubles were met in the only way that could have succeeded, and also in the only way possible to Garfield’s nature—openly and manfully. Writing to his friend Hinsdale, he said: “The district is lost, and as soon as I can close up affairs here I am coming home to capture it.”

While at Washington, in 1873, he prepared two exhaustive pamphlets—one entitled “Review of the Transactions of the Credit Mobilier Company,” and the other “The Increase of Salaries.” These papers, and the general discussions which were going on at the same time, threw much light on the subjects. But the opportunity was too good for politicians to lose, and it was only after a desperate struggle that Mr. Garfield was renominated and reëlected in 1874.

But the victory was gained, and from that time on the Reserve never ceased to grow stronger, year by year, in faith in General Garfield.

Instead of a reproduction of the extensive literature on these subjects, which political necessities alone occasioned, it will suffice here to quote from a speech which in brief covered the whole field. This address was made to his constituents, at Warren, O., on September 19, 1874. September 19—anniversary of Chickamauga, and of the day of his death!

The reply proper began thus:

“There are three things which I propose to discuss; two of them may hardly be said to refer to my public career, one of them directly to my official work. The first one I refer to is my alleged connection with

“There is a large number of people in the United States who use these words without any adequate idea of what they mean. I have no doubt that a great many people feel about it very much as the fishwoman at Billingsgate market felt when Sidney Smith, the great humorist of England, came along and began to talk with her. She answered back in a very 256saucy way, and he finally commenced to call her mathematical names; he called her a parallelogram, a hypothenuse, a parallelopipedon, and other such terms, and she stood back aghast and said she never heard such a nasty talking man in her life—never was abused so before. Now people think they have said an enormous thing when they say that somebody had something to do with the Credit Mobilier. I ask your attention just for a few moments to what that thing is, and in the next place to understand precisely what it is that I am supposed to have had to do with it.

“The Credit Mobilier was a corporation chartered in 1859 by the State of Pennsylvania, and authorized to build houses, buy lands, loan money, etc. Nothing of consequence was done with that company until the year 1867, when a number of men bought up whatever stock there was in it, and commenced to do a very large business. In the winter of 1867, Mr. Train came to me and showed me a list of names and subscribers to the stock of the Credit Mobilier Company, and asked me to subscribe $1,000. I should say there were fifteen or twenty members of Congress on the list, and many more prominent business men. He said that the company was going to buy lands along the lines of the Pacific Railroad at places where they thought cities and villages would grow up, and to develop them, and he had no doubt that the growth of the country would make that investment double itself in a very short time.

“That was the alleged scheme that the Credit Mobilier Company had undertaken—a thing that if there is any gentleman in Warren who would feel any hesitancy in buying, it would be because he didn’t believe in the growth of the country where the business was to be done. That stock was offered to me as a plain business proposition, with no intimation whatever that it was offered because the subscribers were members of Congress, for it was offered to many other people, and no better men lived than at least a large number of the gentlemen to whom it was offered. Some of them took it at once. Some men are cautious about making an investment; others are quick to determine. To none of those men was any explanation made that this Credit Mobilier Company was in any way connected with a ring of seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock and who had contracted with the directors of the Union Pacific road for building six or seven hundred miles at an extravagant price, largely above what the work was worth. That was a secret held only by those seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock. It is 257now understood that Mr. Oakes Ames, who was the center of the company of seven men, sought to gain the friendship of fifteen or twenty prominent Congressmen with the view of protecting himself and the Pacific Railroad against any investigations which might be made; but it was a necessary part of his plan not to divulge that purpose or in any way to intimate to them that he might draw upon them for favors.

“Long before any such purpose was realized, long before any pressure came upon Mr. Ames, most of the men who had been invited to purchase that stock had either declined to purchase or had purchased and realized, or had purchased and sold out. But in 1872, in the midst of the Presidential campaign, an article was published in the public journals charging that sixteen prominent members of Congress—Senators and Representatives—had sold their votes for money or stock; that they had accepted bribes. You remember that I was running for Congress in this district at that time. When that news came I was away in the Rocky Mountains. I came home, and the first day after my arrival at Washington I authorized to be published a statement concerning what I knew about the Oakes Ames business. A great many people suppose now and say—and it has been repeated a hundred times in this district, and especially in this town during the last two weeks—that Mr. Garfield hedged and denied any knowledge of the Credit Mobilier business, until finally the investigation brought it out. I repeat that immediately on my arrival in Washington I made a statement to the correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, of which the following is a copy:

“‘General Garfield, who has just arrived here from the Indian country, has to-day the first opportunity of seeing the charges connecting his name with receiving shares of the Credit Mobilier from Oakes Ames. He authorizes the statement that he never subscribed for a single share of the stock, and that he never received or saw a share of it. When the company was first formed, George Francis Train, then active in it, came to Washington and exhibited a list of subscribers, of leading capitalists and some members of Congress, to the stock of the company. The subscription was described as a popular one of $1,000 cash. Train urged General Garfield to subscribe on two occasions, and each time he declined. Subsequently he was again informed that the list was nearly completed, but that a chance remained for him to subscribe, when he again declined, 258and to this day he has not subscribed for or received any share of stock or bond of the company.’

“Now I want my audience to understand that in the midst of that storm and tempest of accusation, and only a little while before the election, I started it and let it go broadcast to the daily press, that I did know something about the Credit Mobilier; that I had on two occasions discussed the matter; that I had taken it into consideration, and that finally I had declined to subscribe; that I never had owned or held a share; had never seen a certificate of the stock. Now, I am not asking you at this moment, to discuss the truth of that statement, but only to say that I stated it long before there was any investigation talked of; that I never dodged or evaded or denied having knowledge on the subject, but at the first declared plainly and finally what I did know about it.

“When Congress met, Speaker Blaine and the rest of us whose names were concerned in it, at once, on the first morning of the session, demanded a committee of investigation to go through with the whole subject from beginning to end. I want those gentlemen who talk about Mr. Garfield being got after by committees of investigation to know that no investigation into any public affair has been held in the last three years in Washington that I have not helped to organize and bring about. [Applause.]

“Now what was the investigation? You will remember that before the investigation had gone far a feeling of alarm and excitement swept over the whole country that has hardly been paralleled in American history. Some men whose names were connected with the charges of the Credit Mobilier matter, shocked at the terrible charge of bribery thrown at them, in the hurry of the moment so far forgot themselves as to give equivocal answers as to whether they knew any thing about the matter or not, and the impression was made throughout the country that most of them had denied that they knew any thing about it. The fact was that the country was settling down to the belief that the whole thing was a mere campaign slander, and had no foundation in fact. Looking at the subject from this distance, I am inclined to believe that the impression left upon the American mind is that the faults of those who were charged with buying stock was not that they did any thing wrong in reference to the stock, but that afterwards they prevaricated, or lied about it. Now, 259without discussing any body else, I call you to witness that I stated at once what I knew about it the first time that I knew the thing was going the rounds of the newspapers. When the committee of investigation came to make up

there was one thing in that report to which I personally took exception, and only one. I understand that a gentleman occupied this room a few nights ago who undertook to make the impression upon his audience that Mr. Garfield was found guilty of some improper relation with the Credit Mobilier. Let me read you a sentence or two from that report. The committee say:

“Concerning the members to whom he had sold or offered to sell the stock, the committee say that they ‘do not find that Mr. Ames, in his negotiations with the persons above named, entered into any detail of the relations between the Credit Mobilier Company and the Union Pacific Company, or gave them any specific information as to the amount of dividends they would be likely to receive further than has been already stated, viz., that in some cases he had guaranteed a profit of ten per cent.... They do not find as to the members of the present House above named, that they were aware of the object of Mr. Ames, or that they had any other purpose in taking this stock than to make a profitable investment.... They have not been able to find that any of these members of Congress have been affected in their official action in consequence of interest in the Credit Mobilier stock.... They do not find that either of the above-named gentlemen, in contracting with Mr. Ames, had any corrupt motive or purpose himself, or was aware that Mr. Ames had any. Nor did either of them suppose he was guilty of any impropriety or even indelicacy in becoming a purchaser of this stock.’ And, finally, ‘that the committee find nothing in the conduct or motives of either of these members in taking this stock, that calls for any recommendation by the committee of the House.’ (See pp. viii, ix, x.)

“In Mr. Ames’s first testimony he names sixteen members of Congress to whom he offered the stock, and says that eleven of them bought it, but he sets Mr. Garfield down among the five who did not buy it.

“He says: ‘He (Garfield) did not pay for it or receive it.... He never paid any money on that stock or received money on account of it.’ Let me add that the last grant to the Union Pacific Railroad was 260by the act of July, 1864, and that Oakes Ames had nothing to do with the Credit Mobilier till more than two years after that date.

“The point to which I took exception to the report of the committee was this: the report held that Mr. Ames and Mr. Garfield did agree upon the purchase of the stock, and that Mr. Garfield received three hundred and twenty-nine dollars on account of it. I insisted that the evidence did not warrant that conclusion, and rose in my place in the House, and announced that I should make that statement good before the American public; that I held myself responsible to demonstrate that the committee was wrong; that although they charged me with no wrong, they still had made a mistake of fact, which was against the evidence and an injustice to me. Soon after, I published a pamphlet of twenty-eight pages, in which I carefully and thoroughly reviewed all the testimony relating to me. I have now stood before the American people, since the eighth day of May, 1873, announcing that the following propositions were proven concerning myself: that I had never agreed even to take the stock of Mr. Ames; that I never subscribed for it, never did take it, never received any dividends from it, and was never in any way made a beneficiary by it. Seven thousand copies of that pamphlet have been distributed through the United States. Almost every newspaper in the United States has had a copy mailed to it. Every member of the Forty-Second Congress—Democrat and Republican—had a copy, and there is not known to me a man who, having read my review, has denied its conclusiveness of those propositions after having read them. I have seen no newspaper review of it that denies the conclusiveness of the propositions. It is for these reasons that a great public journal, the New York Evening Post, said a few days ago that on this point ‘General Garfield’s answer had been received by the American people as satisfactory.’ [Applause.] If there is any gentleman in this audience, who desires to ask any question concerning the Credit Mobilier, I shall be glad to hear it. [No response.] If not, would it not be about as well to modify the talk on that subject hereafter? [Applause.]

“Now the next thing I shall mention is a question purely of official conduct—and that is a subject which has grown threadbare in this community, and yet I desire your attention to it for a few moments. I refer to

one year and a half ago. First, what are the accusations concerning me?

261“There are several citizens in this town who have signed their names to statements in the newspapers during that discussion, declaring that Mr. Garfield had committed a theft, a robbery; that, to use the plain Saxon word, he was a thief,—that any man who took, or voted for a retroactive increase of salary, was a thief. In one of these articles it was argued in this wise: ‘If I hire a clerk in my bank on a certain salary, and he, having the key to my safe, takes out five hundred or five thousand dollars more than we agreed for, and puts it in his pocket, it is simply theft or robbery. He happened to have access to the funds, and he got hold of them; so did Congress. You can’t gloss it over,’ says the writer, ‘it is robbery.’

“Now, fellow-citizens, I presume you will agree that you can wrong even the devil himself, and that it is not right or manly to lie, even about Satan. I take it for granted that we are far enough past the passion of that period to talk plainly and coolly about the increase of salaries.

“Now, in the first place, I say to-night, what I have said through all this tempest that for a Congress to increase its own pay and make it retroactive, is not theft, is not robbery, and you do injustice to the truth when you call it so. There is ground enough in which to denounce it without straining the truth. Now if Congress can not fix its own salary, who can? The Constitution of your country says, in unmistakable words, that ‘Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the National Treasury.’ Nobody makes the law but Congress. It was a very delicate business in the beginning, for our fathers to make a law paying themselves money. They understood it so, and when they sent the Constitution out to the several States, the question was raised, whether it would not be better to put a curb upon Congress in reference to their own pay; and in several of the States suggestions were sent in. When the First Congress met, James Madison offered seventeen amendments to the Constitution; and, finally, Congress voted to send twelve of the proposed amendments to the country: one of them was this: ‘No law varying the compensation of the Senators or Representatives in Congress shall take effect until an election has intervened.’ In other words, the First Congress proposed that an amendment should be made to the new Constitution, that no Congress could raise its own pay, and make it retroactive. That was sent to the States for their ratification. The States adopted ten of those amendments. Two, they rejected; and this was one of the two. They said it should not be in the Constitution. 262The reason given for its rejection, by one of the wisest men of that time, was this. He said: ‘If we adopt it, this may happen; one party will go into power in a new Congress, but, just before the old Congress expires, the defeated party may pass a law reducing the pay of Congressmen to ten cents a day.’

“It will never do thus to put one Congress into the power of another, it would be an engine of wrong and injustice. For this reason, our fathers refused to put into the Constitution a clause that would prevent back pay. Now it will not do to say that a provision that has been deliberately rejected from the Constitution, is virtually there, and it will not do to say that it is just to call it theft and robbery for Congress to do what it has plainly the constitutional right to do. I use the word right in its legal sense.

“Now, take another step. I hold in my hand here, a record of all the changes of pay that have been made since this Government was founded, and in every case,—I am not arguing now that it is right at all, I am only giving you a history of it—in every single instance when Congress has raised its pay, it has raised it to take effect from the first day of the session of the Congress. Six times Congress has increased its own pay, and every time it made the pay retroactive. I say again, I am not arguing that this was right and proper; I am only arguing that it was lawful and constitutional to do it. In 1856, the pay was raised, and was made retroactive, for a year and four months, and the member of Congress from this district threw the casting vote that made it a law. That act raised the pay by a larger per cent. than the act of last Congress. Joshua R. Giddings was the one-hundredth man that voted aye. Ninety-nine voted no. Joshua R. Giddings’s vote the other way would have turned the score against it. That vote gave back pay for a year and four months. That vote gave Congress nine months’ back pay for a time when members would not have been entitled to any thing whatever, because, under the old law, they were paid only during the session. What did this district do? Did it call him a thief and a robber? A few weeks after that vote this district elected him to Congress for the tenth time. Have the ethics of the world changed since 1856? Would I be a thief and robber in 1873, if I had done what my predecessor did in 1856? In 1866, the pay was raised; that time it was put in the appropriation bill (a very important appropriation bill), a bill giving bounties to soldiers. It passed through the Senate and came to the House; there was 263a disagreement about it. Senator Sherman, of Ohio, had charge of the bill in the Senate, and voted against the increase of pay every time when it came up on its own merits, but he was out-voted. Finally it went to a committee of conference, and he was made chairman of the committee of conference. The conference report between the two houses was made in favor of the bill. Mr. Sherman brought in the report, saying when he brought it in, that, he had been opposed to the increase of pay, but the Senate had overruled him. He voted for the conference report, voted for the final passage of the bill. That bill gave back pay for a year and five months. Was John Sherman denounced as a thief and robber for that? Was Benjamin F. Wade called a thief and robber?

“At that time I was not chairman of the committee, and had no other responsibility than that of an individual representative. I voted against the increase of salary then; at all stages I voted against the conference report, but it passed through the House on final vote by just one majority. I don’t remember that any body ever praised me, particularly, for voting against that report, and I never heard any body blaming John Sherman for voting for it.

“Now, in 1873, the conditions were exactly the reverse. I was chairman of the committee that had charge of the great appropriation bill. There was put upon that bill, against my earnest protest, a proposition to increase salaries. I take it there is no one here who will deny that I worked as earnestly as I could to prevent the putting of that increase upon the bill. I did not work against it because it was a theft or robbery to put it on there; I worked against it because I thought it was indecent, unbecoming, and in the highest degree unwise and injudicious to increase the salaries at that time. First, because they had been increased in 1866, and in proportion to other salaries, Congressmen were paid enough—paid more in proportion than most other officials were paid. Second, the glory of the Congress had been that it was bringing down the expenditures of the Government, from the highest level of war to the lowest level of peace; and that if we raised our own salaries, unless the rise had been made before, it would be the key-note on which the whole tune of extravagance would be sung. I believed, too, that it would seriously injure the Republican party, and on that score I thought we ought to resist it. I did all in my power to prevent that provision being added to the bill. I voted against it eighteen times. I spoke against it, but by a very large vote in the House, and a still larger vote in the Senate, the salary clause 264was put upon the bill. I was captain of the ship, and this objectionable freight had been put upon my deck. I had tried to keep it off. What should I do? Burn the ship? Sink her? Or, having washed my hands of the responsibility for that part of her cargo I had tried to keep off, navigate her into port, and let those who had put this freight on be responsible for it? Using that figure, that was the course I thought it my duty to adopt. Now on that matter I might have made an error of judgment. I believed then and now that if it had been in my power to kill this bill, and had thus brought on an extra session, I believe to-day, I say, had I been able to do that, I should have been the worst blamed man in the United States. Why? During the long months of the extra session that would have followed, with the evils which the country would have felt by having its business disturbed by Congress, and the uncertainties of the result, men would have said all this has come about because we did not have a man at the head of the Committee on Appropriations with nerve enough and force enough to carry his bill through by the end of the session. The next time we have a Congress, we had better see if we can not get a man who will get his bills through. Suppose I had answered there was that salary increase—‘That won’t do. You had shown your hand on the salary question; you had protested against it and you had done your duty.’ Then they would have said, there were six or seven sections in that bill empowering the United States to bring the railroads before the courts, and make them account for their extravagance. They would have said we have lost all that by the loss of this bill, and I would have been charged with acting in the interest of railroad corporations, and fighting to kill the bill for that reason. But be that as it may, fellow-citizens, I considered the two alternatives as well as I could. I believed it would rouse a storm of indignation and ill feeling throughout the country if that increase of salary passed. I believed it would result in greater evils if the whole failed, and an extra session came on. For a little while I was tempted to do what would rather be pleasing than what would be best in the long run. I believe it required more courage to vote as I voted, than it would to have voted the other way, but I resolved to do what seemed to me right in the case, let the consequences be what they would. [Applause.] I may have made a mistake in judgment; I blame no one for thinking so, but I followed what I thought was the less bad of two courses. My subsequent conduct was consistent with my action on the bill.

265“I did not myself parade the fact, but more than a year ago the New York World published a list, stating in chronological order the Senators and Representatives who covered their back pay into the Treasury. My name was first on the list. [Applause.]

“I appeal to the sense of justice of this people, whether they will tolerate this sort of political warfare. It has been proven again and again that I never drew the back pay, never saw a dollar of it, and took no action in reference to it except to sign an order on the sergeant-at-arms to cover it into the general Treasury, and this was done before the convention at Warren. I say more. Some of these men who have been so long pursuing me, have known these facts for many months. During the stormy times of the salary excitement, a citizen of this county wrote a letter to a prominent official in the Treasury of the United States, wanting to know whether Mr. Garfield drew his pay or not, and received a very full and circumstantial reply stating the facts. That letter is in this town, I suppose, to-day, but those who have had possession of it have been careful never to show it. I have a copy of it here, and if these men continue lying about it, I will print it one of these days. [Sensation and great applause. Cries of ‘Let us have that letter read now, General Garfield.’] I will not give the name of the party. The name I have not to whom it is addressed.

[The audience here absolutely insisted on having the letter read, some demanding the name, and all positively refusing to allow the speaker to proceed without reading the letter in justice to himself and for the information of the audience.]

“‘Dear Sir: Your letter written early in May was forwarded to me at Youngstown, where it could not be answered for want of accurate data. When about to return to Washington, I searched for the letter but could not find it. My recollection of its contents is that you inquired as to the repayment into the Treasury by General Garfield of the additional compensation due him as a member of the Forty-Second Congress, under the provisions of the general appropriation act of March 3, 1873.

“‘The additional compensation due General Garfield was drawn by Mr. Ordway, sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives, and by him paid into the Treasury as a miscellaneous revenue receipt. The money was drawn by Mr. Ordway on the order of General Garfield. The practice of the sergeant-at-arms is to take receipts from members 266in blank in anticipation of the dates at which they are to become due, and to pay their check on him by drawing the money from the Treasury on those receipts. In this way he is, in a measure, the banker of the members. General Garfield has signed such receipts month after month at the beginning of the month, one of which was filled up by Mr. Ordway and presented to the Treasury. At that time, I believe, General Garfield was out of the city, but I happen to know that as early as the 22d day of March this written order was delivered to Mr. Ordway, viz: if he had not drawn any money from the Treasury on his account to close the account without drawing it, and if he had drawn it to return it. Mr. Ordway then informed him that it was necessary for him to sign a special order on the Treasury if he wished it drawn out and covered in, otherwise Mr. Garfield could draw it at any time within two years; whereupon Mr. Garfield drew an order for $4,548, payable to the order of Mr. Ordway, to be by him covered into the Treasury. This was presented to the Treasurer and the money turned over from the appropriation account to the general account, so that no portion of it ever left the Treasury at all. It was simply a transfer from the appropriation account to the general funds of the Treasury.

“[Applause.]

“Question.—What was the date of the adjournment of Congress?

“General Garfield.—Congress adjourned on the 3d of March.

“Question.—What was the date of your letter?

“General Garfield.—The 22d day of March was the date of my letter.

“A voice.—Give us some of the De Gollyer matter.

“General Garfield.—We will take each particular thing at the proper time and place. A note is handed me of which I will speak in this connection. It is that during the debate Mr. Garfield answered a question of Mr. Hibbard, of New Hampshire, who said, ‘How about this plunder? How much plunder will it take out of the Treasury?’ And that Mr. Garfield’s answer seemed to imply that he did not regard it as plunder. I believe there has been as much said on that particular reply of mine in connection with this salary business as any thing else that has been said. Now I have already answered that in the general remarks I have made this evening, namely, when a Democrat from New Hampshire rose in his place and put a question to me, inquiring how much money 267it would take out of the Treasury if this salary act passed, and put it in the form of saying how much ‘plunder’ it would take, I did not at first notice that he used the word ‘plunder,’ and I answered it would take a million and a half dollars out of the Treasury. Then Mr. Dawes rose and said, ‘Did my friend from Ohio notice the word ‘plunder?’’ Does he acknowledge this to be ‘plunder?’ I then said, ‘No, I don’t acknowledge that this is plunder. If any gentleman thinks that he is taking more than is justly due him in his conscience, let him call it plunder if he pleases.’

“Now, an attempt has been made to make it appear that Mr. Garfield approved the salary act because he answered this man that he didn’t regard it as robbery. I answer now, I do not regard it as robbery, and never have.

“Now, one word more before I leave this question. I am glad the American people rose up in indignation against that salary increase. There were some unkind and unjust things said by the people in their uprising, but they rose against it and rebuked it with a power and might that has been of very great service to the country during the last winter. It could not have been repealed but for the rebuke of the people, and I could not have led as I did lead in more than $20,000,000 reduction of public expenses, if I had not felt behind me the weight, and help, and reinforcement of the indignation of the people in regard to that salary increase. I say it was an indecent thing to do, to increase the salary thus, and it was a great conservative thing for the people to do to demand its repeal; and it was repealed. But let us, in discussing it, deal with the subject according to the truth. I now pause to inquire if any gentleman in the audience has any questions to ask touching this salary, or any thing concerning it? If he has, I shall be very glad to hear it. [The speaker here paused, but no questions being asked, he proceeded as follows:] If not, I pass to the subject my friend over yonder seemed to be so anxious I should get to before I finished the last; and here I approach a question that in one sense is not a question at all, and in another sense it may be. I understand that several persons in the district are saying that Mr. Garfield has taken a fee for a so-called law opinion, but which, in fact, was something he ought not to have done—which was in reality a kind of fee for his official influence as a member of the Committee on Appropriations; or, to speak more plainly, that I accepted pay for a service as a kind of bribe, and that too, in

“Now, I have tried to state that in the broadest way, with the broadest point forward. I ask the attention of this audience for a few moments to the testimony. In the first place, I want the audience to understand that the city of Washington is governed, and has always been governed so far as its own improvements are concerned, by its own laws and its own people, just as much as Warren has been governed by its own corporate laws and authority. I remember perfectly well what has been paraded in the papers so much of late that Congress has full power to legislate over the District of Columbia. Well, Congress has full jurisdiction over what is now called the District of Columbia, and Congress could, I suppose, make all the police regulations for the city of Washington; but Congress always has allowed the city of Washington to have its city council, or a legislature, until the present time. We have abolished it, because we had a cumbrous machine. In the year 1871 a law was passed by Congress creating the board of public works, appointing a governor, and creating a legislature for the District of Columbia. That act stated what the board of public works could do and what the other branches of the District government could do; and among other things, it empowered the legislature to levy taxes to make improvements on the streets. The legislature met. The board of public works laid before them an elaborate plan for improving the streets of Washington, a plan amounting to six million dollars in the first place, and the legislature adopted the plan and provided that one-third of the entire cost of carrying out that plan should be raised by assessing the front foot on the property holders, and the other two-thirds should be paid by money to be borrowed by the city government; in other words, by the issuing of their bonds. The city government of Washington borrowed money and raised by special taxation enough to carry on a vast system of improvement. When they got ready to execute their plan one of the questions that came before them was, What kind of pavement shall we put in? and in what way shall we go about the business of letting our paving contracts? In order to settle that question they wrote to all the principal cities and found out all the methods pursued by them, and finally appointed from leading officers of the army—General Humphreys, chief engineer; General Meigs, quartermaster-general; the Surgeon-General, and General Babcock of the engineer corps; and those four men sat as an advising board, having no power but merely to advise. They took up all kinds 269of pavement ever made; specimens were sent in; they looked over the whole, and as a result recommended this: ‘We recommend you, instead of letting this work be done by the lowest bidder, with all the scheming “straw-bids” that may come in, to fix a tariff of prices you will pay for different kinds of pavement, and we recommend as follows: If you put down concrete pavement you had better say you will pay so much per square yard for putting it down. We have looked the cities all over and find that it is the proper amount to pay; but for stone so much; for gravel so much; for asphaltum so much; and for wood so much.’ Now, that board of public works adopted the plan and that schedule of prices, and having elected if they put those various kinds of pavements down, they would put them down at those rates, they then said to all comers ‘bring in your various kinds of pavements and show us their merits, and when we have examined them we will act.’

“Then the various paving companies and patentees all over the country who had what they called good pavements, presented themselves; but in almost all cases by their attorneys. They sent men there to represent the relative merits of the pavements. A pavement company in Chicago employed Mr. Parsons, of Cleveland, as early as the month of April, 1872, to go before the board of public works and present the merits of their pavements. Mr. Parsons had nothing whatever to do with the question of prices; they had already been settled in advance by the board. Mr. Parsons was marshal of the Supreme Court at that time, and was just about running for Congress. He asked the Chief Justice of the United States whether there was any impropriety in his taking that case up and arguing it, merely because he was an appointee and under his direction, and the Chief Justice responded: ‘There was none in the world.’ He proceeded with the case until the 8th day of June, when, for the first time, I heard any thing about it. This was two days before the adjournment of Congress. On that day Mr. Parsons came to me and said to me he had an important case; he had worked a good while on it but was called away. He must leave. He did not want to lose his fee in it—was likely to lose it unless the work was completed; he must go at any rate. He asked me if I would argue the case for him; if I would examine into the merits of this pavement and make a statement of it before the board. I said, ‘I will do it if I, on examination, find the patent what it purports to be—the best wood pavement patent there is, but I can’t do it until after Congress adjourns.’ Congress adjourned two days later; the papers of patents were sent to me, modeled 270specimens, and documents showing where pavement had been used were forwarded to me. The investigation of the patents and the chemical analysis representing all the elements of the pavement was a laborious task and I worked at it as faithfully as any thing I ever worked at. I did it in open daylight. I have never been able to understand how any body has seen any thing in that on which to base an attack on me. I say I am to-day intellectually incapable of understanding the track of a man’s mind who sees in this any ground for attacking me. I made the argument; there were two patents contained in that pavement itself; there were some forty different wood pavements proposed, and to carefully and analytically examine all the relative merits of those was no small work. Mr. Parsons was to get a fee providing he was successful, and not any if he was not successful, and hence the sum offered was large—a contingent fee, as every lawyer knows.”

This is enough to show Mr. Garfield’s relation to the De Gollyer affair. After some further discussion of it this Warren speech closed as follows:

“If no further questions are to be asked I will conclude with a few general reflections on the whole subject.

“Nothing is more distasteful to me than to speak of my own work—but this discussion has been made necessary by the persistent misrepresentations of those who assail me.

“During my long public service the relation between the people of this district and myself has been one of mutual confidence and independence. I have tried to follow my own convictions of duty with little regard to personal consequences, relying upon the intelligence and justice of the people for approval and support. I have sought to promote, not merely local and class interests, but the general good of the whole country, believing that thereby I could honor the position I hold and the district I represent. On the other hand my constituents have given me the great support of their strong and intelligent approval. They have not always approved my judgment, nor the wisdom of my public acts. But they have sustained me because they knew I was earnestly following my convictions of duty, and because they did not want a representative to be the mere echo of the public voice, but an intelligent and independent judge of public questions.

“In conclusion, I appeal to the best men of the district—to men who 271are every way worthy and every way capable to judge my conduct—nor do I hesitate to refer all inquiries to those noble men with whom I have acted during my public life. They have worked with me as representatives during all these years, and know the character and quality of my work. I have sought to make myself worthy of an honorable fame among them, and have not sought in vain. They have placed me in many positions of large trust and responsibility, and in the present Congress I again hold the chairmanship of the committee of the second if not the first importance in the House of Representatives. I fearlessly appeal to the honorable members of the present Congress, and of all the Congresses in which I have served, to say if my conduct has not been high and worthy—the very reverse of what these home enemies represent it to be. [Applause.] All this time it has been a source of great strength and confidence to know that here in this district there has been a strong, manly, intelligent constituency willing to hold up my hands and enable me more effectually to serve the country and honor them by my service. While this has been true, a bitter few have long been doing all in their power to depreciate my work and weaken my support.

“Mr. Wilkins.—You are rising too fast; they are afraid of being eclipsed.

“Mr. Garfield.—In all this I have relied upon the good sense and justice of the people to understand both my motives and the motives and efforts of my enemies. On some questions of public policy there have been differences between some of my constituents and myself. For instance, on the currency question, I have followed what seemed to me to be the line of truth and duty, and in that course I believe that the majority of the people of this district now concur. Whether right or wrong in opinions of this sort, I have believed it to be my duty to act independently, and in accordance with the best light I could find.

“Fellow-citizens, I believe I have done my country and you some service, and the only way I can still continue thus to serve you is by enjoying, in a reasonable degree, your confidence and support. I am very grateful for the expression of confidence which you have again given me by choosing me a seventh time as your candidate. It was an expression which I have reason to believe was the result of your deliberate judgment, based on a full knowledge of my record; and it is all the more precious to me because it came after one of those storms of public feeling which sometimes sweeps away the work of a life-time.”

272Aside from what has been here recounted, Garfield did not speak much on these unpleasant topics. Having put himself on record, he did not convict himself by protesting overmuch.

That he felt these things deeply one can not doubt. In a letter of January 4, 1875, written to B. A. Hinsdale, he said:

“With me the year 1874 has been a continuation, and in some respects an exaggeration, of 1873. That year brought me unusual trials, and brought me face to face with personal assaults and the trial that comes from calumny and public displeasure. This year has perhaps seen the culmination, if not the end, of that kind of experience. I have had much discipline of mind and heart in living the life which these trials brought me. Lately I have been studying myself with some anxiety to see how deeply the shadows have settled around my spirit. I find I have lost much of that exuberance of feeling, that cheerful spirit which I think abounded in me before. I am a little graver and less genial than I was before the storm struck me. The consciousness of this came to me slowly, but I have at last given in to it, and am trying to counteract the tendency.”

These efforts were successful; for prosperity and popularity returned to him; and even if they had not, General Garfield was not the man to acquire bitterness of spirit.

In fact, if there was one thing wherein Garfield was greater than any man in the illustrious group, whose names form a matchless diadem for the epoch in which he lived, it was in a sweetness of temper, a loftiness of spirit, the equal of which can hardly be found in secular history. His spirit knew no malice; his heart no revenge. A distinguished man who served with him in Congress, but who was not a great friend, told the writer that in this regard Garfield inspired him with awe. His conservative views made him many party enemies. Time after time these brilliant debaters—Farnsworth and the rest—would attack Garfield. No sarcasm was too cutting, no irony too cold. At times the speaker seemed to leave the quiver of ridicule without an arrow. When Garfield rose to reply, it was in a tone of calm discussion. He would proceed to the subject in hand in the friendliest and most earnest manner. No attack could provoke him to reply to personalities 273or invective. Never did he lose self-poise for a moment. It was said that a stranger entering the House after Garfield had begun his speech in answer to some most galling attack would never suspect that the speech was a reply to hostile and malignant assault.

The elections of 1874 having resulted favorably to the Democratic party, the Republicans found themselves with only a minority in the House in the Forty-Fourth Congress. Blaine lost his position as Speaker, and Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana, presided. Committees were all reorganized with Democratic chairmen and majorities.

Garfield, after having been four years Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, now found himself near the foot of the Committee of Ways and Means, with a weighty group of Democrats above him on the list. During his last four terms, Garfield was a member of the House Committee on Rules. His knowledge of Parliamentary Law amounted to a mastery of the subject.

In consequence of this change, General Garfield, suddenly relieved of his usual large responsibility in the work of legislation, was turned into a comparatively new field of public life. Relieved of the real work of legislation, for the first time he had a good opportunity to observe how others would do that work.

A very brief season of such observation on the part of Garfield and his fellow-partisans was enough to make them dissatisfied with Democratic statesmanship. The new majority began to destroy what Republicans had spent so many years in building up. Then came organized opposition.

The first great collision occurred in January, 1876. This first Democratic House since the war was, very naturally, led by Southern members. Many late rebel generals had been sent to it. It was popularly named the Confederate Congress—the rule of rebel brigadiers. Of course, it was not long till they began to propose measures peculiarly favorable to themselves.

When, at the close of the civil war, the Southern States were restored to their right places in the Union, many of their citizens, guilty of treason, had lost their political privileges. By acts of legislation and presidential proclamations, most of these disabilities 274had been removed. Early in the Forty-Fourth Congress the Amnesty Bill was proposed, extending pardon to all ex-Confederates unconditionally.

It had been the policy of the Government to restore the South completely in this respect, as fast as it was expedient to do so; but this was, as yet, too sweeping a measure. The Republican leaders were opposed to it; and Mr. Blaine proposed an amendment, excepting Jefferson Davis absolutely and by name, and excepting seven hundred and fifty others until they should renounce their treason by taking the oath of allegiance to the United States. The friends of the bill would not except even Davis, and on this point there arose one of the most exciting debates ever held in Congress.

The attack was first made by Mr. Blaine, in the course of a series of sharp thrusts between himself and Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, who had charge of the bill. Finally the “plumed knight” rushed to the front and dealt his heavy blows. It was a terrible arraignment of the Confederate President, making him responsible for the savage cruelties practiced on Union prisoners. All the horrors of Andersonville and Libby prisons were described. He read the celebrated order “Number Thirteen,” directing rebel guns to be turned on the suffering thousands at Andersonville, on the approach of Sherman. Davis, he said, was a party to these proceedings, and the American people would not, should not sanction any act which made it possible for this man ever again to hold any honorable public position within the gift of his Southern friends.

After Blaine’s speech, the debate was continued by Mr. Cox. Then came Benjamin Hill, of Georgia, and James A. Garfield, of Ohio. Hill took up the charges of Blaine, parried them skillfully without answering them, made counter-charges against the Government in its treatment of rebel prisoners, and, in fine, succeeded in his attempt to overcome the impression made by the Blaine attack. In this emergency, while the whole Democracy was exulting, and Hill was the hero of the hour, all eyes turned towards Garfield, for he promised a reply, and was known to be better able for that task than any other man.

275On the next day, January 12, Mr. Garfield was given the floor, and began. After stating his regret that such an unpleasant discussion had arisen, he made a brief review of the situation, and proceeded thus:

“Let me say in the outset that, so far as I am personally concerned, I have never voted against any proposition to grant amnesty to any human being who has asked for it at the bar of the House. Furthermore, I appeal to gentlemen on the other side who have been with me in this hall many years, whether at any time they have found me truculent in spirit, unkind in tone or feeling toward those who fought against us in the late war. Twelve years ago this very month, standing in this place, I said this: ‘I believe a truce could be struck to-day between the rank and file of the hostile armies now in the field. I believe they could meet and shake hands together, joyful over returning peace, each respecting the courage and manhood of the other, and each better able to live in amity than before the war.’

“I am glad to repeat word for word what I said that day. For the purposes of this speech I will not even claim the whole ground which the Government assumed toward the late rebellion. For the sake of the present argument, I will view the position of those who took up arms against the Government in the light least offensive to them.

“Leaving out of sight for the moment the question of slavery, which evoked so much passion, and which was the producing cause of the late war, there were still two opposing political theories which met in conflict. Most of the Southern statesmen believed that their first obedience was due to their State. We believed that the allegiance of an American citizen was due to the National government, not by the way of a State capital, but in a direct line from his own heart to the government of the Union. Now, that question was submitted to the dreadful arbitrament of war, to the court of last resort—a court from which there is no appeal, and to which all other powers must bow. To that dread court the great question was carried, and there the right of a State to secede was put to rest forever. For the sake of peace and union, I am willing to treat our late antagonists as I would treat litigants in other courts, who, when they have made their appeal and final judgment is rendered, pay the reasonable costs and bow to its mandates. Our question to-day is not that, but is closely connected with it. When we have made our argument and the court has rendered its judgment, it may be 276that in the course of its proceedings the court has used its discretion to disbar some of its counselors for malpractice, for unprofessional conduct. In such a case a motion may be made to restore the disbarred members. Applying this illustration to the present case, there are seven hundred and fifty people who are yet disbarred before the highest authority of the Republic—the Constitution itself. The proposition is to offer again the privileges of official station to these people; and we are all agreed as to every human being of them save one.

“I do not object to Jefferson Davis because he was a conspicuous leader. Whatever we may believe theologically, I do not believe in the doctrine of vicarious atonement in politics. Jefferson Davis was no more guilty for taking up arms than any other man who went into the rebellion with equal intelligence. But this is the question: In the high court of war did he practice according to its well-known laws—the laws of nations? Did he, in appealing to war, obey the laws of war; or did he so violate those laws, that justice to those who suffered at his hands demands that he be not permitted to come back to his old privileges in the Union? That is the whole question; and it is as plain and fair a question for deliberation as was ever debated in this House.”

From this point Mr. Garfield proceeded by a long argument, well supported by authorities, to show forth the real history of the atrocities mentioned, and to demonstrate the responsibility of Jefferson Davis for them. He ended this portion of the discussion in these words:

“It seems to me incontrovertible that the records I have adduced lay at his door the charge of being himself the author, the conscious author, through his own appointed instrument, of the terrible work at Andersonville, for which the American people still hold him unfit to be admitted among the legislators of this Nation.

“And now, Mr. Speaker, I close as I began. Toward those men who gallantly fought us on the field I cherish the kindest feeling. I feel a sincere reverence for the soldierly qualities they displayed on many a well-fought battle-field. I hope the day will come when their swords and ours will be crossed over many a doorway of our children, who will remember the glory of their ancestors with pride. The high qualities displayed in that conflict now belong to the whole Nation. Let them be consecrated 277to the Union, and its future peace and glory. I shall hail that consecration as a pledge and symbol of our perpetuity.

“But there was a class of men referred to in the speech of the gentleman yesterday for whom I have never yet gained the Christian grace necessary to say the same thing. The gentleman said that, amid the thunder of battle, through its dim smoke, and above its roar, they heard a voice from this side saying, ‘Brothers, come!’ I do not know whether he meant the same thing, but I heard that voice behind us. I heard that voice, and I recollect that I sent one of those who uttered it through our lines—a voice owned by Vallandigham. General Scott said, in the early days of the war, ‘When this war is over, it will require all the physical and moral power of the Government to restrain the rage and fury of the non-combatants.’ It was that non-combatant voice behind us that cried ‘Halloo!’ to the other side; that always gave cheer and encouragement to the enemy in our hour of darkness. I have never forgotten, and have not yet forgiven, those Democrats of the North whose hearts were not warmed by the grand inspirations of the Union, but who stood back, finding fault, always crying disaster, rejoicing at our defeat, never glorying in our victory. If these are the voices the gentleman heard, I am sorry he is now united with those who uttered them.

“But to those most noble men, Democrats and Republicans, who together fought for the Union, I commend all the lessons of charity that the wisest and most beneficent men have taught.

“I join you all in every aspiration that you may express to stay in this Union, to heal its wounds, to increase its glory, and to forget the evils and bitterness of the past; but do not, for the sake of the three hundred thousand heroic men who, maimed and bruised, drag out their weary lives, many of them carrying in their hearts horrible memories of what they suffered in the prison-pen—do not ask us to vote to put back into power that man who was the cause of their suffering—that man still unaneled, unshriven, unforgiven, undefended.”

As the autumn of 1876 approached, it became evident that the Democratic party, already dominant in the House; would make a desperate struggle at the November elections to get complete control of the Government.

Before the long session of that hot summer ended, Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, took occasion to deliver in the House a powerful 278campaign speech, attempting to prove that the Republican party did not deserve further support from the people, and that the Democracy was eminently worthy to rule in their stead. The next day, August 4, Mr. Garfield replied. A part of this reply is here given:

“Mr. Chairman: I regret that the speech of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] has not yet appeared in the Record, so that I might have had its full and authentic text before offering my own remarks in reply. But his propositions were so clearly and so very ably stated, the doctrines that run through it were so logically connected, it will be my own fault if I fail to understand and appreciate the general scope and purpose of his speech.

“In the outset, I desire for myself and for a majority at least, of those for whom I speak, to express my gratitude to the gentleman for all that portion of his speech which had for its object the removal of the prejudices and unkindly feelings that have arisen among citizens of the Republic in consequence of the late war. Whatever faults the speech may have, its author expresses an earnest desire to make progress in the direction of a better understanding between the North and the South; and in that it meets my most hearty concurrence and approval.

“I will attempt to state briefly what I understand to be the logic of the gentleman’s speech.

“Now I have stated—of course very briefly, but I hope with entire fairness—the scope of the very able speech to which we listened. In a word, it is this: The Republican party is oppressing the South; negro suffrage is a grievous evil; there are serious corruptions in public affairs in the national legislation and administration; the civil service of the country especially needs great and radical reform; and, therefore, the Democratic party ought to be placed in control of the Government at this time.

“It has not been my habit, and it is not my desire, to discuss mere party politics in this great legislative forum. And I shall do so now only in so far as a fair review of the gentleman’s speech requires. My remarks shall be responsive to his; and I shall discuss party history and party policy only as the logic of his speech leads into that domain.

“From most of the premises of the gentleman, as matters of fact and history, I dissent; some of them are undoubtedly correct. But, for the 279sake of argument only, admitting that all his premises are correct, I deny that his conclusion is warranted by his premises; and, before I close, I shall attempt to show that the good he seeks can not be secured by the ascendency of the Democratic party at this time.

“Before entering upon that field, however, I must notice this remarkable omission in the logic of his speech. Although he did state that the country might consider itself free from some of the dangers which are apprehended as the result of Democratic ascendency, he did not, as I remember, by any word attempt to prove the fitness of the Democracy as a political organization to accomplish the reforms which he so much desires; and without that affirmative proof of fitness his argument is necessarily an absolute failure.

“It is precisely that fear which has not only made the ascendency of the Democratic party so long impossible, but has made it incompetent to render that service so necessary to good government—the service of maintaining the position of a wise and honorable opposition to the dominant party. Often the blunders and faults of the Republican party have been condoned by the people because of the violent, reactionary, and disloyal spirit of the Democracy.

“He tells us that it is one of the well-known lessons of political history and philosophy, that the opposition party comes in to preserve and crystallize the measures which their antagonists inaugurated; and that a conservative opposition party is better fitted to accomplish such a work than an aggressive radical party, who roughly pioneered the way and brought in the changes. And to apply this maxim to our own situation, he tells us that the differences between the Republican and the Democratic parties upon the issues which led to the war, and those which grew out of it, were rather differences of time than of substance; that the Democracy followed more slowly in the Republican path, but have at last arrived, by prudent and constitutional methods, at the same results; and hence they will be sure to guard securely and cherish faithfully what the Republicans gained by reckless and turbulent methods. There is some truth in these ‘glittering generalities,’ but, as applied to our present situation, they are entitled only to the consideration which we give to the bright but fantastic pictures of a Utopian dream.

“I share all that gentleman’s aspirations for peace, for good government at the South; and I believe I can safely assure him that the great majority of the nation shares the same aspirations. But he will allow me 280to say that he has not fully stated the elements of the great problem to be solved by the statesmanship of to-day. The actual field is much broader than the view he has taken. And before we can agree that the remedy he proposes is an adequate one, we must take in the whole field, comprehend all the conditions of the problem, and then see if his remedy is sufficient. The change he proposes is not like the ordinary change of a ministry in England when the government is defeated on a tax-bill or some routine measure of legislation. He proposes to turn over the custody and management of the Government to a party which has persistently, and with the greatest bitterness, resisted all the great changes of the last fifteen years; changes which were the necessary results of a vast revolution—a revolution in national policy, in social and political ideas—a revolution whose causes were not the work of a day nor a year, but of generations and centuries. The scope and character of that mighty revolution must form the basis of our judgment when we inquire whether such a change as he proposes is safe and wise.

“In discussing his proposition we must not forget that, as the result of this revolution, the South, after the great devastations of war, the great loss of life and treasure, the overthrow of its social and industrial system, was called upon to confront the new and difficult problem of two races—one just relieved from centuries of slavery, and the other a cultivated, brave, proud, imperious race—to be brought together on terms of equality before the law. New, difficult, delicate, and dangerous questions bristle out from every point of that problem.

“But that is not all of the situation. On the other hand, we see the North, after leaving its 350,000 dead upon the field of battle and bringing home its 500,000 maimed and wounded to be cared for, crippled in its industries, staggering under the tremendous burden of public and private debt, and both North and South weighted with unparalleled burdens and losses—the whole nation suffering from that loosening of the bonds of social order which always follows a great war, and from the resulting corruption both in the public and the private life of the people. These, Mr. Chairman, constitute the vast field which we must survey in order to find the path which will soonest lead our beloved country to the highway of peace, of liberty and prosperity. Peace from the shock of battle; the higher peace of our streets, of our homes, of our equal rights, we must make secure by making the conquering ideas of the war every-where dominant and permanent.

281“With all my heart I join with the gentleman in rejoicing that—

and I look forward with joy and hope to the day when our brave people, one in heart, one in their aspirations for freedom and peace, shall see that the darkness through which we have traveled was a part of that stern but beneficent discipline by which the Great Disposer of events has been leading us on to a higher and nobler national life.

“But such a result can be reached only by comprehending the whole meaning of the revolution through which we have passed and are still passing. I say still passing; for I remember that after the battle of arms comes the battle of history. The cause that triumphs in the field does not always triumph in history. And those who carried the war for union and equal and universal freedom to a victorious issue can never safely relax their vigilance until the ideas for which they fought have become embodied in the enduring forms of individual and national life.

“Has this been done? Not yet.

“I ask the gentleman in all plainness of speech, and yet in all kindness, is he correct in his statement that the conquered party accept the results of the war? Even if they do, I remind the gentleman that accept is not a very strong word. I go further. I ask him if the Democratic party have adopted the results of the war? Is it not asking too much of human nature to expect such unparalleled changes to be not only accepted, but, in so short a time, adopted by men of strong and independent opinions?

“The antagonisms which gave rise to the war and grew out of it were not born in a day, nor can they vanish in a night.

“Mr. Chairman, great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods, whose feet were shod with wool. Our war of independence was a war of ideas, of ideas evolved out of two hundred years of slow and silent growth. When, one hundred years ago, our fathers announced as self-evident truths the declaration that all men are created equal, and the only just power of governments is derived from the consent of the governed, they uttered a doctrine that no nation had ever adopted, that not one kingdom on the earth then believed. Yet to our fathers it was so plain that they would not debate it. They announced it as a truth ‘self-evident.’

“Whence came the immortal truths of the Declaration? To me this was for years the riddle of our history. I have searched long and 282patiently through the books of the doctrinaires to find the germs from which the Declaration of Independence sprang. I found hints in Locke, in Hobbes, in Rousseau, and Fénelon; but they were only the hints of dreamers and philosophers. The great doctrines of the Declaration germinated in the hearts of our fathers, and were developed under the new influences of this wilderness world, by the same subtle mystery which brings forth the rose from the germ of the rose-tree. Unconsciously to themselves, the great truths were growing under the new conditions until, like the century-plant, they blossomed into the matchless beauty of the Declaration of Independence, whose fruitage, increased and increasing, we enjoy to-day.

“It will not do, Mr. Chairman, to speak of the gigantic revolution through which we have lately passed as a thing to be adjusted and settled by a change of administration. It was cyclical, epochal, century-wide, and to be studied in its broad and grand perspective—a revolution of even wider scope, so far as time is concerned, than the Revolution of 1776. We have been dealing with elements and forces which have been at work on this continent more than two hundred and fifty years. I trust I shall be excused if I take a few moments to trace some of the leading phases of the great struggle. And, in doing so, I beg gentlemen to see that the subject itself lifts us into a region where the individual sinks out of sight and is absorbed in the mighty current of great events. It is not the occasion to award praise or pronounce condemnation. In such a revolution men are like insects that fret and toss in the storm, but are swept onward by the resistless movements of elements beyond their control. I speak of this revolution not to praise the men who aided it, or to censure the men who resisted it, but as a force to be studied, as a mandate to be obeyed.

“In the year 1620 there were planted upon this continent two ideas irreconcilably hostile to each other. Ideas are the great warriors of the world; and a war that has no ideas behind it is simply brutality. The two ideas were landed, one at Plymouth Rock from the Mayflower, and the other from a Dutch brig at Jamestown, Virginia. One was the old doctrine of Luther, that private judgment in politics as well as religion, is the right and duty of every man; and the other that capital should own labor, that the negro had no rights of manhood, and the white man might justly buy, own, and sell him and his offspring forever. Thus freedom and equality on the one hand, and on the other the slavery of 283one race and the domination of another, were the two germs planted on this continent. In our vast expanse of wilderness, for a long time, there was room for both; and their advocates began the race across the continent, each developing the social and political institutions of their choice. Both had vast interests in common; and for a long time neither was conscious of the fatal antagonisms that were developing.

“For nearly two centuries there was no serious collision; but when the continent began to fill up, and the people began to jostle against each other; when the Roundhead and the Cavalier came near enough to measure opinions, the irreconcilable character of the two doctrines began to appear. Many conscientious men studied the subject, and came to the belief that slavery was a crime, a sin, or as Wesley said, ‘the sum of all villainies.’ This belief dwelt in small minorities for a long time. It lived in the churches and vestries, but later found its way into the civil and political organizations of the country, and finally found its way into this chamber. A few brave, clear-sighted, far-seeing men announced it here, a little more than a generation ago. A predecessor of mine, Joshua R. Giddings, following the lead of John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, almost alone held up the banner on this floor, and from year to year comrades came to his side. Through evil and through good report he pressed the question upon the conscience of the nation.

“And so the contest continued; the supporters of slavery believing honestly and sincerely that slavery was a divine institution; that it found its high sanctions in the living oracles of God and in a wise political philosophy; that it was justified by the necessities of their situation; and that slave-holders were missionaries to the dark sons of Africa, to elevate and bless them. We are so far past the passions of that early time that we can now study the progress of the struggle as a great and inevitable development, without sharing in the crimination and recrimination that attended it. If both sides could have seen that it was a contest beyond their control; if both parties could have realized the truth that ‘unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations,’ much less for the fate of political parties, the bitterness, the sorrow, the tears, and the blood might have been avoided. But we walked in the darkness, our paths obscured by the smoke of the conflict, each following his own convictions through ever-increasing fierceness, until the debate culminated in ‘the last argument to which kings resort.’

284“This conflict of opinion was not merely one of sentimental feeling; it involved our whole political system; it gave rise to two radically different theories of the nature of our Government: the North believing and holding that we were a Nation, the South insisting that we were only a confederation of sovereign States, and insisting that each State had the right, at its own discretion, to break the Union, and constantly threatening secession where the full rights of slavery were not acknowledged.

“Thus the defense and aggrandizement of slavery, and the hatred of Abolitionism, became not only the central idea of the Democratic party, but its master-passion—a passion intensified and inflamed by twenty-five years of fierce political contest, which had not only driven from its ranks all those who preferred freedom to slavery, but had absorbed all the extreme pro-slavery elements of the fallen Whig party. Over against this was arrayed the Republican party, asserting the broad doctrines of nationality and loyalty, insisting that no State had a right to secede, that secession was treason, and demanding that the institution of slavery should be restricted to the limits of the States where it already existed. But here and there, many bolder and more radical thinkers declared, with Wendell Phillips, that there never could be union and peace, freedom and prosperity, until we were willing to see John Hancock under a black skin.

“Mr. Chairman, after the facts I have cited, am I not warranted in raising a grave doubt whether the transformation occurred at all except in a few patriotic and philosophic minds? The light gleams first on the mountain peaks; but shadows and darkness linger in the valley. It is in the valley masses of those lately in rebellion that the light of this beautiful philosophy, which I honor, has not penetrated. It is safer to withhold from them the custody and supreme control of the precious treasures of the Republic until the midday sun of liberty, justice, and equal laws shall shine upon them with unclouded ray.

“In view of all the facts, considering the centuries of influence that brought on the great struggle, is it not reasonable to suppose that it will require yet more time to effect the great transformation? Did not the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. George F. Hoar] sum up the case fairly and truthfully when he said of the South, in his Louisiana report of 1874: ‘They submitted to the national authority, not because they would, but because they must. They abandoned the doctrine 285of State sovereignty, which they had claimed made their duty to the States paramount to that due to the nation in case of conflict, not because they would, but because they must. They submitted to the constitutional amendments which rendered their former slaves their equals in all political rights, not because they would, but because they must. The passions which led to the war, the passions which the war excited, were left untamed and unchecked, except so far as their exhibition was restrained by the arm of power.’

“Mr. Chairman, it is now time to inquire as to the fitness of this Democratic party to take control of our great nation and its vast and important interests for the next four years. I put the question to the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar], what has the Democratic party done to merit that great trust? He tried to show in what respects it would not be dangerous. I ask him to show in what it would be safe. I affirm, and I believe I do not misrepresent the great Democratic party, that in the last sixteen years they have not advanced one great national idea that is not to-day exploded and as dead as Julius Cæsar. And if any Democrat here will rise and name a great national doctrine his party has advanced, within that time, that is now alive and believed in, I will yield to hear him. [A pause.] In default of an answer, I will attempt to prove my negative.

“What were the great central doctrines of the Democratic party in the presidential struggle of 1860? The followers of Breckinridge said slavery had a right to go wherever the Constitution goes. Do you believe that to-day? Is there a man on this continent that holds that doctrine to-day? Not one. That doctrine is dead and buried. The other wing of the Democracy held that slavery might be established in the territories if the people wanted it. Does any body hold that doctrine to-day? Dead, absolutely dead!

“Come down to 1864. Your party, under the lead of Tilden and Vallandigham, declared the experiment of war to save the Union was a failure. Do you believe that doctrine to-day? That doctrine was shot to death by the guns of Farragut at Mobile, and driven, in a tempest of fire, from the valley of the Shenandoah by Sheridan less than a month after its birth at Chicago.

“Come down to 1868. You declared the Constitutional Amendments revolutionary and void. Does any man on this floor say so to-day? If so, let him rise and declare it.

286“Do you believe in the doctrine of the Broadhead letter of 1868, that the so-called Constitutional Amendments should be disregarded? No; the gentleman from Mississippi accepts the results of the war! The Democratic doctrine of 1868 is dead!

“I walk across that Democratic camping-ground as in a graveyard. Under my feet resound the hollow echoes of the dead. There lies slavery, a black marble column at the head of its grave, on which I read: Died in the flames of the Civil War; loved in its life; lamented in its death; followed to its bier by its only mourner, the Democratic party, but dead! And here is a double grave: Sacred to the memory of Squatter Sovereignty. Died in the campaign of 1860. On the reverse side: Sacred to the memory of the Dred Scott-Breckinridge doctrine. Both died at the hands of Abraham Lincoln! And here a monument of brimstone: Sacred to the memory of the Rebellion; the war against it is a failure; Tilden et Vallandigham fecerunt, A. D. 1864. Dead on the field of battle; shot to death by the million guns of the Republic. The doctrine of Secession; of State Sovereignty. Dead. Expired in the flames of civil war, amidst the blazing rafters of the Confederacy, except that the modern Æneas, fleeing out of the flames of that ruin, bears on his back another Anchises of State Sovereignty, and brings it here in the person of the honorable gentleman from the Appomattox district of Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. [Laughter.] All else is dead.

“Now, gentlemen, are you sad, are you sorry for these deaths? Are you not glad that Secession is dead? that slavery is dead? that Squatter Sovereignty is dead? that the doctrine of the failure of the war is dead? Then you are glad that you were out-voted in 1860, in 1864, in 1868, and in 1872. If you have tears to shed over these losses, shed them in the graveyard, but not in this House of living men. I know that many a Southern man rejoices that these issues are dead. The gentleman from Mississippi has clothed his joy with eloquence.

“Now, gentlemen, if you yourselves are glad that you have suffered defeat during the last sixteen years, will you not be equally glad when you suffer defeat next November? [Laughter.] But pardon that remark; I regret it; I would use no bravado.

“Now, gentlemen, come with me for a moment into the camp of the Republican party and review its career. Our central doctrine in 1860 was that slavery should never extend itself over another foot of American soil. Is that doctrine dead? It is folded away like a victorious banner; 287its truth is alive for evermore on this continent. In 1864 we declared that we would put down the Rebellion and Secession. And that doctrine lives, and will live when the second Centennial has arrived! Freedom, national, universal, and perpetual—our great Constitutional Amendments, are they alive or dead? Alive, thank the God that shields both liberty and Union. And our national credit, saved from the assaults of Pendleton; saved from the assaults of those who struck it later, rising higher and higher at home and abroad; and only now in doubt lest its chief, its only enemy, the Democracy, should triumph in November.

“Mr. Chairman, ought the Republican party to surrender its truncheon of command to the Democracy? The gentleman from Mississippi says, if this were England, the ministry would go out in twenty-four hours with such a state of things as we have here. Ah, yes! that is an ordinary case of change of administration. But if this were England, what would she have done at the end of the war? England made one such mistake as the gentleman asks this country to make, when she threw away the achievements of the grandest man that ever trod her highway of power. Oliver Cromwell had overturned the throne of despotic power, and had lifted his country to a place of masterful greatness among the nations of the earth; and when, after his death, his great scepter was transferred to a weak though not unlineal hand, his country, in a moment of reactionary blindness, brought back the Stuarts. England did not recover from that folly until, in 1689, the Prince of Orange drove from her island the last of that weak and wicked line. Did she afterward repeat the blunder?

“For more than fifty years pretenders were seeking the throne; and the wars on her coast, in Scotland and in Ireland, threatened the overthrow of the new dynasty and the disruption of the empire. But the solid phlegm, the magnificent pluck, the roundabout common-sense of Englishmen steadied the throne till the cause of the Stuarts was dead. They did not change as soon as the battle was over and let the Stuarts come back to power.

“And how was it in our own country, when our fathers had triumphed in the war of the Revolution? When the victory was won, did they open their arms to the Loyalists, as they called themselves, or Tories, as our fathers called them? Did they invite them back? Not one. They confiscated their lands. The States passed decrees that no Tory should live on our soil. And when they were too poor to take themselves away, 288our fathers, burdened as the young nation was with debt, raised the money to transport the Tories beyond seas or across the Canada border. They went to England, to France, to Nova Scotia, to New Brunswick, and especially to Halifax; and that town was such a resort for them, that it became the swear-word of our boyhood. ‘Go to Halifax!’ was a substitute for a more impious, but not more opprobrious expression. The presence of Tories made it opprobrious.

“Now, I do not refer to this as an example which we ought to follow. Oh, no. We live in a milder era, in an age softened by the more genial influence of Christian civilization. Witness the sixty-one men who fought against us in the late war, and who are now sitting in this and the other chamber of Congress. Every one of them is here because a magnanimous nation freely voted that they might come; and they are welcome. Only please do not say that you are just now especially fitted to rule the Republic, and to be the apostles of liberty and of blessings to the colored race.

“Gentlemen, the North has been asked these many years to regard the sensibilities of the South. We have been told that you were brave and sensitive men, and that we ought not to throw firebrands among you. Most of our people have treated you with justice and magnanimity. In some things we have given you just cause for complaint; but I want to remind you that the North also has sensibilities to be regarded. The ideas which they cherished, and for which they fought, triumphed in the highest court, the court of last resort, the field of battle. Our people intend to abide by that verdict and to enforce the mandate. They rejoice at every evidence of acquiescence. They look forward to the day when the distinctions of North and South shall have melted away in the grander sentiment of nationality. But they do not think it is yet safe to place the control of this great work in your hands. In the hands of some of you they would be safe, perfectly safe; but into the hands of the united South, joined with the most reactionary elements of the Northern Democracy, our people will not yet surrender the government.

“I am aware that there is a general disposition ‘to let by-gones be by-gones,’ and to judge of parties and of men, not by what they have been, but by what they are and what they propose.

“That view is partly just and partly erroneous. It is just and wise to bury resentments and animosities. It is erroneous in this, that parties have an organic life and spirit of their own—an individuality and character 289which outlive the men who compose them; and the spirit and traditions of a party should be considered in determining their fitness for managing the affairs of a nation. For this purpose I have reviewed the history of the Democratic party.”

Long ago an arrangement was perfected by which each State of the Union should be allowed to place in the halls of Congress two statues of distinguished citizens. On December 19, 1876, the State of Massachusetts announced its readiness to comply with this arrangement, by presenting two statues, one of John Winthrop and one of Samuel Adams.

Speaking on the resolution of that day, accepting this gift, Mr. Garfield made one of the most felicitous of the many speeches of this kind that he has left on record. One paragraph from this address can not be omitted here:

“As, from time to time, our venerable and beautiful Hall has been peopled with statues of the elect of the States, it has seemed to me that a Third House was being organized within the walls of the Capitol—a house whose members have received their high credentials at the hands of history, and whose term of office will outlast the ages. Year by year we see the circle of its immortal membership enlarging; year by year we see the elect of their country, in eloquent silence, taking their places in this American Pantheon, bringing within its sacred circle the wealth of those immortal memories which made their lives illustrious; and year by year that august assembly is teaching a deeper and grander lesson to all who serve their brief hour in these more ephemeral Houses of Congress. And now two places of great honor have just been most nobly filled.”

Of a truth, General Garfield understood and appreciated the greatness of the Republic, and the grandeur of the character which belonged to its founders!

The election for President, in 1876, and the difficulty which arose in deciding its results, will not be forgotten by this generation, or left out of the studies of American statesmen in the future. We still vividly recollect how narrow the majority, and how uncertain; how all depended on three doubtful 290Southern States; how the “visiting statesmen” went to New Orleans to watch the count before the Returning Board; how the nation waited breathless while these momentous calculations were being made. And finally, we long shall remember that famous Electoral Commission which by an eight to seven vote made R. B. Hayes President of the United States.

Arriving at Washington early in November, General Garfield was requested by President Grant to go to New Orleans with the little company of Democratic and Republican leaders who were there. General Garfield arrived in New Orleans on November fourteenth. In common with other members of the Republican Committee, he refused to unite in any movement to in any way influence the Returning Board in its canvass of the vote. He was there simply to witness what was done; not to take part in the proceedings.

These visitors of both parties were given opportunities to witness the count, five of each party being there all the time. They were furnished with copies of all testimony taken; and to simplify the work, the study of this testimony was distributed out among individuals. General Garfield was given all the papers regarding East Feliciana parish, which he thoroughly examined, and even recalled and re-examined some of the witnesses.

In the work before the Returning Board, that Board allowed these witnesses to ask questions, and to take copies of all the papers. Each party was also represented by counsel, who argued the disputed points.

This was the work of the “visiting statesmen.” When the canvassing of votes was completed, without waiting for or trying to influence the result, General Garfield returned to Washington, as did nearly all the others.

It has been a question whether outsiders ought to have been at New Orleans at all in this emergency. Certainly a public man ran great risk of doing himself harm by going, and it required the utmost circumspection to get out of it, clear from suspicion of evil. A year afterward this affair was examined by the Potter Committee, 291and of Garfield, the worst they could say was this: “We found no fault in him.”

But the struggle at New Orleans did not decide it all. When January came it was seen that there would still be trouble in deciding who were elected. It was feared by all that an attempt to decide by the existing laws, without the help of further provisions, might lead to serious difficulties.

Accordingly, on January 29, 1877, there was passed in the House a law providing for the Electoral Commission, a body to be composed of five Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, five Senators and five Representatives, to whom should be committed the duty of deciding, by their recommendation, the votes of any disputed States.

General Garfield was opposed to this commission, which he thought an unhappy way of ending the trouble. His views are given in a speech made to the House, on January 25, wherein he said:

“What, then, are the grounds on which we should consider a bill like this? It would be unbecoming in me or in any member of this Congress to oppose this bill on mere technical or trifling grounds. It should be opposed, if at all, for reasons so broad, so weighty, as to overcome all that has been said in its favor, and all the advantages which I have here admitted may follow from its passage. I do not wish to diminish the stature of my antagonist; I do not wish to undervalue the points of strength in a measure before I question its propriety. It is not enough that this bill will tide us over a present danger, however great. Let us for a moment forget Hayes and Tilden, Republicans and Democrats; let us forget our own epoch and our own generation; and, entering a broader field, inquire how this thing which we are about to do will effect the great feature of our republic, and in what condition, if we pass this bill, we shall transmit our institutions to those who shall come after us. The present good which we shall achieve by it may be very great; yet if the evils that will flow from it in the future must be greater, it would be base in us to flinch from trouble by entailing remediless evils upon our children.

“In my view, then, the foremost question is this: What will be the effect of this measure upon our institutions? I can not make that inquiry intelligibly without a brief reference to the history of the Constitution, and to some of the formidable questions which presented themselves to 292our fathers nearly a hundred years ago, when they set up this goodly frame of Government.

“Among the foremost difficulties, both in point of time and magnitude, was how to create an executive head of the Nation. Our fathers encountered that difficulty the first morning after they organized and elected the officers of the Constitutional Convention. The first resolution introduced by Randolph, of Virginia, on the 29th day of May, recognized that great question, and invited the Convention to its examination. The men who made the Constitution were deeply read in the profoundest political philosophy of their day. They had learned from Montesquieu, from Locke, from Fénelon, and other good teachers of the human race, that liberty is impossible without a clear and distinct separation of the three great powers of government. A generation before their epoch, Montesquieu had said:

“‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws and execute them in a tyrannical manner.

“‘There would be an end of every thing were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise these three powers, that of enacting the laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.’

“This was a fundamental truth in the American mind, as it had long been cherished and practiced in the British empire.

“There, as in all monarchies, the creation of a chief executive was easily regulated by adopting a dynasty, and following the law of primogeniture.

“But our fathers had drawn the deeper lesson of liberty from the inspirations of this free New World, that their Chief Executive should be born, not of a dynasty, but of the will of a free people regulated by law.

“In the course of their deliberations upon this subject, there were suggested seven different plans, which may be grouped under two principal heads or classes. One group comprised all the plans for creating the Chief Executive by means of some one of the preëxisting political organizations of the country. First and foremost was the proposition to authorize one or both Houses of the National Legislature to elect the Chief Executive. Another was to confer that power upon the governors 293of the States, or upon the legislatures of the States. Another, that he should be chosen directly by the people themselves under the laws of the States. The second group comprised all the various plans for creating a new and separate instrumentality for making the choice.

“At first the proposition that the Executive should be elected by the National Legislature was received by the Convention with almost unanimous approval; and for the reason that up to that time Congress had done all that was done in the way of national government. It had created the nation and led its fortunes through a thousand perils, had declared and achieved independence, and had preserved the liberty of the people in the midst of a great war. Though Congress had failed to secure a firm and stable Government after the war, yet its glory was not forgotten. As Congress had created the Union, it was most natural that our fathers should say Congress should also create the Chief Executive of the nation. And within two weeks after the Convention assembled, they voted for that plan with absolute unanimity.

“But with equal unanimity they agreed that this plan would be fatal to the stability of the Government they were about to establish, if they did not couple with it some provision that should make the President’s functions independent of the power that created him. To effect this, they provided that the President should be ineligible for reëlection. They said it would never do to create a Chief Executive by the voice of the National Legislature, and then allow him to be reëlected by that same voice; for he would thus become their creature.

“And so, from the first day of their session in May, to within five days of its close in September, they grappled with the mighty question. I have many times, and recently very carefully, gone through all the records that are left to us of that great transaction. I find that more than one-seventh of all the pages of the Madison papers are devoted to this Samson of questions, how the Executive should be chosen and made independent of the organization that made the choice. This topic alone occupied more than one-seventh of all the time of the Convention.

“After a long and earnest debate, after numerous votes and reconsiderations, they were obliged utterly to abandon the plan of creating the Chief Executive by means of the National Legislature. I will not stop now to prove the statement by a dozen or more pungent quotations from the masters of political science in that great assembly, in which they declared that it would be ruinous to the liberty of the people and 294to the permanence of the Republic if they did not absolutely exclude the National Legislature from any share in the election of the President.

“They pointed with glowing eloquence to the sad but instructive fate of those brilliant Italian republics that were destroyed because there was no adequate separation of powers, and because their senates overwhelmed and swallowed up the executive power, and, as secret and despotic conclaves, became the destroyers of Italian liberty.

“At the close of the great discussion, when the last vote on this subject was taken by our fathers, they were almost unanimous in excluding the National Legislature from any share whatever in the choice of the Chief Executive of the nation. They rejected all the plans of the first group, and created a new instrumentality. They adopted the system of electors. When that plan was under discussion, they used the utmost precaution to hedge it about by every conceivable protection against the interference or control of Congress.

“In the first place, they said the States shall create the electoral colleges. They allowed Congress to have nothing whatever to do with the creation of the colleges, except merely to fix the time when the States should appoint them. And, in order to exclude Congress by positive prohibition, in the last days of the Convention they provided that no member of either House of Congress should be appointed an elector; so that not even by the personal influence of any one of its members could the Congress interfere with the election of a President.

“The creation of a President under our Constitution consists of three distinct steps: First, the creation of the electoral colleges; second, the vote of colleges; and third, the opening and counting of their votes. This is the simple plan of the Constitution.

“The creation of the colleges is left absolutely to the States, within the five limitations I had the honor to mention to the House a few days ago. First, it must be a State that appoints electors; second, the State is limited as to the number of electors it may appoint; third, electors shall not be members of Congress or officers of the United States; fourth, the time for appointing electors may be fixed by Congress; and, fifth, the time when their appointment is announced, which must be before the date for giving their votes, may also be fixed by Congress.

“These five simple limitations, and these alone, were laid upon the States. Every other act, fact, and thing possible to be done in creating the electoral colleges was absolutely and uncontrollably in the power of 295the States themselves. Within these limitations, Congress has no more power to touch them in this work than England or France. That is the first step.

“The second is still plainer and simpler, namely, the work of the colleges. They were created as an independent and separate power, or set of powers, for the sole purpose of electing a President. They were created by the States. Congress has just one thing to do with them, and only one: it may fix the day when they shall meet. By the act of 1792 Congress fixed the day as it still stands in the law; and there the authority of the Congress over the colleges ended.

“There was a later act—of 1845—which gave to the States the authority to provide by law for filling vacancies of electors in these colleges; and Congress has passed no other law on the subject.

“The States having created them, the time of their assemblage having been fixed by Congress, and their power to fill vacancies having been regulated by State laws, the colleges are as independent in the exercise of their functions as is any department of the Government within its sphere. Being thus equipped, their powers are restrained by a few simple limitations laid upon them by the Constitution itself: first, they must vote for a native-born citizen; second, for a man who has been fourteen years a resident of the United States; third, at least one of the persons for whom they vote must not be a citizen of their own State; fourth, the mode of voting and certifying their returns is prescribed by the Constitution itself. Within these simple and plain limitations the electoral colleges are absolutely independent of the States and of Congress.

“One fact in the history of the Constitutional Convention, which I have not seen noticed in any of the recent debates, illustrates very clearly how careful our fathers were to preserve these colleges from the interference of Congress, and to protect their independence by the bulwarks of the Constitution itself. In the draught of the electoral system reported September 4, 1787, it was provided that Congress ‘may determine the time of choosing and assembling of the electors and the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes.’

“That was the language of the original draught; but our fathers had determined that the National Legislature should have nothing to do with the action of the colleges; and the words that gave Congress the power to prescribe the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes were stricken out. The instrument itself prescribed the mode. Thus Congress 296was wholly expelled from the colleges. The Constitution swept the ground clear of all intruders, and placed its own imperial guardianship around the independence of the electoral colleges by forbidding even Congress to enter the sacred circle. No Congressman could enter; and, except to fix the day of their meeting, Congress could not speak to the electors.

“These colleges are none the less sovereign and independent because they exist only for a day. They meet on the same day in all the States; they do their work summarily in one day, and dissolve for ever. There is no power to interfere, no power to recall them, no power to revise their action. Their work is done; the record is made up, signed, sealed, and transmitted; and thus the second great act in the Presidential election is completed. I ought to correct myself; the second act is the Presidential election. The election is finished the hour when the electoral colleges have cast their votes and sealed up the record.

“Still, there is a third step in the process; and it is shorter, plainer, simpler than the other two. These sealed certificates of the electoral colleges are forwarded to the President of the Senate, where they rest under the silence of the seals for more than two months. The Constitution assumes that the result of the election is still unknown. But on a day fixed by law, and the only day of all the days of February on which the law commands Congress to be in session, the last act in the plan of electing a President is to be performed.

“How plain and simple are the words that describe this third and last step. Here they are:

“‘The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.’

“Here is no ambiguity. Two words dominate and inspire the clause. They are the words open and count. These words are not shrouded in the black-letter mysteries of the law. They are plain words, understood by every man who speaks our mother-tongue, and need no lexicon or commentary.

“Consider the grand and simple ceremonial by which the third act is to be completed. On the day fixed by law the two Houses of Congress are assembled. The President of the Senate, who, by the Constitution, has been made the custodian of the sealed certificates from all the electoral colleges, takes his place. The Constitution requires a ‘person’ and a ‘presence.’ That ‘person’ is the President of the Senate; and that 297‘presence’ is the ‘presence’ of the two Houses. Then two things are to be done. The certificates are to be opened, and the votes are to be counted. These are not legislative acts, but clearly and plainly executive acts. I challenge any man to find anywhere an accepted definition of an executive act that does not include both these. They can not be tortured into a meaning that will carry them beyond the boundaries of executive action. And one of these acts the President of the Senate is peremptorily ordered to perform. The Constitution commands him to ‘open all the certificates.’ Certificates of what? Certificates of the votes of the electoral colleges. Not any certificates that any body may choose to send, but certificates of electors appointed by the States. The President of the Senate is presumed to know what are the States in the Union, who are their officers, and, when he opens the certificates, he learns from the official record who have been appointed electors, and he finds their votes.

“The Constitution contemplated the President of the Senate as the Vice-President of the United States, the elect of all the people. And to him is confided the great trust, the custodianship of the only official record of the election of President. What is it to ‘open the certificates’? It would be a narrow and inadequate view of that word to say that it means only the breaking of the seals. To open an envelope is not to ‘open the certificates.’ The certificate is not the paper on which the record is made; it is the record itself. To open the certificates is not a physical but an intellectual act. It is to make patent the record; to publish it. When that is done the election of President and Vice-President is published. But one thing remains to be done; and here the language of the Constitution changes from the active to the passive voice, from the personal to the impersonal. To the trusted custodian of the votes succeeds the impersonality of arithmetic; the votes have been made known; there remains only the command of the Constitution: ‘They shall be counted’—that is, the numbers shall be added up.

“No further act is required. The Constitution itself declares the result:

“‘The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.’

“If no person has such majority, the House of Representatives shall immediately choose a President; not the House as organized for legislation, but a new electoral college is created out of the members of the House, by means of which each State has one vote for President, and only one.

298“To review the ground over which I have traveled: The several acts that constitute the election of a President may be symbolized by a pyramid consisting of three massive, separate blocks. The first, the creation of the electoral college by the States, is the broad base. It embraces the legislative, the judicial, and the executive powers of the States. All the departments of the State government and all the voters of the State coöperate in shaping and perfecting it.

“The action of the electoral colleges forms the second block, perfect in itself, and independent of the others, superimposed with exactness upon the first.

“The opening and counting of the votes of the colleges is the little block that crowns and completes the pyramid.

“Such, Mr. Speaker, was the grand and simple plan by which the framers of the Constitution empowered all the people, acting under the laws of the several States, to create special and select colleges of independent electors to choose a President, who should be, not the creature of Congress, nor of the States, but the Chief Magistrate of the whole Nation—the elect of all the people.”

But the Electoral Commission was constituted by law, and Garfield himself chosen unanimously by his party as a member thereof. He accepted, saying: “Since you have appointed me, I will serve. I can act on a committee when I do not believe in its validity.” That fact could not affect the justice of his decisions.

It is impossible to even hint at more than a small portion of the vast field of work which occupied General Garfield during this and the succeeding Congress.

On November 16, 1877, he made a very able speech on the subject of Resumption of Payments; an address which would serve to perpetuate his fame, if he had no other monument.

In the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1876, appeared an article from his pen, entitled “The Currency Conflict.” On June 4, of the same year, he opposed, in an elaborate address, a tariff bill brought in by Mr. Morrison, of Illinois.

June 22, 1876, was to him the “sad occasion dear” of a revival of precious memories. In the preceding December his old friend and fellow-student of Hiram, Miss Booth, had died, and this day 299in June was appointed there for a memorial address by General Garfield. As at all such times when he spoke, we are struck with a sense of the wonderful delicacy of this man’s nature, which responded so perfectly to every delicate and holy sentiment known to the human heart. His very first words were:

“Mr. President: You have called me to a duty at once most sad and most sacred. At every step of my preparation for its performance, I have encountered troops of thronging memories that swept across the field of the last twenty-five years of my life, and so filled my heart with the lights and shadows of their joy and sorrow that I have hardly been able to marshal them into order or give them coherent voice. I have lived over again the life of this place. I have seen again the groups of young and joyous students, ascending these green slopes, dwelling for a time on this peaceful height in happy and workful companionship, and then, with firmer step, and with more serious and thoughtful faces, marching away to their posts in the battle of life.

“And still nearer and clearer have come back the memories of that smaller band of friends, the leaders and guides of those who encamped on this training-ground. On my journey to this assembly, it has seemed that they, too, were coming, and that I should once more meet and greet them. And I have not yet been able to realize that Almeda Booth will not be with us. After our great loss, how shall we gather up the fragments of the life we lived in this place? We are mariners, treading the lonely shore in search of our surviving comrades and the fragments of our good ship, wrecked by the tempest. To her, indeed, it is no wreck. She has landed in safety, and ascended the immortal heights beyond our vision.”

The death of Michael C. Kerr having made necessary the selection of a new Speaker, the Democratic majority in the House elected Samuel J. Randall, and the complimentary vote of the Republicans went to General Garfield. He was also their candidate in the two succeeding Congresses. He had divided the honor of leadership pretty evenly with Mr. Blaine, until, in 1877, the latter gentleman went to the Senate, and left Garfield without a rival. Fourteen years of able and faithful service had done their work grandly for his power and his fame.

300On February 12, 1878, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York City, presented to Congress that great painting of Carpenter, “Lincoln and Emancipation.” At her request the presentation address was made by General Garfield.

His important speeches during this Congress were even more numerous than usual; especially in the special session held in the spring and summer of 1879. One of the best was that of February 19, 1878, on the “Policy of Pacification, and the Prosecutions in Louisiana.” At this time there were two serious political storms brewing in the air. First, there were divisions in the Republican party, and an alienation of some of its leaders from President Hayes; second, the Democratic party, with its cries of “fraud,” concerning the last election, and its Potter Committee, and its prosecutions against the members of the Louisiana Returning Board, was trying to destroy the people’s confidence in the Government as then constituted. The latter quarrel no doubt was the salvation of the party concerned in the former. Its members rallied and united. Garfield was leader and chief promoter of Republican harmony, as well as the strongest bulwark against the enemy.

This speech of February 19 contains the following pithy paragraph, descriptive of the way in which the nation had passed through the transformations of war:

“There was, first, the military stage—the period of force, of open and bloody war—in which gentlemen of high character and honor met on the field, and decided by the power of the strongest the questions involved in the high court of war. That period passed, but did not leave us on the calm level of peace. It brought us to the period of transition, in which the elements of war and peace were mingled together in strange and anarchic confusion. It was a period of civil and military elements combined. All through that semi-military period the administration of General Grant had, of necessity, to conduct the country. His administration was not all civil, it was not all military; it was necessarily a combination of both; and out of that combination came many of the strange and anomalous situations which always follow such a war.”

Again:

“Our great military chieftain, who brought the war to a successful 301conclusion, had command as chief executive during eight years of turbulent, difficult, and eventful administration. He saw his administration drawing to a close, and his successor elected—who, studying the question, came to the conclusion that the epoch had arrived, the hour had struck, when it was possible to declare that the semi-military period was ended, and the era of peace methods, of civil processes, should be fully inaugurated. With that spirit, and at the beginning of this third era, Rutherford B. Hayes came into the Presidency. I ought to say that, in my judgment, more than any other public man we have known, the present head of the administration is an optimist. He looks on the best side of things. He is hopeful for the future, and prefers to look upon the bright side rather than upon the dark and sinister side of human nature. His faith is larger than the faith of most of us; and with his faith and hope he has gone to the very verge of the Constitution in offering both hands of fellowship and all the olive-branches of peace to bring back good feeling, and achieve the real pacification to this country.”

After this came a brief protest against the Bland Silver Bill, February 28, 1878. On March 6, 1878, he delivered his “New Scheme of American Finance,” being in answer to a personal attack of William D. Kelley, the great protective tariff advocate, of Pennsylvania. Other addresses were, “The Army and the Public Peace,” May 21, 1878; reply to Mr. Tucker on the “Tariff,” June 4, 1878; “Honest Money,” a speech delivered at Boston, in Faneuil Hall, September 10, 1878; “Suspension and Resumption of Specie Payments,” at Chicago, January 2, 1879, before the Honest Money League of the North-west; in memory of Joseph Henry, January 16,1879; “Relation of Government to Science,” February 11, 1879; in memory of the late Hon. Gustave Schleicher, February 17, 1879; and a very interesting speech of February 26, 1879, about the “Sugar Tariff.”

When March 3,1879, came, the Forty-Fifth Congress went out with much of its important business undone; two of the great appropriation bills had not passed on account of political difficulties. The Democrats attempted to force assent to some of their schemes by tacking their propositions to the Appropriation bill. But this measure the Republicans resisted to the last. And so it happened that in March, 1879, President Hayes was 302obliged to call an extra session. But here the old fight was renewed, and a long “dead lock” followed.

Throughout this struggle, Garfield was the central figure in the front rank of his party in the House. Scarcely had Congress assembled when the old Army Bill was reported. Then, in Committee of the Whole, the old “rider” was moved as an amendment. The Chair decided this amendment in order, whereupon there was great indignation on the Republican side, and a remarkable debate ensued. Garfield made his principal protest while things were in this situation, on March 29, 1879, in a speech entitled “Revolution in Congress.”

Throughout this special session the fierce heat of political conflict grew more intense every day, like the sun whose burning rays beat down upon the Capitol. On April 4, Garfield spoke again on the subject which had occupied his attention six days before. April 26, he spoke on the passage of the Legislative Appropriation Bill; May 17, against unlimited coinage of silver; June 19, on the Judicial Appropriation Bill; June 21, concerning a proposed survey of the Mississippi River, in the course of which he said:

“But for myself, I believe that one of the grandest of our material national interests—one that is national in the largest material sense of that word—is the Mississippi River and its navigable tributaries. It is the most gigantic single natural feature of our continent, far transcending the glory of the ancient Nile or of any other river on the earth. The statesmanship of America must grapple the problem of this mighty stream. It is too vast for any State to handle; too much for any authority less than that of the nation itself to manage. And I believe the time will come when the liberal-minded statesmanship of this country will devise a wise and comprehensive system, that will harness the powers of this great river to the material interests of America, so that not only all the people who live on its banks and the banks of its confluents, but all the citizens of the Republic, whether dwellers in the central valley or on the slope of either ocean, will recognize the importance of preserving and perfecting this great natural and material bond of national union between the North and the South—a bond to be so strengthened by commerce and intercourse that it can never be severed.”

303Thus refreshed by something more liberal than the recent discussions in which he had been engaged, Garfield soon resumed the struggle, and on June 27, 1879, gave the Democratic party and the South a regular broadside on “State Sovereignty.”

The Special Session of 1879 came to an end on July 1st. At its beginning the dominant power in the House loudly proclaimed its intention to push its measures through at all hazards. The appropriation bills, with their obnoxious “riders,” were passed; the President vetoed them. It then became a question of revolution or yielding. There was no revolution! Every dollar called for by the Government was voted, except the pay of the United States marshals, who overcame the difficulty by paying their own expenses, trusting a future session of Congress to repay them.

According to his custom, General Garfield spoke often during the Ohio campaign of 1879; a good specimen of his stump speeches is the one at Cleveland, on October 11th, of this year. At the Andersonville Reunion, held in Toledo, Ohio, on October 3d, he had been present and addressed the throng of Union soldiers and ex-prisoners who met there.

During the regular sessions of the Forty-Sixth Congress his activity was undiminished. In his speech of March 17, during the discussion of a bill to pay the United States marshals for the year ending June 30, 1880, we find such sterling utterances as these:

“Mr. Chairman: When I took my seat as a member of this House, I took it with all the responsibilities which the place brought upon me; and among others was my duty to keep the obligations of the law. Where the law speaks in mandatory terms to every body else and then to me, I should deem it cowardly and dishonorable if I should skulk behind my legislative privilege for the purpose of disobeying and breaking the supreme law of the land.

“The issue now made is somewhat different from that of the last session, but, in my judgment, it is not less significant and dangerous. I would gladly waive any party advantage which this controversy might 304give for the sake of that calm and settled peace which would reign in this Hall if we all obeyed the law. But if the leaders on the other side are still determined to rush upon their fate by forcing upon the country this last issue—that because the Democratic party happen not to like a law they will not obey it—because they happen not to approve of the spirit and character of a law they will not let it be executed—I say to gentlemen on the other side, if you are determined to make such an issue, it is high time that the American people should know it.

“Here is the volume of our laws. More sacred than the twelve tables of Rome, this rock of the law rises in monumental grandeur alike above the people and the President, above the courts, above Congress, commanding everywhere reverence and obedience to its supreme authority. Yet the dominant party in this House virtually declares that ‘any part of this volume that we do not like and can not repeal we will disobey. We have tried to repeal these election laws; we have failed because we had not the constitutional power to destroy them; the Constitution says they shall stand in their authority and power; but we, the Democratic party, in defiance of the Constitution, declare that if we can not destroy them outright by the repeal, they shall be left to crumble into ruin by wanton and lawless neglect.’

“Mr. Chairman, by far the most formidable danger that threatens the Republic to-day is the spirit of law-breaking which shows itself in many turbulent and alarming manifestations. The people of the Pacific Coast, after two years of wrestling with the spirit of communism in the city of San Francisco, have finally grappled with this lawless spirit, and the leader of it was yesterday sentenced to penal servitude as a violator of the law. But what can we say to Denis Kearney and his associates if to-day we announce ourselves the foremost law-breakers of the country and set an example to all the turbulent and vicious elements of disorder to follow us?

“I ask, gentlemen, whether this is a time when it is safe to disregard and weaken the authority of law. In all quarters the civil society of this country is becoming honeycombed through and through by disintegrating forces—in some States by the violation of contracts and the repudiation of debts; in others by open resistance and defiance; in still others by the reckless overturning of constitutions and letting the ‘red fool fury of the Seine’ run riot among our people and build its blazing altars to the strange gods of ruin and misrule. All these things are shaking the good order of 305society and threatening the foundations of our Government and our peace. In a time like this, more than ever before, this country needs a body of lawgivers clothed and in their right minds, who have laid their hands upon the altar of the law as its defenders, not its destroyers.”

April 5, 1880, General Garfield made a trenchant argument against a pet measure of the greenback apostle, Mr. Weaver. Five days afterward occurred a debate between Garfield and McMahon, also of Ohio, on the pending Appropriation bill.

On May first he made a personal explanation, defending his committee action in regard to the so-called wood-pulp monopoly. This pulp is obtained from soft wood and used in the manufacture of paper. The newspapers everywhere were calling for a removal of the duty on this their great necessity. Garfield stood out for a ten per cent. tariff, as a protection to our manufacturers from the Canadian manufacturers, who had no royalties to pay, and therefore could have undersold us. In this speech Garfield met the charge of being a monopoly supporter, and vindicated his policy on the disputed question.

Turning aside from this well-fought field where Garfield had so long stood, as a great representative of all that is good in the recent legislative history of our country, it is time to view the new honors which were now preparing for him.

On the fourteenth of January, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected James A. Garfield to the United States Senate, to succeed Mr. Thurman, whose term was to expire in the following March. So thoroughly had Garfield recovered from the wave of scandal which a few years earlier had swept over but could not overwhelm him, that he was the unanimous choice of his party; and the Democratic minority itself cordially united to make his election unanimous. All this came entirely without solicitation from him for such an honor.

At an informal reception held in the Capitol at Columbus, the evening after his election, General Garfield was called upon for a speech. In response, he made a brief and appropriate address. The following is an extract therefrom:

306“Fellow-Citizens:—I should be a great deal more than a man, or a great deal less than a man, if I were not extremely gratified by this mark of your kindness you have shown me in recent days. I did not expect any such meeting as this. I knew there was a greeting awaiting me, but I did not expect so cordial, generous, and general a greeting, without distinction of party, without distinction of interests, as I have received here to-night. And you will allow me in a moment or two to speak of the memories this chamber awakens.

“I recognize the importance of the place to which you have elected me, and I should be base if I did not also recognize the great man whom you have elected me to succeed. I say for him, Ohio has had few larger-minded, broader-minded men in the records of our history than that of Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely from him as I have done in politics, and do, I recognize him as a man high in character and great in intellect; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have never before referred to in public—that many years ago, in the storm of party fighting, when the air was filled with all sorts of missiles aimed at the character and reputation of public men, when it was even for his party interest to join the general clamor against me and my associates, Senator Thurman said in public, in the campaign, on the stump,—where men are as likely to say unkind things as at any place in the world,—a most generous and earnest word of defense and kindness for me, which I shall never forget as long as I live. I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world; and where we can early pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so.

“And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, without distinction of party, I recognize this tribute and compliment made to me to-night. Whatever my own course may be in the future, a large share of the inspiration of my future public life will be drawn from this occasion and these surroundings, and I shall feel anew the sense of obligation that I owe to the State of Ohio. Let me venture to point a single sentence in regard to that work. During the twenty years that I have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my convictions at whatever personal cost to myself. I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little 307egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name is Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not have his approbation, I should have bad companionship. And in this larger constituency which has called me to represent them now, I can only do what is true to my best self, applying the same rules. And if I should be so unfortunate as to lose the confidence of this larger constituency, I must do what every other fair-minded man has to do—carry his political life in his hand and take the consequences. But I must follow what seems to me to be the only safe rule of my life; and with that view of the case, and with that much personal reference, I leave the subject.

“Thanking you again, fellow-citizens, members of the General Assembly, Republicans and Democrats—all, party man as I am,—thanking you both for what you have done and for this cordial and manly greeting, I bid you good-night.”

CHAPTER IX. GREAT QUESTIONS AND GREAT ANSWERS. — THIS IS A NATION. — THE FORCE BILL. — EQUIPOISE OF OUR GOVERNMENT. — “‘A BILL TO PROVIDE FOR A GRADUAL RETURN TO SPECIE PAYMENTS. — ENGLISH PRECEDENT. — CURRENCY AND THE BANKS. — THE REPEAL OF THE RESUMPTION ACT. — THE TARIFF. — PUBLIC EXPENDITURES — HOW SHALL EXPENDITURES BE GAUGED? — TEST OF POPULATION. — TEST OF TERRITORIAL SETTLEMENT AND EXPANSION. — EXPENDITURES OF ENGLAND. — EFFECTS OF WAR ON EXPENDITURES. — WAR EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES. — DURATION OF WAR EXPENDITURES. — WHEN SHALL WE REACH OUR NEW LEVEL OF EXPENDITURES? — THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC. — ON THE RELATION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO SCIENCE. — REVOLUTION IN CONGRESS. — THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. — FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS.

It is now appropriate to consider somewhat in extenso the claims of James A. Garfield to be regarded as a statesman. It must needs be in the life of every public man, more particularly in the life of a Congressman, and more particularly still in the life of him who has risen to the rank of leader of the House, that he speak much on questions of passing interest. Many of the topics which engage his attention flit away with the occasion which gave them birth. They are the issues of the day, creatures of prejudice and partisanship. Hence in the history of the life of a public man, many paragraphs will be found which merely recount the battles fought and victories won in the ordinary contests of the arena.

In the most marked contrast with this, however, is another class of questions which rise to the level of perpetual interest, affecting not only the destinies of the hour, but pregnant with the fate of the future. Not questions of the day are these, passing like a shadow over the landscape of current events; but shining rather like those orbs from whose disks the effulgence is shed which makes shadows possible. Albeit, there are themes of statesmanship vitally affecting the life of the nation; and only he, who in the heated arena of public life shows himself able to grapple with such problems, is worthy of the name of statesman.

Was James A. Garfield a statesman? In considering this question, and finding therefor a fitting answer, it is necessary clearly to understand what are the leading themes of American statesmanship. Perhaps a fair analysis of this great question will show that those topics of public discussion which rise to the dignity of questions of statesmanship will present about four leading heads:

I. Questions affecting the Nationality of the United States.

309II. Questions affecting the Financial and Monetary systems of the United States.

III. Questions affecting the Revenue and Expenditures of the United States.

IV. Questions concerning the General Character and Tendency of American Institutions.

If it be shown that James A. Garfield proved himself able to grasp and discuss any or all of the great questions falling under this comprehensive classification, in such a manner as to throw new light upon them, to fix the status of public opinion regarding them, and to that extent to build more securely than hitherto the substructure of American greatness, then indeed is he worthy of the name of statesman. Let us then, without fear or partiality, apply the crucial test to Garfield’s public life, and see whether indeed he is the peer and fit companion for the great names of our history—for Hamilton, and Adams, and Webster, and Sumner, and Chase.

Before beginning this discussion, however, it will be necessary to remind the reader, that in considering the claims of Garfield to the rank of statesman under the outline presented above, the chronological order of the narrative will be broken up, and such a grouping made of his public speeches and papers as will best illustrate his views and establish his rank among the great men of our country.

First, then, as to questions affecting the Nationality of the United States. What is the record of him whose life is here recounted concerning those great and vital themes upon which rests our perpetuity as a nation? Three utterances, his earliest, his latest, and his most characteristic, must be taken as representatives of the entire class.

On February 1, 1866, being thirty-five years of age, he presented his views on the general question of the restoration of the States lately in rebellion:

“The word ‘State’, as it has been used by gentlemen in this discussion, has two meanings, as perfectly distinct as though different words had been used to express them. The confusion arising from applying 310the same word to two different and dissimilar objects, has had very much to do with the diverse conclusions which gentlemen have reached. They have given us the definition of a ‘state’ in the contemplation of public or international law, and have at once applied that definition and the conclusions based upon it, to the States of the American Union and the effects of war upon them. Let us examine the two meanings of the word, and endeavor to keep them distinct in their application to the questions before us.

“Phillimore, the great English publicist, says: ‘For all the purposes of international law, a state (demos, civitas, volk) may be defined to be a people permanently occupying a fixed territory, bound together by common laws, habits, and customs, into one body-politic, exercising through the medium of an organized government, independent sovereignty and control over all persons and things within its boundaries, capable of making war and peace, and of entering into all international relations with the other communities of the globe.’—Phillimore’s International Law, vol. i, sec. 65.

“Substantially the same definition maybe found in Grotius, book one, chapter one, section fourteen; in Burlamaqui, volume two, part one, chapter four, section nine; and in Vattel, book one, chapter one. The primary point of agreement in all these authorities is, that in contemplation of international law a state is absolutely sovereign, acknowledging no superior on earth. In that sense the United States is a state, a sovereign state, just as Great Britain, France, and Russia are states.

“But what is the meaning of the word State as applied to Ohio or Alabama? Is either of them a state in the sense of international law? They lack all the leading requisites of such a state. They are only the geographical subdivisions of a state; and though endowed by the people of the United States with the rights of local self-government, yet in all their external relations their sovereignty is completely destroyed, being merged in the supreme Federal Government.—Halleck’s International Law, sec. 16, page 71.

“Ohio can not make war; can not conclude peace; can not make a treaty with any foreign government, can not even make a compact with her sister States; can not regulate commerce; can not coin money; and has no flag. These indispensable attributes of sovereignty, the State of Ohio does not possess, nor does any other State of the Union. We call them States for want of a better name. We call them States, because the 311original Thirteen had been so designated before the Constitution was formed, but that Constitution destroyed all the sovereignty which those States were ever supposed to possess in reference to external affairs.

“I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the five great publicists—Grotius, Puffendorf, Bynkershoek, Burlamaqui, and Vattel, who have been so often quoted in this debate, and all of whom wrote more than a quarter of a century, and some nearly two centuries before our Constitution was formed, can hardly be quoted as good authorities in regard to the nature and legal relationships of the component States of the American Union.

“Even my colleague from the Columbus District [Mr. Shellabarger], in his very able discussion of this question, spoke as though a State of this Union was the same as a state in the sense of international law, with certain qualities added. I think he must admit that nearly all the leading attributes of such a state are taken from it when it becomes a State of the Union.

“Several gentlemen, during this debate, have quoted the well known doctrine of international law, ‘that war annuls all existing compacts and treaties between belligerents;’ and they have concluded, therefore, that our war has broken the Federal bond and dissolved the Union. This would be true, if the rebel States were states in the sense of international law—if our Government were not a sovereign nation, but only a league between sovereign states. I oppose to this conclusion the unanswerable proposition that this is a nation; that the rebel States are not sovereign states, and therefore their failure to achieve independence was a failure to break the Federal bond—to dissolve the Union....

“In view of the peculiar character of our Government, in what condition did the war leave the rebel States?”

He argued that by the admission of a State to the Union, the laws of the United States were extended to it. A State might violate one of these laws, but could not annul it. Each rebel State exerted every power to break away from these laws, but was unable to destroy or invalidate one of them. Each rebel State let go of the Union, but the Union did not let go of it:

“Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, He bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which 312they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the high hills are covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes miles below the soil, but it must still revolve in its appointed orbit. So Alabama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in ruin, but she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign people of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of obedience and duty.

“Now, let us inquire how the surrender of the military power of the rebellion affected the legal condition of those States. When the rebellion collapsed, and the last armed man of the Confederacy surrendered to our forces, I affirm that there was not in one of those States a single government that we did or could recognize. There was not in one of those States, from governor down to constable, a single man whom we could recognize as authorized to exercise any official function whatever. They had formed governments alien and hostile to the Union. Not only had their officers taken no oaths to support the Constitution of the United States, but they had heaped oath upon oath to destroy it.

“I go further. I hold that there were in those States no constitutions of any binding force and effect; none that we could recognize. A constitution, in this case, can mean nothing less than a constitution of government. A constitution must constitute something, or it is no constitution. When we speak of the constitution of Alabama, we mean the constitution of the government of Alabama. When the rebels surrendered, there remained no constitution in Alabama, because there remained no government. Those States reverted into our hands by victorious war, with every municipal right and every municipal authority utterly and completely swept away.”

After citing from the highest authorities on the laws of war, he sums up the legal status of the rebellious states as follows:

“1. That, by conquest, the United States obtained complete control of the rebel territory.

“2. That every vestige of municipal authority in those States was, by secession, rebellion, and the conquest of the rebellion, utterly destroyed.

313“3. That the state of war did not terminate with the actual cessation of hostilities, but that, under the laws of war, it was the duty of the President, as commander-in-chief, to establish governments over the conquered people of the insurgent States, which governments, no matter what may be their form, are really military governments, deriving their sole power from the President.

“4. That the governments thus established, are valid while the state of war continues and until Congress acts in the case.

“5. That it belongs exclusively to the legislative authority of the Government to determine the political status of the insurgent States, either by adopting the governments the President has established, or by permitting the people to form others, subject to the approval of Congress.

“It was time for Congress to act. That action should recognize, first, the stupendous facts of the war. By the Emancipation Proclamation we not only declared the slaves free, but pledged the faith of the nation to ‘maintain their freedom.’ What is freedom? It is no mere negative; no mere privilege of not being chained, bought and sold, branded or scourged. It is a tangible realization of the truths that ‘all men are created free and equal,’ and that the sanction of just government is the ‘consent of the governed.’

“These truths can never be realized until each man has a right to be heard in all matters concerning himself....

“I remember an incident in the history of the eastern church, as recorded by Gibbon, volume two, chapter twenty-eight, which illustrates the power that slavery has exercised among us. The Christians of that day, under the lead of Theophilus, undertook to destroy the heathen temples. Gibbon says:

“‘Theophilus proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis without any other difficulties than those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials, but these obstacles proved so insuperable that he was obliged to leave the foundations and to content himself with reducing the edifice itself to a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon afterward cleared away to make room for a church, erected in honor of the Christian martyrs.

“‘The colossal statue of Serapis was involved in the ruin of his temple and religion. A great number of plates of different metals, artificially joined together, composed the majestic figure of the deity, who 314touched on either side the walls of the sanctuary. The aspect of Serapis, his sitting posture, and the scepter, which he bore in his left hand, were extremely similar to the ordinary representations of Jupiter. He was distinguished from Jupiter by the basket, or bushel, which was placed on his head, and by the emblematic monster which he held in his right hand, the head and body of a serpent branching into three tails, which were again terminated by the triple heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf. It was confidently affirmed that if any impious hand should dare to violate the majesty of the god, the heavens and earth would instantly return to the original chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated by zeal, and armed with a weighty battle-ax, ascended the ladder, and even the Christian multitude expected with some anxiety the event of the combat. He aimed a vigorous stroke against the cheek of Serapis; the cheek fell to the ground; the thunder was still silent, and both the heavens and the earth continued to preserve their accustomed order and tranquillity. The victorious soldier repeated his blows, the huge idol was overthrown and broken in pieces, and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His mangled carcass was burnt in the amphitheater amid the shouts of the populace, and many persons attributed their conversion to this discovery of the impotence of their tutelary deity.’

“So slavery sat in our national Capitol. Its huge bulk filled the temple of our liberty, touching it from side to side. Mr. Lincoln, on the 1st of January, 1863, struck it on the cheek, and the faithless and unbelieving among us expected to see the fabric of our institutions dissolve into chaos because their idol had fallen. He struck it again; Congress and the States repeated the blow, and its unsightly carcass lies rotting in our streets. The sun shines in the heavens brighter than before. Let us remove the carcass and leave not a vestige of the monster. We shall never have done that until we have dared to come up to the spirit of the Pilgrim covenant of 1620, and declare that all men shall be consulted in regard to the disposition of their lives, liberty, and property. The Pilgrim fathers proceeded on the doctrine that every man was supposed to know best what he wanted, and had the right to a voice in the disposition of himself.”

A second fact to be recognized was that 7,000,000 white men were waiting to have their case adjudged and their political status fixed.

315“As to persons we must see to it that hereafter personal liberty and personal rights are placed in the keeping of the nation; that the right to life, liberty, and property are to be guaranteed to citizens in reality, and not left to the caprice of mobs and contingencies of local legislation.... As to States, the burden of proof rests on each one of them, to show whether it is fit to enter the Federal circle in full communion of privileges. Men can not change their hearts—love what they hated, and hate what they loved—upon the issue of a battle; but our duty is to demand that before we admit them they shall give sufficient assurance that, whatever they believe or wish, their action in the future shall be such as loyal men can approve.”

How far does that speech differ from the reconstruction policy actually adopted?

Thirteen years later, on June 27, 1879, the pending bill being one for the appropriations for United States marshals, General Garfield said:

“Mr. Chairman: ‘To this favor’ it has come at last. The great fleet that set out on the 18th of March, with all its freightage and armament, is so shattered that now all the valuables it carried are embarked in this little craft, to meet whatever fate the sea and the storm may offer. This little bill contains the residuum of almost every thing that has been the subject of controversy at the present session. I will not discuss it in detail, but will speak only of its central feature, and especially of the opinions which the discussion of that feature has brought to the surface during the present session. The majority in this Congress have adopted what I consider very extreme and dangerous opinions on certain important constitutional questions. They have not only drifted back to their old attitude on the subject of State Sovereignty, but they have pushed that doctrine much further than most of their predecessors ever went before, except during the period immediately preceding the late war.

“Let me summarize them: First, there are no national elections; second, the United States has no voters; third, the States have the exclusive right to control all elections of members of Congress; fourth, the senators and representatives in Congress are State officers, or, as they have been called during the present session, ‘embassadors’ or ‘agents’ of the State; fifth, the United States has no authority to keep the peace anywhere within a State, and, in fact, has no peace to keep; sixth, the 316United States is not a Nation endowed with sovereign power, but is a confederacy of States; seventh, the States are sovereignties possessing inherent supreme powers; they are older than the Union, and as independent sovereignties the state governments created the Union and determined and limited the powers of the General Government.

“These declarations embody the sum total of the constitutional doctrines which the Democracy has avowed during this extra session of Congress. They form a body of doctrines which I do not hesitate to say are more extreme than was ever before held on this subject, except, perhaps, at the very crisis of secession and rebellion.

“Firmly believing that these doctrines and attempted practice of the present Congress are erroneous and pernicious, I will state briefly the counter-propositions:

“I affirm: first, that the Constitution of the United States was not created by the governments of the States, but was ordained and established by the only sovereign in this country—the common superior of both the States and the Nation—the people themselves; second, that the United States is a Nation, having a government whose powers, as defined and limited by the Constitution, operate upon all the States in their corporate capacity and upon all the people; third, that by its legislative, executive, and judicial authority the Nation is armed with adequate power to enforce all the provisions of the Constitution against all opposition of individuals or of States, at all times and all places within the Union.

“These are broad propositions; and I take the few minutes remaining to defend them. The constitutional history of this country, or, rather, the history of sovereignty and government in this country, is comprised in four sharply defined epochs:

“First. Prior to the 4th day of July, 1776, sovereignty, so far as it can be affirmed of this country, was lodged in the crown of Great Britain. Every member of every colony (the colonists were not citizens, but subjects) drew his legal rights from the crown of Great Britain. ‘Every acre of land in this country was then held mediately or immediately by grants from that crown,’ and ‘all the civil authority then existing or exercised here flowed from the head of the British empire.’

“Second. On the 4th day of July, 1776, the people of these colonies, asserting their natural inherent right as sovereigns, withdrew the sovereignty from the crown of Great Britain, and reserved it to themselves. In so far as they delegated this national authority at all, they delegated 317it to the Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia. That Congress, by general consent, became the supreme government of this country—executive, judicial, and legislative in one. During the whole of its existence it wielded the supreme power of the new Nation.

“Third. On the 1st day of March, 1781, the same sovereign power, the people, withdrew the authority from the Continental Congress, and lodged it, so far as they lodged it at all, with the Confederation, which, though a league of States, was declared to be a perpetual union.

“Fourth. When at last our fathers found the Confederation too weak and inefficient for the purposes of a great nation, they abolished it, and lodged the national authority, enlarged and strengthened by new powers, in the Constitution of the United States, where, in spite of all assaults, it still remains. All these great acts were done by the only sovereign in this Republic, the people themselves.

“That no one may charge that I pervert history to sustain my own theories, I call attention to the fact that not one of the colonies declared itself free and independent. Neither Virginia nor Massachusetts threw off its allegiance to the British crown as a colony. The great declaration was made not even by all the colonies as colonies, but it was made in the name and by authority of ‘all the good people of the colonies’ as one people.

“Mr. Chairman, the dogma of State Sovereignty, which has re-awakened to such vigorous life in this chamber, has borne such bitter fruits and entailed such suffering upon our people that it deserves more particular notice. It should be noticed that the word ‘sovereignty’ can not be fitly applied to any government in this country. It is not found in our constitution. It is a feudal word, born of the despotism of the Middle Ages, and was unknown even in imperial Rome. A ‘sovereign’ is a person, a prince, who has subjects that owe him allegiance. There is no one paramount sovereign in the United States. There is no person here who holds any title or authority whatever, except the official authority given him by law. Americans are not subjects, but citizens. Our only sovereign is the whole people. To talk about the ‘inherent sovereignty’ of a corporation—an artificial person—is to talk nonsense; and we ought to reform our habit of speech on that subject.

“But what do gentlemen mean when they tell us that a State is sovereign? What does sovereignty mean in its accepted use, but a political corporation having no superior? Is a State of this Union such a 318corporation? Let us test it by a few examples drawn from the Constitution. No State of this Union can make war or conclude a peace. Without the consent of Congress it can not raise or support an army or a navy. It can not make a treaty with a foreign power, nor enter into any agreement or compact with another State. It can not levy imposts or duties on imports nor exports. It can not coin money. It can not regulate commerce. It can not authorize a single ship to go into commission anywhere on the high seas; if it should, that ship would be seized as a pirate or confiscated by the laws of the United States. A State can not emit bills of credit. It can enact no law which makes any thing but gold and silver a legal tender. It has no flag except the flag of the Union. And there are many other subjects on which the States are forbidden by the Constitution to legislative.

“How much inherent sovereignty is left in a corporation which is thus shorn of all these great attributes of sovereignty?

“But this is not all. The Supreme Court of the United States may declare null and void any law or any clause of the constitution of a State which happens to be in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States. Again, the States appear as plaintiffs and defendants before the Supreme Court of the United States. They may sue each other; and, until the Eleventh Amendment was adopted, a citizen might sue a State. These ‘sovereigns’ may all be summoned before their common superior to be judged. And yet they are endowed with supreme inherent sovereignty!

“Again, the government of a State may be absolutely abolished by Congress, in case it is not republican in form. And, finally, to cap the climax of this absurd pretension, every right possessed by one of these ‘sovereign’ States, every inherent sovereign right, except the single right to equal representation in the Senate, may be taken away, without its consent, by the vote of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the States. But, in spite of all these disabilities, we hear them paraded as independent, sovereign States, the creators of the Union and the dictators of its powers. How inherently ‘sovereign’ must be that State west of the Mississippi which the Nation bought and paid for with the public money, and permitted to come into the Union a half century after the Constitution was adopted! And yet we are told that the States are inherently sovereign and created the National Government.

“The dogma of State Sovereignty in alliance with chattel slavery made 319its appeal to that court of last resort where the laws are silent, and where kings and nations appear in arms for judgment. In that awful court of war two questions were tried: Shall slavery live? And is a State so sovereign that it may nullify the laws and destroy the Union? These two questions were tried on the thousand battle-fields of the war; and if war ever ‘legislates,’ as a leading Democrat of Ohio once wisely affirmed, then our war legislated finally upon those subjects, and determined, beyond all controversy, that slavery should never again live in this Republic, and that there is not sovereignty enough in any State to authorize its people either to destroy the Union or nullify its laws.”

Ten years ago a biographer who loved Garfield and cared for his fame would have omitted the speech from which we are about to give extracts. It is, however, no secret that, in 1871, General Garfield split with his party upon what was known in contemporary politics as “The Force Bill.” This bill was drawn, under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, to protect the Republicans of the Southern States from outrage and murder. The President had laid before Congress a most terrible state of affairs. The Ku-Klux Klan, that bloody and mysterious organization, which was the terror of loyal men, and the guilty perpetrator of unnumbered crimes, thrust its hideous head into the face of the men who had fought for the Union. Murder, ostracism, incendiarism, bull-dozing, intimidation, ballot-box stuffing, and a thousand other outrages were committed. The best picture of the time is in “The Fool’s Errand.” These things, perhaps, (we do not say so) magnified by fear, hate, and political rancor, were too much for the Republican Congress and the men who had worn the blue under Southern skies. There was terrible bitterness. Revenge darkened the Northern heart. The majority in Congress resolved to clutch the demon’s throat with the iron grip of law. In a former chapter we spoke of the battle as an experience, and how it perpetually reproduced itself in the mind of its participants. The illustration of that is found in the attitude of President Grant and the soldier majority in Congress at the time of which we are writing. The “Force Bill” 320was really a tremendous battery. It was surrounded with sulphurous smoke, and was as grim as death.

But to the rule General Garfield was an exception. At the close of the war, he said, we passed into another political epoch. He believed in the Nation, but the calm balance of his mind refused assent to any extreme measure. There was no wavering on the supremacy of the Nation. But after all this was a Republic, and despotism, the one extreme, was as fatal as disunion, the other. General Garfield opposed the extreme parts of the “Force Bill.” He looked to the future of our country as well as the past. We summarize his elaborate speech:

“Mr. Speaker: I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose ignorance is bliss, or a man of transcendant genius whom no difficulties can daunt and whose clear vision no cloud obscures.

“The distinguished gentleman [Mr. Shellabarger] who introduced the bill from the committee, very appropriately said that it requires us to enter upon unexplored territory. That territory, Mr. Speaker, is the neutral ground of all political philosophy; the neutral ground for which rival theories have been struggling in all ages. There are two ideas so utterly antagonistic that, when in any nation, either has gained absolute and complete possession of that neutral ground, the ruin of that nation has invariably followed. The one is that despotism which swallows and absorbs all power in a single-central government; the other is that extreme doctrine of local sovereignty which makes nationality impossible, and resolves a general government into anarchy and chaos. It makes but little difference, as to the final result, which of these ideas drives the other from the field; in either case ruin follows.

“The result exhibited by the one was seen in the Amphictyonic and Achæan leagues of ancient Greece, of which Madison, in the twentieth number of the Federalist, says:

“‘The inevitable result of all was imbecility in the government, discord among the provinces, foreign influences and indignities, a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities in war.’

321“This is a fitting description of all nations which have carried the doctrine of local self-government so far as to exclude the doctrine of nationality. They were not nations, but mere leagues, bound together by common consent, ready to fall to pieces at the demand of any refractory member. The opposing idea was never better illustrated than when Louis XIV. entered the French Assembly, booted and spurred, and girded with the sword of ancestral kings, and said to the Deputies of France: ‘The State! I am the State!’

“Between these opposite and extreme theories of government, the people have been tossed from century to century; and it has been only when these ideas have been in reasonable equipoise, when this neutral ground has been held in joint occupancy, and usurped by neither, that popular liberty and national life have been possible. How many striking illustrations of this do we see in the history of France! The deposition of Louis XIV., followed by the Reign of Terror, when liberty had run mad and France was a vast scene of blood and ruin! We see it again in our day. Only a few years ago, the theory of personal government had placed in the hands of Napoleon III., absolute and irresponsible power. The communes of France were crushed, and local liberty existed no longer. Then followed Sedan and the rest. On the first day of last month, when France was trying to rebuild her ruined Government, when the Prussian cannon had scarcely ceased thundering against the walls of Paris, a deputy of France rose in the National Assembly and moved, as the first step toward the safety of his country, that a committee of thirty should be chosen, to be called the Committee of Decentralization. But it was too late to save France from the fearful reaction from despotism. The news comes to us, under the sea, that on Saturday last, the cry was ringing through France: ‘Death to the Priests!’ and ‘Death to the Rich!’ and the swords of the citizens of that new republic are now wet with each other’s blood.

“The records of time show no nobler or wiser work done by human hands than that of our fathers when they framed this Republic. Beginning in a wilderness world, they wrought unfettered by precedent, untrammeled by custom, unawed by kings or dynasties. With the history of other nations before them, they surveyed the new field. In the progress of their work they encountered these antagonistic ideas to which I 322have referred. They attempted to trace through that neutral ground the boundary line across which neither force should pass. The result of their labors is our Constitution and frame of government. I never contemplate the result without feeling that there was more than mortal wisdom in the men who produced it. It has seemed to me that they borrowed their thought from Him who constructed the universe and put it in motion. For nothing more aptly describes the character of our Republic than the solar system, launched into space by the hand of the Creator, where the central sun is the great power around which revolve all the planets in their appointed orbits. But while the sun holds in the grasp of its attractive power the whole system, and imparts its light and heat to all, yet each individual planet is under the sway of laws peculiar to itself.

“Under the sway of terrestrial laws, winds blow, waters flow, and all the tenantries of the planet live and move. So, sir, the States move on in their orbits of duty and obedience, bound to the central Government by this Constitution, which is their supreme law, while each State is making laws and regulations of its own, developing its own energies, maintaining its own industries, managing its local affairs in its own way, subject only to the supreme but beneficent control of the Union. When States Rights ran mad, put on the form of secession, and attempted to drag the States out of Union, we saw the grand lessons taught, in all the battles of the late war, that a State could no more be hurled from the Union, without ruin to the Nation, than could a planet be thrown from its orbit without dragging after it, to chaos and ruin, the whole solar universe.

“Sir, the great war for the Union has vindicated the centripetal power of the Nation, and has exploded, forever I trust, the disorganizing theory of State Sovereignty, which slavery attempted to impose upon this country. But we should never forget that there is danger in the opposite direction. The destruction, or serious crippling of the principle of local government, would be as fatal to liberty as secession would have been fatal to the Union.

“The first experiment which our fathers tried in government-making after the War of Independence was a failure, because the central power conferred in the Articles of Confederation was not strong enough. The second, though nobly conceived, became almost a failure, because slavery attempted so to interpret the Constitution as to reduce the nation again 323to a confederacy, a mere league between sovereign States. But we have now vindicated and secured the centripetal power; let us see that the centrifugal force is not destroyed, but that the grand and beautiful equipoise may be maintained.

“It will not be denied that before the adoption of the last three amendments, it was the settled interpretation of the Constitution that the protection of the life and property of private citizens belonged to the State governments entirely.... Now three amendments have been added to the Constitution, and it will not be denied that each of these amendments has changed the relation of Congress to the citizens of the States.”

Garfield spoke with his eye on the future: “This debate will become historic as the earliest legislative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment,” he said. He reviewed the debates accompanying the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Two propositions had been before Congress. The essential parts of the one adopted were—

“The Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation, the following provisions, to wit:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

“And this is the rejected clause:

“The Congress shall have power to make all laws which may be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens in these several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property.

“The one exerts its force directly upon the States, laying restriction and limitations upon their power, and enabling Congress to enforce these limitations. The other, the rejected proposition, would have brought the power of Congress to bear directly upon the citizens, and contained a clear grant of power to Congress to legislate directly for the protection of life, liberty, and property within the States. The first limited, but did not oust the jurisdiction of the State over these subjects. The second gave Congress plenary power to cover the whole subject with its jurisdiction, and, as it seems to me, to the exclusion of the State authorities.

324“Mr. Speaker, unless we ignore both the history and the language of these clauses we can not, by any reasonable interpretation, give to the section as it stands in the Constitution, the force and effect of the rejected clause.”

Then followed an exhaustive discussion of the different clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, after which he passed to the provisions of the pending bill. Southern outrages had been stated by the President to exist. The trouble was not unequal laws, but their maladministration and denial of protection under them. This demanded legislation. But Congress had no power to assume original jurisdiction of the matter. It could only define and declare the offense, and should employ no terms which asserted the power of Congress to take jurisdiction, until such denial of rights was clearly made. Passing then to the extreme and most objectionable parts of the bill he said:

“But, Mr. Speaker, there is one provision in the fourth section which appears to me both unwise and unnecessary. It is proposed not only to authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, but to authorize the declaration of martial law in the disturbed districts.

“I do not deny, but I affirm, the right of Congress to authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus whenever, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. Such action has been, and may again be, necessary to the safety of the Republic; but I call the attention of the House to the fact that never but once in the history of this Government has Congress suspended the great privileges of this writ, and then it was not done until after two years of war had closed all the ordinary tribunals of justice in the rebellious districts, and the great armies of the Union, extending from Maryland to the Mexican line, were engaged in a death-struggle with the armies of the rebellion. It was not until the third day of March, 1863, that the Congress of the United States found the situation so full of peril as to make it their duty to suspend this greatest privilege enjoyed by Anglo-Saxon people. Are we ready to say that an equal peril confronts us to-day?

“My objections to authorizing this suspension implies no distrust of the wisdom or patriotism of the President. I do not believe he would employ this power were we to confer it upon him; and if he did employ it, I do not doubt he would use it with justice and wisdom. But what we do on 325this occasion will be quoted as a precedent hereafter, when other men with other purposes may desire to confer this power on another President for purposes that may not aid in securing public liberty and public peace.

“But this section provides no safeguard for citizens who may be arrested during the suspension of the writ. There is no limit to the time during which men may be held as prisoners. Nothing in the section requires them to be delivered over to the courts. Nothing in it gives them any other protection than the will of the commander who orders their arrest.”

“But, sir, this fourth section goes a hundred bow-shots farther than any similar legislation of Congress during the wildest day of the rebellion. It authorizes the declaration of martial law. We are called upon to provide by law for the suspension of all law! Do gentlemen remember what martial law is? Refer to the digest of opinions of the Judge Advocate-General of the United States, and you will find a terse definition which gleams like a flash of a sword-blade. The Judge Advocate says: ‘Martial law is the will of the general who commands the army.’ And Congress is here asked to declare martial law. Why, sir, it is the pride and boast of England that martial law has not existed in that country since the Petition of Right in the thirty-first year of Charles II. Three years ago the Lord Chief-Justice of England came down from the high court over which he was presiding to review the charge of another judge to the grand jury, and he there announced that the power to declare martial law no longer existed in England. In 1867, the same judge, in the case of the Queen vs Nelson, uttered this sentence:

“‘There is no such law in existence as martial law, and no power in the Crown to proclaim it.’

“In a recent treatise, entitled The Nation, a work of great power and research, the author, Mr. Mulford, says: ‘The declaration of martial law, or the suspension of habeas corpus, is the intermission of the ordinary course of law, and of the tribunals to which an appeal may be made. It places the locality included in its operations no longer under the government of law. It interrupts the process of rights and the procedure of courts and restricts the independence of civil administration. There is substituted for these the intention of the individual. To this there is in the civil order no formal limitation. In its immediate action it allows beyond itself no obligation and acknowledges no responsibility. 326Its command or its decree is the only law; its movement may be secret, and its decisions are opened to the inquiry of no judge and the investigation of no tribunal. There is no positive power which may act, or be called upon to act, to stay its caprice or to check its arbitrary career since judgment and execution are in its own command, and the normal action and administration is suspended and the organized force of the whole is subordinate to it.’

“Sir, this provision means war, or it means nothing; and I ask this House whether we are now ready to take this step? Shall we ‘cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war?’

“I have taken a humble part in one war, and I hope I shall always be ready to do any duty that the necessities of the country may require of me; but I am not willing to talk war or to declare war in advance of the terrible necessity. Are there no measures within our reach which may aid in preventing war? When a savage war lately threatened our Western frontiers we sent our Commissioners of Peace in the hope of avoiding war. Have we done all in our power to avoid that which this section contemplates? I hope the committee will bring a companion measure that looks toward peace and enable us to send the olive branch with the sword.”

This speech marked the separation of General Garfield from the Stalwart wing of the Republican party. It was never forgiven nor forgotten. It showed his balance of mind, his avoidance of extremes. The time when he delivered it was one of extremes. It was an epoch of reaction. It was verging toward the period when Sumner and Adams and Greeley were to forsake the party they had helped to create. It was a time when the fierce passions of war were beginning to find an opponent in the struggling instinct of reunion and peace. It was a time when the great radicals, who had fought slavery to its death, were to swing to the other extreme of loving gush and apologetic forgiveness toward a South which sat crouching in the Temple of Liberty, still maddened with the wild insanity of war. It was a time, on the other hand, when the great war leaders, gorged with the bloody spoils of victory, were to know no forgiveness, no forgetfulness, but to plant the iron heel of despotism upon the prostrate and bleeding foe. In this time of extremes General Garfield took the middle course. He remained a 327true Republican, but he recoiled from brutalism toward the South. Now that the passions of the hour have passed away, we believe that his speech on the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment will stand as the wisest utterance of the times. It rises above the level of partisanship to that of statesmanship. In the midst of the tempest of popular excitement over Southern outrages he was calm. As he afterwards said in his nominating speech at Chicago:

“It is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunlight bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all terrestrial heights and depths.”

This was the secret of all of Garfield’s views. In spite of political fears and dogmas, in spite of partisan doubts and dismay, he was right. Therefore, in his answers to the great questions affecting the nationality of the United States, James A. Garfield is entitled to the historic rank of statesman.

We will next inquire to what rank Garfield’s utterances on questions affecting the Financial and Monetary systems of the United States belong. It has been noticed that this and the succeeding topic formed General Garfield’s specialty. In the epoch in which he lived they were the paramount themes of politics. He himself called the financial question the modern political Sphinx. For the last eight years, inflation, hard money, greenbacks, etc., had been discussed from every point of the compass, in every key and to every tune. Men thought it was a new thing. Years before the public clamor, General Garfield took his position on the financial question. He foresaw and foretold the experience of the country before the public mind had rolled its heavy eyes toward the subject. It has been claimed that on the financial question Garfield was ten years ahead of his generation; that he was a pioneer and leader in every sense in the advance toward the resumption of specie payments and a stable currency. Not in 1874, when the first great inflation bill ran its rapid career, nor in 1876, 328nor 1878, when the advocates of paper money had organized themselves into a political party, did he come forward with arguments on the currency for the first time. It was in 1866 that he turned the first furrow in Congress. On March 16th of that year, he enunciated, in a short but vigorous speech, the basal principles of finance, which in later efforts he was to elaborate and fortify with every argument or authority which could appeal to the human understanding. From that first position Garfield never receded. Not for a moment did he cease to regard irredeemable and inflated paper currency an unmixed evil, and resumption as the main end of the legislation of the epoch. His speeches on finance cover the entire field, and are very numerous. From two or three we present copious extracts. On May 15, 1868, he delivered a speech which was, and is, a complete manual of the principles of sound financial policy:

“I am aware that financial subjects are dull and uninviting in comparison with those heroic themes which have absorbed the attention of Congress for the last five years. To turn from the consideration of armies and navies, victories and defeats, to the array of figures which exhibits the debt, expenditure, taxation, and industry of the nation, requires no little courage and self-denial; but to these questions we must come, and to their solution Congress, political parties, and all thoughtful citizens must give their best efforts for many years to come.

“In April, 1861, there began in this country an industrial revolution, not yet completed, as gigantic in its proportions, and as far-reaching in its consequences, as the political and military revolution through which we have passed. As the first step to any intelligent discussion of the currency, it is necessary to examine the character and progress of that industrial revolution.

“The year 1860 was one of remarkable prosperity in all branches of business. For seventy years no Federal tax-gatherer had ever been seen among the laboring population of the United States. Our public debt was less than sixty-five million dollars. The annual expenditures of the Government, including interest on the public debt, were less than sixty-four million dollars. The revenues from customs alone amounted to six-sevenths of the expenditures. The value of our agricultural products for 329that year amounted to $1,625,000,000. Our cotton crop alone was two billion one hundred and fifty-five million pounds, and we supplied to the markets of the world seven-eighths of all the cotton consumed. Our merchant marine engaged in foreign trade amounted to two million five hundred and forty-six thousand two hundred and thirty-seven tons, and promised soon to rival the immense carrying trade of England.

“Let us now observe the effect of the war on the various departments of business. From the moment the first hostile gun was fired, the Federal and State governments became gigantic consumers. As far as production was concerned, eleven States were completely separated from the Union. Two million laborers, more than one-third of the adult population of the Northern States, were withdrawn from the ranks of producers, and became only consumers of wealth. The Federal Government became an insatiable devourer. Leaving out of account the vast sums expended by States, counties, cities, towns, and individuals, for the payment of bounties, for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers and their families, and omitting the losses, which can never be estimated, of property destroyed by hostile armies, I shall speak only of expenditures which appear on the books of the Federal Treasury. From the 30th of June, 1861, to the 30th of June, 1865, there were paid out of the Federal Treasury $3,340,996,211, making an aggregate during these four years of more than $836,000,000 per annum.

“From the official records of the Treasury Department it appears that, from the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775 to the beginning of the late rebellion, the total expenditures of the Government for all purposes, including the assumed war debts of the States, amounted to $2,250,000,000. The expenditure of four years of the rebellion were nearly $1,100,000,000 more than all the other Federal expenses since the Declaration of Independence. The debt of England, which had its origin in the revolution of 1688, and was increased by more than one hundred years of war and other political disasters, had reached in 1793 the sum of $1,268,000,000. During the twenty-two years that followed, while England was engaged in a life and death struggle with Napoleon (the greatest war in history save our own), $3,056,000,000 were added to her debt. In our four years of war we spent $300,000,000 more than the amount by which England increased her debt in twenty-two years of war; almost as much as she had increased it in one hundred and twenty-five years of war. Now, the enormous demand which this expenditure 330created for all the products of industry stimulated to an unparalleled degree every department of business. The plow, furnace, mill, loom, railroad, steamboat, telegraph—all were driven to their utmost capacity. Warehouses were emptied; and the great reserves of supply, which all nations in a normal state keep on hand, were exhausted to meet the demands of the great consumer. For many months the Government swallowed three millions per day of the products of industry. Under the pressure of this demand, prices rose rapidly in every department of business. Labor every-where found quick and abundant returns. Old debts were canceled, and great fortunes were made.

“For the transaction of this enormous business an increased amount of currency was needed; but I doubt if any member of this House can be found bold enough to deny that the deluge of Treasury notes poured upon the country during the war was far greater even than the great demands of business. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the chief object of these issues was not to increase the currency of the country. They were authorized with great reluctance, and under the pressure of overwhelming necessity, as a temporary expedient to meet the demands of the Treasury. They were really forced loans in the form of Treasury notes. By the act of July 17, 1861, an issue of demand notes was authorized to the amount of $50,000,000. By the act of August 5, 1861, this amount was increased $50,000,000 more. By the act of February 25, 1862, an additional issue of $150,000,000 was authorized. On the 17th of the same month, an unlimited issue of fractional currency was authorized. On the 17th of January, 1873, an issue of $150,000,000 more was authorized, which was increased $50,000,000 by the act of March 3d of the same year. This act also authorized the issue of one and two years’ Treasury notes, bearing interest at five per cent., to be a legal tender for their face, to the amount of $400,000,000. By the act of June 30, 1864, an issue of six per cent. compound-interest notes, to be a legal tender for their face, was authorized, to the amount of $200,000,000. In addition to this, many other forms of paper obligation were authorized, which, though not a legal tender, performed many of the functions of currency. By the act of March 1, 1862, the issue of an unlimited amount of certificates of indebtedness was authorized, and within ninety days after the passage of the act there had been issued and were outstanding of these certificates more than $156,000,000. Of course these issues were not all outstanding at the same time, but the acts show how great was the necessity for loans during the war.

331“The law which made the vast volume of United States notes a legal tender operated as an act of general bankruptcy. The man who loaned $1,000 in July, 1861, payable in three years, was compelled by this law to accept at maturity, as a full discharge of the debt, an amount of currency equal in value to $350 of the money he loaned. Private indebtedness was every-where canceled. Rising prices increased the profits of business, but this prosperity was caused by the great demand for products, and not by the abundance of paper money. As a means of transacting the vast business of the country, a great volume of currency was indispensable, and its importance can not well be overestimated. But let us not be led into the fatal error of supposing that paper money created the business or produced the wealth. As well might it be alleged that our rivers and canals produce the grain which they float to market. Like currency, the channels of commerce stimulate production, but can not nullify the inexorable law of demand and supply.

“Mr. Chairman, I have endeavored to trace the progress of our industrial revolution in passing from peace to war. In returning from war to peace all the conditions were reversed. At once the Government ceased to be an all-devouring consumer. Nearly two million able-bodied men were discharged from the army and navy and enrolled in the ranks of the producers. The expenditures of the Government, which, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1865, amounted to $1,290,000,000, were reduced to $520,000,000 in 1866; to $346,000,000 in 1867; and, if the retrenchment measures recommended by the Special Commissioner of the Revenue be adopted, another year will bring them below $300,000,000.

“Thus during the first year after the war the demands of the Federal Government as a consumer decreased sixty per cent.; and in the second year the decrease had reached seventy-four per cent., with a fair prospect of a still further reduction.

“The recoil of this sudden change would have produced great financial disaster in 1866, but for the fact that there was still open to industry the work of replacing the wasted reserves of supply, which, in all countries in a healthy state of business, are estimated to be sufficient for two years. During 1866, the fall in price of all articles of industry amounted to an average of ten per cent. One year ago a table was prepared, at my request, by Mr. Edward Young, in the office of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue, exhibiting a comparison of wholesale prices at New York in December, 1865, and December, 1866. It shows that in ten leading articles of provisions there was an average decline of twenty-two per 332cent., though beef, flour, and other breadstuffs remained nearly stationary. On cotton and woolen goods, boots, shoes, and clothing, the decline was thirty per cent. On the products of manufacture and mining, including coal, cordage, iron, lumber, naval stores, oils, tallow, tin, and wool, the decline was twenty-five per cent. The average decline on all commodities was at least ten per cent. According to the estimates of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue in his last report, the average decline during 1867 has amounted at least to ten per cent. more. During the past two years Congress has provided by law for reducing internal taxation $100,000,000; and the act passed a few weeks ago has reduced the tax on manufactures to the amount of $64,000,000 per annum. The repeal of the cotton tax will make a further reduction of $20,000,000. State and municipal taxation and expenditures have also been greatly reduced. The work of replacing these reserves delayed the shock and distributed its effects, but could not avert the inevitable result. During the past two years, one by one, the various departments of industry produced a supply equal to the demand. Then followed a glutted market, a fall in prices, and a stagnation of business, by which thousands of laborers were thrown out of employment.

“If to this it be added that the famine in Europe and the drought in many of the agricultural States of the Union have kept the price of provisions from falling as other commodities have fallen, we shall have a sufficient explanation of the stagnation of business, and the unusual distress among our people.

“This industrial revolution has been governed by laws beyond the reach of Congress. No legislation could have arrested it at any stage of its progress. The most that could possibly be done by Congress was, to take advantage of the prosperity it occasioned to raise a revenue for the support of the Government, and to mitigate the severity of its subsequent pressure, by reducing the vast machinery of war to the lowest scale possible. Manifestly nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that the abundance of currency produced by the prosperity of 1863, 1864, and 1865, or that the want of it is the cause of our present stagnation.

“In order to reach a satisfactory understanding of the currency question, it is necessary to consider somewhat fully the nature and functions of money or any substitute for it.

“The theory of money which formed the basis of the ‘mercantile system’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been rejected by 333all leading financiers and political economists for the last seventy-five years. That theory asserted that money is wealth; that the great object of every nation should be to increase its amount of gold and silver; that this was a direct increase of national wealth.

“It is now held as an indisputable truth that money is an instrument of trade, and performs but two functions. It is a measure of value and a medium of exchange.

“In cases of simple barter, where no money is used, we estimate the relative values of the commodities to be exchanged in dollars and cents, it being our only universal measure of value.

“As a medium of exchange, money is to all business transactions what ships are to the transportation of merchandise. If a hundred vessels of a given tonnage are just sufficient to carry all the commodities between two ports, any increase of the number of vessels will correspondingly decrease the value of each as an instrument of commerce; any decrease below one hundred will correspondingly increase the value of each.

“The functions of money as a medium of exchange, though more complicated in their application, are precisely the same in principle as the functions of the vessels in the case I have supposed.

“If we could ascertain the total value of all the exchanges effected in this country by means of money in any year, and could ascertain how many dollars’ worth of such exchanges can be effected in a year by one dollar in money, we should know how much money the country needed for the business transactions of that year. Any decrease below that amount will correspondingly increase the value of each dollar as an instrument of exchange. Any increase above that amount will correspondingly decrease the value of each dollar. If that amount be doubled, each dollar of the whole mass will perform but half the amount of business it did before; will be worth but half its former value as a medium of exchange.

“Recurring to our illustration: if, instead of sailing vessels, steam vessels were substituted, a much smaller tonnage would be required; so, if it were found that $500,000,000 of paper, each worth seventy cents in gold, were sufficient for the business of the country, it is equally evident that $350,000,000 of gold substituted for the paper would perform precisely the same amount of business.

“It should be remembered, also, that any improvement in the mode of transacting business, by which the actual use of money is in part dispensed 334with, reduces the total amount needed by the country. How much has been accomplished in this direction by recent improvements in banking may be seen in the operations of the clearing-houses in our great cities.

“The records of the New York Clearing House show that from October 11, 1853, the date of its establishment, to October 11, 1867, the exchanges amounted to nearly $180,000,000,000; to effect which, less than $8,000,000,000 of money were used, an average of about four per cent.; that is, exchanges were made to the amount of $100,000,000 by the payment of $4,000,000 of money.

“It is also a settled principle that all deposits in banks, drawn upon by checks and drafts, really serve the purpose of money.

“The amount of currency needed in the country depends, as we have seen, upon the amount of business transacted by means of money. The amount of business, however, is varied by many causes which are irregular and uncertain in their operation. An Indian war, deficient or abundant harvests, an overflow of the cotton lands of the South, a bread famine or war in Europe, and a score of such causes entirely beyond the reach of legislation, may make money deficient this year and abundant next. The needed amount varies also from month to month in the same year. More money is required in the autumn, when the vast products of agriculture are being moved to market, than when the great army of laborers are in winter-quarters, awaiting the seed-time.

“When the money of the country is gold and silver, it adapts itself to the fluctuations of business without the aid of legislation. If, at any time, we have more than is needed, the surplus flows off to other countries through the channels of international commerce. If less, the deficiency is supplied through the same channels. Thus the monetary equilibrium is maintained. So immense is the trade of the world that the golden streams pouring from California and Australia in the specie circulation, are soon absorbed in the great mass and equalized throughout the world, as the waters of all the rivers are spread upon the surface of all the seas.

“Not so, however, with an inconvertible paper currency. Excepting the specie used in the payment of customs and the interest on our public debt, we are cut off from the money currents of the world. Our currency resembles rather the waters of an artificial lake, which lie in stagnation or rise to full banks at the caprice of the gate-keeper.

335“Gold and silver abhor depreciated paper money, and will not keep company with it. If our currency be more abundant than business demands, not a dollar of it can go abroad; if deficient, not a dollar of gold will come in to supply the lack. There is no legislature on earth wise enough to adjust such a currency to the wants of the country.

“Let us examine more minutely the effect of such a currency upon prices. Suppose that the business transactions of the country at the present time require $350,000,000 in gold. It is manifest that if there are just $350,000,000 of legal-tender notes, and no other money in the country, each dollar will perform the full functions of a gold dollar, so far as the work of exchange is concerned. Now, business remaining the same, let $350,000,000 more of the same kind of notes be pressed into circulation. The whole volume, as thus increased, can do no more than all the business. Each dollar will accomplish just half the work that a dollar did before the increase; but as the nominal dollar is fixed by law, the effect is shown in prices being doubled. It requires two of these dollars to make the same purchase that one dollar made before the increase. It would require some time for the business of the country to adjust itself to the new conditions, and great derangement of values would ensue; but the result would at last be reached in all transactions which are controlled by the law of demand and supply.

“No such change of values can occur without cost. Somebody must pay for it. Who pays in this case? We have seen that doubling the currency finally results in reducing the purchasing power of each dollar one-half; hence every man who held a legal-tender note at the time of the increase, and continued to hold it till the full effect of the increase was produced, suffered a loss of fifty per cent. of its value; in other words, he paid a tax to the amount of half of all the currency in his possession. This new issue, therefore, by depreciating the value of all the currency, cost the holders of the old issue $175,000,000; and if the new notes were received at their nominal value at the date of issue, their holders paid a tax of $175,000,000 more. No more unequal or unjust mode of taxation could possibly be devised. It would be tolerated only by being so involved in the transactions of business as to be concealed from observation; but it would be no less real because hidden.

“But some one may say: ‘This depreciation would fall upon capitalists and rich men, who are able to bear it.’

“If this were true, it would be no less unjust. But, unfortunately, 336the capitalists would suffer less than any other class. The new issue would be paid in the first place in large amounts to the creditors of the Government; it would pass from their hands before the depreciation had taken full effect, and, passing down step by step through the ranks of middle-men, the dead weight would fall at last upon the laboring classes in the increased price of all the necessaries of life. It is well known that in a general rise of prices, wages are among the last to rise. This principle was illustrated in the report of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue for the year 1866. It is there shown that from the beginning of the war to the end of 1866, the average price of all commodities had risen ninety per cent. Wages, however, had risen but sixty per cent. A day’s labor would purchase but two-thirds as many of the necessaries of life as it would before. The wrong is, therefore, inflicted on the laborer long before his income can be adjusted to his increased expenses. It was, in view of this truth, that Daniel Webster said, in one of his ablest speeches:

“‘Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. This is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man’s field by the sweat of the poor man’s brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation, these bear lightly on the happiness of the mass of the community, compared with a fraudulent currency and the robberies committed by depreciated paper.’

“The fraud committed and the burdens imposed upon the people, in the case we have supposed, would be less intolerable if all business transactions could be really adjusted to the new conditions; but even this is impossible. All debts would be canceled, all contracts fulfilled by payment in these notes—not at their real value, but for their face. All salaries fixed by law, the pay of every soldier in the army, of every sailor in the navy, and all pensions and bounties, would be reduced to half their former value. In these cases the effect is only injurious. Let it never be forgotten that every depreciation of our currency results in robbing the one hundred and eighty thousand pensioners, maimed heroes, crushed and bereaved widows, and homeless orphans, who sit helpless at our feet. And who would be benefited by this policy? A pretense of apology might be offered for it, if the Government could save what the people lose. But the system lacks the support of even that selfish and immoral consideration. The depreciation caused by the over-issue in the 337case we have supposed, compels the Government to pay just that per cent. more on all the contracts it makes, on all the loans it negotiates, on all the supplies it purchases; and to crown all, it must at last redeem all its legal-tender notes in gold coin, dollar for dollar. The advocates of repudiation have not yet been bold enough to deny this.

“I have thus far considered the influence of a redundant paper currency on the country when its trade and industry are in a healthy and normal state. I now call attention to its effect in producing an unhealthy expansion of business, in stimulating speculation and extravagance, and in laying the sure foundation of commercial revulsion and widespread ruin. This principle is too well understood to require any elaboration here. The history of all modern nations is full of examples. One of the ablest American writers on banks and banking, Mr. Gouge, thus sums up the result of his researches:

“‘The history of all our bank pressures and panics has been the same in 1825, in 1837, and in 1843; and the cause is given in these two simple words—universal expansion.’

“There still remains to be considered the effect of depreciated currency on our trade with other nations. By raising prices at home higher than they are abroad, imports are largely increased beyond the exports; our coin must go abroad; or, what is far worse for us, our bonds, which have also suffered depreciation, and are purchased by foreigners at seventy cents on the dollar. During the whole period of high prices occasioned by the war, gold and bonds have been steadily going abroad, notwithstanding our tariff duties, which average nearly fifty per cent. ad valorem. More than five hundred million dollars of our bonds are now held in Europe, ready to be thrown back upon us when any war or other sufficient disturbance shall occur. No tariff rates short of actual prohibition can prevent this outflow of gold while our currency is thus depreciated. During these years, also, our merchant marine steadily decreased, and our ship-building interests were nearly ruined.

“Our tonnage engaged in foreign trade, which amounted in 1859–’60 to more than two and a-half million tons, had fallen in 1865–’66 to less than one and a-half millions—a decrease of more than fifty per cent.; and prices of labor and material are still too high to enable our shipwrights to compete with foreign builders.

“From the facts already exhibited in reference to our industrial revolution, and from the foregoing analysis of the nature and functions of currency, it is manifest:

338“1. That the remarkable prosperity of all industrial enterprises during the war was not caused by the abundance of currency, but by the unparalleled demand for every product of labor.

“2. That the great depression of business, the stagnation of trade, the ‘hard times’ which have prevailed during the past year, and which still prevail, have not been caused by an insufficient amount of currency, but mainly by the great falling off of the demand for all the products of labor, compared with the increased supply since the return from war to peace.

“I subjoin a table, carefully made up from the official records, showing the amount of paper money in the United States at the beginning of each year from 1834 to 1868 inclusive. The fractions of millions are omitted:

“The table I have submitted shows how perfect an index the currency is of the healthy or unhealthy condition of business, and that every great financial crisis, during the period covered by the table, has been preceded by a great increase, and followed by a great and sudden decrease, in the volume of paper money. The rise and fall of mercury in the barometer is not more surely indicative of an atmospheric storm, than is a sudden increase or decrease of currency indicative of financial disaster. Within the period covered by the table, there were four great financial and commercial crises in this country. They occurred in 1837, 1841, 1854, and 1857. Observe the volume of paper currency for those years: On the first day of January, 1837, the amount had risen to $149,000,000, an increase of nearly fifty per cent. in three years. Before the end of that year, the reckless expansion, speculation, and over-trading which caused the 339increase, had resulted in terrible collapse; and on the first of January, 1838, the volume was reduced to $116,000,000. Wild lands, which speculation had raised to fifteen and twenty dollars per acre, fell to one dollar and a-half and two dollars, accompanied by a corresponding depression in all branches of business. Immediately after the crisis of 1841, the bank circulation decreased twenty-five per cent., and by the end of 1842 was reduced to $58,500,000, a decrease of nearly fifty per cent.

“At the beginning of 1853 the amount was $146,000,000. Speculation and expansion had swelled it to $205,000,000 by the end of that year, and thus introduced the crash of 1854. At the beginning of 1857 the paper money of the country reached its highest point of inflation up to that time. There were nearly $215,000,000, but at the end of that disastrous year the volume had fallen to $135,000,000, a decrease of nearly forty per cent. in less than twelve months. In the great crashes preceding 1837 the same conditions are invariably seen—great expansion, followed by a violent collapse, not only in paper money, but in loans and discounts; and those manifestations have always been accompanied by a corresponding fluctuation in prices.

“In the great crash of 1819, one of the severest this country ever suffered, there was a complete prostration of business. It is recorded in Niles’s Register for 1820 that, in that year, an Ohio miller sold four barrels of flour to raise five dollars, the amount of his subscription to that paper. Wheat was twenty cents per bushel, and corn ten cents. About the same time Mr. Jefferson wrote to Nathaniel Macon:

“‘We have now no standard of value. I am asked eighteen dollars for a yard of broadcloth which, when we had dollars, I used to get for eighteen shillings.’

“But there is one quality of such a currency more remarkable than all others—its strange power to delude men. The spells and enchantments of legendary witchcraft were hardly so wonderful. Most delusions can not be repeated; they lose their power after a full exposure. Not so with irredeemable paper money. From the days of John Law its history has been a repetition of the same story, with only this difference: No nation now resorts to its use except from overwhelming necessity; but whenever any nation is fairly embarked, it floats on the delusive waves, and, like the lotus-eating companions of Ulysses, wishes to return no more.

“Into this very delusion many of our fellow-citizens and many members of this House have fallen.

340“The chief cause of this new-born zeal for paper money is the same as that which led a member of the Continental Congress to exclaim:

“‘Do you think, gentlemen, that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes, when we can send to the printer and get a wagon-load of money, one quire of which will pay for the whole?’

“It is my clear conviction that the most formidable danger with which the country is now threatened is a large increase in the volume of paper money.

“Shall we learn nothing from experience? Shall the warnings of the past be unheeded?”

Here followed a brilliant historical review of the experience of the Colonies, of the Continental Congress, and of England, with paper money.

“From these considerations it appears to me that the first step toward a settlement of our financial and industrial affairs should be to adopt and declare to the country a fixed and definite policy, so that industry and enterprise may be based upon confidence; so that men may know what to expect from the Government; and, above all, that the course of business may be so adjusted that it shall be governed by the laws of trade, and not by the caprice of any man or of any political party in or out of Congress....

“On the 10th of February, I introduced a bill which, if it should become a law, will, I believe, go far toward restoring confidence and giving stability to business, and will lay the foundation on which a general financial policy may be based, whenever opinions are so harmonized as to make a general policy possible.

“As the bill is short, I will quote it entire, and call attention for a few moments to its provisions:

“‘Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That on and after the first day of December, 1868, the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to pay gold coin of the United States for any legal-tender notes of the United States, which may be presented at the office of the Assistant Treasurer, at New York, at the rate of one dollar in gold for one dollar and thirty cents in legal-tender notes. On and after the first day of January, 1869, the rate shall be one dollar in gold for one dollar and twenty-nine cents in legal-tender notes; and at the beginning of and 341during each succeeding month, the amount of legal-tender notes required in exchange for one dollar in gold shall be one cent less than the amount required during the preceding month, until the exchange becomes one dollar in gold for one dollar in legal-tender notes; and on and after the first day of June, 1871, the Secretary of the Treasury shall exchange gold for legal-tender notes, dollar for dollar. Provided: That nothing in this act shall be so construed as to authorize the retirement or cancellation of any legal-tender notes of the United States.’

“I do not doubt that, in anticipation of the operation of this measure, should it become a law, gold would be at 130, or lower, by the 1st of December, and that very little would be asked for from the Treasury, in exchange for currency. At the beginning of each succeeding month the exchange between gold and greenbacks would be reduced one cent, and specie payments would be fully resumed in June, 1871. That the country is fully able to resume by that time will hardly be denied.

“With the $100,000,000 of gold now in the Treasury, and the amount received from customs, which averages nearly half a million per day, it is not at all probable that we should need to borrow a dollar in order to carry out the provisions of the law.

“But taking the most unfavorable aspect of the case, and supposing that the Government should find it necessary to authorize a gold loan, the expense would be trifling compared with the resulting benefits to the country. The proposed measure would incidentally bring all the national banks to the aid of the Government in the work of resumption. The banks are required by law to redeem their own notes in greenbacks. They now hold in their vaults, as a reserve required by law, $162,000,000, of which sum $114,000,000 are greenbacks. Being compelled to pay the same price for their own notes as for greenbacks, they would gradually accumulate a specie reserve, and would be compelled to keep abreast with the Government in every step of the progress toward resumption. The necessity of redeeming their own notes would keep their circulation nearer home, and would more equally distribute the currency of the country which now concentrates at the great money centers, and produces scarcity in the rural districts.

“This measure would not at once restore the old national standard of value, but it would give stability to business and confidence to business men every-where. Every man who contracts a debt would know what the value of a dollar would be when the debt became due. The opportunity now afforded to Wall Street gamblers to run up and run down the relative 342price of gold and greenbacks would be removed. The element of chance, which now vitiates our whole industrial system, would, in great part, be eliminated.

“If this measure be adopted it will incidentally settle several of our most troublesome questions. It will end the war between the contractionists and the inflationists—a war which, like that of Marius and Sylla, may almost prove fatal to the interests of the country, whichever side may prevail. The amount of paper money will regulate itself, and may be unlimited, so long as every dollar is convertible into specie at the will of the holder.

“The still more difficult question of paying our five-twenty bonds would be avoided—completely flanked by this measure. The money paid to the wounded soldier, and to the soldier’s widow, would soon be made equal in value to the money paid to all other creditors of the Government.

“It will be observed that the bill does not authorize the cancellation or retirement of any United States notes. It is believed that, for a time at least, the volume of the currency may safely remain as it now is. When the measure has been in force for some time, it will be seen whether the increased use of specie for purposes of circulation will not allow a gradual reduction of the legal-tender notes. This can be safely left to subsequent legislation. It will facilitate the success of this plan if Congress will pass a bill to legalize contracts hereafter made for the payment of coin. If this be done, many business men will conduct their affairs on a specie basis, and thus retain at home much of our gold that now goes abroad.

“I have not been ambitious to add another to the many financial plans proposed to this Congress, much less have I sought to introduce a new and untried scheme. On the contrary, I regard it a strong commendation of this measure, that it is substantially the same as that by which Great Britain resumed specie payments, after a suspension of nearly a quarter of a century.

“The situation of England at that time was strikingly similar to our present situation. She had just emerged from a great war in which her resources had been taxed to the utmost. Business had been expanded, and high prices prevailed. Paper money had been issued in unusual volume, was virtually a legal-tender, and had depreciated to the extent 343of twenty-five per cent. Every financial evil from which we now suffer prevailed there, and was aggravated by having been longer in operation. Plans and theories without end were proposed to meet the many difficulties of the case. For ten years the Bank of England and the majority in Parliament vehemently denied that paper money had depreciated, notwithstanding the unanswerable report of the Bullion Committee of 1810, and the undeniable fact that it took twenty-five per cent. more of notes than of coin to buy an ounce of gold.

“Many insisted that paper was a better standard of value than coin. Some denounced the attempt to return to specie as unwise, others as impossible. William Cobbett, the famous pamphleteer, announced that he would give himself up to be broiled on a gridiron whenever the bank should resume cash payments; and for many years kept the picture of a gridiron at the head of his Political Register, to remind his readers of his prophecy. Every phase of the question was discussed by the best minds of the kingdom, in and out of Parliament, for more than ten years; and in May, 1819, under the lead of Robert Peel, a law was passed fixing the time and mode of resumption.

“It provided that on the 1st of February, 1820, the bank should give, in exchange for its notes, gold bullion in quantities not less than sixty ounces, at the rate of 81s. per ounce; that, from the 1st of October, 1820, the rates should be 79s. 6d.; from the 1st of May, 1822, 79s. 10½d.; and on the 1st of May, 1823, the bank should redeem all its notes in coin, whatever the amount presented. The passage of the act gave once more a fixed and certain value to money; and business so soon adjusted itself to the measure in anticipation, that specie payments were fully resumed on the 1st of May, 1821, two years before the time fixed by the law. Forty-seven years have elapsed since then, and the verdict of history has approved the wisdom of the act, notwithstanding the clamor and outcry which at first assailed it. So plainly does this lesson apply to us, that in the preface to one of the best histories of England, recently published, the author, who is an earnest friend of the United States, says:

“‘It seems to me that no thoughtful citizen of any nation can read the story of the years before and after Peel’s bill of 1819, extending over the crash of 1825–’26, without the strongest desire that such risks and calamities may be avoided in his own country at any sacrifice. There are several countries under the doom of retribution for the license of an inconvertible paper currency, and of these the United States are unhappily 344one. This passage of English history may possibly help to check the levity with which the inevitable ‘crash’ is spoken of by some, who little dream what the horrors and griefs of such a convulsion are. It may do more if it should show any considerable number of observers that the affairs of the economic world are as truly and certainly under the control of natural laws as the world of matter without and that of mind within.’”

This speech is remarkable. It is wonderful. Had that resumption bill become a law, it is possible and probable that the panic of 1873, and the long years of distress might have been, if not avoided, at least greatly shortened and alleviated. The argument never was and never could be improved upon by any one. In the light of history that speech was a prophecy. Congress procrastinated a return to specie payment. Finally the crash came, as he had foretold. Garfield once said, “After the battle of arms comes the battle of history.” In writing a historical estimate of the leaders of the epoch which closed with the consummation of specie payments, the critical historian would rightly claim that this speech of General Garfield, in the spring of 1868, five and a-half years before the panic, must take rank as a triumph of statesmanship above every argument, no matter how able or eloquent, made after the panic. In this speech Garfield showed his conservatism again in favoring the continuation of greenbacks in circulation, the very thing which was done over the bitter opposition of resumptionists seven years before.

In the earlier part of the speech he showed the necessity of an adjustable volume of currency. With specie this was easy. With paper currency the volume could be made adjustable through banks. They were the institutions to ease us through the straits to resumption. Their mission was more fully elaborated in a speech of June 7, 1870. The West and South having an insufficient number of banks, and, consequently, lacking the currency of checks, drafts, etc., were suffering. To meet this, he presented a bill redistributing the banks. His views are what most concern us.

“I wish first to state a few general propositions touching the subjects of trade and its instruments. A few simple principles form the foundation on which rests the whole superstructure of money, currency, and trade. They may be thus briefly stated:

“First. Money, which is a universal measure of value and a medium of exchange, must not be confounded with credit currency in any of its forms. Nothing is really money which does not of itself possess the full amount of the value which it professes on its face to possess. Length can only be measured by a standard which in itself possesses length. Weight can only be measured by a standard, defined and recognized, which in itself possesses weight. So, also, value can only be measured by that which in itself possesses a definite and known value. The precious metals, coined and stamped, form the money of the world, because when thrown into the melting-pot and cast into bars they will sell in the market as metal for the same amount that they will pass for in the market as coined money. The coining and stamping are but a certification by the government of the quantity and fineness of the metal stamped. The coining certifies to the value, but neither creates it nor adds to it.

“Second. Paper currency, when convertible at the will of the holder into coin, though not in itself money, is a title to the amount of money promised on its face; and so long as there is perfect confidence that it is a good title for its whole amount, it can be used as money in the payment of debts. Being lighter and more easily carried, it is for many purposes more convenient than money, and has become an indispensable substitute for money throughout all civilized countries. One quality which it must possess, and without which it loses its title to be called money, is that the promise written on its face must be good and be kept good. The declaration on its face must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If the promise has no value, the note itself is worthless. If the promise affords any opportunity for doubt, uncertainty, or delay, the note represents a vague uncertainty, and is measured only by remaining faith in the final redemption of the promise.

“Third. Certificates of credit under whatever form, are among the most efficient instruments of trade. The most common form of these certificates is that of a check or draft. The bank is the institution through which the check becomes so powerful an instrument of exchange. The 346check is comparatively a modern invention, whose functions and importance are not yet fully recognized. It may represent a deposit of coin or of paper currency, convertible or inconvertible; or may, as is more frequently the case, represent merely a credit, secured by property in some form, but not by money. The check is not money; yet, for the time being, it performs all the functions of money in the payment of debts. No greater mistake can be made than to suppose that the effective value of currency is not directly increased by the whole amount of checks in circulation.

“I would not for a moment lose sight of the great first necessity of all exchanges, that they be measured by real money, the recognized money of the world; nor of that other necessity next in importance, that bank notes or treasury notes should represent real money; should be of uniform value throughout the country, and should be sufficient in amount to effect all those exchanges in which paper money is actually used. I would keep constantly in view both these important factors. But that is a superficial and incomplete plan of legislation which does not include, in its provisions for the safe and prompt transaction of business, those facilities which modern civilization has devised, and which have so largely superseded the use of both coin and paper money.

“The bank has become the indispensable agent and instrument of trade throughout the civilized world, and not less in specie paying countries than in countries cursed by an inconvertible paper currency. Besides its function of issuing circulating notes, it serves as a clearing-house for the transactions of its customers. It brings the buyer and seller together, and enables them to complete their exchanges. It brings debtors and creditors together, and enables them to adjust their accounts. It collects the thousand little hoards of unemployed money, and through loans and discounts converts them into active capital. It is a reservoir which collects in amounts available for use, the rain-drops which would otherwise be lost by dispersion.

“I find there are still those who deny the doctrine that bank deposits form an effective addition to the circulation. But let us see. A bank is established at a point thirty or forty miles distant from any other bank. Every man within that circle has been accustomed is keep in his pocket or safe a considerable sum of money during the year. That average amount is virtually withdrawn from circulation, and for the time being is canceled, is dead. After a new bank is established, a large portion 347of that average amount is deposited with the bank, and a smaller amount is carried in their safes and pockets. These accumulated deposits placed in the bank, at once constitute a fund which can be loaned to those who need credit. At least four-fifths of the average amount of deposits can be loaned out, thus converting dead capital into active circulation.

“But the word deposits covers far more than the sums of actual money placed in the bank by depositors. McLeod, in his great work on banking, says: ‘Credits standing in bankers’ books, from whatever source, are called deposits. Hence a deposit in banking language always means a credit in a banker’s books in exchange for money or securities for money,’—Vol. ii, p. 267.

“Much the largest proportion of all bank deposits are of this class—mere credits on the books of the bank. Outside the bank, these deposits are represented by checks and drafts. Inside the bank, they effect settlements, and make thousands of payments by mere transfer from one man’s account to that of another. This checking and counter-checking and transferring of credit, amounts to a sum vastly greater than all the deposits. No stronger illustration of the practical use of deposits can be found than in the curious fact, that all the heavy payments made by the merchants and dealers in the city of Amsterdam for half a century, were made through a supposed deposit which had entirely disappeared some fifty years before its removal was detected. Who does not know that the six hundred millions of dollars of deposits reported every quarter as a part of the liabilities of the national banks, are mainly credits which the banks have given to business men?

“No currency can meet the wants of this country unless it is founded directly upon the demands of business, and not upon the caprice, the ignorance, the political selfishness, of any party in power.

“What regulates now the loans and discounts and credits of our National banks? The business of the country. The amount increases or decreases, or remains stationary, as business is fluctuating or steady. This is a natural form of exchange, based upon the business of the country and regarded by its changes. And when that happy day arrives, when the whole volume of our currency is redeemable in gold at the will of the holder, and recognized by all nations as equal to money, then the whole business of banking, the whole volume of currency, the whole amount of credits, whether in the form of checks, drafts, or bills, will be regulated by the same general law—the business of the country.”

348At last, Congress came up to the position taken by Garfield in 1868. In 1875, the Resumption Act was passed, providing that, after January 1, 1879, the United States Treasury would offer one dollar in gold for every dollar in greenbacks presented for redemption. That this law was ten years too late can not be doubted. The delay prolonged the agony. But it was all that popular opinion would allow. In the interim between 1875 and 1879, every effort was made by the paper-money men to repeal the act. Of General Garfield’s speeches in its defense, we select that of November 16, 1877, as the type. The reader shall see whether he had changed his views, whether the panic and hard times had disconcerted his calculations? Let James A. Garfield speak for himself:

“We are engaged in a debate which has lasted in the Anglo-Saxon world for more than two centuries, and hardly any phase of it to which we have listened in the course of the last week is new. Hardly a proposition has been heard on either side which was not made one hundred and eighty years ago in England, and almost a hundred years ago in the United States. So singularly does history repeat itself.

“That man makes a vital mistake who judges of truth in relation to financial affairs from the changing phases of public opinion. He might as well stand on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, and, from the ebb and flow of a single tide, attempt to determine the general level of the sea, as to stand on this floor and from the current of public opinion in any one debate, judge of the general level of the public mind. It is only when long spaces along the shore of the sea are taken into account, that the grand level is found, from which all heights and depths are measured. And it is only when long spaces of time are considered that we find at last the level of public opinion which we call the general judgment of mankind. From the turbulent ebb and flow of the public opinion of to-day I appeal to that settled judgment of mankind on the subject-matter of this debate.

“In the short time which is allotted to me I invite the attention of gentlemen, who do me the honor to listen, to a very remarkable fact. I suppose it will be admitted on all hands, that 1860 was a year of unusual business prosperity in the United States. It was at a time when the 349bounties of Providence were scattered with a liberal hand over the face of our Republic. It was a time when all classes of our community were well and profitably employed. It was a time of peace; the apprehension of our great civil war had not yet seized the minds of our people. Great crops North and South, great general prosperity marked the era.

“If one thing was settled above all other questions of financial policy in the American mind at that time, it was this, that the only sound, safe, trustworthy standard of value is coin of a standard weight and fineness, or a paper currency convertible into coin at the will of the holder. That was and had been for several generations the almost unanimous opinion of the American people. It is true there was here and there a theorist dreaming of the philosopher’s stone, dreaming of a time when paper money, which he worshiped as a kind of fetish, would be crowned as a god; but those dreamers were so few in number that they made no ripple on the current of public thought, and their theories formed no part of public opinion, and the opinion of 1860–’61 was the aggregated result of the opinions of all the foremost Americans who have left their record upon this subject.

“I make this statement without fear of contradiction, because I have carefully examined the list of illustrious names and the records they have left behind them. No man ever sat in the chair of Washington as President of the United States who has left on record any word that favors inconvertible paper money as a safe standard of value. Every President who has left a record on the subject has spoken without qualification in favor of the doctrine I have announced. No man ever sat in the chair of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States who, if he has spoken at all on the subject, has not left on record an opinion equally strong, from Hamilton down to the days of the distinguished father of my colleague [Mr. Ewing], and to the present moment.

“The general judgment of all men who deserve to be called the leaders of American thought ought to be considered worth something in an American House of Representatives on the discussion of a great topic like this. What happened to cause a departure from this general level of public opinion? Every man knows the history. War, the imperious necessities of war, led the men of 1861–’62 to depart from the doctrine of the fathers; but they did not depart from it as a matter of choice, but compelled by overmastering necessity. Every man in the Senate and House of 1862 who voted for the greenback law, announced that he did 350it with the greatest possible reluctance and with the gravest apprehension for the result. Every man who spoke on the subject, from Thaddeus Stevens to the humblest member in this House, and from Fessenden to the humblest Senator, warned his country against the danger that might follow, and pledged his honor that at the earliest possible moment the country should be brought back to the old, safe-established doctrine of the fathers.

“When they made the law creating the greenbacks they incorporated into its essential provisions the most solemn pledge men could devise, that they would come back to the doctrines of the fathers. The very law that created the greenback provided for its redemption and retirement; and every time the necessities of war required an additional issue, new guarantees and new limitations were put upon the new issues to insure their ultimate redemption. They were issued upon the fundamental condition that the number should be so limited forever that under the law of contracts the courts might enforce their sanctions. The men of 1862 knew the dangers from sad experience in our history; and, like Ulysses, lashed themselves to the mast of public credit when they embarked upon the stormy and boisterous sea of inflated paper money, that they might not be beguiled by the siren song which would be sung to them when they were afloat on the wild waves.

“But the times have changed; new men are on deck; men who have forgotten the old pledges; and now only twelve years have passed (for as late as 1865 this House, with but six dissenting votes, resolved again to stand by the old ways and bring the country back to sound money)—only twelve years have passed, and what do we find? We find a group of theorists and doctrinaires who look upon the wisdom of the fathers as foolishness. We find some who advocate what they call “absolute money;” who declare that a piece of paper stamped a “dollar” is a dollar; that gold and silver are a part of the barbarism of the past, which ought to be forever abandoned. We hear them declaring that resumption is a delusion and a snare. We here them declaring that the eras of prosperity are the eras of paper money; and they point us to all times of inflation as a period of blessing to the people, prosperity to business; and they ask us no more to vex their ears with any allusion to the old standard, the money of the Constitution. Let the wild crop of financial literature that has sprung into life within the last twelve years witness how widely and how far we have drifted. We have lost our old moorings, have thrown overboard our old compass; we sail by alien stars, looking not for the haven, but are afloat on an unknown sea....

351“No theory of currency that existed in 1860 can justify the volume now outstanding. Either our laws of trade, our laws of value, our laws of exchange, have been utterly reversed or the currency of to-day is in excess of the legitimate wants of trade. But I admit freely that no Congress is wise enough to determine how much currency the country needs. There never was a body of men wise enough to do that. The volume of currency needed, depends upon laws that are higher than Congress and higher than governments. One thing only legislation can do. It can determine the quality of the money of the country. The laws of trade alone can determine its quantity.

“In connection with this view we are met by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] with two historical references on which he greatly relies in opposing resumption. The first is his reference to France. Follow France, says the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania, follow France, and see how she poured out her volumes of paper money, and by it survived a great crisis and maintained her business prosperity. Oh, that the gentleman and those who vote with him would follow France! I gladly follow up his allusion to France. As a proof that we have not enough money, he notices the fact that France has always used more money than either the United States or England. I admit it. But does the gentleman not know that the traditions and habits of France are as unlike those of England and the United States as those of any two nations of the world can be in regard to the use of money? I say to the gentleman that in France, banking, as an instrument of trade, is almost unknown. There are no banks in France except the Bank of France itself. The government has been trying for twenty years to establish branches in all the eighty-nine departments, and thus far only fifty-six branches have been organized. Our national, State, and private banks number nearly ten thousand. The habits of the French people are not adapted to the use of banks as instruments of exchange. All the deposits in all the saving-banks of France are not equal to the deposits in the saving-banks of New York City alone. It is the frequent complaint of Americans who make purchases in Paris that the merchants will not accept drafts, even on the Bank of France.

“Victor Bonnet, a recent French writer, says: ‘The use of deposits, bank accounts, and checks, is still in its infancy in this country. They are very little used even in great cities, while in the rest of France they are completely unknown. It is, however, to be hoped that there will be more employed hereafter, and that here, as in England and the United 352States, payments will be more generally made through the medium of bankers and by transfers in account-current. If this should be the case, we shall economize both in the use of specie and of bank-notes; for it is to be observed that the use of bank-notes does not reach its fullest development except in countries where the keeping of bank accounts is universal, as is evident by comparing France in this respect with England.’

“M. Pinard, manager of the Comptoir d’Escompte, testified before the commission of inquiry, that the greatest efforts had been made by that institution to induce French merchants and shopkeepers to adopt English habits in respect to the use of checks and the keeping of bank accounts, but in vain; their prejudices were invincible. ‘It was no use reasoning with them; they would not do it, because they would not.’

“So long as the business of their country is thus done hand to hand by the use of cash, they need a much greater volume of money in proportion to their business than England or the United States.

“How is it in England? Statistics, which no man will gainsay, will show that ninety-five per cent. of all the great mercantile transactions of England is done by drafts, checks, and commercial bills and only five per cent. by the actual use of cash. The great business of commerce and trade is done by drafts and bills. Money is now only the small change of commerce. And how is it in this country? We have adopted the habits of England, and not of France, in this regard. In 1871, when I was Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency, I asked the Comptroller of the Currency to issue an order naming fifty-two banks which were to make an analysis of their receipts. I selected three groups: The first group were the city banks; not, however, the clearing-house banks, but the great city banks not in the clearing-house association. The second group consisted of banks in cities of the size of Toledo and Dayton, in the State of Ohio. In the third group, if I may coin a word, I selected the ‘countriest’ banks—the smallest that could be found at points away from railroads and telegraphs.

“The order was that all those banks should analyze all their receipts for six consecutive days, putting into one list all that can be called cash, either in coin, greenbacks, bank-notes, or coupons; and into the other list all drafts, checks, or commercial bills. What was the result? During those six days $157,000,000 were received over the counters of those fifty-two banks; and, of that amount, $19,370,000 was in cash—twelve per cent. 353only in cash; and eighty-eight per cent. of that vast amount, representing every grade of business, was in checks, drafts, and commercial bills. Does a country that transacts its business in that way need as much currency afloat among the people as a country like France, without banks, without savings institutions, and whose people keep their money in hoards.

“I remember in reading one of the novels of Dumas, when an officer of the French army sent home his agent to run his farm, he loaded him down with silver enough to conduct the business for a year; there was no thought of giving him credit in a bank; but of locking in the till, at the beginning of the year, enough coin to do the business of the year. So much for the difference between the habits of France and those of Anglo-Saxon countries. Let us now consider the conduct of France during and since the German war. In July, 1870, the year before the war began, the Bank of France had outstanding $251,000,000 of paper circulation, and held in its vaults $229,000,000 of coin. When the war broke out, they were compelled immediately to issue more paper, and to make it a legal tender. They took pattern by us in their necessity, and issued paper until, on the 19th of November, 1873, four years ago next Monday, they had $602,000,000 of paper issued by the Bank of France, while the coin in the bank was reduced to $146,000,000.

“But the moment their great war was over, they did what I recommended to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley], they commenced to reduce their paper circulation, and in one year reduced it almost $100,000,000, and increased the coin circulation $120,000,000. In the year 1876 they had pushed into circulation $200,000,000 of coin, and retired nearly all their small notes. They are at this moment within fifty days of resumption of specie payments. Under their law, fifty days from to-day, France will again come into the illustrious line of nations who believe in a sound currency. I commend to the eloquent gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] the example of France....

“The overwhelming and fixed opinion of England is that the cash-resumption act of 1819 was a blessing and not a curse, and that the evils which England suffered from 1821 to 1826 did not arise from the resumption of cash payments. I appeal to every great writer of acknowledged character in England for the truth of this position. I ask the gentleman to read the eighth chapter of the second book of Miss Martineau’s History of the Peace, where the case is admirably stated. 354I appeal also to the opinion of Parliament itself, especially to the House of Commons, which is as sensitive an index of public opinion as England knows. When they were within about eighteen months of resumption of specie payment, a motion was made, like the motion of my colleague from Ohio [Mr. Ewing], that the resumption-act bill be repealed or modified, because it was producing distress. And a number of gentlemen in the House of Commons made speeches of the same spirit as those which we have heard here within the past week. The distress among the people, the crippling of business, the alarm of the mercantile classes, all were paraded in the House of Commons, and were answered by those knights of finance whose names have become illustrious in English history. And at the end of a long debate on that proposition, on the 11th of April, 1821, a vote was taken, and the proposition was rejected by a vote of 141 to 27. In other words, by a vote of 141 to 27 the House of Commons resolved that their act for the resumption of specie payments was not causing distress, and ought not to be repealed, and ought not to be modified, except to make it more effective. As a matter of fact, it was so modified as to allow resumption to take place much sooner than was provided in the act of 1819....

“I now proceed to notice the second point that has been made in favor of this bill. It is assumed that specie payment will injure the debtor class of this country, and thereby oppress the poor; in other words, that the enforcement of the resumption law will oppress the poor and increase the riches of the rich. It is assumed that the laboring-men are in debt, and that the rich men constitute the creditor class. I deny this proposition in toto. I affirm that the vast majority of the creditors of this country are the poor people; that the vast majority of the debtors of this country are the well-to-do people—in fact, people who are moderately rich.

“As a matter of fact, the poor man, the laboring-man, can not get heavily in debt. He has not the security to offer. Men lend their money on security, and in the very nature of the case poor men can borrow but little. What then do poor men do with their small earnings? When a man has earned, out of his hard work, a hundred dollars more than he needs for current expenses, he reasons thus: ‘I can not go into business with a hundred dollars; I can not embark in trade; but, as I work, I want my money to work.’ And so he puts his small gains where they will earn something. He lends his money to a wealthier neighbor, or puts it in the savings-bank. There were, in the United States, on the 355first of November, 1876, forty-four hundred and seventy-five savings-banks and private banks of deposit, and their deposits amounted to $1,377,000,000, almost three-fourths of the amount of our national debt. Over two and a half millions of the citizens of the United States were depositors. In some States the deposits did not average more than $250 each. The great mass of the depositors are men and women of small means—laborers, widows, and orphans. They are the lenders of this enormous aggregate. The savings-banks, as their agents, lend it to whom? Not to the laboring poor, but to the business men who wish to enlarge their business beyond their capital. Speculators sometimes borrow it. But in the main, well-to-do business men borrow these hoardings. Thus the poor lend to the rich....

“There is another way in which poor men dispose of their money. A man says: ‘I can keep my wife and babies from starving while I live and have my health, but if I die they may be compelled to go over the hills to the poor-house’; and, agonized by that thought, he saves out of his hard earnings enough to take out and keep alive a small life-insurance policy, so that, if he dies, there may be something left, provided the insurance company to which he intrusts his money is honest enough to keep its pledges. And how many men do you think have done that in the United States? I do not know the number for the whole country, but I do know this, that from a late report to the insurance commissioner of the State of New York, it appears that the companies doing business in that State had 774,625 policies in force, and the face value of these policies was $1,922,000,000. I find, by looking over the returns, that in my State there are 55,000 policies outstanding; in Pennsylvania, 74,000; in Maine, 17,000; in Maryland, 25,000; and, in the State of New York, 160,090. There are, of course, some rich men insured in these companies, but the majority are poor people, for the policies do not average more than $2,200 each. What is done with the assets of these companies, which amount to $445,000,000? They are loaned out. Here again the creditor class is the poor, and the insurance companies are the agents of the poor to lend their money for them. It would be dishonorable for Congress to legislate either for the debtor class or for the creditor class alone. We ought to legislate for the whole country. But when gentlemen attempt to manufacture sentiment against the resumption act, by saying it will help the rich and hurt the poor, they are overwhelmingly answered by the facts.

356“Suppose you undo the work that Congress has attempted—to resume specie payment—what will result? You will depreciate the value of the greenback. Suppose it falls ten cents on the dollar, you will have destroyed ten per cent. of the value of every deposit in the savings-banks, ten per cent. of every life-insurance policy and fire-insurance policy, of every pension to the soldier, and of every day’s wages of every laborer in the nation.

“In the census of 1870, it was estimated that on any given day there were $120,000,000 due to laborers for their unpaid wages. That is a small estimate. Let the greenback dollar come down ten per cent. and you take $12,000,000 from the men who have already earned it. In the name of every interest connected with the poor man I denounce this effort to prevent resumption. Daniel Webster never uttered a greater truth in finance than when he said that of all contrivances to cheat the laboring-classes of mankind, none was so effective as that which deluded them with an irredeemable paper money. The rich can take care of themselves, but the dead-weight of all the fluctuations and losses falls ultimately on the poor man who has only his day’s work to sell.

“I admit that in the passage from peace to war there was a great loss to one class of the community, to the creditors; and in the return to the basis of peace some loss to debtors was inevitable. This injustice was unavoidable. The loss and gain did not fall upon the same. The evil could not be balanced nor adjusted. The debtors of 1862–’65 are not the debtors of 1877. The most competent judges declare that the average life of the private debts in the United States is not more than two years. Of course, obligations may be renewed, but the average length of private debts in this country is not more than two years. Now, we have already gone two years on the road to resumption, and the country has been adjusting itself to the new condition of things. The people have expected resumption, and have already discounted most of the hardships and sufferings incident to the change. The agony is almost over; and if we now embark again upon the open sea we lose all that has been gained, and plunge the country into the necessity of venturing once more over the same boisterous ocean, with all its perils and uncertainties. I speak the deepest convictions of my mind and heart when I say that, should this resumption act be repealed and no effectual substitute be put in its place, the day is not far distant when all of us, looking back on this time from the depths of the evils which will result, 357will regret, with all our power to regret, the day when we again let loose the dangers of inflation upon the country.

“Although I do not believe in keeping greenbacks as a permanent currency in the United States, although I do not myself believe in the Government becoming a permanent banker, yet I am willing for one that, in order to prevent the shock to business which gentlemen fear, the $300,000,000 of greenbacks shall be allowed to remain in circulation as long as the wants of trade show manifestly that they are needed. Now, is that a great contraction? Is it contraction at all?

“Why, gentlemen, when you have brought your greenback up two and one-half cents higher in value, you will have added to your volume of money $200,000,000 of gold coin which can not circulate until greenbacks are brought to par.

“Let those who are afraid of contraction consider that and answer it.

“Summing it all up in a word: the struggle now pending in the House is on the one hand to make the greenback better, and on the other to make it worse. The resumption act is making it better every day. Repeal that act and you make it infinitely worse. In the name of every man who wants his own when he has earned it, I demand that we do not make the wages of the poor man to shrivel in his hands after he has earned it; but that his money shall be made better and better, until the plow-holder’s money shall be as good as the bond-holder’s money; until our standard is one, and there is no longer one money for the rich and another for the poor.”

With these bits of marble chipped from the temple of his arguments on the currency question, we must content ourselves. Upon this question Garfield was undoubtedly ahead of his generation. The resumption bill which he introduced in 1868 was better than the one adopted in 1875. He presented the fundamental principles as he understood them in 1868. From them he never changed. All subsequent efforts were but their elaboration, and, at this writing, history itself is their fulfillment and demonstration.

It is easy to see that his style of speaking changed somewhat. He became more terse and epigrammatic. He condensed the 358philosophical parts of his speeches, and enlarged the practical parts. He became more direct in address, more sparing of ornament, and simpler in language. But this was all. He was never known to be on but one side of a question. He took his position only after the most laborious investigations and careful thought. Once taken, nothing could drive him from it. In his answers to the riddles propounded by the Sphinx of American currency and finance, James A. Garfield is entitled to a place in the gallery of fame, beside the greatest financiers known to our national history. In the future, no authority will be, or can be, higher than Garfield.

Our next inquiry relates to Garfield’s record upon questions affecting the Revenue and Expenditures of the United States. Owing to his long service on the Committees of Ways and Means and on Appropriations, these twin topics of surpassing importance continually lay like couchant lions right in his political pathway.

Of the question of revenue, the tariff is the most vital branch. On the subjects of free-trade and protection, Garfield had made up his mind while at Williams College. Professor Perry, the instructor in political economy, was an unqualified free-trader. After his usual careful investigation, Garfield took the opposite view. He formulated the following proposition: “As an abstract theory, the doctrine of Free-Trade seems to be universally true, but as a question of practicability, under a government like ours, the protective system seems to be indispensable.”

Into the defense of that proposition he threw all his energies. In his speeches on the tariff we will find but one continual elaboration of this view. The speeches are moderate and conservative, avoiding either extreme. His object was to legislate for the whole country and not for any locality or class alone. On April 1, 1870, he delivered a speech on the tariff, which is of the first rank among his earlier efforts.

It presents an interesting history of England’s tariff policy toward the colonies, a brilliant discussion of the trend of prices since the war, and closes with a review of the eventful history of tariff legislation in this country, not omitting the South Carolina 359nullification. The high tariffs required by the high prices prevailing during the war, he thought, should be gradually reduced. Every one knows that the advantage of a high tariff on imports is the protection it gives to American industry by keeping up the prices here, and preventing competition with the cheap labor of Europe. But it is equally true that, while keeping prices up is good for the seller, and indirectly for the laborer whom he employs, it is bad for the buyer. Free-trade makes low prices. Avoiding alike the Scylla on the one hand and the Charybdis on the other, Garfield chose a medium. He closed his speech of April 1, 1870, by an appeal against either extreme:

“I stand now where I have always stood since I have been a member of this House. I take the liberty of quoting, from the Congressional Globe of 1866, the following remarks which I then made on the subject of the tariff:

“‘We have seen that one extreme school of economists would place the price of all manufactured articles in the hands of foreign producers by rendering it impossible for our manufacturers to compete with them; while the other extreme school, by making it impossible for the foreigner to sell his competing wares in our market, would give the people no immediate check upon the prices which our manufacturers might fix for their products. I disagree with both these extremes. I hold that a properly adjusted competition between home and foreign products is the best gauge by which to regulate international trade. Duties should be so high that our manufacturers can fairly compete with the foreign product, but not so high as to enable them to drive out the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of the trade, and regulate the price as they please. This is my doctrine of protection. If Congress pursue this line of policy steadily, we shall, year by year, approach more nearly to the basis of free-trade, because we shall be more nearly able to compete with other nations on equal terms. I am for that protection which leads to ultimate free-trade. I am for that free-trade which can only be achieved through a reasonable protection.’”

As the representative of General Garfield’s tariff speeches in these pages, we select the one of February 4, 1878. Of this speech a gentleman of high abilities and information, says: “Having read 360and re-read it carefully, and having read all the great speeches made in Congress for forty years before the war on this difficult question, it is my deliberate conviction that the sound American doctrine of protection has never been stated with equal clearness, breadth, and practicality.”

“A few days ago, the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, who now occupies the chair [Mr. Tucker], made a speech of rare ability and power, in which he placed at the front of his line of discussion a question that was never raised in American legislation until our present form of Government was forty years old; the question of the constitutionality of a tariff for the encouragement and protection of manufacturers. The first page of the printed speech of the gentleman, as it appears in the Congressional Record, is devoted to an elaborate and very able discussion of that question.

“He insists that the two powers conferred upon Congress, to levy duties and to regulate commerce, are entirely distinct from each other; that the one can not by any fair construction be applied to the other; that the methods of the one are not the methods of the other, and that the capital mistake which he conceives has been made in the legislation of the country for many years is that the power to tax has been applied to the regulation of commerce, and through that to the protection of manufactures. He holds that if we were to adopt a proper construction of the Constitution we should find that the regulation of commerce does not permit the protection of manufactures, nor can the power to tax be applied, directly or indirectly, to that object.

“I will not enter into any elaborate discussion of that question, but I can not refrain from expressing my admiration of the courage of the gentleman from Virginia, who in that part of his speech brought himself into point-blank range of the terrible artillery of James Madison, one of the fathers of the Constitution, and Virginia’s great expounder of its provisions.

“In a letter addressed to Joseph C. Cabell, on the 18th of March, 1827, will be found one of those discussions in which Mr. Madison gives categorically thirteen reasons against the very constitutional theory advanced now by the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. It would almost seem that the distinguished author of the book which I hold in 361my hand had prophetically in his mind the very speech delivered in this House by the later Virginian, for he refutes its arguments, point by point, thoroughly and completely.

“I say that more than a hundred pages of Madison’s works are devoted to discussing and exploding what was, in 1828, this new notion of constitutional construction. In one of these papers he calls to mind the fact that sixteen of the men who framed the Constitution sat in the first Congress and helped to frame a tariff expressly for the protection of domestic industries; and it is fair to presume that these men understood the meaning of the Constitution.

“I will close this phase of the discussion by calling the attention of the committee to the language of the Constitution itself:

“‘The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.’

“Language could hardly be plainer to declare the great general objects to which the taxing power is to be applied.

“It should be borne in mind that revenue is the life-blood of a government, circulating through every part of its organization and giving force and vitality to every function. The power to tax is therefore the great motive power, and its regulation impels, retards, restrains, or limits all the functions of the Government.

“What are these functions? The Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate and control this great motive power, the power to levy and collect duties; and the objects for which duties are to be levied and collected are summarized in three great groups: First, ‘to pay debts.’ By this, the arm of the Government sweeps over all its past history and protects its honor by discharging all obligations that have come down from former years. Second, is ‘to provide for the common defense.’ By this, the mailed arm of the Government sweeps the great circle of the Union to defend it against foes from without and insurrection within. And, third, is to ‘promote the general welfare.’ These are the three great objects to which the Constitution applies the power of taxation. They are all great, beneficent, national objects, and can not be argued out of existence.

“The fifteen specifications following in the eighth section of the same article—such as the power to raise armies, to maintain a navy, to establish courts, to coin money, to regulate commerce with foreign nations and 362among the several States, to promote science and the useful arts by granting patents and copyrights—are all specifications and limitations of the methods by which this great central power of taxation is to be applied to the common defense and the general welfare. And it is left to the discretion of Congress to determine how these objects shall be secured by the use of the powers thus conferred upon it.

“The men who created this Constitution also set it in operation, and developed their own idea of its character. That idea was unlike any other that then prevailed upon the earth. They made the general welfare of the people the great source and foundation of the common defense. In all the nations of the Old World the public defense was provided for by great standing armies, navies, and fortified posts, so that the nation might every moment be fully armed against danger from without or turbulence within. Our fathers said: ‘Though we will use the taxing power to maintain a small army and navy sufficient to keep alive the knowledge of war, yet the main reliance for our defense shall be the intelligence, culture, and skill of our people; a development of our own intellectual and material resources, which will enable us to do every thing that may be necessary to equip, clothe, and feed ourselves in time of war, and make ourselves intelligent, happy, and prosperous in peace.’

“To lay the foundation for the realization of these objects was a leading motive which led to the formation of the Constitution, and was the earliest and greatest object of solicitude in the First Congress.

“Two days after the votes for president were counted, and long before Washington was inaugurated, James Madison rose in the first House of Representatives, and for the first time moved to go into the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, for the express purpose of carrying out the theory of the Constitution to provide for the common defense and the general welfare, both by regulating commerce and protecting American manufactures. Thus, on the 8th of April, 1789, he opened a debate which lasted several weeks, in which was substantially developed every idea that has since appeared save one, the notion that it was unconstitutional to protect American industry. All other phases of the subject were fully and thoroughly handled in that great debate.

“Our fathers had been disciplined in the severe school of experience during the long period of colonial dependence. The heavy hand of British repression was laid upon all their attempts to become a self-supporting people. The navigation laws and commercial regulations of the mother 363country were based upon the theory that the colonies were founded for the sole purpose of raising up customers for her trade. They were allowed to purchase in British markets alone any manufactured article which England had to sell. In short, they were compelled to trade with England on her own terms; and whether buying or selling, the product must be carried in British bottoms at the carrier’s own price. In addition to this, a revenue tax of 5 per cent. was imposed on all colonial exports and imports.

“The colonists were doomed to the servitude of furnishing, by the simplest forms of labor, raw materials for the mother country, who arrogated to herself the sole right to supply her colonies with the finished product. To our fathers, independence was emancipation from this servitude. They knew that civilization advanced from the hunting to the pastoral state, from the pastoral to the agricultural, which has such charms for the distinguished gentleman from Virginia. But they also knew that no merely agricultural people had ever been able to rise to a high civilization and to self-supporting independence. They determined, therefore, to make their emancipation complete by adding to agriculture the mechanic arts, which in their turn would carry agriculture and all other industries to a still higher development, and place our people in the front rank of civilized and self-supporting nations. This idea inspired the legislation of all the earlier Congresses. It found expression in the first tariff act of 1789; in the higher rates of the act of 1790; and in the still larger schedule and increased rates of the acts of 1797 and 1800.

“In 1806 the non-importation act forbade the importation of British manufactures of silk, cloth, nails, spikes, brass, tin, and many other articles; and the eight years of embargo witnessed a great growth in American manufactures. When the non-importation act was repealed in 1814, John C. Calhoun assured the country that Congress would not fail to provide other adequate means for promoting the development of our industries; and, under his lead, the protective tariff of 1816 was enacted.

“I have given this brief historical sketch for the purpose of exhibiting the ideas out of which the tariff legislation of this country has sprung. It has received the support of the most renowned names in our early history; and, though the principle of protection has sometimes been carried to an unreasonable extreme, thus bringing reproach upon the system, it 364has nevertheless borne many of the fruits which were anticipated by those who planted the germ.

“Gentlemen who oppose this view of public policy tell us that they favor a tariff for revenue alone. I therefore invite their attention to the revenue phase of the question. The estimated expenditures for the next fiscal year are two hundred and eighty and one-half million dollars, including interest on the public debt and the appropriations required by law for the sinking fund. The Secretary of the Treasury estimates the revenues which our present laws will furnish at $269,000,000; from customs, one hundred and thirty-three millions; from internal revenue, one hundred and twenty millions; and from miscellaneous sources, sixteen millions. He tells us that it will be necessary to cut down the expenditures eleven millions below the estimates in order to prevent a deficit of that amount. The revenues of the last fiscal year failed by three and a quarter millions to meet the expenditures required by law.

“In the face of these facts can we safely diminish our revenues? If we mean to preserve the public faith and meet all the necessities of the Government we can not reduce the present revenues a single dollar. Yet the majority of this House not only propose to reduce the internal tax on spirits and tobacco but they propose in this bill to reduce the revenues on customs by at least $6,000,000. To avoid the disgrace of a deficit they propose to suspend the operations of the sinking fund and thereby shake the foundation of the public credit. But they tell us that some of the reductions made in this bill will increase rather than diminish the revenue. Perhaps on a few articles this will be true; but as a whole it is undeniable that this bill will effect a considerable reduction in the revenues from customs.

“Gentlemen on the other side have been in the habit of denouncing our present tariff laws as destructive to, rather than productive of, revenue. Let me invite their attention to a few plain facts:

“During the fifteen years that preceded our late war—a period of so-called revenue tariffs—we raised from customs an average annual revenue of forty-seven and a half million dollars, never in any year receiving more than sixty-four millions. That system brought us a heavy deficit in 1860, so that Congress was compelled to borrow money to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government.

“Do they tell us that our present law fails to produce an adequate 365revenue? They denounce it as not a revenue tariff. Let them wrestle with the following fact: During the eleven years that have passed since the close of the war we have averaged one hundred and seventy and one-half million dollars of revenue per annum from customs alone. Can they say that this is not a revenue tariff which produces more than three times as much revenue per annum as that law did which they delight to call ‘the revenue tariff?’ In one year, 1872, the revenues from the customs amounted to two hundred and twelve millions. Can they say that the present law does not produce revenue? It produces from textile fabrics alone more revenue than we ever raised from all sources under any tariff before the war. From this it follows that the assault upon the present law fails if made on the score of revenue alone.

“I freely admit that revenue is the primary object of taxation. That object is attained by existing law. But it is an incidental and vitally important object of the law to keep in healthy growth those industries which are necessary to the well-being of the whole country.

“Let us glance at the leading industries which, under the provisions of the existing law, are enabled to maintain themselves in the sharp struggle of competition with other countries. I will name them in five groups. In the first I place the textile fabrics, manufactures of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, jute, and silk. From these we received during the last fiscal year $50,000,000, which is more than one-third of all our customs revenue.

“It is said that a tax should not be levied upon the clothing of the people. This would be a valid objection were it not for the fact that objects of the highest national importance are secured by its imposition. That forty-five millions of people should be able to clothe themselves without helpless dependence upon other nations is a matter of transcendent importance to every citizen. What American can be indifferent to the fact that in the year 1875 the State of Massachusetts alone produced 992,000,000 yards of textile fabrics, and in doing so consumed seventy-five million dollars’ worth of the products of the fields and flocks, and gave employment to 120,000 artisans? There is a touch of pathos in the apologetic reply of Governor Spottswood, an early colonial Governor of Virginia, when he wrote to his British superiors:

“‘The people of Virginia, more of necessity than inclination, attempt to clothe themselves with their own manufactures.... It is certainly necessary to divert their application to some commodity less prejudicial 366to the trade of England.’—Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. iv, page 104.

“Thanks to our independence, such apologies are no longer needed. Some of the rates on the textiles are exorbitant and ought to be reduced; but the general principle which pervades the group is wise and beneficent, not only as a means of raising revenue, but as a measure of national economy.

“In the second group I have placed the metals, including glass and chemicals. Though the tariff upon this group has been severely denounced in this debate, the rate does not average more than thirty-six per cent. ad valorem, and the group produced about $14,000,000 of revenue last year. Besides serving as a source of public revenue, what intelligent man fails to see that the metals are the basis of all the machinery, tools, and implements of every industry? More than any other in the world’s history, this is the age when inventive genius is bending all its energies to devise means to increase the effectiveness of human labor. The mechanical wonders displayed at our Centennial Exposition are a sufficient illustration.

“The people that can not make their own implements of industry must be content to take a very humble and subordinate place in the family of nations. The people that can not, at any time, by their own previous training, arm and equip themselves for war, must be content to exist by the sufferance of others.

“I do not say that no rates in this group are too high. Some of them can safely be reduced. But I do say these industries could not have attained their present success without the national care; and to abandon them now will prevent their continued prosperity.

“In the third group I place wines, spirits, and tobacco in its various forms which come from abroad. On these, rates of duty range from eighty-five to ninety-five per cent. ad valorem; and from them we collected last year $10,000,000 of revenue. The wisdom of this tax will hardly be disputed by any one.

“In the fourth group I have placed imported provisions which come in competition with the products of our own fields and herds, including breadstuffs, salt, rice, sugar, molasses, and spices. On these provisions imported into this country we collected last year a revenue of $42,000,000, $37,000,000 of which was collected on sugar. Of the duty on the 367principal article of this group I shall speak further on in the discussion.

“On the fifth group, comprising leather and manufactures of leather, we received about $3,000,000 of revenue.

“On the imports included in the five groups I have mentioned, which comprise the great manufacturing industries of the country, we collect $119,000,000—more than ninety per cent. of all our customs revenue. I ask if it be not an object of the highest national importance to keep alive and in vigorous health and growth the industries included in these groups? What sort of people should we be if we did not keep them alive? Suppose we were to follow the advice of the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] when he said:

“‘Why should me make pig-iron when with Berkshire pigs raised upon our farms we can buy more iron pigs from England than we can get by trying to make them ourselves? We can get more iron pigs from England for Berkshire pigs than we can from the Pennsylvania manufacturers. Why, then, should I not be permitted to send there for them?...

“‘What a market for our raw material, for our products, if we only would take the hand which Great Britain extends to us for free-trade between us!’

“For a single season, perhaps, his plan might be profitable to the consumers of iron; but if his policy were adopted as a permanent one, it would reduce us to a merely agricultural people, whose chief business would be to produce the simplest raw materials by the least skill and culture, and let the men of brains of other countries do our thinking for us, and provide for us all products requiring the cunning hand of the artisan, while we would be compelled to do the drudgery for ourselves and for them.

“The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] is too good a logician not to see that the theory he advocates can only be realized in a state of universal peace and brotherhood among the nations; and, in developing his plan, he says:

“‘Commerce, Mr. Chairman, links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests, and thus creates that unity of our race which makes the resources of all the property of each and every member. We can not if we would, and should not if we could, remain isolated and alone. Men under the benign influence of 368Christianity yearn for intercourse, for the interchange of thought and the products of thought as a means of a common progress toward a nobler civilization....

“‘Mr. Chairman, I can not believe this is according to the Divine plan. Christianity bids us seek, in communion with our brethren of every race and clime, the blessings they can afford us, and to bestow in return upon them those with which our new continent is destined to fill the world.’

“This, I admit, is a grand conception, a beautiful vision of the time when all the nations shall dwell in peace; when all will be, as it were, one nation, each furnishing to the others what they can not profitably produce, and all working harmoniously together in the millennium of peace. If all the kingdoms of the world should become the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, then I admit that universal free-trade ought to prevail. But that blessed era is yet too remote to be made the basis of the practical legislation of to-day. We are not yet members of the ‘parliament of man, the federation of the world.’ For the present, the world is divided into separate nationalities; and that other divine command still applies to our situation: ‘He that provideth not for his own household has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel;’ and, until that better era arrives, patriotism must supply the place of universal brotherhood.

“For the present Gortschakoff can do more good to the world by taking care of Russia. The great Bismarck can accomplish more for his era by being, as he is, a German to the core, and promoting the welfare of the German Empire. Let Beaconsfield take care of England, and McMahon of France, and let Americans devote themselves to the welfare of America. When each does his best for his own nation to promote prosperity, justice, and peace, all will have done more for the world than if all had attempted to be cosmopolitans rather than patriots. [Applause.]

“But I wish to say, Mr. Chairman, that I have no sympathy with those who approach this question only from the stand-point of their own local, selfish interest. When a man comes to me and says, ‘Put a prohibitory duty on the foreign article which competes with my product, that I may get rich more rapidly,’ he does not excite my sympathy; he repels me; and when another says, ‘Give no protection to the manufacturing industries, for I am not a manufacturer and do not care to have them sustained,’ I say that he, too, is equally mercenary and unpatriotic. 369If we were to legislate in that spirit, I might turn to the gentleman from Chicago and say, ‘Do not ask me to vote for an appropriation to build a court-house or a post-office in your city; I never expect to get any letters from that office, and the people of my district never expect to be in your courts.’ If we were to act in this spirit of narrow isolation we should be unfit for the national positions we occupy.

“Too much of our tariff discussions have been warped by narrow and sectional considerations. But when we base our action upon the conceded national importance of the great industries I have referred to, when we recognize the fact that artisans and their products are essential to the well-being of our country, it follows that there is no dweller in the humblest cottage on our remotest frontier who has not a deep personal interest in the legislation that shall promote these great national industries. Those arts that enable our nation to rise in the scale of civilization bring their blessings to all, and patriotic citizens will cheerfully bear a fair share of the burden necessary to make their country great and self-sustaining. I will defend a tariff that is national in its aims, that protects and sustains those interests without which the nation can not become great and self-sustaining.

“So important, in my view, is the ability of the nation to manufacture all these articles necessary to arm, equip, and clothe our people, that if it could not be secured in any other way I would vote to pay money out of the Federal Treasury to maintain government iron and steel, woolen and cotton mills, at whatever cost. Were we to neglect these great interests and depend upon other nations, in what a condition of helplessness would we find ourselves when we should be again involved in war with the very nations on whom we were depending to furnish us these supplies? The system adopted by our fathers is wiser, for it so encourages the great national industries as to make it possible at all times for our people to equip themselves for war, and at the same time increase their intelligence and skill so as to make them better fitted for all the duties of citizenship both in war and in peace. We provide for the common defense by a system which promotes the general welfare.

“I have tried thus summarily to state the grounds on which a tariff which produces the necessary revenue and at the same time promotes American manufactures, can be sustained by large-minded men, for national reasons. How high the rates of such a tariff ought to be is a question on which there may fairly be differences of opinion.

370“Fortunately or unfortunately, on this question I have long occupied a position between two extremes of opinion. I have long believed, and I still believe, that the worst evil which has afflicted the interests of the American artisans and manufacturers has been the tendency to extremes in our tariff legislation. Our history for the last fifty years has been a repetition of the same mistake. One party comes into power, and believing that a protective tariff is a good thing establishes a fair rate of duty. Not content with that, they say: ‘This works well, let us have more of it,’ and they raise the rates still higher, and perhaps go beyond the limits of national interest.

“Every additional step in that direction increases the opposition and threatens the stability of the whole system. When the policy of increase is pushed beyond a certain point, the popular reaction sets in; the opposite party gets into power and cuts down the high rates. Not content with reducing the rates that are unreasonable, they attack and destroy the whole protective system. Then follows a deficit in the Treasury, the destruction of manufacturing interests, until the reaction again sets in, the free-traders are overthrown, and a protective system is again established. In not less than four distinct periods during the last fifty years has this sort of revolution taken place in our industrial system. Our great national industries have thus been tossed up and down between two extremes of opinion.

“During my term of service in this House I have resisted the effort to increase the rates of duty whenever I thought an increase would be dangerous to the stability of our manufacturing interests; and by doing so, I have sometimes been thought unfriendly to the policy of protecting American industry. When the necessity of the revenues and the safety of our manufactures warranted, I have favored a reduction of rates; and these reductions have aided to preserve the stability of the system. In one year, soon after the close of the war, we raised $212,000,000 of revenue from customs.

“In 1870 we reduced the custom duties by the sum of twenty-nine and one-half millions of dollars. In 1872 they were again reduced by the sum of forty-four and one half millions. Those reductions were in the main wise and judicious; and although I did not vote for them all, yet they have put the fair-minded men of this country in a position where they can justly resist any considerable reduction below the present rates.

371“My view of the danger of extreme positions on the questions of tariff rates may be illustrated by a remark made by Horace Greeley in the last conversation I ever had with that distinguished man. Said he:

“‘My criticism of you is that you are not sufficiently high protective in your views.’

“I replied:

“‘What would you advise?’

“He said:

“‘If I had my way—if I were king of this country—I would put a duty of $100 a ton on pig-iron and a proportionate duty on every thing else that can be produced in America. The result would be that our people would be obliged to supply their own wants; manufactures would spring up; competition would finally reduce prices; and we should live wholly within ourselves.’

“I replied that the fatal objection to his theory was that no man is king of this country, with power to make his policy permanent. But as all our policies depend upon popular support, the extreme measure proposed would beget an opposite extreme, and our industries would suffer from violent reactions. For this reason I believe that we ought to seek that point of stable equilibrium somewhere between a prohibitory tariff on the one hand, and a tariff that gives no protection on the other. What is that point of stable equilibrium? In my judgment it is this: a rate so high that foreign producers can not flood our markets and break down our home manufacturers, but not so high as to keep them altogether out, enabling our manufacturers to combine and raise the prices, nor so high as to stimulate an unnatural and unhealthy growth of manufactures.

“In other words, I would have the duty so adjusted that every great American industry can fairly live and make fair profits; and yet so low that if our manufacturers attempted to put up prices unreasonably, the competition from abroad would come in and bring down prices to a fair rate. Such a tariff I believe will be supported by the great majority of Americans. We are not far from having such a tariff in our present law. In some respects we have departed from that standard. Wherever it does, we should amend it, and by so doing we shall secure stability and prosperity.

“This brings me to the consideration of the pending bill. It was my hope, at the beginning of the present session, that the Committee of Ways and Means would enter upon a revision of the tariff in the spirit I have 372indicated. The Secretary of the Treasury suggested in his annual report that a considerable number of articles which produced but a small amount of revenue, and were not essential to the prosperity of our manufacturers, could be placed upon the free list, thus simplifying the law and making it more consistent in its details. I was ready to assist in such a work of revision; but the committee had not gone far before it was evident that they intended to attack the whole system, and, as far as possible, destroy it. The results of their long and arduous labors are embodied in the pending bill.

“Some of the rates can be slightly reduced without serious harm; but many of the reductions proposed in this bill will be fatal. It is related that when a surgeon was probing an emperor’s wound to find the ball, he said:

“‘Can your Majesty allow me to go deeper?’

“His Majesty replied:

“‘Probe a little deeper and you will find the Emperor.’

“It is that little deeper probing by this bill that will touch the vital interests of this country and destroy them.

“The chief charge I make against this bill is that it seeks to cripple the protective features of the law. It increases rates where an increase is not necessary, and it cuts them down where cutting will kill. One of the wisest provisions of our present law is the establishment of a definite free list. From year to year when it has been found that any article could safely be liberated from duty it has been put upon the free list. A large number of raw materials have thus been made free of duty. This has lightened the burdens of taxation, and at the same time aided the industries of the country.

“To show the progress that has been made in this direction, it should be remembered that in 1867 the value of all articles imported free of duty was but $39,000,000, while in 1877 the free imports amounted to $181,000,000.

“As I have already said, the Secretary of the Treasury recommends a still further increase of the free list. But this bill abolishes the free list altogether and imposes duties upon a large share of articles now free. And this is done in order to make still greater reduction upon articles that must be protected if their manufacture is maintained in this country.

“Let me notice a few of the great industries at which this bill strikes. In the group of textile fabrics, of which I have spoken, reductions are 373made upon the manufactures of cotton which will stop three-quarters of the cotton mills of the country, and hopelessly prostrate the business. Still greater violence is done to the wool and woolen interests. The attempt has been made to show that the business of wool-growing has declined in consequence of our present law, and the fact has been pointed out that the number of sheep has been steadily falling off in the Eastern States. The truth is that sheep-culture in the United States was never in so healthy a condition as it is to-day. In 1860 our total wool product was sixty millions of pounds. In 1877 we produced two hundred and eight millions of pounds.

“It is true that there is not now so large a number of sheep in the Eastern States as there were a few years since; but the center of that industry has been shifted. Of the thirty-five and a half millions of sheep now in the United States, fourteen and a half millions are in Texas and the States and Territories west of the Rocky Mountains. California alone has six and a half millions of sheep. Not the least important feature of this interest is the facility it offers for cheap animal food. A great French statesman has said: ‘It is more important to provide food than clothing,’ and the growth of sheep accomplishes both objects. Ninety-five per cent. of all the woolen fabrics manufactured in this country are now made of native wool.

“The tariff on wools and woolens was adopted in 1867, after a most careful and thorough examination of both the producing and manufacturing interests. It was the result of an adjustment between the farmers and manufacturers, and has been advantageous to both. A small reduction of the rates could be made without injury.

“Both of these interests consented to a reduction, and submitted their plan to the Committee of Ways and Means. But instead of adopting it, the committee have struck those interests down, and put a dead level ad valorem duty upon all wools. The chairman tells us that the committee had sought to do away with the ad valorem system, because it gave rise to fraudulent invoices and undervaluation. Yet on the interest that yields twenty millions of revenue, he proposes to strike down the specific duties and put the interest upon one dead level of ad valorem duty without regard to quality.

“I would not introduce sectional topics in this discussion, but I must notice one curious feature of this bill. In the great group of provisions, on which nearly fifty millions of revenue are paid into the Treasury, 374I find that thirty-seven millions of that amount come from imported sugar. No one would defend the levying of so heavy a tax upon a necessary article of food were it not that a great agricultural interest is thereby protected, and that interest is mainly confined to the State of Louisiana. I am glad that the Government has given its aid to the State, for not a pound of sugar could be manufactured there if the tariff law did not protect it.

“As the law now stands, the average ad valorem duty on sugar is sixty-two and one-half per cent. But what has this bill done? The complaint is made by its advocates that the rates are now too high. The rates on all dutiable articles average about forty-two per cent.; yet on sugar the average is sixty-two and one-half per cent., greatly above the average. This bill puts up the average duty on sugar to about seventy per cent. This one interest, which is already protected by a duty much higher than the average, is granted a still higher rate, while other interests, now far below the average rate, are put still lower. Metals, that now average but thirty-six per cent. ad valorem, far less than the general average—but little more than half of the rate on sugar—are cut down still more, while the protection of the sugar interest is made still higher.

“If the planters of Louisiana were to get the benefit there would be some excuse for the increase; but what is the fact? One thousand four hundred and fifteen million pounds of sugar were imported into this country last year, but not one pound of refined sugar; every pound was imported in the crude form, going into the hands of about twenty-five gentlemen, mostly in the city of New York, who refine every pound of this enormous quantity of imported sugar. This bill increases the rates on the high grades of sugar far more than on the lower grades, and makes the importation of any finished sugar impossible. It strengthens and makes absolute the monopoly already given to the refining interest; yet we are told that this is a revenue-reform tariff.

“Before closing I wish to notice one thing which I believe has not been mentioned in this debate. A few years ago we had a considerable premium on gold, and as our tariff duties were paid in coin, there was thus created an increase in the tariff rates. In 1875, for instance, the average currency value of coin was one hundred and fourteen cents; in 1876, one hundred and eleven cents; in 1877, one hundred and four cents. Now, thanks to the resumption law and the rate of our exchanges and credit, the premium on gold is almost down to zero. But this fall in 375the premium has operated as a steady reduction of the tariff rates, because the duties were paid in gold and the goods were sold in currency.

“Now, when gentlemen say that the rates were high a few years ago, it should be remembered that they have been falling year by year, as the price of gold has been coming down. When, therefore, gentlemen criticise the rates as fixed in the law of 1872, they should remember that the fall in the premium on gold has wrought a virtual reduction of fourteen per cent. in the tariff rates.

“Mr. Chairman, the Committee of Ways and Means has done a large amount of work on this bill. But the views which have found expression in his bill must be criticised without regard to personal consideration. A bill so radical in its character, so dangerous to our business prosperity, would work infinite mischief at this time, when the country is just recovering itself from a long period of depression and getting again upon solid ground, just coming up out of the wild sea of panic and distress which has tossed us so long.

“Let it be remembered that twenty-two per cent. of all the laboring people of this country are artisans engaged in manufactures. Their culture has been fostered by our tariff laws. It is their pursuits and the skill which they have developed that produced the glory of our centennial exhibition. To them the country owes the splendor of the position it holds before the world more than to any other equal number of our citizens. If this bill becomes a law, it strikes down their occupation and throws into the keenest distress the brightest and best elements of our population.

“It is not simply a stalking-horse upon which gentlemen can leap to show their horsemanship in debate; it is not an innocent lay-figure upon which gentlemen may spread the gaudy wares of their rhetoric without harm; but it is a great, dangerous monster, a very Polyphemus which stalks through the land. Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. If its eye be not out, let us take it out and end the agony.” [Applause on the Republican side.]

But the correlative of revenue is expenditure. Only one other man of this age ever attempted a philosophy of national expenditure besides Garfield—that was Gladstone. No other American ever attempted to regulate appropriations by a philosophical principle. No other man ever attempted to reduce 376the fabulous and irregular outlay of the Government to a science. Of Garfield’s studies in this direction we have spoken elsewhere. On January 23, 1872, upon the introduction of his first bill as Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations he delivered an elaborate speech on the subject of

“It is difficult to discuss expenditures comprehensively without discussing also the revenues; but I shall on this occasion allude to the revenues only on a single point. Revenue and the expenditure of revenue form by far the most important element in the government of modern nations. Revenue is not, as some one has said, the friction of a government, but rather its motive power. Without it the machinery of a government can not move; and by it all the movements of a government are regulated. The expenditure of revenue forms the grand level from which all heights and depths of legislative action are measured. The increase and the diminution of the burdens of taxation depend alike upon their relation to this level of expenditures. That level once given, all other policies must conform to it and be determined by it. The expenditure of revenue and its distribution, therefore, form the best test of the health, the wisdom, and the virtue of a government. Is a government corrupt? that corruption will inevitably, sooner or later, show itself at the door of the treasury in demands for money. There is scarcely a conceivable form of corruption or public wrong that does not at last present itself at the cashier’s desk and demand money. The legislature, therefore, that stands at the cashier’s desk and watches with its Argus eyes the demands for payment over the counter, is most certain to see all the forms of public rascality. At that place, too, we may feel the Nation’s pulse; we may determine whether it is in the delirium of fever or whether the currents of its life are flowing with the steady throbbings of health. What could have torn down the gaudy fabric of the late government of France so effectually as the simple expedient of compiling and publishing a balance sheet of the expenditures of Napoleon’s government, as compared with the expenditures of the fifteen years which preceded his reign? A quiet student of finance exhibited the fact that during fifteen years of Napoleon’s reign the expenditures of his government had been increased by the enormous total of three hundred and fifty million dollars in gold per annum.

“Such, in my view, are the relations which the expenditures of the revenue sustain to the honor and safety of the nation. How, then, shall they be regulated? By what gauge shall we determine the amount of revenue that ought to be expended by a nation? This question is full of difficulty, and I can hope to do little more than offer a few suggestions in the direction of its solution.

“And, first, I remark that the mere amount of the appropriations is in itself no test. To say that this government is expending two hundred and ninety-two million dollars a year, may be to say that we are penurious and niggardly in our expenditures, and may be to say that we are lavish and prodigal. There must be some ground of relative judgment, some test by which we can determine whether expenditures are reasonable or exorbitant. It has occurred to me that two tests can be applied.

“The first and most important is the relation of expenditure to the population. In some ratio corresponding to the increase of population it may be reasonable to increase the expenditures of a government. This is the test usually applied in Europe. In an official table I have before me the expenditures of the British government for the last fifteen years, I find the statement made over against the annual average of each year of the expenditure per capita of the population. The average expenditure per capita for that period, was two pounds, seven shillings and seven pence, or about twelve dollars in gold, with a slight tendency to decrease each year. In our own country, commencing with 1830 and taking the years when the census was taken, I find that the expenditures, per capita, exclusive of payments on the principal and interest of the public debt were as follows:

or, excluding pensions, three dollars and fifty-two cents. No doubt this test is valuable. But how shall it be applied? Shall the increase of expenditures keep pace with the population? We know that population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, that is, at a per cent. compounded 378annually. If the normal increase of expenditures follow the same law, we might look forward to the future with alarm. It is manifest, however, that the necessity of expenditures does not keep pace with the mere increase of numbers; and while the total sum of money expended must necessarily be greater from year to year, the amount per capita ought in all well-regulated governments in time of peace to grow gradually less.

“But in a country like ours there is another element besides population that helps to determine the movement of expenditures. That element can hardly be found in any other country. It is the increase and settlement of our territory, the organic increase of the nation by the addition of new States. To begin with the original thirteen States, and gauge expenditure till now by the increase of population alone, would be manifestly incorrect. But the fact that there have been added twenty-four States, and that we now have nine territories, not including Alaska, brings a new and important element into the calculation. It is impossible to estimate the effect of this element upon expenditures. But if we examine our own records from the beginning of the Government, it will appear that every great increase of settled territory has very considerably added to the expenditures.

“If these reflections be just, it will follow that the ordinary movement of our expenditures depends upon the action of two forces: first, the natural growth of population, and second, the extension of our territory and the increase in the number of our States. Some day, no doubt—and I hope at no distant day—we shall have reached the limit of territorial expansion. I hope we have reached it now, except to enlarge the number of States within our borders; and when we have settled our unoccupied lands, when we have laid down the fixed and certain boundaries of our country, then the movement of our expenditure in time of peace will be remitted to the operation of the one law, the increase of population. That law, as I have already intimated, is not an increase by a per cent. compounded annually, but by a per cent. that decreases annually. No doubt the expenditures will always increase from year to year; but they ought not to increase by the same per cent. from year to year; the rate of increase ought gradually to grow less.

“In England, for example, where the territory is fixed, and they are 379remitted to the single law of increase of population, the increase of expenditure during the last fifteen years of peace has been only about one and three-quarter per cent. compounded annually. I believe nobody has made a very careful estimate of the rate in our country; our growth has been too irregular to afford data for an accurate estimate. But a gentleman who has given much attention to the subject expressed to me the belief that our expenditures in time of peace have increased about eight per cent. compounded annually. I can hardly believe it; yet I am sure that somewhere between that and the English rate will be found our rate of increase in times of peace. I am aware that such estimates as these are unsatisfactory, and that nothing short of the actual test of experience can determine the movements of our expenditures; but these suggestions which have resulted from some study of the subject, I offer for the reflection of those who care to follow them out.

“Thus far I have considered the expenditures that arise in times of peace. Any view of this subject would be incomplete that did not include a consideration of the effect of war upon national expenditures. I have spoken of what the rate ought to be in time of peace, for carrying on a government. I will next consider the effect of war on the rate of increase. And here we are confronted with that anarchic element, the plague of nations, which Jeremy Bentham called ‘mischief on the largest scale.’ After the fire and blood of the battle-fields have disappeared, nowhere does war show its destroying power so certainly and so relentlessly as in the columns which represent the taxes and expenditures of the nation. Let me illustrate this by two examples.

“In 1792, the year preceding the commencement of the great war against Napoleon, the expenditures of Great Britain were less than twenty million pounds sterling.

“During the twenty-four years that elapsed, from the commencement of that wonderful struggle until its close at Waterloo, in 1815, the expenditures rose by successive bounds, until, in one year near the close of the war, it reached the enormous sum of one hundred and six million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

“The unusual increase of the public debt, added to the natural growth of expenditures from causes already discussed, made it impossible for England ever to reach her old level of expenditure. It took twenty years after Waterloo to reduce expenditures from seventy-seven million 380seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the annual average of the second decade of the century, to forty-five million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the expenditure for 1835.

“This last figure was the lowest England has known during the present century. Then followed nearly forty years of peace, from Waterloo to the Crimean war in 1854. The figures for that period may be taken to represent the natural growth of expenditures in England. During that period the expenditures increased, in a tolerably uniform ratio, from forty-five million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the amount for 1835, to about fifty-one million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the average for the five years ending 1853–’54. This increase was about four million dollars of our money per annum. Then came the Crimean war of 1854–1856, during one year of which the expenditures rose to eighty-four million five hundred thousand pounds.

“Again, as after the Napoleonic war, it required several years for the expenditures of the kingdom to get down to the new level of peace, which level was much higher than that of the former peace.

“During the last ten years the expenditures of Great Britain have again been gradually increasing; the average for the six years ending with March 31, 1871, being sixty-eight million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

“As the second example of the effect of war on the movement of national expenditures, I call attention to our own history.

“Considering the ordinary expenses of the Government, exclusive of payments on the principal and interest of the public debt, the annual average may be stated thus:

“Beginning with 1791, the last decade of the eighteenth century showed an annual average of three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. During the first decade of the present century, the average was nearly five million five hundred thousand dollars. Or, commencing with 1791, there followed twenty years of peace, during which the annual average of ordinary expenditures was more than doubled. Then followed four years, from 1812 to 1815, inclusive, in which the war with England swelled the average to twenty-five million five hundred thousand dollars. During the five years succeeding that war, the average was sixteen million five hundred thousand dollars, and it was not until 1821 that the new level of peace was reached. During the five years, from 1820 to 3811825, inclusive, the annual average was eleven million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1825 to 1830, it was thirteen million dollars. From 1830 to 1835, it was seventeen million dollars. From 1835 to 1840, in which period occurred the Seminole war, it was thirty million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1840 to 1845, it was twenty-seven million dollars. From 1845 to 1850, during which occurred the Mexican war, it was forty million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1850 to 1855, it was forty-seven million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1855 to June 30, 1861, it was sixty-seven million dollars. From June 30, 1861, to June 30, 1866, seven hundred and thirteen million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and from June 30, 1866, to June 30, 1871, the annual average was one hundred and eighty-nine million dollars.

“It is interesting to inquire how far we may reasonably expect to go in the descending scale before we reach the new level of peace. We have already seen that it took England twenty years after Waterloo before she reached such a level. Our own experience has been peculiar in this, that our people have been impatient of debt, and have always determinedly set about the work of reducing it.

“Throughout our history there may be seen a curious uniformity in the movement of the annual expenditures for the years immediately following a war. We have not the data to determine how long it was, after the war of independence, before the expenditures ceased to decrease; that is, before they reached the point where their natural growth more than balanced the tendency to reduction of war expenditure; but in the years immediately following all our subsequent wars, the decrease has continued for a period almost exactly twice the length of the war itself.

“After the war of 1812–’15, the expenditures continued to decline for eight years, reaching the lowest point in 1823.

“After the Seminole war, which ran through three years, 1836, 1837, and 1838, the new level was not reached until 1844, six years after its close.

“After the Mexican war, which lasted two years, it took four years, until 1852, to reach the new level of peace.”

Probably the most remarkable portion of this speech is the following prophecy:

“It is, perhaps, unsafe to base our calculations for the future on these analogies; but the wars already referred to have been of such varied character, and their financial effects have been so uniform, as to make it not unreasonable to expect that a similar result will follow our late war. If so, the decrease of our ordinary expenditures, exclusive of the principal and interest of the public debt, will continue until 1875 or 1876.

“It will be seen by an analysis of our expenditures, that, exclusive of charges on the public debt, nearly fifty million dollars are expenditures directly for the late war. Many of these expenditures will not again appear, such as the bounty and back pay of volunteer soldiers, and payment of illegal captures of British vessels and cargoes. We may reasonably expect that the expenditures for pensions will hereafter steadily decrease, unless our legislation should be unwarrantably extravagant. We may also expect a large decrease in expenditures for the internal revenue department. Possibly, we may ultimately be able to abolish the department altogether. In the accounting and disbursing bureaus of the treasury department, we may also expect a further reduction of the force now employed in settling war claims.

“We can not expect so rapid a reduction of the public debt and its burden of interest as we have witnessed for the last three years; but the reduction will doubtless continue, and the burden of interest will constantly decrease. I know it is not safe to attempt to forecast the future; but I venture to express the belief that if peace continues, the year 1876 will witness our ordinary expenditures reduced to one hundred and twenty-five million dollars, and the interest on our public debt to ninety-five million dollars; making our total expenditures, exclusive of payment on the principal of the public debt, two hundred and thirty million dollars. Judging from our own experience and from that of other nations, we may not hope thereafter to reach a lower figure. In making this estimate, I have assumed that there will be a considerable reduction of the burdens of taxation; and a revenue not nearly so great in excess of the expenditures as we now collect.”

Seven years afterwards, in the June number (1879) of the North American Review, General Garfield quoted the above paragraphs from the speech of January, 1872, and called attention to the fulfillment of his prediction in the following words:

383“Reviewing the subject in the light of subsequent experience, it will be seen that the progress of reduction of expenditures from the war level has been very nearly in accordance with these expectations of seven years ago.

“The actual expenditures since the war, including interest on the public debt, as shown by the official record, were as follows:

“Omitting the first of these years, in which the enormous payments to the army swelled the aggregate of expenses to $1,297,000,000, and beginning with the first full year after the termination of the war, it will be seen that the expenditures have been reduced, at first very rapidly, and then more slowly, from $520,000,000 in 1866 to about $237,000,000 in 1878.

“The estimate quoted above was that in 1876 expenditures would be reduced to $230,000,000, including $95,000,000 for interest on the public debt. In 1877, one year later than the estimated date, the actual reduction had reached $238,000,000, including $97,000,000 for interest on the public debt. [He means the expenditures had been reduced to $238,000,000.]

“It is evident that in 1877 we had very nearly reached the limit of possible reduction, for the aggregate expenditures of 1878 show a reduction below that of the preceding year of less than $2,000,000; and the expenditures, actual and estimated, for the current year ending June 30, 1879, are $240,000,000. It thus appears that 1878 was the turning-point from which, under the influence of the elements of normal growth, we may expect a constant, though it ought to be a small, annual increase of expenditures.”

If anywhere there is to be found a more scientific statesmanship than this, the average man knows not the place to seek it out. Garfield had discovered the law of the increase and decrease of national expenditures. It was as fixed as the laws which lengthen and shorten the day. Scientists agree that the laws of society are 384far more difficult of discovery and of demonstration than the laws of nature. Only one man in a generation makes any real advance in the study of those laws which pervade the affairs of men. In his philosophy of public expenditures, James A. Garfield was that man of his political generation. On March 5, 1874, in another speech on the same topic, he unfolded the philosophy and laws of growth of the public debt. As usual, it is an illumination of a vast and foggy subject. It is impossible to give, in our already crowded pages, even a synopsis of this address.

There can be no question that Garfield was the most perfect master of the themes of revenue and expenditure in his generation. With the exception of the tariff, they were not questions which could be brought into politics. In their nature, they were so dry and complicated that the House itself, much less the people, knew but little of the enormous labor performed by General Garfield on the subject. He applied his immense energies to the task as cheerfully as if the questions were those of the next campaign, instead of being known only in the committee-room. His research would gain him no contemporary laurels, his toil bring him no applause. But he grappled with the monster of public debt, which had its clutch on England’s throat, and was reaching toward the New Republic. He who knew so well how to thrill the audience and shake the building with plausive thunders, embodied the results of his work in speeches, which his friends possibly thought impractical and certainly tiresome. They lie embalmed in the mighty mausoleum of the Congressional Record, hidden away from the prying eyes of mankind. Some future statesman, with more industry or genius than his contemporaries, will, perchance, come with pick and shovel to excavate and disinter the buried children of the brain. If so, like the recently-discovered remains at Mycenæ and Thebes, they will be pronounced of royal blood.

We now pass to the last branch of the subject discussed in this chapter. This relates to the record of Garfield in relation to questions concerning the general character and tendency of American institutions.

385This question opens the door to what would make a volume of General Garfield’s speeches. Under a rigid necessity of condensation, we can only give broken extracts from three addresses.

On July 2, 1873, before the students of the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio, he spoke on—

“What do men mean when they predict the immortality of any thing earthly?

“The first Napoleon was one day walking through the galleries of the Louvre, filled with the wonders of art which he had stolen from the conquered capitals of Europe. As he passed the marvelous picture of Peter Martyr, one of the seven masterpieces of the world, he overheard an enthusiastic artist exclaim: ‘Immortal work!’ Turning quickly upon his heel, the Emperor asked: ‘What is the average life of an oil-painting?’ ‘Five hundred years,’ answered the artist. ‘Immortal!’ the Corsican scornfully repeated as he passed on, thinking doubtless of Austerlitz and Marengo. Six years ago the wonderful picture of Peter Martyr was dissolved in the flames of a burning church at Venice, and, like Austerlitz, is now only a memory and a dream.

“When the great lyric poet of Rome ventured to predict immortality for his works, he could think of no higher human symbol of immortality than the Eternal City and her institutions, crowded with seven centuries of glorious growth; and so Horace declared that his verses would be remembered as long as the high-priest of Apollo and the silent vestal virgin should climb the steps of the Capitol. Fifteen centuries ago the sacred fires of Vesta went out, never to be rekindled. For a thousand years Apollo has had no shrine, no priest, no worshiper on the earth. The steps of the Capitol, and the temples that crowned it, live only in dreams, and to-day the antiquary digs and disputes among the ruins, and is unable to tell us where on the Capitoline hill the great citadel of Rome stood.

“There is much in the history of dead empires to sadden and discourage our hope for the permanence of any human institution. But a deeper study reveals the fact that nations have perished only when their institutions have ceased to be serviceable to the human race; when their faith has become an empty form, and the destruction of the old is indispensable to the growth of the new. Growth is better than permanence; and 386permanent growth is better than all. Our faith is large in time; and we—

“It matters little what may be the forms of national institutions, if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured. To save the life of a nation, it is sometimes necessary to discard the old form and make room for the new growth; for—

“There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation—the forces of repression and expression. The one acts from without—limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within—expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs belong to the first. The free play of individual life, the opinion and action belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.

“How are these forces acting upon our nation at the present time?

“Our success has been so great hitherto, we have passed safely through so many perils which at the time seemed almost fatal, that we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper, unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are, and what we are to be, unless at the same time we compare our strength with the magnitude of our dangers.

“What, then, are our dangers: and how can they be conquered?...

“In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We do not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to find the elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is territorial expansion—overgrowth; the danger that we shall break in pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of historians and publicists for many centuries; and its truth has found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But we have fair ground for believing that new conditions and new forces have nearly, if not wholly, removed the ground of this danger. Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent amazing growth in the means 387of intercommunion. For political and industrial purposes, California and Massachusetts are nearer neighbors to-day than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of the Revolution. The people of all our thirty-seven States know more of each other’s affairs than the Vermonter knew of his Virginia neighbor’s fifty years ago. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of separate parts that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of antiquity. Public affairs are now more public, and private less private, than in former ages. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the Press, have virtually brought our citizens, with their opinions and industries, face to face; and they live almost in each other’s sight. The leading political, social, and industrial events of this day will be reported and discussed at more than two millions of American breakfast-tables to-morrow morning. Public opinion is kept in constant exercise and training. It keeps itself constantly in hand—ready to approve, condemn, and command. It may be wrong, it may be tyrannical; but it is all-pervading, and constitutes, more than ever before, a strong band of nationality.

“After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.”

In the latter part of the address, he discussed Lord Macaulay’s famous letter, in which he predicted that, with universal suffrage, our Republic was all sail and no ballast; that when the country was populated like Europe, the Government would fall in the inevitable conflict between labor and capital.

“With all my heart I repel that letter as false. My first answer is this: No man who has not lived among us can understand one thing about our institutions; no man who has been born and reared under monarchical governments can understand the vast difference between theirs and ours. How is it in monarchical governments? Their society is one series of caste upon caste. Down at the bottom, like the granite rocks in the crust of the earth, lie the great body of laboring men. An Englishman told me not long ago that in twenty-five years of careful study of the agricultural class of England, he had never known one who was born and reared in the ranks of farm laborers that rose above his class and became a well-to-do citizen. That is a most terrible sentence, that 388three millions of people should lie at the bottom of society, with no power to rise. Above them the gentry, the hereditary capitalist; above them, the nobility; above them, the royalty; and, crowning all, the sovereign—all impassable barriers of caste.

“No man born under such institutions can understand the mighty difference between them and us in this country. Thank God, and thank the fathers of the Republic who made, and the men who carried out the promises of the Declaration, that in this country there are no classes, fixed and impassable. Here society is not fixed in horizontal layers, like the crust of the earth, but as a great New England man said, years ago, it is rather like the ocean, broad, deep, grand, open, and so free in all its parts that every drop that mingles with the yellow sand at the bottom may rise through all the waters, till it gleams in the sunshine on the crest of the highest waves. So it is here in our free society, permeated with the light of American freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, however humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a true heart, a strong arm, he may not rise through all the grades of society, and become the crown, the glory, the pillar of the State.

“Again, in depicting the dangers of universal suffrage, Macaulay leaves wholly out of the account the great counterbalancing force of universal education. He contemplates the government delivered over to a vast multitude of ignorant, vicious men, who have learned no self-control, who have never comprehended the national life, and who will wield the ballot solely for personal and selfish ends. If this were indeed the necessary condition of Democratic communities, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to escape the logic of Macaulay’s letter. And here is a real peril—the danger that we shall rely upon the mere extent of the suffrage as a national safeguard. We can not safely, even for a moment, lose sight of the quality of the suffrage, which is more important than its quantity.

“Our faith in the Democratic principle rests upon the belief that intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in liberty, regulated by just and equal laws; and that in the distribution of political power it is safe to follow the maxim, ‘Each for all, and all for each.’ We confront the dangers of the suffrage by the blessings of universal education.”

389We present next a brief extract from an address delivered February 11, 1879,

“What ought to be the relation of the National Government to science? What, if any thing, ought we to do in the way of promoting science? For example, if we have the power, would it be wise for Congress to appropriate money out of the Treasury to employ naturalists to find out all that is to be known of our American birds. Ornithology is a delightful and useful study; but would it be wise for Congress to make an appropriation for the advancement of that science? In my judgment manifestly not. We would thereby make one favored class of men the rivals of all the ornithologists who in their private way, following the bent of their genius, may be working out the results of science in that field. I have no doubt that an appropriation out of our Treasury for that purpose would be a positive injury to the advancement of science, just as an appropriation to establish a church would work injury to religion.

“Generally the desire of our scientific men is to be let alone to work in free competition with all the scientific men of the world; to develop their own results, and get the credit of them, each for himself; not to have the Government enter the lists as a rival of private enterprise.

“As a general principle, therefore, the United States ought not to interfere in matters of science, but should leave its development to the free, voluntary action of our great third estate, the people themselves.

“In this non-interference theory of the Government I do not go to the extent of saying that we should do nothing for education—for primary education. That comes under another consideration—the necessity of the nation to protect itself, and the consideration that it is cheaper and wiser to give education than to build jails. But I am speaking now of the higher sciences.

“To the general principle I have stated, there are a few obvious exceptions which should be clearly understood when we legislate on the subject. In the first place the Government should aid all sorts of scientific inquiry that are necessary to the intelligent exercise of its own functions.

“For example, as we are authorized by the Constitution, and compelled by necessity, to build and maintain light-houses on our coast and establish fog-signals, we are bound to make all necessary scientific inquiries 390in reference to light and its laws, sound and its laws—to do whatever in the way of science is necessary to achieve the best results in lighting our coasts and warning our mariners of danger. So, when we are building iron-clads for our navy, or casting guns for our army, we ought to know all that is scientifically possible to be known about the strength of materials and the laws of mechanics which apply to such structures. In short, wherever in exercising any of the necessary functions of the Government, scientific inquiry is needed; let us make it to the fullest extent, and at the public expense.

“There is another exception to the general rule of leaving science to the voluntary action of the people. Wherever any great popular interest, affecting whole classes, possibly all classes of the community, imperatively need scientific investigation, and private enterprise can not accomplish it, we may wisely intervene and help, where the Constitution gives us authority. For example, in discovering the origin of yellow fever, and the methods of preventing its ravages, the nation should do, for the good of all, what neither the States nor individuals can accomplish. I might perhaps include, in a third exception, those inquiries which, in consequence of their great magnitude and cost, can not be successfully made by private individuals. Outside these three classes of inquiries, the Government ought to keep its hands off, and leave scientific experiment and inquiry to the free competition of those bright, intelligent men whose genius leads them into the fields of research.”

Passing abruptly from valley to mountain-peak, we present the substance of one of the most characteristic and original speeches mentioned in this book. It was delivered March 29, 1879. Though political in its immediate object, it will probably be remembered and quoted from as long as the name of Garfield lingers on the lips of men. The speaker states the question before the House better than any one else could do.

“Let me, in the outset, state as carefully as I may, the precise situation. At the last session, all our ordinary legislative work was done, in accordance with the usages of the House and the Senate, except as to two bills. Two of the twelve great appropriation bills for the support of the Government were agreed to in both Houses as to every matter of detail 391concerning the appropriation proper. We were assured by the committees of conference in both bodies that there would be no difficulty in adjusting all differences in reference to the amount of money to be appropriated and the objects of its appropriation. But the House of Representatives proposed three measures of distinctly independent legislation; one upon the Army Appropriation Bill, and two upon the Legislative Appropriation Bill. The three grouped together are briefly these: first, the substantial modification of certain sections of the law relating to the use of the army; second, the repeal of the jurors’ test oath; and third, the repeal of the laws regulating elections of members of Congress.

“These three propositions of legislation were insisted upon by the House, but the Senate refused to adopt them. So far it was an ordinary proceeding, one which occurs frequently in all legislative bodies. The Senate said to us, through their conferees: ‘We are ready to pass the appropriation bills, but are unwilling to pass, as riders, the three legislative measures you ask us to pass.’ Thereupon the House, through its conference committee, made the following declaration. And, in order that I may do exact justice, I read from the speech of the distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck]:

“‘The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem determined that unless those rights were secured to the people—’

“Alluding to the three points I have named—‘in the bill sent to the Senate they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to make appropriations to carry on the Government, if the dominant majority in the Senate insisted upon the maintenance of these laws and refused to consent to their appeal.’

“Then, after stating that if the position they had taken compelled an extra session, and that the new Congress would offer the repealing bills separately, and forecasting what would happen when the new House should be under no necessity of coercing the Senate, he declared that—

“‘If, however, the President of the United States, in the exercise of the power vested in him, should see fit to veto the bills thus presented to him, ... then I have no doubt those same amendments will be again made part of the appropriation bills, and it will be for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of Government and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than allow the representatives of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as subversive of their rights and privileges.... Whether that course is 392right or wrong, it will be adopted, and I have no doubt adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation bills.’

“That was the proposition made by the Democracy in Congress at the close of the Congress now dead.

“Another distinguished Senator [Mr. Thurman]—and I may properly refer to Senators of a Congress not now in existence—reviewing the situation, declared, in still more succinct terms:

“‘We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two centuries of contest, to say we will not grant the money of the people unless there is a redress of grievances.’

“These propositions were repeated with various degrees of vehemence by the majority in the House.

“The majority in the Senate and the minority on this floor expressed the deepest anxiety to avoid an extra session and to avert the catastrophe thus threatened—the stoppage of the Government. They pointed out the danger to the country and its business interests of an extra session of Congress, and expressed their willingness to consent to any compromise consistent with their views of duty which should be offered—not in the way of coercion but in the way of fair adjustment—and asked to be met in a spirit of just accommodation on the other side. Unfortunately no spirit of adjustment was manifested in reply to their advances. And now the new Congress is assembled: and after ten days of caucus deliberation, the House of Representatives has resolved, substantially, to reaffirm the positions of its predecessors.

“I had occasion, at a late hour of the last Congress, to say something on what may be called the voluntary element in our institutions. I spoke of the distribution of the powers of Government. First, to the nation; second, to the States; and third, the reservation of power to the people themselves.

“I called attention to the fact that under our form of government the most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not delegated to the nation, nor to the States, but are reserved to the third estate—the people themselves. I called attention to the interesting fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire made the declaration that it was the chief object of the existence of the German government to defend and maintain the religion of Jesus Christ—an object in reference to 393which our Congress is absolutely forbidden by the Constitution to legislate at all. Congress can establish no religion; indeed, can make no law respecting it, because in the view of our fathers—the founders of our government—religion was too precious a right to intrust its interests by delegation to any body. Its maintenance was left to the voluntary action of the people themselves.

“In continuation of that thought, I wish now to speak of the voluntary element inside our Government—a topic that I have not often heard discussed, but one which appears to me of vital importance in any comprehensive view of our institutions.

“Mr. Chairman, viewed from the stand-point of a foreigner, our Government may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our stand-point, and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why would a foreigner call it the feeblest? He can point out a half-dozen ways in which it can be destroyed without violence. Of course, all governments may be overturned by the sword; but there are several ways in which our Government may be annihilated without the firing of a gun.

“For example, if the people of the United States should say we will elect no Representatives to the House of Representatives. Of course, this is a violent supposition; but suppose they do not, is there any remedy? Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two years there would be no House of Representatives; of course no support of the Government, and no Government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their Legislatures, we will elect no Senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this Government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent it.

“Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order, and a majority of one, in this body or in the Senate should firmly band themselves together and say, we will vote to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every session during our two years of existence; the Government would perish, and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it. Or again, if a majority of one of either body should declare that they would vote down, and did vote down, every bill to support the Government by appropriations, can you find in the whole range of our judicial or our executive authority any remedy whatever? A Senator, or a member of this House is free, and may vote ‘no,’ on every proposition. Nothing but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not so with the executive and judicial officers. 394They have no power to destroy this Government. Let them travel an inch beyond the line of the law, and they fall within the power of impeachment. But, against the people who create Representatives; against the Legislatures who create Senators; against Senators and Representatives in these Halls, there is no power of impeachment; there is no remedy, if, by abstention or by adverse votes, they refuse to support the Government.

“At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise as our fathers were, should have left a whole side of their fabric open to these deadly assaults; but on a closer view of the case their wisdom will appear. What was their reliance? This: The sovereign of this nation, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed sovereign, in whom resides ‘the State’s collected will,’ and to whom we all owe allegiance, is the people themselves. Inspired by love of country and by a deep sense of obligation to perform every public duty; being themselves the creators of all the agencies and forces to execute their own will, and choosing from themselves their representatives to express that will in the forms of law, it would have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of these voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the Government. Public opinion—that great ocean of thought from whose level all heights and depths are measured—was trusted as a power amply able, and always willing, to guard all the approaches on that side of the Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation.

“Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never been such a refusal to exercise those primary functions of sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple the Government; nor have the majority of the representatives of that sovereign in either House of Congress ever before announced their purpose to use their voluntary powers for its destruction. And now, for the first time in our history, and I will add for the first time for at least two centuries in the history of any English speaking nation, it is proposed and insisted upon that these voluntary powers shall be used for the destruction of the Government. I want it distinctly understood that the proposition which I read at the beginning of my remarks, and which is the programme announced to the American people to-day, is this: that if the House can not have its own way in certain matters, not connected with appropriations, it will so use, or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the Government.

“Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the other side that when 395a demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that runs the risk of stopping and destroying the Government, is the one that resists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor to follow my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this denial good.

“Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this Republic can be law without consent—the free consent of the House; the free consent of the Senate; the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the free consent of two-thirds of these bodies. Will any man deny that? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions? And yet the programme announced two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused to consent to the demand of the House, the Government should stop. And the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third independent branch in the legislative power of the Government whose consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this Government; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty, shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to destroy the Government. This is the proposition which we confront; and we denounce it as revolution.

“It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall be adopted against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every fair-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though his own life depended upon his resistance.

“Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of legislation; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of the fundamental element of American liberty, the free consent of all the powers that unite to make laws.

“In opening this debate, I challenge all comers to show a single instance in our history where this consent has been coerced. This is the great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all others into insignificance. 396Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle of Waterloo, that the struggle of the two armies was like the wrestling of two giants, when a chip under the heel of one might determine the victory. It may be that this amendment is the chip under your heel, or it may be that it is the chip on our shoulder. As a chip it is of small account to you or to us; but when it represents the integrity of the Constitution and is assailed by revolution, we fight for it as if it were a Koh-i-noor of purest water. [Applause.]

“The proposition now is, that after fourteen years have passed, and not one petition from one American citizen has come to us asking that this law be repealed; while not one memorial has found its way to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have heard, the Democratic House of Representatives now hold if they are not permitted to force upon another House and upon the Executive against their consent the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal shall be considered a sufficient ground for starving this Government to death. That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution. [Applause on the Republican side.]

“And here I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the other side while I offer a suggestion which I make with reluctance. They will bear me witness that I have in many ways shown my desire that the wounds of the war should be healed; that the grass that has grown green over the graves of both armies might symbolize the returning spring of friendship and peace between citizens who were lately in arms against each other.

“But I am compelled by the necessities of the case to refer to a chapter of our recent history. The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Republicans, ‘If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your Government to death;’ and the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln President of the United States.

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out on the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the Government was saved.

“To-day, after eighteen years’ defeat, the book of your domination is 397again opened, and your first act awakens every bitter memory, and threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page; not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field, but you say if all the legislative powers of the Government do not consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you will not shoot our Government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter; but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you can not coerce an independent branch of this Government against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the Government to death. [Great applause on the Republican side.]

“Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this Government; you have it in your power by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of our Constitution with the paralysis of death; and you have declared your purpose to do this, if you can not break down that fundamental element of free consent which, up to this hour, has always ruled in the legislation of this Government.”

The question stated at the beginning of this chapter is: Was Garfield a Statesman? In view of what the reader has perused since that question was put, it must at this point be restated—Was Garfield not a Statesman? The burden of proof has shifted. It is, of course, too soon to form a complete estimate of Garfield’s stature. We are too near to the man we loved. It will be for some future generation, farther removed from the spell of his name, and more able calmly to contemplate his life apart from the bloody death. This is the task for the historian of the future.

But what we say enters into the contemporary estimate of the dead President’s life and work. While the relative height of the mountain peak can only be told by viewing it from a long distance, where the entire range pictures its upper outline on the eye, the people who dwell at the foot of the mountain know it as the highest of their neighborhood. Moreover, some of the strongest 398objections to the contemporary estimates of a public man are entirely wanting in the present case. One of these is the popularity of his opinions or achievements. Men are apt to overestimate the abilities of a man who agrees with them. But time and again, on different questions, as in the currency and the enforcement act, the Wade-Davis manifesto, and the defense of Bowles and Milligan, we have seen General Garfield, not merely opposing, but openly defying the opinions of the people who elected him. When he thought a thing was true, no personal consideration could affect his public utterance. Such a spectacle is rare indeed in American politics.

Another reason why the present contemporary estimate of Garfield is more likely than usual to pass into history is that, in a sense, the vindication of his policy is already accomplished. When Cromwell died his work was incomplete. It was only one act in the great drama of the struggle against kings. The result was unknown at the time. Other fields were to run red with patriot blood, other monarchs to expire on the scaffold, before the solution of the deadly struggle should appear. It was uncertain whether any other government than monarchy was possible. No man was wise enough to tell, at Cromwell’s death, whether he had advanced or retarded civilization and progress. But this is a more rapid age. Events hurry on quickly. The questions growing out of the Civil War are very largely settled already. The historic genius which sits in judgment upon men and institutions is no longer in doubt as to those questions. Similarly, too, the stupendous problem of national finance, to which Garfield devoted such herculean labor, has reached its solution. It may be that all men are not willing to surrender yet, but beyond a doubt the return to a specie basis, and the wonderful improvement of the times following it, are a vindication of General Garfield’s statesmanship. It is the same with his position on the Force Bill and the Tariff. Some things, however, are still incomplete. The railway problem and the perpetuity of American institutions the future alone can pass upon; but these are the exceptions. The completeness of Mr. Lincoln’s work at the time of his assassination was not generally recognized, but we see it now. So with Garfield’s labors. They 399were in a sense complete. We may pass judgment upon them. The vindication of history is already at hand.

There is still another reason why the contemporary estimate of James A. Garfield is likely to become permanent. It is because the field of his principal achievements was not one of popular interest. It was not one which takes hold of the people’s hearts, and sweeps the popular judgment from its moorings. It lacked the glamour of military fame. The present age will hand down to posterity the fame of mighty soldiers, but their glory must be viewed with some reserve, some mistrust for the present.

Julius Cæsar, who was assassinated as a tyrant, now takes his place at the head of all secular history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mention of whose name has, for three quarters of a century, been enough to convulse Paris and fill every wall with placards and every street with barricades, is likely to become the most odious figure of modern times. Garfield’s chosen field of work, that where his fame must rest, was to the careless masses dull. Men grow excited over battles, but not a pulse beats higher over a computation of interest on the public debt. The stories of marches and sieges thrill the reader a thousand years after every combatant has been vanquished by the black battalions of Death. But the most eloquent orator in America finds it difficult to hold an audience with the discussion of the tariff list or of public expenditures or of the currency, even when every man in the audience knows that his pocket is touched. If such discussions are thrown into newspaper editorials they are but little read. No argument, however powerful, on the fallacy of fiat money ever drew a tear or roused a cheer. No table of the reduction of public expenditure is ever greeted with huzzas. When the news of a victory comes, every corner has a bonfire and every window an illumination. But the change of the balance of trade in our favor only awakens a quiet satisfaction in the merchant’s heart as he glances through the morning papers. A new kind of gun attracts world-wide attention; it is talked over at every breakfast-table and described in every paper, but a new theory of surplus and deficits in the public treasury is utterly unnoticed. We see no flushed assemblies straining 400to catch every word that falls from the orator’s lips as he discusses the tariff on sugar or quinine. But when Kearney shouts his hoarse note of defiance to capital, the street is packed with listening thousands.

Hence it is that the man who significantly whispers “Garfield is overestimated” is more likely to be wrong than right. There is no tide of popular excitement over his work. The calm conviction of his abilities is a different thing from the feverish hurrahs of a campaign. In 1859 his old neighbors in his county had this conviction when they sent him to the State Senate. From the county, this spread to his Congressional district; from the district to the State of Ohio; from Ohio to the Union. It was gradual, and sure.

Garfield’s speeches must be the foundation for his fame. To these history will turn as a basis for its estimate. The first thing which is to be said of them, is that they dealt with the real problems of the epoch. That he was a great orator is true; that he was much more than this is equally true. While other men busied themselves with political topics Garfield took hold of the great non-political problems of the time. He refused to view them from a partisan or a personal stand-point. He grappled with the leviathans of reconstruction, tariff, and currency in the spirit of the statesman. That he was always right, we are not prepared to say; that he was right in his views on the great questions above mentioned, that with regard to them he was a leader of leaders, seems hardly to admit of a doubt. He was so radical in opinion that on almost every question he was ahead of his party and the country. This was the case in his arguments on the status of the rebel States, and what ought to be done with them; in his arguments in favor of a reduction of the tariff as prices declined after the war, and in his discussion of the currency and banking problems. Yet so nearly right was he that in every one of these instances Congress and the country gradually moved up to and occupied the position which he had taken in advance of them.

On the other hand, he was so conservative in practice that 401on no question was he ever an extremist. While he was a strong believer in the nationality of the Republic, and its powers of self-preservation, he faced the entire North in his opposition to the provisions of the “Force Bill,” for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the declaration of martial law in a country bleeding at every wound from war, but in a state of peace. Let no reader omit his speech of April 4, 1871. We say it the more willingly because at the time we thought Garfield was wrong. While he was a protectionist, he believed in a tariff which avoided both extremes. While he was an original and unintermittent hard-money man, he believed in the necessity of an elastic volume of currency. As the end of resumption forbade inflation, he demanded that every part of the country should have its share of banks, and the drafts and checks which they threw into the circulation.

Of the variety as well as the quantity of his work, men will not soon cease to wonder. There were few who could equal him in the discussion of any one of the great topics of the day, much less all of them. His name and fame can never be identified with any single question or measure, for he displayed the same ability on every subject alike.

In other respects he also differed from the men around him. He was a scholar in the broadest sense. His speeches are absolutely unequaled anywhere for their scientific method. In their philosophical discussions they were the product of the ripest scholarship; in their practical suggestions and arguments, they were, they are the product of the highest statesmanship.

Finally, a man of more spotless honor and loftier integrity never trod the earth than James A. Garfield. He lived in an atmosphere of purity and unselfishness, which, to the average man, is an unknown realm. After all, there are men enough with intellect in politics, but too few with character. An estimate of Garfield would be incomplete which failed to include the inflexible honesty of the great orator and legislator, whether in affairs public or private. History shows that while no institutions ever decayed because of the intellectual weakness 402of the people among which they flourished, empire after empire has perished from the face of the earth through the decay of morals in its people and its public men. History repeats itself. What has been, will be. Name after name of the great men of the new Republic is stained with private immorality and public crime. The noblest part of Garfield, with all his genius, was his spotless character. There was, there is, no greater, purer, manlier man.

CHAPTER X. THE CLIMAX OF 1880.

The fathers of the Republic had no suspicion of the form which American politics has assumed. The thing which we know as a political party is new under the sun. No other country or age ever had any thing like what America understands by the word party. When we speak of a party, we do not have in mind a mere sect, or class, distinguished by peculiar opinions, and composed of individuals whose only bond of union is their harmony of opinion, passion, or prejudice. We do not mean a caste, nor a peculiar section of American society, nor a portion of the masses, whose birth, condition, and surroundings predestine them to take a traditional sort of a view of political affairs, which they hold in common with their parents and their fellows. This was what Rome, in the days of her Republic, understood by the name of party. Patrician and plebeian stood not merely for opinion, but for more—for birth, heritage, and station. When there was an election, it was a rout, a rabble, without organization, work, or object. Rich and poor were arrayed against each other; the public offices were the glittering prize. But they were captured more by seditions, revolts, coups d’état, than by the insinuating arts of the wire-puller. The same thing is largely true of England and France, although less so lately than formerly.

But in America by a political party, we mean an organism, of which the life is, in the beginning at least, an opinion or set of opinions. We mean an institution as perfectly organized as the government itself; and taking hold of the people much more intimately. We mean an organization so powerful 404that the government is in its hands but a toy; so despotic that it has but one penalty for treason—political death; so much beloved, that while a few men in a few widely separated generations make glorious and awful sacrifices for their country, nearly all the men of every generation lend themselves, heart and soul, to the cause of party. A political party raises, once in four years, drilled armies, more numerous than any war ever called forth. If the battalions wear no uniform but red shirt and cap, and carry no more deadly weapon than the flaming torch, they are, nevertheless, as numerous, as well drilled, and as powerful as the glistening ranks of Gettysburg or Chickamauga. They, too, fight for the government—or against it. A political party has its official chief, its national legislature or “committee,” its state, county, township, ward, and precinct organizations. It is stupendous. The local organization has in its secret rooms lists containing the name of every voter, with an analysis of his political views; if they are wavering, a few significant remarks on how he can be “reached.” The county and state organizations have their treasuries, their system of taxation and revenue, their fields of expenditure, and their cries of robbery, reform, and retrenchment. In the secret committee rooms are laid deep and sagacious plans for carrying the election. In some States, the old, crude ways of sedition, driving away of voters, and stuffing the poll are still followed; but in most of the States prevail arts and methods so mysterious, so secret, that none but the expert politician knows what they are.

A political party has other than financial resources. It owns newspapers—manufacturers of public sentiment. It makes the men that make it. It controls offices, and places of trust and profit. It has all the powers of centralization. One man in a State is at the head of the organism. He is an autocrat, a czar, a sultan. At the crack of his finger the political head of his grand vizier falls under the headsman’s ax. The party has in its service the most plausible writers, the most 405eloquent orators, the most ingenious statisticians, and the most graphic artists. In its service are all the brilliant and historic names and reputations. Military glory, statesmanship, diplomacy, are alike appropriated to itself. Wealth, genius, love, and beauty, alike lay their treasures at its feet.

A party as well as the nation has its laws. Its delegates and committeemen are as certain to be elected, and those elections are required to occur at times and places as definitely settled by party rule as those for Congressmen or President.

The thing which we have been describing did not begin with the Republic. It is substantially a growth of the last fifty years. Its beginning was marked by the rise of the convention, its most public and prominent feature. Formerly, congressional and legislative caucuses nominated the candidates for office. But about 1831 a change began to come about. When the first severe cold of winter begins, every floating straw or particle of dust on the surface of a pond becomes the center of a crystallization around itself. The distances between the nearer and smaller, then the more isolated and larger, centers, are gradually bridged until the icy floor is built. So in the rise of party organism in the Republic. The local organizations, the town clubs, the township conventions for the nomination of trustee and road master, became the initial centers of a process of crystallization which was to go on until the icy floor of party organization and platforms covered the thousand little waves and ripples of individual opinions from shore to shore.

The delegate and the convention, the permanent committee and the caucus, became the methods by which the organization grew. Stronger and stronger have they grown, twining themselves like monster vines around the central trunk of the Republic. Every Presidential election has doubled the power, unity, centralization and resources of the monsters. The surplus genius and energy of the American people for organizing, 406being unexhausted and unsatisfied by the simple forms of the Republic, has spent itself in the political party.

With the rise of the party as an independent, self-sustaining organism, which, like the government, derives its powers from the consent of the people, two facts have become more and more prominent: first, the struggle for the delegateships to the conventions; second, the struggle to control delegates by instructions after they were elected. While these are both called struggles, the word has a widely different meaning in the two places. In the first it stands for the contest between candidates. Not only did the party become a nationalized organism for a campaign against the enemy, but the candidacies within the party for its nomination for a national office also became nationalized. But, in the second place, the word struggle stands for a contest, not between men, but between principles. In every phase of this long conflict the underlying struggle was between two opposite tendencies. The one was toward stronger and stronger party organization, greater centralization, increased powers of the caucus, the absolute tyranny of the majority, in short, the subordination of the individual to the machine, in the name of party discipline. The other tendency was toward less organization, less centralization, less binding powers for the caucus on its members, the representation of minorities, the subordination of the machine to the individual.

The struggle between these tendencies, of which the unit rule or the control of the vote of solid delegations, by instructions or by the voice of the majority of the delegation, was but a single aspect, reached its highest point so far, in the Republican National Convention which assembled in Chicago, June 2d, 1880. As will be seen, the contests of that convention must make it absolutely unique. The tremendous tide toward organization received a strong check. The events of that convention are far more significant of the political life-tendencies of the American people than the election of the following November.

407All other ages and countries have distrusted the people, have concentrated power in the hands of the few, and perpetuated it by the rigid forms of despotic government. In America that tendency was defeated. But the same instincts are still present in the hearts of men. It is not impossible that in the struggles toward organization, discipline, party centralization and the machine aspect of politics, we see the same devilish forces of the past at work in a new field. It is not impossible that in party “bosses,” and the tyranny of the machine, we are really looking in the face of the ancient foe of mankind, whose sole aim was to concentrate and perpetuate power in the hands of the few.

When, after General Grant returned from his trip around the world, he consented to become a candidate for the Presidency, he had a perfect right to do so. It was the privilege of his countrymen to bring forward and support for that position the great Captain of the nineteenth century. The three men who were instrumental in bringing about his candidacy, and who managed the campaign for him, were Roscoe Conkling, of New York; Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Republican National Committee; and John A. Logan, of Illinois. The history of the canvass for the nomination of General Grant shows an ability so remarkable that his defeat must still be a matter of wonder. The New York member of the triumvirate caused a resolution to be passed in his State convention instructing the delegates to vote solidly for Grant. Cameron achieved the same thing in Pennsylvania. In Illinois, Logan, fearing or foreseeing that instructions were a feeble reliance, attempted the more heroic method of electing a solid Grant delegation by a majority of votes in the State convention. The minority, to protect itself, held meetings by congressional districts and selected contesting delegates. Over the right to instruct and the right to elect solid delegations the battle was fought. It was unquestioned that with three solid delegations from the three most populous States in the Union, and his other strong support, Grant’s nomination was overwhelmingly assured. The 408country, in the few days preceding the convention was wrought up to a pitch of feverish excitement.

The three principal candidates for the Presidency, whose names were openly before the convention, were: Ulysses S. Grant, of Illinois; James G. Blaine, of Maine; and John Sherman, of Ohio.

General Grant is the best known living American. His wonderful career is familiar throughout the civilized world. Rising from the trade of a tanner in an Illinois village, he became the commander of the armies of the Republic, the greatest soldier of the age, President of the United States for two terms, and the most distinguished citizen of the Union. The foundation of his fame is his military achievements. Taciturn, self-poised, alike unmoved by victory or defeat, grim, immovable, bent only on achieving the thing which lay before him, of deadly earnestness, equal to every emergency, Grant must be admitted to be a man of solitary and sublime genius. For practical resources, the age has not produced his equal.

Grant’s candidacy at Chicago, which seemed so singular to many, was really the result of underlying forces, greater than any of the men who were borne onward by the tide. First, was the fact of his personal candidacy.

On one side was the Republican party closing its quarter of a century—a Long Parliament of counsels, deeds, and changes; and, on the other, the tried Cromwell of the Commonwealth, backed by his victories, and asking the party to recognize him again. The party seemed almost destined to make the choice. In asking again for the Presidency, it was natural that he should look toward organization, discipline, and studied strategy as the instrumentalities of his canvass. His career as a soldier, his mental constitution, and his political training and experience during the arbitrary and tempestuous times of the civil war and the epoch of reconstruction, his military habit of relying on his subordinate generals, all were antecedents of the memorable struggle at Chicago, and helped to give it its character.

409But if Grant, in his personal canvass, naturally reached for the party organization to make up his line of battle, the underlying tendency toward organization in politics, of which we have spoken heretofore, seeking for its strongest personal representative, inevitably selected Grant. On the one side was his individual will turning toward the Machine. On the other was the far more powerful but impersonal force, in its struggle to grasp and subordinate American politics, embodying itself in its chosen representative. It will be remembered that in popular opinion Grant became a candidate as much at the request of his friends as from any personal wish. The distinguished gentlemen who thus urged him were animated not merely by personal affection and preference, but by the invincible tendency toward organization, structure, and machinery in politics. In the organism the man found his support; in the man, the organic force found its strongest representative.

But what of the opposite tendency, the counter-current, which set against organization, party discipline, unit rules, the tyranny of majorities, and toward the freedom of individual action? Who was its representative? Was it ready to do battle with its gigantic foe? The Chicago Convention must be viewed not as a personal struggle between rival candidates, but as the meeting of two mighty waves in the ocean of American politics, the shock of whose collision was to be felt on the farthest shores. Amid the foam which rose along the line of breaking crests, mere men were for the moment almost lost from view.

In the nature of the case the counter tendency could not embody itself beforehand in a representative. To be sure there was Blaine, the dashing parliamentary leader, the magnetic politician, the brilliant debater. Generous and brave of heart, superb in his attitude before the maligners of his spotless fame, personally beloved by his supporters beyond any man of his political generation, he was too independent to represent the organism, and too much of a candidate, and had too much machinery, too many of the politician’s arts, to fully meet the 410requirements of the counter tendency in the great crisis. Although Blaine was beyond question running on his personal merits, yet the fact that he was a leading candidate, but without a majority, destined him to fall a prey to his competitors. In the great political arena, when one gladiator is about to triumph over his divided rivals, the latter unite against him, that all may die together, and by giving to an unknown the palm of victory save themselves from the humiliation of a rival’s triumph.

John Sherman, the very opposite of Blaine, cold, cautious, solid, hostile to display, was also a candidate upon personal merits, and was also to fail from the same cause.

It can not be said that there was any other candidate before the convention. Windom, Edmunds, and Washburne, had each a small personal following, but neither sought the nomination, and all were only possible “dark horses.”

On the floor of the convention, Grant was to be represented by the triumvirate of United States Senators, Conkling, Cameron, and Logan. Of these, Cameron, though a superb manipulator, a splendid manager, and a man full of adroitness and resources, was a silent man. His voice was not lifted in debate. His work was in the secret room, planning, and not amid the clash of arms in the open field. Logan, tall and powerful, of coppery complexion, and long, straight, black hair, which told plainly of the Indian blood, was a somewhat miscellaneous but rather powerful debater. His tremendous voice was well fitted for large audiences. That he was a man of great force is shown by his career. While his two colleagues were descended from high-born ancestry,—Cameron’s father having been the son’s predecessor in the United States Senate,—Logan sprang from below.

The leader of the trio, and with one exception the most distinguished person in the convention, was Roscoe Conkling. Tall, perfectly formed, graceful in every movement, with the figure of an athlete, and the head of a statesman, surmounted with a crown of snow-white hair, he was a conspicuous figure in the most brilliant assemblage of the great which could convene on any continent. 411In speaking, his flute-like tones, modulated by the highest elocutionary art, his intensely dramatic manner, his graceful but studied gesticulation, united to call attention to the speaker as much as to the speech. He was dressed in faultless style, from the tightly-buttoned blue frock coat—the very ne plus ultra of the tailor’s art,—to the exquisite fancy necktie. If it were not for his intellect he would have been called a dandy. In his walk there was a perceptible strut. But the matter of Conkling’s speeches is the best revelation of his character. Every sentence was barbed with irony; every expression touched with scorn. He was the very incarnation of pride. Haughty, reserved, imperious in manner, at every thrust he cut to the quick. His mastery of the subject in hand was always apparently perfect, and not less perfectly apparent. He was called “Lord Roscoe,” “The Superb,” “The Duke,” and other names indicative of his aristocratic bearing. Never for a moment did he cease to carry himself as if he were on the stage. It is said that great actors become so identified with the characters they impersonate, that even in private life they retain the character which they have assumed on the stage. Thus Booth is said to order his fried eggs with the air of a Hamlet. So Conkling never for a moment laid aside the air of high tragedy.

Nevertheless the commanding genius of the man was unquestioned. He was the chief representative in the Chicago Convention of the tendency to more organism, stronger party discipline, a more perfect machine. The problem to which he applied all his abilities, was to strengthen the party structure; and to that end, practically place the power of both his party and his country in the hands of a few. A national party, with the consciences of its individual members in the hands of a few astute politicians, could control the Government forever. But the end is vicious, and the means an abomination to governments of the people, for the people, and by the people.

The companion figure to that of Roscoe Conkling, of New York, was James A. Garfield, of Ohio. He was there as the chief supporter of John Sherman. The contrast between Conkling and Garfield was of the strongest possible kind. In person, Garfield 412was a taller man than Conkling, but his size and solidity of build made him look shorter. His figure, though less trim, had an air of comfortable friendliness and cheer about it. He, too, had a massive head, but it rested more easily above the broad shoulders. His face lacked the lines of scorn traced on the other, and made a true picture of a benevolent good nature, a generous, kindly heart, and a great and wise intellect. He wore a plain sack coat, and his attire generally though neat, was of an unstudied sort. He had a habit of sitting with his leg swinging over the arm of the chair, and his manners were those of a big, jolly, overgrown boy. In speaking he had a deep, rich voice, with a kindly accent, in marked contrast with the biting tones of the great New York Senator. He was never sarcastic, though often grave. His speeches were conservative but earnest. Socially, his manners were utterly devoid of restraint; he was accessible to every body, and appeared to be on good terms with himself. The dramatic element was completely absent. He believed in Sherman heartily, though he was evidently a stranger to the mysterious arts of the wire-puller and politician. For himself, he was well satisfied looking forward to the seat in the United States Senate, which he was to enter the next December, with joy and gratification.

These were the two chief figures of the Chicago Convention. Each was there as the chief supporter of another. The one was the conscious personification and representative of a tendency which, for fifty years, had been setting more and more strongly toward party organism and permanent structure, having for its aim a perfect power-getting and power-keeping machine. The other was the unconscious personification and representative of the opposite tendency, the current which set toward a flexible rather than rigid party organization, toward new political ideas, and the independence of individual thought. The one was a patrician, the other the child of the people.

When the Chicago Convention met, it was the nature of the organic tendency to have its candidate selected. On the other hand, it was equally the nature of the opposite tendency to have no candidate. But each force was present in the convention working in 413the hearts and minds of its members. Day after day, the angry white caps rose along the line where the two waves met. As the crisis approached the movement of resistance to the strengthening and increase of party organism, with that instinct which belongs to every subtle underlying tendency in human society, began to look and to feel its way toward a personal representative. Having found the man, the spirit would enter into him and possess him.

Thus it was that when the supreme moment came, personal candidates and preferences, pledges and plans, leaders and followers were suddenly lost from view. The force, which was greater than individuals, rose up, embodied itself in the person of a protesting and awe-stricken man within whose heart may have been some presentiment of the tragic future, and, subordinating all to itself, relentlessly demanding and receiving the sacrifice alike of candidates and of the supporter, defeating for the time being, not so much the silent soldier from Galena, as the political tendency which made him its representative.

Notwithstanding the nomination of Garfield, as the remaining chapters of this story will show, the spirit of party organism was not killed but stunned. Cast out from the most famous citizen of the Republic, it was to enter into a swine. History will say of Guiteau, that he embodied and represented a force stronger than himself.

Let us turn now from the internal philosophy to the external facts of the Chicago Convention.

Chicago is a roomy place and well-suited for the meeting of a large assembly, but its resources were taxed by the Convention of 1880. By Monday preceding the Convention, its hotels were crowded, and thousands upon thousands were pouring in every hour. It was a great gathering of rival clans, which did not wait the order of their generals to advance, but charged upon each other the moment they came upon the field.

There were two battles in progress—the one of the masses, the other of the leaders.

On Monday evening two public meetings of the “Grant” and “anti-Grant” elements, respectively, were held in Dearborn Park and in the Base Ball Park.

414The speakers announced for the Grant meeting were Senators Conkling, Logan, Carpenter, Stewart L. Woodford of New York, Leonard Swett, Emory Storrs, Robert T. Lincoln, and Stephen A. Douglas. But the advertised speakers did not all appear; neither Conkling nor Carpenter spoke. They were too busy plotting elsewhere. In fact, this Grant meeting was, so far as any demonstration in favor of the third term was concerned, an acknowledged failure. The speakers, however, managed to throw some spirit into the affair, and aroused some enthusiasm.

But the anti-Grant meeting, as was quite evident, felt and fared better. Though it had been but meagerly advertised, and but few speakers of prominence had been announced, the grounds were densely crowded. At least ten thousand persons were in attendance.

The tone of the meeting was unmistakable. The most radical utterances were the most loudly cheered. The people declared that “they would not submit to boss rule; that they would not have a third term; that they would defeat the villainous attempt to deprive them of their liberties.” People came there determined to be pleased—with every thing or any thing but Grant. But they hissed the third term. They shouted themselves hoarse for Blaine, Washburne, and Edmunds.

Speakers from New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and New Hampshire, declared that those States would be lost to the Republican party by a third-term campaign. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the vast crowds attending the two meetings, the corridors of the hotels and streets were thronged. The utmost interest was manifested, and every report of the work of the managers of the candidates, whether reasonable or unreasonable, was seized and discussed in its bearing upon the candidates. The greatest interest centered about the Palmer House, where a secret meeting of the National Committee was being held.

And what of this secret meeting? The National Committee contained a majority of anti-Grant men. At its very beginning, William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire, took the floor and offered the following resolutions:

415“Resolved, That the committee approves and ratifies the call for the approaching Republican National Convention, which was issued by its chairman and secretary, and which invites ‘two delegates from each Congressional district, four delegates at large from each State, two from each Territory, and two from the District of Columbia,’ to compose the convention.

“Resolved, That this committee recognizes the right of each delegate in a Republican National Convention freely to cast and have counted his individual vote therein, according to his own sentiments, if he so decides, against any ‘unit rule’ or other instructions passed by a State convention, which right was conceded without dissent, and was exercised in the conventions of 1860 and 1868, and was, after a full debate, affirmed by the convention of 1876, and has thus become a part of the law of Republican conventions; and until reversed by a convention itself must remain a governing principle.”

The first of these passed unanimously. But not so the second. The “unit rule” was not to die without a struggle. Chairman Cameron promptly declared this resolution out of order.

Then Mr. Chaffee, of Colorado, offered a resolution approving of the decision of the Cincinnati Convention, declaring that each delegate should be allowed to vote on all subjects before the convention. Mr. Gorham, of California, inquired of Mr. Cameron if he intended to entertain these resolutions. Mr. Cameron announced that he would not. This caused great excitement, and Mr. Chaffee appealed from this decision. The next decision of Mr. Cameron caused still greater commotion, this being to the effect that there could be no appeal, as there was no question before the committee. At this Mr. Chaffee renewed his appeal, saying that if the committee submitted to such tyranny it might as well have a king. This was roundly applauded. Mr. Cameron again repeated that there could be no appeal, and he would put none.

Mr. Chandler thereupon, in a vigorous speech, demurred to such ruling, and wound up by also appealing from the decision of the chair. To further aggravate matters, Cameron again refused to entertain the appeal. This brought Frye, of Maine, to his feet, and in a caustic speech he told the chairman that the committee had rights which he (the chairman) was bound to respect.

Mr. Chandler significantly remarked that if the chairman would 416not pay any respect to the committee, the same power that made him chairman would remove him.

Mr. Forbes, of Massachusetts, then offered a resolution appointing a committee of six to select and present to the committee a candidate to preside at the temporary organization. This was adopted. A recess was then taken till half-past ten o’clock.

It now became certain that the anti-Grant men were ready to depose Cameron at once if they could not control him in any other way.

The committee to select the name of a temporary chairman returned after a recess of fifteen minutes, and reported in favor of Senator George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts. Senator Jones announced that the minority reserved the right to name a candidate in the convention. After some minor matters, Mr. Frye offered one of the resolutions of the caucus, providing, in the case of the absence of the chairman of the committee from sickness or from any cause, that the chairman of the committee of six (Mr. Chandler) should be authorized to call the convention to order, and perform all the duties pertaining to the temporary organization.

Mr. McCormick followed with a second resolution of the caucus, directing that in all questions pertaining to the temporary organization the chairman shall rule that every delegate was at liberty to vote as he chooses, regardless of instructions. Messrs. Gorham, Filley, and others, made great opposition, and Mr. Cameron ruled that this resolution would not be entertained, since it was not in the power of the committee to instruct the chairman as to his rulings.

A warm debate followed as to the rights and powers of the committee. Finally, the meeting attended to some routine business, and adjourned till next day noon.

The battle now grew hotter every hour. Mr. Conkling’s delegation broke in two, and issued the following protest:

“The undersigned, delegates to the Republican National Convention, representing our several Congressional districts in the State of New York, desiring above all the success of the Republican party at the approaching election, and realizing the hazard attending an injudicious nomination, declare our purpose to resist the nomination 417of General U. S. Grant by all honorable means. We are sincere in the conviction that in New York, at least, his nomination would insure defeat. We have a great battle to fight, and victory is within our reach, but we earnestly protest against entering the contest with a nomination which we regard as unwise and perilous.

“William H. Robertson, 12th Dist.; William B. Woodin, 26th Dist.; Norman M. Allen and Loren B. Sessions, 33d Dist.; Moses D. Stivers and Blake G. Wales, 14th Dist.; Webster Wagner and George West, 20th Dist.; Albert Daggett, 3d Dist.; Simeon S. Hawkins and John Birdsall, 1st Dist.; John P. Douglass and Sidney Sylvester, 22d Dist.; John B. Dutcher, 13th Dist.; Henry R. James and Wells S. Dickinson, 19th Dist.; James W. Husted, 12th Dist.; Ferris Jacobs, Jr., 21st Dist.; Oliver Abell, Jr., 18th Dist.”

A similar protest was published by twenty-two Pennsylvania delegates, headed by Mr. James McManes.

At nine o’clock on the morning of June 1st, an anti-Grant caucus was held, which determined to defeat the “unit rule” at all hazards, even if Mr. Cameron must first be deposed from the chairmanship.

The news of the firm attitude of the caucus had reached Cameron, Gorham, Filley, Arthur, and their associates, and before any movement could be made, the Grant men announced that they had a proposition to make, looking to harmonizing all differences. A recess was taken to allow a committee on the part of Cameron, Conkling, Arthur, and Logan, to state the agreement which they were willing to make. It proved to be as follows:

“That Senator Hoar should be accepted as temporary chairman of the convention, and that no attempt should be made to enforce the unit rule, or have a test vote in the convention, until the committee on credentials had reported, when the unit-rule question should be decided by the convention in its own way.”

This proposition was finally, in the interest of harmony, agreed to by all parties.

On Wednesday, June 2d, after days and nights of caucusing, serenading, speech-making, and cheering by every body, and for nearly every body, the great convention held its first session. As a clever correspondent wrote at the time:

418“A more beautiful day in June probably never rose upon a Presidential Convention. The sun, the shade, the trees, the lake, the high façades of business buildings and palace hotels; the air cool, yet temperate; the well-dressed, energetic people, and the signs of prosperous business, uninfluenced even by such a convention, sent a hopeful, cheery feeling to the heart. The rageful features of the past day or two went into their tents at such sunshine and calm godliness of sky.”

The place of meeting was in the Exposition Building, in the south half of which vast structure there is a hall 400 feet long by 150 feet wide, with galleries all round, and so arranged that room for about ten thousand people could be provided.

THE EXPOSITION BUILDING, WHERE GARFIELD WAS NOMINATED.

At eleven o’clock the band stationed on the north gallery began playing national airs, but nearly an hour passed before the delegates took their seats. The Chairman called on the Secretary to read the call, and Secretary Keogh proceeded, in a clear voice, to read the document.

419Mr. Cameron then arose, and, in a short address, nominated, as temporary chairman, the Hon. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, who was elected by a unanimous vote. Mr. Hoar was then conducted to the chair; and the preliminary organization was thus peacefully resigned by the disappointed Grant faction, which had expected to control all.

On motion of Eugene Hale, of Maine, the roll of States and Territories was called, and the committees made up. There were four: (1) Permanent Organization; (2) Rules; (3) Credentials; and (4) Resolutions.

After a slight stir over Utah, and a sharp encounter between Conkling and Frye, the opening business was completed, and the convention adjourned for that day.

A newspaper dispatch sent out of the room during this session said:

“There is a good deal of talk about Garfield. Some significance is attached to the fact that when the name was mentioned in the convention to-day as a member of the Committee on Rules it was loudly applauded.”

And another added:

“A prolonged contest is now certain on the floor of the convention to-day over the reports from the committees on Credentials, Rules, and Resolutions. Senator Conkling is recognized as the leader of debate on the Grant side. Frye and Hale will be the principal speakers, with Garfield and Conger on the part of the majority. The debates preceding the balloting promise to be the most heated and the ablest ever heard in a Republican Convention.”

That night the popular battle in the streets and lobbies continued, attended with ever-growing excitement. Grant men and Blaine men loudly proclaimed their confidence in a victory for their respective favorites, on the first or second ballot. Each of these two leaders claimed about three hundred reliable votes; but, in fact, they had not six hundred between them.

Sherman, Edmunds, Washburne, and Windom men felt sure that neither Blaine nor Grant could be nominated on account of the 420violent opposition of their factions. This gave hope to each of these smaller sections, and made “dark-horse” talk plausible.

At eleven o’clock of June 3d, the second day’s fight of the convention began. As the delegations took their places, the great crowd of spectators occupied themselves in getting acquainted with the men who were to give and receive the hard blows to be dealt by both sides when the contest opened. All these men—Conkling, Garfield, Frye, Hale, and Logan—were cordially received, though there were degrees in the favor.

The most spontaneous of the greetings given any one of the leaders was to Garfield. One of the ovations to him gave rise to a ludicrous affair for Conkling. The latter had made his usual late and pompous entrance, had been received with much noise, and walked slowly up to his seat near the front. Just as he rose to show himself further and address the chair, General Garfield came in at the rear. A tremendous and rapidly spreading cheer broke out, which the New York “Duke” mistook for his own property.

The second day was now passing, and the preliminaries were not yet complete. It was the policy of the Grant men to make delay, and wear out the strength of all opponents. They had come, as Cameron said, “to stick until we win.” The Blaine leaders, on the other hand, had no such reliable, lasting force. They must dash in boldly and carry off their prize at once, or be forever defeated.

To-day the Blaine men came in jubilant, for they had beaten the Grant faction in the committees. Conkling opened the proceedings from the floor at the earliest moment. He moved to adjourn until evening to await the report of the Committee on Credentials. Hale opposed this. Conkling, in his haste, forgetting his parliamentary knowledge, claimed that his motion to take a recess was not debatable. The Chairman overruled this, much to the annoyance of Conkling. He soon poured out a little vial of wrath on Hale, and sneered at him as his “amiable friend.” To this Hale retorted that he had not spent his time in cultivating sarcastic and sneering methods in argument; and if the Senator from New York was less amiable than others this morning the 421convention understood the reason well. At this reference to the general defeat of the Grant forces in the committees during the last evening the people laughed loudly at Conkling, and that august gentleman himself deigned to smile.

Soon the Committee on Permanent Organization reported, the temporary chairman and other officers were continued, and Mr. Hoar took permanent possession of his Chairmanship. Thereupon Mr. Frye moved that the Committee on Rules and Order of Business report at once. Mr. Sharpe, of New York, now arose and said that he had been instructed by the delegates of nine States to prepare a minority report of the Committee on Rules; that he had not had time to do so, and this ought not to be taken advantage of, because, by agreement in the committee, he should have had a longer time to prepare.

Mr. Frye then said that if the chairman of that committee—Mr. Garfield—was present, he would request that gentleman to state what agreement had been made.

As General Garfield arose in his seat he was greeted with loud and prolonged cheers and applause, and cries of “Platform,” “Step up on the seat.” He said:

“Mr. President, the Committee on Rules finished its business at about eleven o’clock by adopting a body of rules and an order of business. A resolution was then offered by one member of the committee that it was the judgment of the committee that the report ought to be made after the report of the Committee on Credentials, and that was adopted, whether unanimously or not I am unable to say, for the committee was about breaking up. General Sharpe requested that a minority of that committee might have leave to offer their views as a minority, and no objection was made. No vote was taken on that latter topic. I did not, therefore, and shall not tender a report of the Committee on Rules. I am, however, like every other delegate, subject to the orders of this convention, and when they desire the report and order it, I suppose the committee are ready to make it, but good faith requires this certainly, that if the minority is not ready with its report it ought to have the time.”

Mr. Frye then withdrew his motion, and the convention adjourned until evening.

422At half-past five they had reassembled and the battle proceeded at the point where it had been dropped before adjournment.

The Committee on Credentials were not ready to report, and it was so announced. The Blaine men forced the fighting, entering a motion by Mr. Henderson, of Iowa, that the convention proceed to consider the report of the Committee on Rules and Organization. This the Grant men resisted, and for this reason: The rules which had been agreed to by the committee only allowed five minutes debate on the matter of each individual contested seat. The Grant men did not want the report adopted before the Committee on Credentials reported, because they wanted to ascertain just what the latter report would be. Logan led the fight for Grant, supported by Boutwell and others. Henderson held his own very well. Finally, after an hour of this running fire of debate, Mr. Sharpe moved to amend the pending motion by substituting an order that the Committee on Credentials report at once.

On this amendment a vote was soon reached which proved to be the most significant event of the day; for it was the first vote taken by States; it was a test vote between the Grant men on the one side and the allied anti-Grant factions on the other, and it settled the fate of the “unit rule.”

Upon Alabama being called, the Chairman of the delegation, Mr. Dunn, announced 20 ayes.

Mr. Allen Alexander, of Alabama, a colored delegate—I desire to vote “No.”

The Chairman—Does the gentleman from Alabama desire that his vote should be received in the negative?

Mr. Alexander—Yes, sir.

The Chairman—It will be so recorded.

Several other States offered divided votes.

The result was against Sharpe’s substitute, by a vote of 318 to 406. About forty delegates were absent or did not vote. There was great rejoicing among the anti-Grant factions when it became certain that Hoar would allow no “unit rule” until forced to do so by an order of the convention.

On motion of Mr. Brandagee, of Connecticut, Henderson’s motion 423was laid on the table, and adjournment till the next day followed immediately.

Friday of convention week dawned less delightfully than did the first two days. There was a cloudy sky, an east wind, a rheumatic, chilly atmosphere penetrating every nook and corner of the great Convention Hall, and a crowd of shivering mortals pushed and elbowed each other up and down the passages, delegates looking angular, stiff, and cold, and angry,—every body denouncing the weather. The dull light made the pictures on the walls look sour and stern and cross. The frown on the wretched oil-painted face of old Ben Wade was deepened; Zach Chandler’s hard mouth appeared more firmly set, and Sumner’s jaw was more rigid and uncompromising than ever in life. The flags drooped under the depressing atmospheric influences, blue turned black, the red was dull, and the white looked dirty, and the stars were dim. The opening scenes of each day had now assumed a stereotyped form. Conkling made his arrival in state as usual, and the usual cheer went up. General Phil Sheridan was greeted with hearty applause, and Garfield’s entrance was the signal for a great ovation.

Hardly had the opening prayer of the good man of God come to its amen when Mr. Conkling offered the following:

Resolved, As the sense of this Convention, that every member of it is bound in honor to support its nominee, whoever that nominee may be; and that no man should hold a seat here who is not ready to so agree.

Mr. Hale said he thought that a Republican Convention did not need to be instructed, that its first and underlying duty, after nominating its candidate, was to elect him over the Democratic candidate.

A call of the States being requested, the convention voted unanimously in favor of Mr. Conkling’s resolution, with the exception of three hostile votes from West Virginia.

Mr. Conkling then offered the following:

“Resolved, That the delegates who have voted that they will not abide the action of the convention do not deserve and have forfeited their vote in this convention.”

Mr. Campbell, of West Virginia—“Mr. Chairman: There are three 424gentlemen from West Virginia, good and true Republicans, who have voted in the negative in the last vote. Gentlemen, as a delegate in a Republican Convention, I am willing to withdraw. If it has come to this that in the city of Chicago, where I came as a young man from the State of Virginia, after having submitted twenty years to contumely and to violence in the State of Virginia for my Republican principles—if it has come to this, that in the city of Chicago a delegate from that State can not have a free expression of opinion, I for one am willing to withdraw from this convention. Mr. Chairman, I have been a Republican in the State of Virginia from my youth. For twenty-five years I have published a Republican newspaper in that State. I have supported every Republican Presidential nominee in that time. I expect to support the nominee of this convention. But, sir, I shall do so as a Republican, having imbibed my principles from the great statesman from New York, William H. Seward, with whom I had an early acquaintance by virtue of my having gone to school with him nine years from the city of Utica, from which the Senator from New York now hails. I was a Republican then, and I made the acquaintance of that distinguished gentleman. I came home, and in my youth I became a newspaper editor. From that day to this—from the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry all through the troubles of the last twenty-five years—I have consistently and always supported our State and National Republican nominee. But, Mr. Chairman, I feel as a Republican that there is a principle in this question, and I will never go into any convention and agree beforehand that whatever may be done by that convention shall have my indorsement. Sir, as a free man, whom God made free, I always intend to carry my sovereignty under my own hat. I never intend that any body of men shall take it from me. I do not, Mr. Chairman, make my living by politics; I make it by my labor as a newspaper editor; and I am not afraid to go home and say that I stood up here in this convention, as I was not afraid to stand up in the State of West Virginia, when but 2,900 men were found to vote for Abraham Lincoln, and where that party has risen to-day to 45,000 votes under the training that we received from our early inspiration of principle. I am not afraid to go home and face these men as I have faced them always.”

The two other dissenters also stated their position as defiantly if not as ably. After some further debate, Mr. Garfield 425spoke, taking ground against Conkling’s pending resolution. While speaking to this, he said:

“There never can be a convention, of which I am one delegate, equal in rights to every other delegate, that shall bind my vote against my will on any question whatever on which my vote is to be given.

“I regret that these gentlemen thought it best to break the harmony of this convention by their dissent; but, when they tell the convention that their dissent was not, and did not mean, that they would not vote for the nominee of this convention, but only that they did not think the resolution at this time wise, they acted in their right, and not by my vote. I do not know the gentlemen, nor their affiliations, nor their relations to candidates, except one of them. One of them I knew in the dark days of slavery, and for twenty long years, in the midst of slave-pens and slave-drivers, has stood up for liberty with a clear-sighted courage and a brave heart equal to the best Republicans that live on this globe. And if this convention expel him, then we must purge ourselves at the end of every vote by requiring that so many as shall vote against us shall go out.”

A few minutes later Mr. Conkling withdrew the obnoxious resolution.

The first important business of the day was now transacted. Mr. Garfield, as Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Order of Business, read the report of that committee. Its most important provision was:

“Rule VIII. In the record of the votes by States, the vote of each State, Territory, and the District of Columbia, shall be announced by the chairman; and in case the votes of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall be divided, the chairman shall announce the number of votes cast for any candidate or for or against any proposition; but, if exception is taken by any delegate to the correctness of such announcement by the chairman of his delegation, the president of the convention shall direct the roll of members of such delegation to be called and the result recorded in accordance with the votes individually given.”

From this resolution a minority of the committee dissented, and, through General Sharpe, presented, as Rule VIII, the following:

“In the record of the votes by States, the vote of each State, Territory, and 426the District of Columbia shall be announced by the chairman; and in case the votes of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall be divided, the chairman shall announce the number of votes cast for any candidate or for or against any proposition.”

When the final action was taken, the majority report prevailed.

At last there came the long-delayed report of the Committee on Credentials, the one great matter preliminary to the real work of this great gathering of the people’s representatives. This committee’s principal duty was to decide upon the conflicting claims of “regular” and “bolting” delegations from several States.

The reading of this report was painfully tedious, taking over three hours; and the debates which followed as the separate State contests were being settled, kept any other business from being done that day.

From the State of Louisiana, the committee recommended the admission of the delegation with their alternates headed by Henry C. Warmouth, and the exclusion of the delegation with their alternates headed by Taylor Beattie. This contest arose out of two rival conventions.

The committee recommended James T. Rapier for admission as a delegate from the Fourth Congressional District of Alabama. The facts found were that Rapier had been requested to pledge support for Grant, and upon his refusal to do so the president of the convention had been requested to withhold the credentials unless he would, within twenty-four hours, give such pledge. This, Rapier had refused to do.

The committee recommended that William H. Smith and Willett Warner be admitted in the place of Arthur Bingham and R. A. Mosely from the Seventh Congressional District of Alabama. The facts in the case of Messrs. Smith and Warner were substantially the same as those in the case of James T. Rapier.

The committee recommended the admission of eight delegations from the State of Illinois, in the place of sitting 427members. The Committee found that a State Convention had been held at Springfield, on the 19th day of May, to elect delegates to the National Convention. During the convention, the delegates from eight Congressional Districts had assembled and organized District Conventions, each of which had elected two delegates and two alternates to the Chicago Convention by clear majorities of all the delegates elected to the State Convention in each of said districts, as was shown by the credentials accompanying the report. The State Convention, by means of a committee of one from each Congressional District, selected, and afterward assumed to elect, two delegates to the National Convention, including the sitting members from the foregoing districts, the delegates from each of which filed in the State Convention protests against said election by the State Convention. The committee reported against the validity of the contests in the Second District of Illinois of the seats of sitting members, A. M. Wright and R. S. Tuthill.

Contests were also settled by this report in cases coming from several other States.

In each case of favorable consideration, the committee ascertained that those delegates who were recommended were actually chosen by a proper convention, representing the Congressional District from which they were accredited.

The committee then proceeded to the justice and equity of recognizing, securing, and protecting Congressional District representation, as is also demonstrated by the actual precedents of the Republican party since its organization.

With the exception of a couple of hours for supper, this extraordinary session kept to the subjects of this report steadily from one o’clock in the afternoon till after two in the morning. This chapter can not find room for these debates, though surpassing in interest, as they do, many a volume of the Congressional Record. The Illinois questions caused the most intense feeling of all. At ten o’clock they 428were taken up; after a short time, on motion, the further debate was limited to one hour on each side.

The whole subject of this report was not fully disposed of until early in the Saturday session. The result was that the majority report was adopted, and the “machine” thus received another solid shot, which penetrated its iron sides below waterline; but the leaders fired no guns to signal their distress.

Saturday, June 5th, was, like Friday, dark and gloomy. The vast crowd, after the preceding night of excitement, was, of course, dull and sleepy. It was noted, however, that when Garfield came into the hall the audience waked up and gave a hearty cheer.

The roll was called at about twelve o’clock. After finishing the matters connected with the credentials, the Convention, on motion of General Garfield, adopted the report of the Committee on Rules. The Committee on Resolutions next reported, and the Platform was adopted; after which the Convention adjourned till evening.

Skirmishing ended, now would come serious work. The triumvirate and its legions had exhausted every parliamentary resource for delay, and at last had to face “the inevitable hour” which must lead, for them, to glory, or the common grave of all their plans.

It was a magnificent audience which poured into the great hall that evening to witness the beginning of the end of this tremendous political conflict.

After some preliminaries, Mr. Hale, of Maine, moved that the roll of States be called alphabetically and that nominations for candidates for President be made.

General Logan inquired whether the rules permitted the seconding of nominations for candidates for President. The Chairman said no, that the rules did not provide for it. Garfield thought there would be no objection to the seconding of nominations. Unanimous consent was accorded for five-minute speeches in seconding nominations. Hale’s motion was then adopted without opposition.

429The roll was then called down to Michigan, with no responses. When that State was named, James F. Joy arose and nominated, for President of the United States, James G. Blaine. Mr. Joy was not the kind of a man to arouse the enthusiasm of an audience, and when he had closed, Mr. Pixley, of California, seconded the nomination. These speeches were a great disappointment to the Blaine men. They still remembered Ingersoll’s famous “plumed knight” speech for Blaine at Cincinnati, in 1876. To remedy matters, Mr. William P. Frye, of Maine, obtained the floor by consent, and delivered the following brief, but brilliant little speech, which, in a measure, retrieved the mistake already made. He said:

“I saw once a storm at sea in the night-time, and our staunch old ship battling for its life with the fury of the tempest; darkness every-where; the wind shrieking and howling through the rigging; the huge waves beating upon the sides of that ship and making her shiver from stem to stern. The lightnings were flashing, the thunders were rolling. There was danger every-where. I saw at the helm a calm, bold, courageous, immovable, commanding man. In the tempest, calm; in the commotion, quiet; in the dismay, hopeful. I saw him take that old ship and bring her into the harbor, into still waters, into safety. That man was a hero. I saw the good old ship, the State of Maine, within the last year, fighting her way through the same darkness, through the same perils, against the same waves, against the same dangers. She was freighted with all that is precious in the principles of our Republic—with the rights of American citizenship, with all that is guaranteed to the American citizen by our Constitution. The eyes of the whole Nation were upon her; an intense anxiety filled every American heart, lest the grand old ship, the State of Maine, might go down beneath the waves forever, carrying her precious freight with her. But, sir, there was a man at the helm. Calm, deliberate, commanding, sagacious, he made even the foolish men wise. Courageous, he inspired the timid with courage; hopeful, he gave heart to the dismayed, and he brought that good old ship proudly into the harbor, into safety, and there she floats to-day, brighter, purer, stronger from her baptism of danger. That man, too, was a hero, and his name was James G. Blaine. Maine sends greetings to this magnificent Convention. With the memory of her own salvation from impending peril fresh upon 430her, she says to you, representatives of 50,000,000 of American people, who have met here to counsel how the Republic shall be saved, she says to you, representatives of the people, take a man, a true man, a staunch man for your leader, who has just saved her, and who will bear you to safety and certain victory.”

Minnesota was next called; whereupon E. F. Drake placed in nomination William Windom, of Winona, a very able and distinguished Senator from that State.

Now was heard the call for New York; a call which meant Roscoe Conkling and the nomination of the great General and ex-President, Ulysses S. Grant.

As Mr. Conkling advanced to the front, he was greeted with tremendous cheers. Taking a commanding position on one of the reporter’s tables, he stood a few moments and regarded the audience while they grew silent at an imperious wave of his hand. Then he said:

“When asked whence comes our candidate, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox with its famous apple-tree. In obedience to instructions I should never dare to disregard, expressing also my own firm conviction, I rise to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide for many years whether the country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do that. The need is not of a candidate popular in the territories, because they have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States. Not the doubtful States of the North, but doubtful States of the South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but every thing to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the conscience of this convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.

431“His services attest his greatness, and the country—nay, the world—knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done. And perils and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised, having filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the high-born and the titled, but the poor and the lowly in the uttermost ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and the defects of many systems of government; and he has returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light that beat upon him during sixteen years, the most trying, the most portentous, the most perilous.

“Vilified and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands, but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny’s ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once; its force is spent: and the name of Grant will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish that name have moldered in forgotten graves, and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished utterly.

“Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee’s surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his aversion to war, and his love of peace by an arbitration of international disputes, which stands the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the world’s diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both Houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone, overthrew expansion, and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, to him immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is as good as gold.

“With him as our leader we shall have no defensive campaign. No! 432We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet.

“Life, liberty, and property will find a safeguard in him. When he said of the colored men in Florida, ‘Wherever I am they may come also;’ when he so said, he meant that had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Denis Kearney in California, he meant that Communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole city, would find a foe in him. He meant that popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may.

“His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequaled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one which would dumbfounder Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen what stultification does not such a fallacy involve. The American people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? Why? Because he was the arch-traitor and would-be destroyer; and now the same people is asked to ostracise Grant, and not to trust him. Why? Why, I repeat? Because he was the arch-preserver of his country, and because not only in war, but twice as Civil Magistrate, he gave his highest, noblest efforts to the Republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy’s masquerade? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, what man do you reject because, by his works, you have known him, and found him faithful and fit? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares—who dares to put 433fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate his term? He has no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without patronage and without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house to this Convention, or running from his house anywhere else, this man is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt unless this Convention did as they said. He is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the candidates of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and they mean to uphold that faith against not only the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps, and guerrillas—the men who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and then on the other. This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. It can break that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose very existence is a standing protest against progress.

“The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very hope of existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to order and progress. I say this Convention can overthrow that power. It can dissolve and emancipate a solid South. It can speed the Nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements. Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.”

After Mr. Bradley, of Kentucky, had seconded Grant’s nomination, the call proceeded, and Ohio being reached, General Garfield arose. Amid great applause he advanced to Mr. Conkling’s late high station on a table, and, as soon as order was restored, said:

“Mr. President: I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep solicitude. No emotion touches my heart more quickly than a sentiment in honor of a great and noble character. But 434as I sat on these seats and witnessed these demonstrations, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunshine bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of the people.

“When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm level of public opinion, below the storm, from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where 15,000 men and women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of 756 delegates waiting to cast their votes into the urn and determine the choice of their party; but by 5,000,000 Republican firesides, where the thoughtful fathers, with wives and children about them, with calm thoughts inspired by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by,—there God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but in the sober quiet that comes between now and November, in the silence of deliberate judgment, will this great question be settled. Let us aid them to-night.

“But now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want? Bear with me a moment. Hear me for this cause, and for a moment, be silent that you may hear. Twenty-five years ago this Republic was wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with the traffic in the body and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people. The baleful doctrine of State sovereignty had shocked and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the National Government, and the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin Territories of the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from the fire of liberty which God has lighted in every man’s heart, 435and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and save the Republic. It entered the arena when beleaguered and assailed Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free forever.

“Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the leadership of that great man, who on this spot, twenty years ago, was made its leader, entered the national capital and assumed the high duties of the Government. The light which shone from its banner dispelled the darkness in which slavery had enshrouded the Capitol and melted the shackles of every slave, and consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave-pen within the shadow of the Capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched notes of 2,000 uncontrolled and irresponsible state bank corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the life of business.

“The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the babel of confusion and gave the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and they stood erect as with new life. It filled with the spirit of true nationality all the great functions of the Government. It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude, with a slavery behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty until victory was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the sweet, calm words of peace uttered by the conquering nation, and saying to the conquered foe that lay prostrate at its feet, ‘This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting to the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars forever and forever, the immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free and stand equal before the law.’ Then came the questions of reconstruction, the public debt, and the public faith.

“In the settlement of these questions the Republican party has completed its twenty-five years of glorious existence, and it has sent us here to prepare it for another lustrum of duty and of victory. How shall we do this great work? We can not do it, my friends, by assailing our Republican 436brethren. God forbid that I should say one word to cast a shadow upon any name on the roll of our heroes. This coming fight is our Thermopylæ. We are standing upon a narrow isthmus. If our Spartan hosts are united we can withstand all the Persians that the Xerxes of Democracy can bring against us.

“Let us hold our ground this one year, for the stars in their courses fight for us in the future. The census to be taken this year will bring reinforcements and continued power. But, in order to win this victory now, we want the vote of every Republican, of every Grant Republican in America, of every Blaine man and every anti-Blaine man. The vote of every follower of every candidate is needed to make our success certain; therefore I say, gentlemen and brethren, we are here to calmly counsel together, and inquire what we shall do. [A voice: ‘Nominate Garfield.’—Great applause.]

“We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, sees all the achievements of our past history, and carries in his heart the memory of all its glorious deeds, and who, looking forward, prepares to meet the labor and the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle. The Republican party offers to our brethren of the South the olive branch of peace, and wishes them to return to brotherhood, on this supreme condition, that it shall be admitted, forever and for evermore, that, in the war for the Union, we were right and they were wrong. On that supreme condition we meet them as brethren, and no other. We ask them to share with us the blessings and honors of this great Republic.

“Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to present a name for your consideration—the name of a man who was the comrade, and associate, and friend of nearly all those noble dead whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago, whose first duty was courageously done in the days of peril on the plains of Kansas, when the first red drops of that bloody shower began to fall which finally swelled into the deluge of war. He bravely stood by young Kansas then, and, returning to his duty in the national legislature, through all subsequent time his pathway has been marked by labors performed in every department of legislation.

“You ask for his monuments. I point you to twenty-five years of the 437national statutes. Not one great beneficent statute has been placed on our statute books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided these men to formulate the laws that raised our great armies and carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back the unity and married calm of the States. His hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency, and in a greater work that redeemed the promises of the Government, and made the currency equal to gold. And when, at last, called from the halls of legislation into a high executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness, and poise of character which has carried us through a stormy period of three years. With one-half the public press crying ‘Crucify him!’ and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success—in all this he remained unmoved until victory crowned him.

“The great fiscal affairs of the nation and the great business interests of the country he has guarded and preserved, while executing the law of resumption and effecting its object without a jar, and against the false prophecies of one-half of the press and all the Democracy of this continent. He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the Government for twenty-five years. He has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of ‘that fierce light that beats against the throne,’ but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain on his shield.

“I do not present him as a better Republican, or as a better man than thousands of others we honor, but I present him for your deliberate consideration. I nominate John Sherman, of Ohio.”

The addresses of Conkling and Garfield are given here, that the reader may contrast these two great leaders at their best. Garfield’s speech made a profound impression, not only on the Convention, but on the country,—and strengthened the already powerful sentiment in favor of making himself the nominee.

Edmunds and Washburne were the only other nominations proposed. They, with Sherman, were minor candidates, whose only hope lay in the enmity of the Grant and Blaine factions, whose evenly-balanced powers would prevent the success of either.

At twelve o’clock the Convention adjourned over till Monday,—but 438not for a Sabbath of repose! On Sunday very few of the delegates found time for church, but devoted the day to mustering forces, polishing arms, and a general preparation for the battle of the ballots on Monday. Of the group of great men who led these hosts of enthusiasts, Garfield was one of the very, very few, who attended religious worship. Bound by the good habit of Sabbath observance, he went his solitary way to a little congregation of Disciples, where the tumult and turmoil of the time was smoothed away in peaceful contemplation of the eternal.

A bright, cool, and delightful morning made the Convention open pleasantly on Monday, and at half-past ten the Hall was filled with an immense crowd, made up largely of ladies, come to see the climax of this great battle, and to be in at the finish. The Blaine men were confident. Grant’s followers were not so confident, but still determined. All were hopeful, as the uncertain always may possibly favor us, and most men believe in the luck of their own stars.

On motion, when called to order, the roll of States was called for the first ballot, which appears in full on the opposite page.

After this vote it became evident that there would be no immediate choice, and with a long breath of resignation to its fate, the multitude settled down to a prospectively long siege. There were twenty-eight successive ballots taken, when the day’s work ended, and still no choice.

On Tuesday, June 8, the sixth and last day of the Convention, the great work of nomination was completed. “It was done, and well done.” We give the work of the day somewhat in detail:

On the twenty-ninth ballot Sherman’s vote suddenly went up from 91 on the previous ballot to 116. This resulted from a change in Massachusetts, which broke for him to the extent of twenty-one votes. On the thirtieth he reached his best vote, 120, and then steadily sank to 99 on the thirty-fifth ballot.

Finally that wonderful Grant column of three hundred and five, which had stood so nobly by their great candidate for many hours, began to gain. Pennsylvania gave him an increase, and on the thirty-fourth ballot he had 312 votes. It then became evident that the anti-Grant factions must combine at once, or be beaten.

440It was at this point that Wisconsin pointed them the way to victory. Garfield’s manly course in the Convention had created a favorable impression on all sides, the result of which in the Wisconsin delegation was that he was freely talked of for second choice. They held no caucus, and during the night of Monday were anxiously waiting to see some other State make the break for Garfield. After the adjournment on Monday night the matter was talked up in the delegation, and it was agreed that, if no other solution offered itself within three or four ballots, the delegation would throw its solid strength to Garfield. No consultation was had on the subject with the other leaders, as it was intended to operate as a feeler, Wisconsin being among the last States called on the roll. The result of this feeler is now a matter of history. The thirty-fifth ballot developed a Garfield strength of 50 votes.

Amid the most intense excitement another call was ordered. It was Grant or Garfield—which?

Here General Garfield rose to a question of order. He challenged the vote on the ground that votes had been given for him without his consent, which consent he absolutely refused to give. The point was overruled. The roll call proceeded. When Connecticut was reached, eleven of the twelve votes were given for Garfield. This was the beginning of the excitement. Then Illinois gave seven votes for Garfield, followed by Indiana with twenty-nine votes. Next came Iowa, which had voted for Blaine on every ballot, with its full twenty-two votes for Garfield. When Maine was reached it voted for Garfield. This settled the question. Blaine was out of the field, and Garfield was speedily nominated. Vermont, Edmunds’ State, gave a solid vote for Garfield.

At this point the people could no longer be controlled. The breeze had grown into a storm of enthusiasm. Delegates crowded around Garfield; the people in the galleries, ignoring the lines that had divided them, cheered and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. In this 10,000 people were engaged. It was taken up by almost as many people on the outside, where cannon were also 441discharged. The scene was one that will not soon be forgotten by those who were present. Republicans, without regard to previous differences, felt and acted as if a great and crushing weight had been removed, and as if they had safely emerged from an impending danger—a danger that threatened the very existence of the party.

The result was read out as follows: Whole number of votes, 755; necessary to a choice, 378; Grant, 306; Blaine, 42; Sherman, 3; Washburne, 5; Garfield, 399.

There was immense cheering, and the Chairman found it difficult to restore order. But order being secured, he said: “James A. Garfield is nominated for President of the United States.”

In the midst of all this, Garfield sat deeply moved. He was overwhelmed. Loud calls of “Platform” and “Speech” were unheard by him, and he sat silently in the heart of the hurricane which had caught him up.

As soon as a hearing could be obtained, Mr. Conkling arose, and, after a few remarks on the subject of unity and harmony, and in praise of the nominee, moved that the nomination be made unanimous. This motion was seconded, with warm pledges of support, by several distinguished gentlemen, previous leaders of factions, now leaders of a united and satisfied political party.

At half-past two o’clock the Convention adjourned to meet again at seven in the evening. In view of the fact that the man nominated for the second place on the National ticket was, in fact, a future president, it may be well to give this closing session a passing notice.

When the time of reassembling came, business was begun at once. The principal names presented for Vice-President were: Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois; Marshall Jewell, of Connecticut; and Chester A. Arthur, of New York. On the first and only ballot the New York gentleman received 468 votes to 288 for all others. A vote to make the nomination unanimous carried with a good will, and Garfield and Arthur were at last before the country on their records and their characters, both to be approved and both to be elected.

442The following table gives the results of each ballot in the well-contested struggle, of which this brief chronicle has been trying to tell the story:

CHAPTER XI. CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

A candidate for public office has a difficult part to play. There is constant and imminent danger that he will commit some blunder, and thereby put himself on the defensive. The fear of doing or saying something which shall put a club into the hands of the enemy haunts both himself and his friends. He is obliged to stand for some months on a high platform in the market-place, saying to the whole world: “Now get out your microscopes and your telescopes; with the one examine me, and with the other examine the heavens of my past, and see if you can’t find something that shall make me wince—some tender spot which you may prod and make me cry out with pain.”

Notably does a candidate for the presidency suffer from exposure to this fierce light and heat. All summer long he must be scrutinized and assailed. All kinds of attack he must meet with equanimity. Every sort of missile he must face, from the keenest-barbed arrows of analysis and satire to the vulgarest discharges of mud. To be angered is a sign that he is hurt; to bear it without flinching is a sign of indifferent reprobacy; to do nothing at all is a sign of cowardice! Of a certainty the American people will see their man. They will hear him, if he can be tortured into opening his mouth. To all this we must add the diabolical ingenuity of that inquisitor-general of the ages, the “interviewer” of the public press—that wizen-faced mixture of gimlet, corkscrew, and blood-sucker, who squeezes in, and bores, and pumps, 444and then goes away with a bucket filled with the ichor of his own imagination. This he retails to the public as the very wine of truth!

All the dangers of the case considered, the candidate generally adopts the policy of mum. He becomes pro tempore a universal know-nothing. He has no ideas, no thoughts, no opinions. He has no political preferences. He has not heard the news from Europe. He does not know whether the Danubian provinces can compete with the American wheat-fields or not. He has never heard that there is an English market for American beef. He has never read a book. His family receive the newspapers; he does not read them. The grave problem as to whether the Mississippi runs by St. Louis he has not fully considered. The time of the year and the day of the week are open questions which he has not investigated. Such matters should be referred to the managers of the observatory and the bureau of statistics. Only on two things does he plant himself firmly; to wit, the Nicene Creed and the platform of his party!

How would General Garfield, now that he was nominated, bear himself before the country? Could one who had so long been accustomed to speaking out in meeting hold his peace, and assume the role of the typical know-nothing? The General seems not to have taken counsel with any body on this question, but simply to have made up his mind that the mum policy was pusillanimous, and that for himself he would continue to talk to his neighbors and friends and the general public just as usual. This was, according to the judgment of the trimmers, an alarming decision. Even thoughtful politicians were doubtful whether the outspoken, talking policy could be trusted. But General Garfield soon taught them and the country at large the useful lesson that a man can talk without being a fool. He began at once to converse freely on all proper occasions, to make little speeches to delegations of friends who came from all directions to pay their respects, and to abandon, both theoretically and practically, the monastic method of running for office.

But let us resume the narrative. In the evening after his nomination the General was called upon at the parlors of the Grand 445Pacific Hotel, and in the presence of a great company of ladies and gentlemen was formally notified of his nomination. Senator Hoar headed the committee appointed to carry the news to the nominee, and to receive, in due season, his response. The committee confronted General Garfield, and the distinguished chairman said:

“General Garfield: The gentlemen present are appointed by the National Republican Convention, representatives of every State in the Union, and have been directed to convey to you the formal ceremonial notice of your nomination as the Republican candidate for the office of President of the United States. It is known to you that the convention which has made this nomination assembled divided in opinion and in council in regard to the candidate. It may not be known to you with what unanimity of pleasure and of hopes the convention has received the result which it has reached. You represent not only the distinctive principles and opinion of the Republican party, but you represent also its unity; and in the name of every State in the Union represented on the committee, I convey to you the assurance of the cordial support of the Republican party of these States at the coming election.”

At the conclusion of Senator Hoar’s speech, General Garfield replied with great gravity and composure:

“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I assure you that the information you have officially given to me brings the sense of very grave responsibility, and especially so in view of the fact that I was a member of your body, a fact that could not have existed with propriety had I had the slightest expectation that my name would be connected with the nomination for the office. I have felt, with you, great solicitude concerning the situation of our party during the struggle; but, believing that you are correct in assuring me that substantial unity has been reached in the conclusion, it gives me a gratification far greater than any personal pleasure your announcement can bring.

“I accept the trust committed to my hands. As to the work of our party, and as to the character of the campaign to be entered upon, I will take an early occasion to reply more fully than I can properly do to-night.

“I thank you for the assurances of confidence and esteem you have presented to me, and hope we shall see our future as promising as are indications to-night.”

446As soon as the morning broke, General Garfield made preparations for starting home. It seldom falls to the lot of man to return home under such circumstances. He was followed by the eyes of millions. A special car whirled him away in triumph. By his side were a multitude of distinguished friends. A candidate for the presidency of the United States is not likely to want for friends. Those who accompanied General Garfield, however, were, for the most part, the genuine article. Many of them were his old comrades in arms; others were prominent politicians, some of them, no doubt, busy in constructing the fabric of a new administration with themselves for possible corner-stones.

At La Porte, Indiana, the train made a halt. That great organ of American noise, the brass band, came down the street with a multitudinous citizenship at its heels. The huzzas called out the General. He was introduced by Governor Foster, of Ohio. Then there were more huzzas, and the train rolled away. The same happened at South Bend, at Elkhart, at Goshen, and at all the other points, great and small, between Chicago and Cleveland. At the latter city there was an immense demonstration. The spacious depot was crowded with an enthusiastic throng, that burst out with far-resounding cheers as the General’s train came in. The city was all in a flutter, and it became evident that the people were up and stirring. The great Ohioan was driven to the hotel, and, in response to a speech of welcome, said:

“Fellow-citizens of my native county and of my State: I thank you for this remarkable demonstration of your good-will and enthusiasm on this occasion. I can not at this time proceed upon any speech. All that I have to say is, that I know that all this demonstration means your gladness at the unity and harmony and good feeling of a great political party, and in part your good feeling toward a neighbor, an old friend. For all of these reasons I thank you, and bid you good night.”

The following day, the 10th of June, was passed at Cleveland, and on the morrow General Garfield visited his old school at Hiram. The commencement exercises were set for that day, and the distinguished nominee was under promise to speak. Here were gathered his old friends and neighbors. Here he had first 447met his wife. She, with the boys, was now a part of her husband’s audience. Here was the scene of his early struggles for discipline and distinction. Here he had been a bell-ringer, a student, a college professor, a president. Here he had seen the horizon of his orphanage and boyhood sink behind him, and the horizon of an auspicious future rise upon his vision. Before the vast throng of visitors and students, at the appointed hour, he rose and delivered his address as follows:

“Fellow-citizens, old neighbors and friends of many years: It has always given me pleasure to come back here and look upon these faces. It has always given me new courage and new friends, for it has brought back a large share of that richness which belongs to those things out of which come the joys of life.

“While sitting here this afternoon, watching your faces and listening to the very interesting address which has just been delivered, it has occurred to me that the least thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the least, and that is your leisure—the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below; the leisure you have to walk about the towers yourself, and find how strong they are or how weak they are, to determine what needs building up; how to work, and how to know all that shall make you the final beings you are to be. Oh, these hours of building!

“If the Superior Being of the universe would look down upon the world to find the most interesting object, it would be the unfinished, unformed character of the young man or young woman. Those behind me have probably in the main settled this question. Those who have passed into middle manhood and middle womanhood are about what they shall always be, and there is but little left of interest, as their characters are all developed.

“But to your young and your yet unformed natures, no man knows the possibilities that lie before you in your hearts and intellects; and, while you are working out the possibilities with that splendid leisure that you need, you are to be most envied. I congratulate you on your leisure. I commend you to treat it as your gold, as your wealth, as your treasure, out of which you can draw all possible treasures that can be laid down 448when you have your natures unfolded and developed in the possibilities of the future.

“This place is too full of memories for me to trust myself to speak upon, and I will not. But I draw again to-day, as I have for a quarter of a century, life, evidence of strength, confidence and affection from the people who gather in this place. I thank you for the permission to see you and meet you and greet you as I have done to-day.”

After this reunion with his old friends at Hiram, General Garfield was, on the morning of the 12th of June, driven to Mentor and Painesville. At both places he was received with great enthusiasm, and at the latter place, in response to the speech of welcome, made the following characteristic address:

“Fellow-citizens and neighbors of Lake County: I am exceedingly glad to know that you care enough to come out on a hot day like this, in the midst of your busy work, to congratulate me. I know it comes from the hearts of as noble a people as lives on the earth. [Cheers.] In my somewhat long public services there never has been a time, in however great difficulties I may have been placed, that I could not feel the strength that came from resting back upon the people of the Nineteenth District. To know that they were behind me with their intelligence, their critical judgment, their confidence and their support was to make me strong in every thing I undertook that was right. I have always felt your sharp, severe, and just criticism, and my worthy, noble, supporting friends always did what they believed was right. I know you have come here to-day not altogether, indeed not nearly, for my sake, but for the sake of the relations I am placed in to the larger constituency of the people of the United States. It is not becoming in me to speak, nor shall I speak, one word touching politics. I know you are here to-day without regard to politics. I know you are all here as my neighbors and my friends, and, as such, I greet you and thank you for this candid and gracious welcome. [Cheers.] Thus far in my life I have sought to do what I could according to my light. More than that I could never hope to do. All of that I shall try to do, and if I can continue to have the good opinion of my neighbors of this district, it will be one of my greatest satisfactions. I thank you again, fellow-citizens, for this cordial and generous welcome.” [Applause and cheers.]

449After some days of rest at his home, General Garfield repaired to Washington City, where he arrived on the 15th day of June. Everywhere along the route the railway stations and towns were crowded with people, anxious to catch a glimpse and hear a word from the probable President. Arriving at the Capital, he was, on the evening of the 16th, serenaded at his hotel, and, responding to the cheers of the crowd, appeared on the balcony and made the following happy speech:

“Fellow-citizens: While I have looked upon this great array, I believe I have gotten a new idea of the majesty of the American people. When I reflect that wherever you find sovereign power, every reverent heart on this earth bows before it, and when I remember that here for a hundred years we have denied the sovereignty of any man, and in place of it we have asserted the sovereignty of all in place of one, I see before me so vast a concourse that it is easy for me to imagine that the rest of the American people are, gathered here to-night, and if they were all here, every man would stand uncovered, all in unsandaled feet in presence of the majesty of the only sovereign power in this Government under Almighty God. [Cheers.] And, therefore, to this great audience I pay the respectful homage that in part belongs to the sovereignty of the people. I thank you for this great and glorious demonstration. I am not, for one moment, misled into believing that it refers to so poor a thing as any one of our number. I know it means your reverence for your Government, your reverence for its laws, your reverence for its institutions, and your compliment to one who is placed for a moment in relations to you of peculiar importance. For all these reasons I thank you.

“I can not at this time utter a word on the subject of general politics. I would not mar the cordiality of this welcome, to which to some extent all are gathered, by any reference except to the present moment and its significance; but I wish to say that a large portion of this assemblage to-night are my comrades, late of the war for the Union. For them I can speak with entire propriety, and can say that these very streets heard the measured tread of your disciplined feet, years ago, when the imperiled Republic needed your hands and your hearts to save it, and you came back with your numbers decimated; but those you left behind were immortal and glorified heroes forever; and those you brought back came, carrying under tattered banners and in bronze hands the ark of the covenant 450of your Republic in safety out of the bloody baptism of the war [cheers], and you brought it in safety to be saved forever by your valor and the wisdom of your brethren who were at home; and by this you were again added to the great civil army of the Republic. I greet you, comrades and fellow-soldiers, and the great body of distinguished citizens who are gathered here to-night, who are the strong stay and support of the business, of the prosperity, of the peace, of the civic ardor and glory of the Republic, and I thank you for your welcome to-night. It was said in a welcome to one who came to England to be a part of her glory—and all the nation spoke when it was said:

“And we say to-night, of all nations, of all the people, soldiers and civilians, there is one name that welds us all into one. It is the name of American citizen, under the union and under the glory of the flag that led us to victory and to peace. [Applause.] For this magnificent welcome I thank you with all there is in my heart.”

VIEW OF MENTOR.

On the next evening after this address, General Garfield was given a reception and banquet, at which were present many of the most distinguished men of the nation. Then, after a brief stay at Washington, he returned to Mentor, hoping to enjoy a respite from the excitements of the hour. But there was little hope of rest for one who by the will of the millions had thus been whirled into the blazing focus of expectation.

451On the 3d of July the Soldiers’ Monument at Painesville, Ohio, was formally dedicated. General Garfield was present on the occasion, and after the principal oration, was called upon to speak. His address created great enthusiasm, especially among the veterans, who were gathered in great numbers to hear their old leader. General Garfield said:

“Fellow-citizens: I can not fail to respond on such an occasion, in sight of such a monument to such a cause, sustained by such men. [Applause and cheers.] While I have listened to what my friend has said, two questions have been sweeping through my heart. One was, ‘What does the monument mean?’ and the other, ‘What will the monument teach?’ Let me try and ask you for a moment, to help me answer what does the monument mean. Oh! the monument means a world of memories, a world of deeds, and a world of tears, and a world of glories. You know, thousands know, what it is to offer up your life to the country, and that is no small thing, as every soldier knows. Let me put the question to you: For a moment suppose your country in the awfully embodied form of majestic law, should stand above you and say: ‘I want your life. Come up here on the platform and offer it.’ How many would walk up before that majestic presence and say, ‘Here I am, take this life and use it for your great needs.’ [Applause.] And yet almost two millions of men made that answer [applause], and a monument stands yonder to commemorate their answer. That is one of its meanings. But, my friends, let me try you a little further. To give up life is much, for it is to give up wife, and home, and child, and ambition. But let me test you this way further. Suppose this awfully majestic form should call out to you, and say, ‘I ask you to give up health and drag yourself, not dead, but half alive, through a miserable existence for long years, until you perish and die in your crippled and hopeless condition. I ask you to volunteer to do that,’ and it calls for a higher reach of patriotism and self-sacrifice; but hundreds of thousands of you soldiers did that. That is what the monument means also. But let me ask you to go one step further. Suppose your country should say, ‘Come here, on this platform, and in my name, and for my sake, consent to be idiots. [Voice—Hear, hear.] Consent that your very brain and intellect shall be broken down into hopeless idiocy for my sake.’ How many could be found to make that venture? And yet there are thousands, and that with their eyes wide open to the horrible consequences, obeyed that call.

452“And let me tell how one hundred thousand of our soldiers were prisoners of war, and to many of them when death was stalking near, when famine was climbing up into their hearts, and idiocy was threatening all that was left of their intellects, the gates of their prison stood open every day, if they would quit, desert their flag and enlist under the flag of the enemy; and out of one hundred and eighty thousand not two per cent. ever received the liberation from death, starvation and all that might come to them; but they took all these horrors and all these sufferings in preference to going back upon the flag of their country and the glory of its truth. [Applause.] Great God! was ever such measure of patriotism reached by any men on this earth before? [Applause.] That is what your monument means. By the subtle chemistry that no man knows, all the blood that was shed by our brethren, all the lives that were devoted, all the grief that was felt, at last crystallized itself into granite rendered immortal, the great truth for which they died [applause], and it stands there to-day, and that is what your monument means.

“Now, what does it teach? What will it teach? Why, I remember the story of one of the old conquerors of Greece, who, when he had traveled in his boyhood over the battle-fields where Miltiades had won victories and set up trophies, returning said: ‘These trophies of Miltiades will never let me sleep.’ Why? Something had taught him from the chiseled stone a lesson that he could never forget; and, fellow-citizens, that silent sentinel, that crowned granite column, will look down upon the boys that will walk these streets for generations to come, and will not let them sleep when their country calls them. [Applause.] More than from the bugler on the field, from his dead lips will go out a call that the children of Lake County will hear after the grave has covered us and our immediate children. That is the teaching of your monument. That is its lesson, and it is the lesson of endurance for what we believe, and it is the lesson of sacrifices for what we think—the lesson of heroism for what we mean to sustain—and that lesson can not be lost to a people like this. It is not a lesson of revenge; it is not a lesson of wrath; it is the grand, sweet, broad lesson of the immortality of the truth that we hope will soon cover, as the grand Shekinah of light and glory, all parts of this Republic, from the lakes to the gulf. [Applause.] I once entered a house in old Massachusetts, where, over its doors, were two crossed swords. One was the sword carried by the grandfather of its owner on the field of Bunker Hill, and the other was 453the sword carried by the English grandsire of the wife, on the same field, and on the other side of the conflict. Under those crossed swords, in the restored harmony of domestic peace, lived a happy, and contented, and free family, under the light of our republican liberties. [Applause.] I trust the time is not far distant when, under the crossed swords and the locked shields of Americans North and South, our people shall sleep in peace, and rise in liberty, love, and harmony under the union of our flag of the Stars and Stripes.”

The next public utterance of General Garfield had been anxiously awaited. Until now he had not found time to return a formal answer to the committee, whose chairman had, on the evening of the 8th of June, informed him of his nomination for the Presidency. On the 12th of July, the General, from his home at Mentor, issued his letter of acceptance. It was a document of considerable length, touching upon most of the political questions of the day, and gave great satisfaction to his party throughout the Union. The letter was as follows:

“Dear Sir: On the evening of the 8th of June last I had the honor to receive from you, in the presence of the committee of which you were chairman, the official announcement that the Republican National Convention at Chicago had that day nominated me for their candidate for President of the United States. I accept the nomination with gratitude for the confidence it implies and with a deep sense of the responsibilities it imposes. I cordially indorse the principles set forth in the platform adopted by the convention. On nearly all the subjects of which it treats my opinions are on record among the published proceedings of Congress. I venture, however, to make special mention of some of the principal topics which are likely to become subjects of discussion, without reviewing the controversies which have been settled during the last twenty years, and with no purpose or wish to revive the passions of the late war.

“It should be said that while Republicans fully recognize and will strenuously defend all the rights retained by the people and all the rights reserved to the States, they reject the pernicious doctrine of State supremacy, which so long crippled the functions of the National Government and at one time brought the Union very near to destruction. They insist that the United States is a nation, with ample power of self-preservation; 454that its Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land; that the right of the nation to determine the method by which its own legislature shall be created can not be surrendered without abdicating one of the fundamental powers of the Government; that the national laws relating to the election of representatives in Congress shall neither be violated nor evaded; that every elector shall be permitted freely and without intimidation to cast his lawful ballot at such election and have it honestly counted, and that the potency of his vote shall not be destroyed by the fraudulent vote of any other person. The best thoughts and energies of our people should be directed to those great questions of national well-being in which we all have a common interest. Such efforts will soonest restore perfect peace to those who were lately in arms against each other, for justice and good-will will outlast passion; but it is certain that the wounds can not be completely healed and the spirit of brotherhood can not fully pervade the whole country until every one of our citizens, rich or poor, white or black, is secure in the free and equal enjoyment of every civil and political right guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws. Wherever the enjoyment of this right is not assured, discontent will prevail, immigration will cease, and the social and industrial forces will continue to be disturbed by the migration of laborers and the consequent diminution of prosperity. The National Government should exercise all its constitutional authority to put an end to these evils, for all the people and all the States are members of one body; and no member can suffer without injury to all.

“The most serious evils which now afflict the South arise from the fact that there is not such freedom and toleration of political opinion and action that the minority party can exercise an effective and wholesome restraint upon the party in power. Without such restraint party rule becomes tyrannical and corrupt. The prosperity which is made possible in the South, by its great advantages of soil and climate, will never be realized until every voter can freely and safely support any party he pleases. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained. Its interests are intrusted to the States and the voluntary action of the people. Whatever help the nation can justly afford should be generously given to aid the States in supporting common schools; but it would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions 455to apply any portion of the revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools. The separation of the Church and the State in every thing relating to taxation should be absolute.

“On the subject of national finances my views have been so frequently and fully expressed that little is needed in the way of additional statement. The public debt is now so well secured, and the rate of annual interest has been so reduced by refunding, that rigid economy in expenditures and the faithful application of our surplus revenues to the payment of the principal of the debt, will gradually but certainly free the people from its burdens, and close with honor the financial chapter of the war. At the same time the Government can provide for all its ordinary expenditures, and discharge its sacred obligations to the soldiers of the Union and to the widows and orphans of those who fell in its defense. The resumption of specie payments, which the Republican party so courageously and successfully accomplished, has removed from the field of controversy many questions that long and seriously disturbed the credit of the Government and the business of the country. Our paper currency is now as national as the flag, and resumption has not only made it everywhere equal to coin, but has brought into use our store of gold and silver. The circulating medium is more abundant than ever before, and we need only to maintain the equality of all our dollars to insure to labor and capital a measure of value from the use of which no one can suffer loss. The great prosperity which the country is now enjoying should not be endangered by any violent change or doubtful financial experiments.

“In reference to our custom laws, a policy should be pursued which will bring revenues to the Treasury, and will enable the labor and capital employed in our great industries to compete fairly in our own markets with the labor and capital of foreign producers. We legislate for the people of the United States, not for the whole world; and it is our glory that the American laborer is more intelligent and better paid than his foreign competitor. Our country can not be independent unless its people, with their abundant natural resources, possess the requisite skill at any time to clothe, arm, and equip themselves for war, and in time of peace to produce all the necessary implements of labor. It was the manifest intention of the founders of the Government to provide for the common defense, not by standing armies alone, but by raising among the people a greater army of artisans, whose intelligence and skill should powerfully contribute to the safety and glory of the nation.

456“Fortunately for the interests of commerce there is no longer any formidable opposition to appropriations for the improvement of our harbors and great navigable rivers, provided that the expenditures for that purpose are strictly limited to works of national importance. The Mississippi River, with its great tributaries, is of such vital importance to so many millions of people that the safety of its navigation requires exceptional consideration. In order to secure to the nation the control of all its waters, President Jefferson negotiated the purchase of a vast territory, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. The wisdom of Congress should be invoked to devise some plan by which that great river shall cease to be a terror to those who dwell upon its banks, and by which its shipping may safely carry the industrial products of twenty-five millions of people.

“The interests of agriculture, which is the basis of all our material prosperity, and in which seven-twelfths of our population are engaged, as well as the interests of manufactures and commerce, demand that the facilities for cheap transportation shall be increased by the use of all our great water courses. The material interests of this country, the traditions of its settlement and the sentiment of our people, have led the Government to offer the widest hospitality to immigrants who seek our shores for new and happier homes, willing to share the burdens as well as the benefits of our society, and intending that their posterity shall become an undistinguishable part of our population. The recent movement of the Chinese to our Pacific coast partakes but little of the qualities of such an immigration, either in its purposes or its result. It is too much like an importation to be welcomed without restriction; too much like an invasion to be looked upon without solicitude. We can not consent to allow any form of servile labor to be introduced among us under the guise of immigration. Recognizing the gravity of this subject, the present administration, supported by Congress, has sent to China a commission of distinguished citizens for the purpose of securing such a modification of the existing treaty as will prevent the evils likely to arise from the present situation. It is confidently believed that these diplomatic negotiations will be successful without the loss of that commercial intercourse between the two great powers which promises a great increase of reciprocal trade and the enlargement of our markets. Should these efforts fail, it will be the duty of Congress to mitigate the evils already felt, and prevent their increase by such restrictions as, without 457violence or injustice, will place upon a sure foundation the peace of our communities and the freedom and dignity of labor.

“The appointment of citizens to the various executive and judicial offices of the Government is, perhaps, the most difficult of all duties which the Constitution has imposed upon the Executive. The convention wisely demands that Congress shall coöperate with the Executive Department in placing the civil service on a better basis. Experience has proved that, with our frequent changes of administration, no system of reform can be made effective and permanent without the aid of legislation. Appointments to the military and naval service are so regulated by law and custom, as to leave but little ground of complaint. It may not be wise to make similar regulations by law for the civil service, but, without invading the authority or necessary discretion of the Executive, Congress should devise a method that will determine the tenure of office, and greatly reduce the uncertainty which makes that service so uncertain and unsatisfactory. Without depriving any officer of his rights as a citizen, the Government should require him to discharge all his official duties with intelligence, efficiency, and faithfulness. To select wisely from our vast population those who are best fitted for the many offices to be filled, requires an acquaintance far beyond the range of any one man. The Executive should, therefore, seek and receive the information and assistance of those whose knowledge of the communities in which the duties are to be performed, best qualifies them to aid in making the wisest choice. The doctrines announced by the Chicago Convention are not the temporary devices of a party to attract votes and carry an election. They are deliberate convictions, resulting from a careful study of the spirit of our institutions, the events of our history, and the best impulses of our people. In my judgment, these principles should control the legislation and administration of the Government. In any event, they will guide my conduct until experience points out a better way. If elected, it will be my purpose to enforce strict obedience to the Constitution and the laws, and to promote as best I may the interest and honor of the whole country, relying for support upon the wisdom of Congress, the intelligence and patriotism of the people, and the favor of God.

“With great respect, I am very truly yours,

458The battle was now fairly on. The Democracy had, on the 23d day of June, in convention at Cincinnati, nominated as their standard-bearer the distinguished and popular soldier, Major-General Winfield S. Hancock. This nomination was received by the General’s party with as much satisfaction and enthusiasm as that of General Garfield had been by the Republicans. Meanwhile, General James B. Weaver, of Iowa, had been chosen to make the race by the National party, in a convention held in Chicago, on the 9th of June. So that there were presented for the suffrages of the people three eminent soldiers—all men of large abilities, undoubted patriotism, and thorough soundness of character. It was evident, however, from the opening of the campaign, that the contest was narrowed to Generals Garfield and Hancock, with the chances in favor of the former; and as the public mind became warmed up to the pitch of battle, the chances of Garfield were augmented by almost every incident of the fight. The platforms of the two parties had both been made with a view to political advantage rather than to uphold any distinctive principles. So the fight raged backwards along the line of the history and traditions of the two parties rather than forward along the line of the living political issues of the present and the future. In a modified form the old questions of the war were revived and paraded. A delegate in the Cincinnati Convention, allowing his zeal to run away with his sense, had pledged a “Solid South” to the support of General Hancock. This sectional utterance was a spark dropped among the old war memories of the Union soldiers; and the politicians were quick to fan the flame by suggesting that “a Solid South” ought to be confronted by “a Solid North.” This line of argument, of course, meant ruin to the Democracy. The Republican leaders virtually abandoned the Southern States, and concentrated all their efforts upon the doubtful States of the Northern border. Indiana became a critical battle-field; and here the political fight was waged with the greatest spirit. Having a gubernatorial election in October, it was foreseen that to carry this doubtful State would be well nigh decisive of the contest, and to this end the best talent of both parties was hurried into her 459borders. While these great movements were taking place, General Garfield remained, for the most part, at his quiet home at Mentor. On the 3d of August he attended the dedication ceremonies of a soldiers’ monument at Geneva, Ohio. More than ten thousand people were in attendance. After the principal address of the day had been delivered, General Garfield was introduced, and spoke as follows:

LAWNFIELD.—THE HOME OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD AT MENTOR.

“Fellow-citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen: These gentlemen had no right to print on a paper here that I was to make a speech, for the types should always tell the truth. [A voice—They did it this time.] They have not done it in this case; but I can not look out upon an audience in Ashtabula County, recognizing so many old faces and old friends, without at least making my bow to them, and saying ‘good-bye’ before I go. I can not either hear such a speech as that to which I have just listened without thanking the man who made it [applause] and the people who enabled him to make it [applause], for after all no man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand hearts that acts upon him and makes the speech. [Applause.] It originates with 460those outside of him, if he makes one at all, and every man that has stood on this platform to-day has had a speech made out of him by you and by what is yonder on your square. That’s the way speeches are made, and if I had time to stay long enough, these forces with you might make one out of me. [Applause.] Ideas are the only things in the universe really immortal. Some people think that soldiers are chiefly renowned for courage. That is one of the cheapest and commonest qualities; we share it with the brutes. I can find you dogs and bears and lions that will fight, and fight to the death, and will tear each other. Do you call that warfare? Let me tell you the difference. They are as courageous as any of these soldiers, if mere brute courage is what you are after. The difference between them and us is this: Tigers never hold reunions [laughter] to celebrate their victories. When they have eaten the creature they have killed, that is the only reunion they have ever held. [Laughter.] Wild beasts never build monuments over their slain comrades. Why? Because there are no ideas behind their warfares. Our race has ideas, and because ideas are immortal, if they be true, we build monuments to them. We hold reunions not for the dead, for there is nothing on all the earth that you and I can do for the dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can not add more glory, and we can give them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them. [Applause.] The glory that trails in the clouds behind them after their sun has set, falls with its benediction upon us who are left [applause], and it is to commemorate the immortality of the ideas for which they fought, that you assemble to-day and dedicate your monument, that points up toward God who leads them in the glory of the great world beyond. Around these ideas, under the leadership of these ideas, we assemble to-day, reverently to follow, reverently to acknowledge the glory they achieved and the benediction they left behind them. That is the meaning of an assembly like this, and to join in it, to meet you, my old neighbors and constituents, to share with you the memories that we have heard rehearsed and the inspiration that this day points to, that this monument celebrates, is to me a joy, and for it I am grateful to you.”

Immediately after this address at Geneva, General Garfield took his departure for New York, where it had been determined to hold a conference of the principal Republican leaders, relative to the conduct of the pending campaign. The standard-bearer participated 461in the council of his friends, adding not a little by his presence and unflagging spirits to the zeal and enthusiasm of those upon whose efforts so much depended. On the 7th he left the city for Lake Chautauqua, where he had decided to spend a day at the great Sunday-school encampment and other lakeside resorts. He was received with the greatest good-will by the thousands assembled at Jamestown and Chautauqua; and on the eve of his departure was induced, in response to salutations and cheers, to make the following brief address:

“Fellow-citizens: You have done so much to me since I arrived on this shore, that I am quite unable to tell what sort of man I am this morning. [Laughter.] I had never been here, and really did not know what you were doing. Last evening I asked Mr. Vincent, rather brusquely, to tell me what Chautauqua means—what your work here means—and he filled me so full of your ideas that I have not yet assimilated it so as to be quite sure what manner of man I am since I got hold of it. But this I see, you are struggling with one of the two great problems of civilization. The first one is a very old question—‘How shall we get leisure?’ That is the object of every hammer stroke, of every blow that labor has struck since the foundation of the world. [Applause.] The fight for bread is a great primal fight, and it is so absorbing a struggle that until one conquers to some extent he can have no leisure. We may divide the struggles of the human race into two chapters: First, the fight to get leisure, and, second, what to do with our leisure when we have won it. It looks to me that Chautauqua has solved the second problem. [Applause.] Like all blessings, leisure is a very bad thing unless it is well used. The man with a fortune ready made, and with leisure on his hands, is likely to get sick of the world, sick of himself, tired of life, and to become a useless, wasted man. What shall you do with your leisure? I understand Chautauqua is trying to develop new energies, largeness of mind and culture in a better sense, ‘with the varnish scratched off,’ as our friend, Dr. Kirkwood, says. [Applause.] We are getting over the fashion of painting and varnishing our native woods. We are getting down to the real grain, and finding whatever is best and most beautiful in it, and if Chautauqua is helping to develop in our people the native stuff that is in them rather than to give them varnish and gewgaws of culture, it is doing well. Chautauqua, therefore, 462has filled me with thought, and, in addition to that, you have filled me with gratitude for your kindness and for this great spontaneous greeting in early morning, earlier than men of leisure get up. [Laughter.] Some of these gentlemen of the press around me looked distressed at the early rising by which you have compelled our whole party to look at the early sun. [Laughter.] This greeting on the lake slope toward the sun is very precious to me, and I thank you all. This is a mixed audience of citizens, and I will not offend the proprieties of the occasion by discussing controverted questions or entering upon any political discussion. I look in the faces of men of all shades of opinion, but whatever our party affiliation, I trust there is in all this audience that love of our beneficent institutions which makes it possible for free labor to earn leisure, and for our institutions to make that leisure worth something [applause]—our Union and our institutions, under the blessing of equal laws, equal to all colors and all conditions, an open career for every man, however humble, to rise to whatever place the power of a strong arm, the strength of a clear head, and the aspirations of a pure heart can do to lift him. That prospect ought to inspire every young man in this vast audience. [Applause.] I heard yesterday and last night the songs of those who were lately redeemed from slavery, and I felt that there, too, was one of the great triumphs of the Republic. [Applause.] I believe in the efficiency of the forces that come down from the ages behind us, and I wondered if the tropical sun had not distilled its sweetness, and if the sorrow of centuries of slavery had not distilled its sadness into verses, which were touching, sweet verses, to sing the songs of liberty as they sing them wherever they go. [Applause.]

“I thank that choir for the lesson they have taught me here, and now, fellow-citizens, thanking you all, good-bye.” [Applause.]

On the 9th of the month General Garfield returned to his home, where he again sought a respite from the uproar and tumult of publicity which followed him everywhere. On the 25th of August, a reunion of his old regiment, the Forty-second Ohio, was held at Ashland, and the General could but accept an invitation to share the occasion with his former comrades in arms. The old soldiers passed a resolution, declaring it an honor that their former Colonel had become the conspicuous man of the nation, and commending 463him to the world as a model of all soldierly virtues. He was elected President of the Regimental Association for the ensuing year, and was thereupon called out for an address. The General spoke as follows:

“Fellow-citizens: This is a family gathering, a military family, for in war a regiment is to the army what a family is to the whole civilized community. [Here a portion of the platform fell.] A military reunion without some excitement and some accident would be altogether too monotonous and tame to be interesting, and in this good-natured audience we can have a good many accidents like that and still keep quiet and be happy.

“I said this is a family reunion, an assembly of the Forty-second military family, and it is well for us to meet here. Nineteen years ago I met a crowd of earnest citizens in that court-room above stairs. Your bell was rung, your people came out. The teacher of your schools was among them. The boys of the school were there, and after we had talked together a little while, about our country and its imperiled flag, the teacher of the schools offered himself to his country, and twenty of his boys with him. They never went back into the school-house again; but in the dark days of November, 1861, they and enough Ashland County boys to make one hundred went down with me to Columbus to join another one hundred that had gone before them from Ashland County, and these two hundred of your children stood in the center of our military family and bore these old banners that you see tattered before you to-day. One of them was given to our family by the ladies of Ashland, and Company C, from Ashland, carried it well. It was riddled by bullets and torn by underbrush. Flapped by the winds of rebellion, it came back tattered, as you see, but with never a stain upon its folds, and never a touch of dishonor upon it anywhere; and the other of these banners was given us by the special friends of Company A, in my old town of Hiram, the student company from the heart of the Western Reserve, and it also shared like its fellows, the fate, and came home covered with the glory of the conflict.

“We were a family, I say again, and we did not let partisan politics disturb us then, and we do not let partisanship enter our circle here to-day.

“We did not quarrel about controversies outside of our great work. We agreed to be brethren for the Union, under the flag, against all its 464enemies everywhere, and brothers to all men who stood with us under the flag to fight for the Union, whatever their color of skin, whatever their previous politics, whatever their religion. In that spirit we went out; in that spirit we returned; and we are glad to be in Ashland to-day, for it is one of the homes of our regiment, where we were welcomed in the beginning and have always been welcome since. We are grateful for the welcome tendered us to-day by this great assembly of our old neighbors and friends of Ashland County.

“Now, fellow-citizens, a regiment like a family has the right to be a little clannish and exclusive. It does not deny the right of any other family to the same privileges, but it holds the members of its own family a little nearer and a little dearer than any other family in the world. And so the Forty-second Regiment has always been a band of brothers. I do not this day know a Forty-second man in the world who hates another Forty-second man. There never was a serious quarrel inside the regiment. There was never a serious disagreement between its officers. The worst thing I have ever heard said against it is that all its three field officers came home alive. And they are all here on this stand to-day. It was, perhaps, a little against us that no one of us had the honor to get killed or seriously crippled; but we hold that it was not altogether our fault, and we trust that some day or other you will have forgiven us, if you have not to-day, for being alive and all here together.

“I want to say another thing about the soldiers’ work. I know of nothing in all the circle of human duty that so unites men as the common suffering and danger and struggle that war brings upon a regiment. You can not know a man so thoroughly and so soon as by the tremendous tests to which war subjects him. These men knew each other by sight long before they knew each other by heart; but before they got back home they knew each other, as you sometimes say you know a son, ‘by heart;’ for they had been tested by fire; they had been tested by starvation; they had been tested by the grim presence of death, and each knew that those who remained were union men; men that in all the hard, close chances of life, had the stuff in them that enabled them to stand up in the very extremes they did; and stand up ready to die. And such men, so tried and so acquainted, never got over it; and the rest of the world must permit them to be just a little clannish towards each other; the rest of the world will not think we are narrow 465when they consider this particular fault of ours; a little closer to us than any of the rest of the world in a military way.

“Now, fellow-citizens, we are here to look into your faces, to enjoy your hospitality, to revive our old memories of the place, but, for more than any thing else, to look into each other’s faces, and revive old memories of a great many places less pleasing and home-like than Ashland. We have been meeting together in this way for nearly fifteen years, and we have made a pledge to each other that as long as there are two of us left to shake hands, we will meet and greet the survivor. Some of us felt a little hurt about ten years ago when the papers spoke of us as the survivors of the Forty-second Regiment. We were survivors it was true, but we thought we were so surviving that it need not be put at us, as though we were about to die. Now, I don’t know how it is with the rest of you. Most of mankind grow old, and you can see it in their faces. I see here and there a bald head, like my own, or a white one, like Captain Gardner’s, but to me these men will be boys till they die. We call them boys; we meet and greet them as boys, even though they become very old boys, and in that spirit of young, hopeful, daring manhood we expect to meet them so long as we live. Nothing can get us a great way from each other while we live. I am glad to meet these men here to-day. [Here another portion of the platform broke down, precipitating General Garfield and two or three of the reporters to the ground.] Continuing, he said: I was glad also that there was not any body hurt when that broke, and nobody made unhappy, and I will conclude all I wanted to say, more than I intended to say, by adding this: These men went out without one single touch of revenge in their hearts. They went out to maintain this Union and make it immortal; to put their own immortal lives into it, and to make it possible that the people of Ashland should make the monogram of the United States, as you see it up there (pointing to the monogram on the building), a wreath of Union inside of a very large N, a capital N, that stands for Nation, a Nation so large that it includes the ‘U. S. A.’ all the people of the Republic, and will include it for evermore; that is what we meant then and is what we mean now.

“And now, fellow-citizens and soldiers of the Forty-second Regiment—for I have been talking mainly to you, and if any of this crowd have overheard I am not particularly to blame for it—I say, fellow-citizens and comrades, I greet you to-day with great satisfaction and bid you a cordial good-bye.”

466Two days later General Garfield was present at a reunion of an artillery company, held at Mentor, and since they had composed a part of the force with which Thomas stayed at last the furious onset at Chickamauga, their old chief of staff was all the more willing to say a few words for their edification. This he did as follows:—

“Comrades: This is really the first time I have met this battery as an organization since the Sunday evening of the terrible battle of Chickamauga, nearly seventeen years ago. I last saw you there in the most exposed angle of that unfortunate line, broken by the combined forces of Bragg and Longstreet. I then saw you gallantly fighting under the immediate direction of General Thomas, to reform that broken line, and hold the exultant rebel host in check until the gallant Steedman with reinforcements swept them back into the dark valley of the Chickamauga. I am now able to distinguish among your numbers faces which I saw there in that terrible hour. But how changed! I now see you here with your wives, children, and friends, peaceably enjoying this grand reception of your friends and neighbors here assembled to honor and entertain you.

“But nothing so attracts my attention as your young and active appearance. It is more than eighteen years since you left for the war, and yet you are not old. Indeed, many of you appear almost like boys. This I am pleased to observe; for if there be any men upon the face of the earth who deserve an extension of time, it is you who, in early manhood, so freely gave your services to your country, that it might live. Nothing can be more proper than these annual reunions. I am aware of the reputation which this organization, as well as my own regiment, always enjoyed of unity and good fellowship among its officers and men. May you, therefore, continue to enjoy and perpetuate that friendship to the very latest hour of your lives.”

General Garfield had now to learn that the people in their eagerness, and especially the politicians in their unselfish devotion, had decreed him no further rest, even at Lawnfield. Pilgrimages to Mentor became the order of the day. For meanwhile the October elections had been held, and all had gone triumphantly for the Republicans. Indiana, chief of the so-called “doubtful States,” had whirled into line with an unequivocal majority. Ohio had put a quietus on all hopes of the Democracy to carry her electoral 467votes for Hancock. The high-blown anticipations of the friends of “the superb soldier” were shockingly shattered. And so all the paths of political preferment led to Mentor; and all the paths were trodden by way-worn pilgrims, who, with sandal-shoon and scallop-shell urged their course thither to see him who was now their hope. On the 19th of October a train of these pilgrims, rather more notable than the rest, came in from Indiana. It was the Lincoln Club of Indianapolis, four hundred strong. They were uniformed, and wore grotesque cockades extemporized out of straw hats into a sort of three-cornered conspicuity. The General was, none the less, greatly pleased with his visitors, and spared no pains to make their brief stay at Mentor a pleasure, if not a profit. The club was formally introduced by Captain M. G. McLean, and in response General Garfield said:—

“Gentlemen: You come as bearers of dispatches, so your chairman tells me. I am glad to hear the news you bring, and exceedingly glad to see the bringers of the news. Your uniform, the name of your club, the place from which you come, are all full of suggestions. You recollect the verses that were often quoted about the old Continental soldiers: “The old three-cornered hat and breeches, and all that were so queer.” Your costume brings back to our memory the days of the Continentals of 1776, whose principles I hope you represent. You are called the Lincoln Club, and Lincoln was himself a revival, a restoration of the days of ’76 and their doctrines. The great Proclamation of Emancipation, which he penned, was a second Declaration of Independence—broader, fuller, the New Testament of human liberty; and then you come from Indiana, supposed to be a Western State, but yet in its traditions older than Ohio. More than one hundred years ago a gallant Virginian went far up into your wilderness, captured two or three forts, took down the British flag, and reared the Stars and Stripes. Vincennes and Cahokia, and a post in Illinois, were a part of the capture. Your native State was one of the first fruits of that splendid fighting power which gave the whole West to the United States, and now these representatives of Indiana come representing the Revolution in your hats, representing Abraham Lincoln in your badges, and representing the victory both of the Revolution and of Lincoln in the news you bring. I could not be an American and fail to welcome your costumes, your badges, your news 468and yourselves. Many Indiana men were my comrades in the days of the war. I remember a regiment of them that was under my command near Corinth, when it seemed necessary for the defense of our forces to cut down a little piece of timber—seventy-five acres. We unboxed for my brigade about four thousand new axes, and the Fifty-first Regiment of Indiana Volunteers chopped down more trees in half a day than I supposed it was possible could fall in any forest in a week. It appears that in the great political forest from which you have just come, your axes have been busy again. I especially welcome the axmen of the Fifty-first Regiment, who may happen to be here, and thank you all, gentlemen, for the compliment of your visit, and for the good news you bring. I do not prize that news half so much for its personal relations to you and to me, as I do because it is a revival of the spirit of 1776, the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, the spirit of universal liberty, and the spirit of just and equal law all over this land. That gives your news its greatest significance. Gentlemen, I thank you again, and shall be glad to take you by the hand.”

After the speeches, the members of the Lincoln Club all had the pleasure of shaking the hand of General Garfield, and of hearing an individual welcome from his lips.

Two days afterwards, the Cuyahoga Veteran Corps came on a similar pilgrimage to Lawnfield, and were similarly well received. General M. D. Leggett, commander of the corps, made the introductory address; and, in answer, General Garfield said:

“Comrades: Any man that can see twelve hundred comrades in his front-door yard has as much reason to be proud as for any thing that can well happen to him in this world. After that has happened, he need not much care what else happens, or what else don’t happen. To see twelve hundred men, from almost every regiment of the State, and from regiments and brigades and divisions of almost every other State—to see the consolidated field report of the survivors of the war, sixteen years after it is over—is a great sight for any man to look on. I greet you all with gratitude for this visit. Its personal compliment is great.

“But there is another thought in it far greater than that to me and greater to you. Just over yonder about ten miles, when I was a mere lad, I heard the first political speech of my life. It was a speech that Joshua R. Giddings was making. He had come home to appeal to his 469constituents. A Southern man drew a pistol on him while he was speaking in favor of human liberty, and marched over toward him to shoot him down, to stop his speech and quench the voice of liberty. I remember but one thing that the old hero said in the course of that speech so long ago, and it was this: ‘I knew I was speaking for liberty, and I felt that if the assassin had shot me down, my speech would still go on and triumph.’ Well, now, gentlemen, there are twelve hundred, and the hundred times twelve hundred—the million of men that went out into the field of battle to fight for our Union—felt just as that speaker felt—that if they should all be shot down the cause of liberty would still go on. You and all the Union felt that around you, and above you, and behind you, were a force and a cause and an immortal truth that would outlive your bodies and mine, and survive all our brigades and all our armies and all our battles. Here you are to-day in the same belief. We shall all die, and yet we believe that after us the immortal truths for which we fought will live in a united Nation, a united people against all factions, against all section, against all division, so long as there shall be a continent of rivers and mountains and lakes. It was that great belief that lifted you all up into the heroic height of great soldiers in the war, and it is that belief that you cherish to-day, and carry with you in all your pilgrimages and in all your reunions. In that great belief, and in that inspiring faith, I meet you and greet you to-day, and with it we will go on to whatever fate has in store for us all.

“I thank you, comrades, for this demonstration of your faith and confidence and regard for me. Why, gentlemen, this home of mine will never be the same place again. I am disposed to think that a man does not take every thing away from a place when he takes his body away. It was said that long after the death of the first Napoleon, his soldiers believed that on certain anniversary days he came out and reviewed all his dead troops, he himself being dead; that he had a midnight review of those that had fought and fallen under his leadership. That, doubtless, was a fiction of the imagination; but I shall have to believe in all time hereafter the character and spirit and impressions of my comrades live on this turf, and under these trees, and in this portal; and it will be a part of my comradeship in all days to come.”

On the 28th of the month a delegation of Portage County citizens, two hundred strong, headed by Judge Luther Day, of Ravenna, visited Mentor, and paid the customary respects to him who 470was now regarded as well nigh certain to carry away the greatest honor known to the American people. After the company was formally introduced by Judge Day, the General, in response, said:

“Judge Day, Ladies and Gentlemen: I once read of a man who tried to wear the armor and wield the sword of some ancient ancestor, but found them too large for his stature and strength. If I should try at this moment to wear and sway the memories which your presence awakens, I should be overwhelmed, and wholly unable to marshal and master the quick-coming throng of memories which this semicircle of old friends and neighbors has brought to me. Here are school-fellows of twenty-eight years ago. Here are men and women who were my pupils a quarter of a century ago. Here are venerable men who, twenty one years ago, in the town of Kent, launched me upon the stormy sea of political life. I see others who were soldiers in the old regiment which I had the honor to command, and could I listen to the teaching and thoughtful words of my friend, the venerable late Chief Justice of Ohio, who has just spoken, without remembering that evening in 1861, of which he spoke too modestly, when he and I stood together in the old church at Hiram, and called upon the young men to go forth to battle for the Union, and be enlisted before they slept, and thus laid the foundation of the Forty-second Regiment? How can I forget all these things, and all that has followed? How can I forget that twenty-five years of my life were so braided and intertwined with the lives of the people of Portage County, when I see men and women from all its townships standing at my door? I can not forget these things while life and consciousness remain. No other period of my life can be like this. The freshness of youth, the very springtide of life, the brightening on toward noonday—all were with you and of you, my neighbors, my friends, my cherished comrades, in all the relations of social, student, military and political life and friendship. You are here, so close to my heart that I can not trust myself to an attempt to marshal these memories with any thing like coherence. To know that my neighbors and friends in Portage County, since the first day of my Congressional life, have never sent to any convention a delegate who was hostile to me; that through all the storm of detraction that roared around me, the members of the old guard of Portage County have never wavered in their faith and friendship, but have stood an unbroken phalanx with their locked shields above my head, and have given me their hearts in every 471contest. If a man can carry in his memory a jewel more precious than this, I am sure Judge Day has never heard what it is.

“Well, gentlemen, on the eve of great events, closing a great campaign, I look into your faces and draw from you such consolation as even you can not understand. Whatever the event may be, our post is secure, and whatever may befall me hereafter, if I can succeed in keeping the hearts of Portage County near to me I shall know that I do not go far wrong in any thing, for they are men who love the truth for truth’s sake, far more than they love any man.

“Ladies and gentlemen, all the doors of my house are open to you. The hand of every member of my family is outstretched to you. Our hearts greet you, and we ask you to come in.”

In the meantime there had occurred the most remarkable episode of the campaign. On the 21st of October appeared in the columns of a New York newspaper called Truth, a letter purporting to have been written on the 23d of January, 1880, to one H. L. Morey, of Lynn, Massachusetts. The communication was ostensibly a reply to a letter written to General Garfield with the purpose of obtaining his views on the great question of the Chinese in the United States, and more particularly to extract his ideas on the subject of Chinese cheap labor. This previous supposititious letter of Morey was never produced, but only the alleged answer of General Garfield, which was as follows:

“Dear Sir: Yours in relation to the Chinese problem came duly to hand. I take it that the question of employes is only a question of private and corporate economy. Individuals or companies have the right to buy labor where they can get it the cheapest. We have a treaty with the Chinese Government, which should be religiously kept until its provisions are abrogated by the action of the General Government, and I am not prepared to say that it should be abrogated until our great manufacturing interests are conserved in the matter of labor.

472

FAC-SIMILE OF THE MOREY LETTER.

473

FAC-SIMILE OF GARFIELD’S LETTER OF DENIAL.

474It was instantly manifested, on the appearance of this letter, that its almost certain effect would be to lose General Garfield the electoral votes of the Pacific States; for the settled sentiment of those States against Chinese immigration and the consequent competition of that people with American free labor, was known to be so pronounced as to make it sure that no party discipline could hold them in allegiance to a candidate who squinted at favoring the Celestials. There was instant alarm among the General’s friends, but their fears were quickly quieted by the prompt action of Garfield himself, who immediately sent to Hon. Marshall Jewell, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, the following dispatch:

“I will not break the rule I have adopted by making a public reply to campaign lies, but I authorize you to denounce the so-called Morey letter as a bold forgery, both in its language and sentiment. Until its publication I never heard of the existence of the Employers’ Union of Lynn, Massachusetts, nor of such a person as H. L. Morey.

The mails of the same day brought to General Garfield a copy of the Truth newspaper, containing a lithographic fac-simile of his alleged letter, and to this he made immediate answer as follows:

“Your telegram of this afternoon is received. Publish my dispatch of last evening, if you think best. Within the last hour the mail has brought me a lithographic copy of the forged letter. It is the work of some clumsy villain who can not spell nor write English, nor imitate my handwriting. Every honest and manly Democrat in America, who is familiar with my handwriting, will denounce the forgery at sight. Put the case in the hands of the ablest detectives at once, and hunt the rascal down.

The question of veracity was thus broadly opened between General Garfield and the mythical Morey and his backers. It did not take the American people long to decide between them. Except in the columns of extreme and reckless partisan newspapers 475and in the months of irresponsible demagogues, the matter was laid forever to rest. To convince the people that James A. Garfield was a liar was an up-hill work. The Republicans simply said that the Morey letter was an outrageous fraud, a forged expedient, a last resort to stay a lost cause.

In the investigation the following facts clearly appeared:

1. That no such person as H. L. Morey lived at or near Lynn, Massachusetts, at the time when the alleged Garfield letter was written.

2. That no such association as the supposed Morey pretended to represent, ever existed in Lynn.

3. The fac-simile of the letter printed in the columns of Truth showed, on close examination, all the internal evidences of forgery. It was a coarse and easily detected counterfeit of the General’s handwriting and signature, and contained, among other palpable absurdities, the word “companies,” spelled companys—a blunder utterly at variance with General Garfield’s scholarship and careful literary habit.

4. The fact that the sentiments of the letter were in broad and palpable contradiction of Garfield’s letter of acceptance and other public utterances on the Chinese question.

5. General Garfield’s positive and unreserved denial of authorship.

This put the abettors of the Morey business on the defensive, and they squirmed not a little. They said that Morey was dead; which was a necessary thing to say. They declared themselves innocent of all complicity. The letter had come into their hands in the regular way. They believed it to be true, etc. But all these allegations combined would not suffice to stay the inevitable reaction; for say what you will, do not the American people believe in fair play?

According to General Garfield’s expressed desire, the Morey case was carried to the courts. A certain Kenward Philp, a contributor to Truth, was charged with the forgery and arrested.

The grand jury in General Sessions presented an indictment against Joseph Hart, Louis A. Post, Kenward Philp and Charles A. 476Bryne for publishing in the newspaper Truth a criminal libel on General Garfield.

A long trial followed in the court of Oyer and Terminer, of New York. The suit was at first directed against the editors of Truth, and Philp was thus unearthed. As the trial progressed, although the evidence was inconclusive as to Philp’s authorship of the letter, yet every circumstance tended to show unmistakably that the whole affair had been a cunning conspiracy of some prodigious scoundrel to injure General Garfield’s chances for the Presidency.

The production of the letter and its envelope in Court betrayed at once the tampering to which the latter had been subjected, and settled the character of the disgraceful political maneuver which had given it birth. The alleged forger proved to be an English Bohemian, who contributed to the “story papers,” and who confessedly wrote the editorial articles defending the genuineness of the letter in the underground journal which first published it. The register of the Kirtland House, at Lynn, Massachusetts, was produced by the defense, and the name “H. L. Morey” was shown there in October, 1879, and again in February of 1880. But there was the most circumstantial evidence that the name had been recently written on each page of the register. The name had, undoubtedly, been added to the hotel register in each instance by some one who was anxious to bolster up the fraud.

The discovery was made that the envelope containing the forged letter had originally been addressed to some one else than H. L. Morey; and an enlarged photographic copy of the envelope revealed the fact that the original name was Edward or Edwin Fox or Cox, in care of some company in the city of New York. And in the next place it was shown that Edward Fox was employed upon the Truth!

The prosecution failed to convict the publishers of the Truth of criminal libel; but the country rendered again the old Scotch verdict of “Guilty—but not proven.” The Presidential election, however, was imminent, and it is not improbable that General Garfield’s vote on the Pacific Slope was injured by the base machinations of the Morey conspirators.

477On the 2d of November was held the Presidential election. The result had been foreseen. The Democracy could not stem the tide. The “Solid South,” the unfortunate plank in their platform declaring in favor of “a tariff for revenue only,” and the Morey forgery which had been charged up to their account, wrought their ruin. Garfield was overwhelmingly elected. The morning of the 3d revealed the general outline of the result. For a few days it was claimed by the Republicans that they had carried two or three of the Southern States, but this idea was soon dispelled. In a like unprofitable way the Democrats set up certain and sundry claims for some of the Northern States. One day they had carried New York; another day they had authentic information that California and Oregon were safe for Hancock. It was all in vain. The South all went Democratic, and all of the Northern States, except Nevada and one electoral vote from California, had been secured by the Republicans. The victory was unequivocal. The humble boy of Mother Garfield was elected President of the United States by 214 electoral votes against 155 for his antagonist, General Hancock. Thus, under the benign institutions of our country, was conferred upon one who began his life in a log cabin the highest civic honor known among the nations of the earth.

General Garfield spent election day at home without manifest excitement. In the evening, and later in the night, news began to arrive indicative of the result. Still no agitation. To some friends he said: “I have been busying myself with a calculation to determine the rate of voting to-day. During the hours in which the election has been in progress about 2000 ballots have dropped for every tick of the pendulum.” With the morning light there was no longer doubt. The title of General, won on the bloody field of Chickamauga, had given place to that of President-elect, won before the grandest bar of public opinion under the circle of the sun.

On the day succeeding the election, the first delegation bearing congratulations visited Mentor. It was composed of the Oberlin College faculty and students, headed by President Fairchild, and 478the occasion was one of more than usual interest. In reply to the speech of introduction, General Garfield said:

“Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: This spontaneous visit is so much more agreeable than a prepared one. It comes more directly from the heart of the people who participate, and I receive it as a greater compliment for that reason. I do not wish to be unduly impressible or superstitious, but, though we have outlived the days of the augurs, I think we have a right to think of some events as omens; and I greet this as a happy and auspicious omen, that the first general greeting since the event of yesterday is tendered to me by a venerable institution of learning. The thought has been abroad in the world a good deal, and with reason, that there is a divorce between scholarship and politics. Oberlin, I believe, has never advocated that divorce. But there has been a sort of cloistered scholarship in the United States that has stood aloof from active participation in public affairs, and I am glad to be greeted here to-day by the active, live scholarship of Ohio; and I know of no place where scholarship has touched upon the nerve center of the public so effectually as Oberlin. For this reason I am specially grateful for this greeting from the Faculty and students of Oberlin College and its venerable and venerated President. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this visit. Whatever the significance of yesterday’s event may be, it will be all the more significant for being immediately indorsed by the scholarship and culture of my State. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and thank your President for coming with you. You are cordially welcome.”

On the 6th of November the Republican Central Committee of Indiana repaired to Mentor and paid their respects to the coming Chief Magistrate; and on the 12th of the month the President, soon-to-be, was visited by the Republican Central Committee of Cuyahoga County. In answer to their salutation he said:

“Gentlemen: I have been saying a good many things during the past few weeks, and think I should be nearly through talking by this time. I should be the listener. But I can not refrain from saying that I am exceedingly glad to meet with you, a company of Republicans from my native county, and congratulate you upon what you have done. You 479have shown your strength and character in your work. You have shown that you are men of high convictions and observe them in all that you do. I have always taken pride in this county and in the city of Cleveland. The Forest City is well worthy to be the capital of the Western Reserve. It has the credit of our country at heart, never losing sight of it in the heat of political warfare. In no city in the country can be found more active and earnest men—solid business men. It is an honor to any one to have the confidence of such a people. I am glad to be here this evening to greet you and thank you for your kind invitation.” [Applause.]

Garfield had now more offices in prospect or actual possession than usually fall to the lot of one man. He was still a member of the House of Representatives in the Forty-sixth Congress; he was also United States Senator-elect for the State of Ohio; and, thirdly, he was President-elect of the United States. On the 10th of November, being perhaps content with the Presidency, he resigned his seats in the House and Senate, and thus for about four months became Citizen Garfield, of Ohio.

The 2d of December was rather a Red-letter day at Mentor. The Presidential electors for the State of Ohio, on that day called on the President-elect and tendered their best regards. In answer to their congratulations he spoke with much animation and feeling as follows:

“Gentlemen: I am deeply grateful to you for this call, and for these personal and public congratulations. If I were to look upon the late campaign and its result merely in the light of a personal struggle and a personal success, it would probably be as gratifying as any thing could be in the history of politics. If my own conduct during the campaign has been in any way a help and a strength to our cause, I am glad. It is not always an easy thing to behave well. If, under trying circumstances, my behavior as a candidate has met your approval, I am greatly gratified. But the larger subject—your congratulations to the country on the triumph of the Republican party—opens a theme too vast for me to enter upon now.

“I venture, however, to mention a reflection which has occurred to me in reference to the election of yesterday. I suppose that no political 480event has happened in all the course of the contest since the early spring, which caused so little excitement, and, indeed, so little public observation, as the Presidential election which was held yesterday at midday. The American people paid but little attention to the details of the real Presidential election, and for a very significant reason: although you and all the members of the Electoral Colleges had absolute constitutional and technical right to vote for any body you chose, and although no written law directed or suggested your choice, yet every American knew that the august sovereign of this Republic—the 9,000,000 of voters—on an early day in November had pronounced the omnipotent fiat of choice; and that sovereign, assuming as done that which he had ordered to be done, entertained no doubt but that his will would be implicitly obeyed by all the Colleges in all the States. That is the reason why the people were so serenely quiet yesterday. They had never yet found an American who failed to keep his trust as a Presidential Elector.

“From this thought I draw this lesson: that when that omnipotent sovereign, the American people, speaks to any one man and orders him to do a duty, that man is under the most solemn obligations of obedience which can be conceived, except what the God of the universe might impose upon him. Yesterday, through your votes, and the votes of others in the various States of the Union, it is probable (the returns will show) that our great political sovereign has laid his commands upon me. If he has done so, I am as bound by his will and his great inspiration and purpose as I could be bound by any consideration that this earth can impose upon any human being. In that presence, therefore, I stand and am awed by the majesty and authority of such a command.

“In so far as I can interpret the best aspirations and purposes of our august sovereign, I shall seek to realize them. You and I, and those who have acted with us in the years past, believe that our sovereign loves liberty, and desires for all inhabitants of the Republic peace and prosperity under the sway of just and equal laws. Gentlemen, I thank you for this visit; for this welcome; for the suggestions that your presence and your words bring, and for the hope that you have expressed, that in the arduous and great work before us we may maintain the standard of Nationality and promote all that is good and worthy in this country, and during the coming four years we may raise just as large a crop of peace, prosperity, justice, liberty, and culture as it is possible for forty-nine millions of people to raise.”

481At the close of the address there was a general hand-shaking à la Américaine; and then to add to the interest of the occasion the President’s aged mother, to whom more than ever of late his heart had turned with loyal devotion, was led into the apartment and presented to the distinguished guests by her more distinguished son.

Two days afterwards there was another assembly of visitors at Mentor. This time it was a delegation of colored Republicans—Black Republicans in both senses of the word—from South Carolina, headed by the negro orator, R. B. Elliott, who delivered the congratulatory address. In answer, the President-elect said:

“General Elliott and Gentlemen: I thank you for your congratulations on the successful termination of the great campaign that recently closed, and especially for your kind allusion to me personally for the part I bore in that campaign.

“What I have done, what I have said concerning your race and the great problem that your presence on this continent has raised, I have said as a matter of profound conviction, and hold to with all the meaning of the words employed in expressing it. What you have said in regard to the situation of your people, the troubles that they encountered, the evils from which they have suffered and still suffer, I listened to with deep attention, and shall give it full measure of reflection.

“This is not the time nor the place for me to indicate any thing as to what I shall have to say and do, by and by, in an official way. But this I may say: I noted as peculiarly significant one sentence in the remarks of General Elliott, to the effect that the majority of citizens, as he alleges, in some portions of the South, are oppressed by the minority. If this be so, why is it so? Because a trained man is two or three men in one, in comparison with an untrained man; and outside of politics and outside of parties, that suggestion is full, brim-full, of significance, that the way to make the majority always powerful over the minority, is to make its members as trained and intelligent as the minority itself. That brings the equality of citizenship; and no law can confer and maintain in the long run a thing that is not upheld with a reasonable degree of culture and intelligence. Legislation ought to do all it can. I have made these suggestions simply to indicate that the education of your race, in my judgment, lies at the base of the final solution of your great question; 482and that can not be altogether in the hands of the State or National Government. The Government ought to do all it properly can, but the native hungering and thirsting for knowledge that the Creator planted in every child, must be cultivated by the parents of those children to the last possible degree of their ability, so that the hands of the people shall reach out and grasp in the darkness the hand of the Government extended to help, and by that union of effort bring what mere legislation alone can not immediately bring.

“I rejoice that you have expressed so strongly and earnestly your views in regard to the necessity of your education. I have felt for years that that was the final solution.

“Those efforts that are humble and comparatively out of sight are, in the long run, the efforts that tell. I have sometimes thought that the men that sink a coffer-dam into the river, and work for months in anchoring great stones to build the solid abutments and piers, whose work is by and by hidden by the water and out of sight, do not get their share of the credit. The gaudy structure of the bridge that rests on these piers, and across which the trains thunder, is the thing that strikes the eye of the general public a great deal more than the sunken piers and hard work. The educational growth and the building up of industry, the economy and all that can help the foundations of real prosperity is the work that, in the long run, tells. Some Scotch poet said, or put it in the mouth of some prophet to say, that the time would come ‘when Bertram’s right and Bertram’s might shall meet on Ellengowan’s height,’ and it is when the might and the right of a people meet that majorities are never oppressed by minorities. Trusting, gentlemen, that you may take part in this earnest work of building up your race from the foundation into the solidity of intelligence and industry, and upon those bases at last see all your rights recognized, is my personal wish and hope for your people.”

About this time in November, the weather closed in stormy and cold, and, fortunately for Garfield, the tide of visitors ebbed, and he found a little rest. Late in the month, he made a brief visit to Washington, where he spent a few days among his friends and political advisers. After that, he returned to Mentor, and during December his life was passed in comparative quiet at his home.

483No doubt in these December days the vision of his boyhood rose many times to view. No doubt, in the silence of the winter evening, by his glowing hearth at Lawnfield, with the wife of his youth by his side and the children of their love around them, and the certain Presidency of the Republic just beyond, he realized in as full measure as falls to the lot of man that strange thing which is called success.

The New Year came in. The bleak January—bitter cold—went by. On the 16th of February, the distinguished Senator Conkling, of New York, made a visit to the President-elect. In the imagination of the political busybodies the event was fraught with great consequences. It was said that the haughty stalwart leader was on a mission looking to the construction of the new administration, to seek favor for his friends, and to pledge therefor the support—hitherto somewhat doubted—of himself and his partisans. The interview was named the “Treaty of Mentor;” but the likelihood is that the treaty consisted of no more than distinguished civilities and informal discussion of the personnel of the new Cabinet, etc. A few days later the President-elect made his departure for Washington to be inaugurated. The special train which was to bear himself and family away, left Mentor on the 28th of February. Fully three thousand people were gathered at the dépôt. Cheer after cheer was given in honor of him who had made the name of Mentor for ever famous. A farewell speech was delivered by Hon. A. L. Tinker, of Painesville, and to this the Chief Magistrate responded thus:

“Fellow-citizens and neighbors of Lake County: I thank you for the cordial and kindly greeting and farewell. You have come from your homes than which no happier are known in this country, from this beautiful lakeside full of that which makes country life happy, to give me your blessing and farewell. You do not know how much I leave behind me of friendship, and confidence, and home-like happiness; but I know I am indebted to this whole people for acts of kindness, of neighborly friendship, of political confidence, of public support, that few men have ever enjoyed at the hands of any people. You are a part of this great community of Northern Ohio, which, for so many years, have had no 484political desire but the good of your country; and now wishing but the promotion of liberty and justice, have had no scheme but the building up of all that was worthy and true in our Republic. If I were to search over all the world I could not find a better model of political spirit, of aspirations for the truth and the right, than I have found in this community during the eighteen years its people have honored me with their confidence. I thank the citizens of this county for their kindness, and especially my neighbors of Mentor, who have demanded so little of me, and have done so much to make my home a refuge and a joy. What awaits me I can not now speak of, but I shall carry to the discharge of the duties that lie before me, to the problems and dangers I may meet, a sense of your confidence and your love, which will always be answered by my gratitude. Neighbors, friends, and constituents, farewell.” [Great applause.]

Promptly at 1 P. M. the train moved off, and the crowd dispersed. At Ashtabula, that famous old seat of abolitionism, the President-elect was called out by the chorus of cheers, and, in answer, said:

“Citizens of Ashtabula: I greatly thank you for this greeting. I can not forget the tree that was planted so many years ago, and its planting so far watched and assisted by the people of Ashtabula County. It has grown to be a great tree. Its branches cover the whole Republic, and its leaves and fruit are liberty to all men. That is a work for the citizens of Ashtabula County to be proud of to the latest generation. If I, as your representative, have helped on the cause you so much have at heart, I am glad; and if in the future I can help to confirm and strengthen what you have done so much to build; if I can help to garner the harvest that you have helped to plant, I shall feel that I have done something toward discharging the debt of gratitude which I owe for your confidence and love. I thank you, fellow-citizens, for this farewell greeting, and I bid you good-bye.” [Great cheering.]

All along the route, as far as Altoona, Pennsylvania, where night overtook the train, the scene at Ashtabula was renewed, the President-elect responding pleasantly to the many greetings of the people.

We are now come to the last scene in the progress of James A. 485Garfield from the obscurity of a backwoods home to the high seat of the Presidency. Wonderful career! Magnificent development of American manhood and citizenship! The train carrying the President-elect reached Washington on the evening of the 29th of February. By the courtesy of Mrs. President Hayes the Garfield family was taken at once to the White House. A press note, speaking of the arrival, said:

“The General looks travel-tired and weary, although the excitement keeps him well stimulated, having something of the effect of rich-living. He says that when once his Cabinet is settled, and he begins home-life at the White House, he will have a comparative freedom from worry. He does not sleep excellently well. Probably no man ever did while engaged in making up a Cabinet.”

Here, then, we say, Good-night; but think of To-morrow!

CHAPTER XII. IN THE HIGH SEAT. — CONGRESS AND THE EXECUTIVE.

The morning of March 4, 1881, dawned—if such days may be said to dawn at all—dark and gloomy. The snow, which had been falling and melting into a very uncomfortable slush for days before, still continued. The “weather clerk” prophesied more snow and rain; and altogether the promise of this day was not good to the unnumbered thousands of Americans who had come to Washington to see Garfield inaugurated. The weather was such as to give a fresh impulse to the talk which is sometimes indulged about changing the date of Inauguration Day to May 4th.

Nevertheless, fair weather or foul, blue sky or gray, the new administration must begin. Shortly before eleven o’clock the military escort of the President and President-elect moved up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol. It was one of the finest military displays ever seen in Washington. Pennsylvania Avenue was lined with a vast multitude, whose continual cheers made a sound which could be heard afar, like the undying voices of the ocean waves.

President Hayes and President-elect Garfield rode in an open barouche, drawn by four horses. The First Cleveland Troop, splendidly equipped and drilled, marched before, as a guard of honor. Garfield looked weary. He remarked during the morning that the preceding week had been the most trying of his life. The effect of sleepless nights and deep anxiety was plainly visible on his countenance. Thus, with one of the four 487grand divisions of the immense procession as his immediate escort, heartily cheered all along the line, at half-past eleven the new President reached the Capitol.

Meanwhile the Senate Chamber and galleries had been rapidly filling with a distinguished throng. The center of attraction was in the front seat in the gallery, opposite the Vice-President’s desk, where sat the President-elect’s mother and wife and Mrs. Hayes. The venerable woman who sat at the head of the seat was regarded with interest by the whole audience, as she looked down upon the scene in which her son was the most conspicuous figure, with a quiet expression of joy that was very delightful to behold. Next to her sat Mrs. Hayes. Mrs. Garfield sat at her right, and was dressed very quietly. The three ladies chatted together constantly, and the eldest set the other two laughing more than once by her quaint remarks on the proceedings in the chamber below them.

The Senators and Senators-elect were all seated on the left side of the chamber, and the prominent members of the body were eagerly watched by the spectators. Among them were David Davis and Roscoe Conkling engaged in earnest conversation. Near these two sat Thurman and Hamlin, two able Senators whose last day in the Senate had come. The venerable Hamlin was evidently in a meditative mood as the last minutes of his long official life passed by, and was not inclined to be talkative. Thurman brought out the familiar snuff-box, took his last pinch of Senatorial snuff, and flung the traditional bandana handkerchief once more to the breeze.

Soon General Winfield S. Hancock, late Democratic candidate for the Presidency, came in, accompanied by Senator Blaine. Hancock was dressed in Major-General’s full uniform, looking in splendid condition, and conducted himself in a manly, modest fashion, which called forth warm applause, and commanded the respect of all spectators. Phil Sheridan was heartily welcomed when he came in soon after and took his seat by Hancock’s side.

After these, the Diplomatic Corps entered, presenting a brilliant 488appearance; and following them soon came the Judges of the Supreme Court. Then the Cabinet appeared, and immediately the President and President-elect. Vice-President-elect Arthur came last, and was presented to the Senate by Vice-President Wheeler. He spoke a few quiet, appreciative words in that elegant way he has of doing things, and then took the oath of office, after which, exactly at twelve—the Senate clock having been turned back five minutes—the Forty-Sixth Congress was adjourned without day.

The center of interest was now transferred to the east front of the Capitol, whither, as soon as the new Senators had been sworn in, the procession of distinguished people in the Chamber took up the line of march.

A great platform had been erected in front of the building, and the sight presented from it was a most striking one, for rods and rods in front and to either side were massed thousands upon thousands of spectators wedged in one solid mass, so that nothing but their heads could be seen. It was indeed

all uplifted in eager expectancy. In the center of the platform, at the front, was a little space raised a few inches above the level of the rest, upon which stood several chairs, the most noticeable being a homely and antique one, which tradition, if not history, says was occupied by Washington at his first inauguration, and which has certainly been used for many years on such occasions.

In this chair Mr. Garfield took his seat for a few minutes when he arrived, the others being occupied by President Hayes, Vice-President Arthur, Mr. Wheeler, Chief-Justice Waite, and Senators Pendleton, Bayard, and Anthony. The elder and younger Mrs. Garfield, Mrs. Hayes, and one or two other ladies, were also given seats here. At about a quarter of one o’clock General Garfield arose from the historic chair, and took from his pocket a roll of manuscript, tied at the corner with 489blue ribbon. Being introduced by Senator Pendleton, he proceeded to deliver the Inaugural Address.

“Fellow-Citizens—We stand to-day upon an eminence which overlooks a hundred years of national life, a century crowded with perils, but crowned with triumphs of liberty and love. Before continuing the onward march let us pause on this height for a moment to strengthen our faith and renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have traveled.

“It is now three days more than a hundred years since the adoption of the first written Constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The new Republic was then beset with danger on every hand. It had not conquered a place in the family of Nations. The decisive battle of the war for independence, whose centennial anniversary will soon be gratefully celebrated at Yorktown, had not yet been fought. The colonists were struggling, not only against the armies of Great Britain, but against the settled opinions of mankind, for the world did not believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves. We can not overestimate the fervent love, the intelligent courage, the saving common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.

“When they found, after a short time, that the Confederacy of States was too weak to meet the necessities of a glorious and expanding Republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a National Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with powers of self-preservation, and with ample authority for the accomplishment of its great objects.

“Under this Constitution the boundaries of freedom are enlarged, the foundations of order and peace have been strengthened, and the growth in all the better elements of National life have vindicated the wisdom of the founders and given new hope to their descendants.

“Under this Constitution our people long ago made themselves safe against danger from without, and secured for their mariners and flag equality of rights on all the seas. Under this Constitution twenty-five States have been added to the Union, with constitutions and laws framed and enforced by their own citizens to secure the manifold blessings of local and self-government.

“The jurisdiction of this Constitution now covers an area fifty times 490greater than that of the original thirteen states, and a population twenty times greater than that of 1780. The trial of the Constitution came at last under the tremendous pressure of civil war.

“We ourselves are witnesses that the Union emerged from the blood and fire of that conflict, purified and made stronger for all the beneficent purposes of good government, and now at the close of this, the first century of growth, with the inspirations of its history in their hearts, our people have lately reviewed the condition of the Nation, passed judgment upon the conduct and opinions of the political parties, and have registered their will concerning the future administration of the Government. To interpret and to execute that will in accordance with the Constitution is the paramount duty of the Executive. Even from this brief review it is manifest that the Nation is resolutely facing to the front, a resolution to employ its best energies in developing the great possibilities of the future. Sacredly preserving whatever has been gained to liberty and good government during the century, our people are determined to leave behind them all those bitter controversies concerning things which have been irrevocably settled, further discussion of which can only stir up strife and delay the onward march. The supremacy of the Nation and its laws should be no longer the subject of debate. That discussion, which for half a century threatened the existence of the Union, was closed at last in the high court of war by a decree from which there is no appeal: that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof shall continue to be the supreme law of the land, binding alike on the States and the people. This decree does not disturb the autonomy of the States, nor interfere with any of their necessary rules of local self-government, but it does fix and establish the permanent supremacy of the Union.

“The will of the Nation, speaking with the voice of battle and through the amended Constitution, has fulfilled the great promise of 1776 by proclaiming ‘Liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof.’

“The elevation of the negro race from slavery to full rights of citizenship, is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1776.

“No thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution; it has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people; it has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both.

491“It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than five millions of people, and has opened to each of them a career of freedom and usefulness. It has given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both races by making labor more honorable to one and more necessary to the other.

“The influence of this force will grow greater and bear richer fruit with coming years. No doubt the great change has caused serious disturbance to the Southern community—this is to be deplored, though it was unavoidable; but those who resisted the change should remember that in our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessing as long as law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizenship.

“The emancipated race has already made remarkable progress. With unquestionable devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear, ‘they have followed the light as God gave them to see the light.’

“They are rapidly laying the material foundation for self-support, widening their circle of intelligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that gather around the homes of the industrious poor. They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men.

“So far as my authority can lawfully extend, they shall enjoy full and equal protection of the Constitution and laws. The free enjoyment of equal suffrage is still in question, and a frank statement of the issue may aid its solution.

“It is alleged that in many communities negro citizens are practically denied freedom of the ballot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations.

“So far as the latter is true, it is no palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil which ought to be prevented, but to violate the freedom and sanctity of suffrage is more than an evil, it is a crime, which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself. Suicide is not a remedy.

“If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of a king, it should be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power 492and stifle its voice. It has been said that unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. It should be said, with the utmost emphasis, that this question of suffrage will never give repose or safety to the States or to the Nation, until each, within its own jurisdiction, makes and keeps the ballot free and pure by strong sanctions of law.

“But the danger which arises from ignorance in voters can not be denied. It covers a field far wider than that of negro suffrage and the present condition of that race. It is a danger that lurks and hides in the sources and fountains of power in every State. We have no standard by which to measure the disaster that may be brought upon us by ignorance and vice in citizens when joined to corruption and fraud in suffrage. The voters of the Union, who make and unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hangs the destiny of our government, can transmit their supreme authority to no successor save the coming generation of voters, who are the sole heirs of sovereign power. If that generation comes to its inheritance blinded by ignorance and corrupted by vice, the fall of the Republic will be certain and remediless. The census has already sounded the alarm in appalling figures, which mark how dangerously high the tide of illiteracy has arisen among our voters and their children. To the South the question is of supreme importance, but the responsibility for its existence and for slavery does not rest upon the South alone.

“The Nation itself is responsible for the extension of suffrage, and is under special obligations to aid in removing the illiteracy which it has added to the voting population. For North and South alike there is but one remedy: All the Constitutional power of the Nation and of the States, and all the volunteer forces of the people, should be summoned to meet this danger by the saving influence of universal education. It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors, and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work section and race should be forgotten, and partisanship should be unknown. Let our people find a new meaning in the divine oracle which declares that ‘a little child shall lead them,’ for our little children will soon control the destinies of the Republic.

“My countrymen, we do not now differ in our judgment concerning the controversies of the past generations, and fifty years hence our children will not be divided in their opinions concerning our controversies; they will surely bless their fathers—and their fathers’ God—that the Union was preserved; that slavery was overthrown, and that both races were 493made equal before the law. We may hasten on, we may retard, but we can not prevent the final reconciliation.

“Is it not possible for us now to make a truce with time by anticipating and accepting its inevitable verdict? Enterprises of the highest importance to our moral and material well-being invite us, and offer ample scope for the enjoyment of our best powers.

“Let all our people, leaving behind them the battle-fields of dead issues, move forward, and in the strength of liberty and restored union win the grandest victories of peace. The prosperity which now prevails is without parallel in our history. Fruitful seasons have done much to secure it, but they have not done all.

“The preservation of public credit and the resumption of specie payments, so successfully obtained by the administration of my predecessors, have enabled our people to secure the blessings which the seasons brought.

“By the experience of commercial relations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afforded the only safe foundation for a monetary system. Confusion has recently been created by variations in the relative value of the two metals; but I confidently believe that arrangements can be made between the leading commercial nations which will secure the general use of both metals. Congress should provide that the compulsory coinage of silver, now required by law, may not disturb our monetary system by driving either metal out of circulation.

“If possible, such adjustment should be made that the purchasing power of every coined dollar will be exactly equal to its debt-paying power in all the markets of the world. The chief duty of a National Government, in connection with the currency of the country, is to coin and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal-tender.

“The present issue of United States notes has been sustained by the necessities of war; but such paper should depend for its value and currency upon its convenience in use and its prompt redemption in coin at the will of the holder, and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes are not money, but promises to pay money. If the holders demand it, the promises should be kept. The refunding of the National debt at a low rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of National bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.

494“I venture to refer to the position I have occupied on the financial question during a long service in Congress, and to say that time and experience have strengthened the opinions I have so often expressed on these subjects. The finances of the Government shall suffer no detriment which it may be possible for my administration to prevent.

“The interests of agriculture deserve more attention from the Government than they have yet received. The farms of the United States afford homes and employment for more than one-half of our people, and furnish much the largest part of all our exports. As the Government lights our coasts for the protection of the mariners and the benefit of our commerce, so it should give to the tillers of the soil the lights of practical science and experience.

“Our manufacturers are rapidly making us industrially independent, and are opening to capital and labor new and profitable fields of employment. This steady and healthy growth should still be maintained. Our facilities for transportation should be promoted by the continued improvement of our harbors and the great interior water-ways and by the increase of our tonnage on the ocean.

“The development of the world’s commerce has led to an urgent demand for a shortening of the great sea voyage around Cape Horn by constructing ship-canals or railways across the Isthmus which unites the two continents. Various plans to this end have been suggested and will need consideration, but none of them have been sufficiently matured to warrant the United States in extending pecuniary aid.

“The subject is one which will immediately engage the attention of the Government with a view to a thorough protection of American interests. We will argue no narrow policy, nor seek peculiar or exclusive privileges in any commercial route; but, in the language of my predecessors, I believe it to be ‘the right and duty of the United States to assert and maintain such supervision and authority over any inter-oceanic canal across the Isthmus that connects North and South America as will protect our National interests.’

“The Constitution guarantees absolute religious freedom. Congress is prohibited from making any laws respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting free exercise thereof.

“The Territories of the United States are subject to the direct legislative authority of Congress, and hence the General Government is responsible for any violation of the Constitution in any of them. It is, 495therefore, a reproach to the Government that in the most populous of the Territories this constitutional guarantee is not enjoyed by the people, and the authority of Congress is set at naught. The Mormon Church not only offends the moral sense of mankind by sanctioning polygamy, but prevents the administration of justice through the ordinary instrumentalities of the law.

“In my judgment it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the utmost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit within its jurisdiction all criminal practices, especially of that class which destroy family relations and endanger social order. Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the National Government.

“The Civil Service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law, for the good of the service itself. For the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against a waste of time and obstruction of public business, caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall, at the proper time, ask Congress to fix the tenure of minor offices of the several Executive Departments, and prescribe the grounds upon which removals shall be made during the terms for which the incumbents have been appointed.

“Finally, acting always within the authority and limitations of the Constitution, invading neither the rights of States nor the reserved rights of the people, it will be the purpose of my administration to maintain the authority, and in all places within its jurisdiction, to enforce obedience to all laws of the Union; in the interests of the people, to demand rigid economy in all the expenditures of the Government, and to require honest and faithful service of all executive officers, remembering that offices were created not for the benefit of the incumbents or their supporters, but for the service of the Government.

“And now, fellow-citizens, I am about to assume the great trust which you have committed to my hands. I appeal to you for that earnest and thoughtful support which makes this Government in fact, as it is in law, a government of the people. I shall greatly rely upon the wisdom and patriotism of Congress and of those who may share with me the responsibilities and duties of the administration, and upon our efforts to promote the welfare of this great people and their Government I reverently invoke the support and blessing of Almighty God.”

496

JAMES G. BLAINE.

The address was delivered in a deliberate, forcible manner. The President’s appearance was dignified, and even imposing. That splendid voice, with its magnetic power and fine tone, captivated his admiring audience, who listened patiently throughout the entire thirty-five minutes. At its close Garfield turned toward the Chief Justice who advanced and administered the oath of office, the Clerk of the Supreme Court holding a beautifully-bound Bible, upon which the oath was taken. Then occurred as impressive an episode as was ever seen in official life. After the new President had been congratulated by ex-President Hayes and Chief Justice Waite, who stood next to him, he turned around, took his aged mother by the hand and kissed her. The old lady’s cup of happiness at this moment seemed full and running over. It is quite safe to say that nobody, not even Garfield himself, felt more enjoyment at the spectacle of his elevation than this woman whose mind ranged from the days of his obscure and poverty-stricken boyhood to his present elevation, and nobody witnessed the sight but rejoiced at her happiness. Mrs. Eliza Garfield is the first example of a President’s mother having a home in the White House. And it was a pleasure to the people to know that special arrangements had been made there for her accommodation.

Garfield next kissed his wife, then shook hands with Mrs. 497Hayes, and speedily found the grasp of his hand sought by every body within reach, from Vice-President down through Congressmen to the unknown strangers who could manage to push within reaching distance.

WILLIAM WINDOM.

Meanwhile the elements had begun to modify their rigors. The bright sunlight breaking through the clouds, was reflected from the snow, and nature seemed less cheerless. At last, the Presidential party, jostled a good deal on the way, returned through the rotunda to the Senate wing of the Capitol, and prepared for the ride to the White House. Taking their place near the head of the procession, they passed up to the other end of the Avenue, receiving on the way the applause of the multitude. President Garfield and party then took position on a stand erected for the purpose in front of a building near the Avenue, and from this point reviewed the procession, which filed past for two full hours. There were over 15,000 men in line, and the whole number of spectators was doubtless over 100,000.

Immediately after review of the procession, President Garfield received the Williams College Association, of Washington, with visiting Alumni to the number of fifty, in the East Room of the Executive Mansion. Rev. Mark Hopkins, ex-president of the college, eloquently presented the congratulations of the Alumni. 498President Garfield made an appropriate response, in which he exhibited considerable emotion. Afterward the Alumni were presented to the mother and wife of the President. Twenty members of President Garfield’s class were among the Alumni present.

ROBERT T. LINCOLN.

The festivities of March fourth ended at night with a magnificent display of fireworks, a great inaugural ball in the Museum building, and numerous receptions at the houses of the most distinguished residents at the Capital.

On the fifth of March, President Garfield sent to the Senate, then in extra session, a list of nominations for his Cabinet. These were unanimously confirmed. They were: Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, of Maine; Secretary of the Treasury, William Windom, of Minnesota; Secretary of War, Robert T. Lincoln, of Illinois; Secretary of the Navy, Wm. H. Hunt, of Louisiana; Secretary of the Interior, S. J. Kirkwood, of Iowa; Attorney-General, Wayne MacVeagh, of Pennsylvania; Postmaster-General, Thomas L. James, of New York.

499This proved an admirable selection. Its components are men who stand well with the country, and whose services in other positions had given sufficient evidence of honesty and capacity to recommend them to the American people. And it involved no antagonistic elements.

WILLIAM H. HUNT.

Again, this new Cabinet did not take its bias from any strong political element. It was not a Grant-Conkling selection; nor even a Blaine Cabinet. It was a Garfield Cabinet, in which the President was unmistakably the central figure and the center of power.

James G. Blaine, Secretary of State, was leader of the group. His prominent position in his party and before the country made his nomination generally acceptable, and his long and intimate acquaintance with affairs of state gave him the requisite experience. Undoubtedly, Blaine is one of the most magnificently endowed men, in intellectual power, now in public life.

Secretary Windom had a difficult place to fill in following John Sherman as Secretary of the Treasury. Sherman had heartily recommended Windom for the place, and he was probably the best choice that could have been made. He had been an anti-third term man, of course, but was very friendly with such Stalwarts as Conkling and Arthur, and was thus a good factor in an administration which did not want to antagonize these men, although not yielding to them.

The nomination of Robert T. Lincoln was very largely the result 500of sentiment—but a very good sentiment. He had been a respectable lawyer, who attended carefully to his business, and, under trying circumstances, had conducted himself with discretion. It happened that he was a favorite of Senator Logan, and that President Garfield desired to make his Cabinet agreeable to the Senator; also, that young Lincoln had been, according to his opportunities, a Third-termer, and it was the desire of the President to conciliate the Third-termers, so far as it could be done without giving his policy an unwarranted slant; and it happened also that General Garfield, as we have seen from his addresses years previous to this time, held the memory of Abraham Lincoln in the deepest reverence, and felt a solicitude to make his own elevation to the Presidency honor that memory. Under these circumstances, and from these considerations, the appointment of Mr. Robert T. Lincoln to be Secretary of War came naturally about.

DR. D. HAYES AGNEW.

Hunt was appointed to represent the South.

Kirkwood was a man whom Garfield had long held in high esteem, and was familiar with public business.

Wayne MacVeagh, though brother-in-law to Don Cameron, did not belong to the Cameron political clan. He was chosen as a Republican of independent proclivities, and a lawyer of whose ability there could be no question.

501

WAYNE MACVEAGH.

Mr. James, Postmaster of New York City, was appointed Postmaster-General for purely business reasons, and because he was not only believed to be the best man for the place, but was one of the few first-class public men in New York not fully committed to one or the other of the personal or political factions of Republicans in that State.

Thus Garfield tried, and with a degree of success, to appoint a Cabinet which should not give any one cause for organizing an opposition to the Administration. He certainly had the good will of all Republicans, and even his political enemies conceded that he started out under bright auspices. The country itself was prosperous, and the most far-sighted men joined the unreflecting multitude in predictions of a happy, uneventful administration of four years, under the peaceful rule of a popular President.

THOMAS L. JAMES.

Four days after his inauguration, a company of fifty ladies, members of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, called at the White House to present a portrait of Mrs. Lucy Webb Hayes, just completed by Mr. Huntington. It will be remembered 502that Mrs. Hayes had won the approval of many good people by declining to put wine on the table at the White House. These ladies now desired to impress on the new incumbents the desirability of continuing that policy. In responding to the presentation speech, President Garfield received the portrait, and referred to the temperance question thus:

“Nothing I can say will be equal to my high appreciation of the character of the lady whose picture is now added to the treasures of this place. She is noble, the friend of all good people. Her portrait will take, and I hope will always hold in this house, an honored place. I have observed the significance which you have given to this portrait from the stand-point you occupy, and in connection with the work in which you are engaged. First, I approve most heartily what you have said in reference to the freedom of individual judgment and action, symbolized in this portrait. There are several sovereignties in this country. First, the sovereignty of the American people, then the sovereignty nearest to us all—the sovereignty of the family—the absolute right of each family to control its affairs in accordance with the conscience and convictions of duty of the heads of the family. In the picture before us that is bravely symbolized. I have no doubt the American people will always tenderly regard their household sovereignty, and however households may differ in their views and convictions, I believe that those differences will be respected. Each household, by following its own convictions, and holding itself responsible to God, will, I think, be respected 503by the American people. What you have said concerning the evils of intemperance, meets my most hearty concurrence. I have been, in my way, and in accordance with my own convictions, an earnest advocate of temperance, not in so narrow a sense as some, but in a very definite and practical sense. These convictions are deep, and will be maintained. Whether I shall be able to meet the views of all people in regard to all the phases of that question remains to be seen, but I shall do what I can to abate the great evils of intemperance. I shall be glad to have the picture upon these walls; I shall be glad to remember your kind expressions to me and my family; and in your efforts to better mankind by your work, I hope you will be guided by wisdom and that you will achieve a worthy success.”

President Hayes had left the new administration a heritage of hatred from the stalwart element of the Republican party. It was President Garfield’s chief wish, politically, to heal up the chasm which the past had opened, and not to recognize one faction more than another. Notwithstanding these purposes, the deadly breach which had yawned apart during the Hayes administration, was an ominous thing. The defeat of the Stalwarts at Chicago, by Garfield, naturally tended to transfer their hostility from the outgoing to the incoming President. For months before the inauguration, the embarrassment which threatened Garfield was foreseen by the country. On the one hand were the men who had nominated him in the Chicago Convention,—men who, risking every political prospect, rebelled from the command of their leaders, such as Conkling, Cameron, and Logan, and defeated Grant. To such, Garfield owed his nomination. On the other hand was the stalwart element, still bruised and sore from the defeat at Chicago. Yet they had entered heartily into the campaign. They had swallowed their chagrin, and outwardly, if not inwardly, submitted with good grace to their defeat, and wheeled into line of battle for the fall election. To these men, Garfield was largely indebted for his election. In his administration, how could he recognize either one of these elements without arousing the antagonism of the other? This was the riddle which he must solve.

The breach between the two was as deadly as ever. The Cabinet 504was a compromise, but the Grant men were afraid of it, with Blaine so near the throne.

For a few days after the inauguration, the surface of the sea was tolerably smooth; but acute political mariners prophesied rough weather. The two wings of the party in New York were waiting to fly at each other’s throats at the first opportunity. The balance of power between the two elements was the official patronage of the President. Into whose lap the plum was thrown, to that wing belonged the ascendancy.

Senator Conkling’s chief political purpose was to chastise the men who had deserted his standard at Chicago. This he could best accomplish by controlling the Federal patronage himself; but failing in that, his next object was to cause the patronage to be distributed to neutrals, thereby preventing it from becoming an element at all in the fight.

Senators Conkling, Logan, and Cameron, as well as Sherman and Blaine, were visitors at the White House, and left in pleasant humor. In the eyes of the country it seemed plain that Conkling had made the disposition of the New York patronage the price of his friendship to the new administration. Every body was on tiptoe to see what the President would do. On March 22d, he sent to the Senate, for confirmation, the names of Stewart L. Woodford, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Asa W. Tenney, for the Eastern District; Lewis F. Payne, to be United States Marshal, for the Southern, and Clinton D. McDougall, for the Northern District of New York, and John Tyler, to be Collector of Customs at Buffalo.

This move was interpreted by the country to mean a great victory for Conkling, and that the New York patronage was controlled by him. Other nominations, in Conkling’s supposed interest, were those of James in the Cabinet, and Morton, Minister to France.

But on the following day, President Garfield nominated, for Collector of the port of New York, William H. Robertson. In New York, and more or less throughout the country, this was a great surprise. But it was not an objectionable 505nomination. Then it was Robertson who headed the break in the New York delegation at Chicago. He had risked much; he had been very largely instrumental in nominating Garfield. Gratitude is a noble quality of human nature, and the President was a man of generous motives and impulses. The general expression from the country upon the Robertson nomination was one of approval. To disinterested people, far away from the heat and dust of the battle, it was, coupled with the nominations of the preceding day, plainly a declaration of an intention to recognize each branch of the party in New York. Weaker men would have recognized neither, giving the offices to neutrals, and pleasing nobody. Mere partisan men would have recognized one faction only. Garfield tried to recognize both. A deeper significance also lay in the Robertson nomination. Whether Garfield meant it or not, it was, in a sense, a declaration of independence. Garfield, with his lion-like courage, his intellectual powers, his moral greatness, could not, in fact or in appearance, allow his administration to be manipulated by outside influence. It was said that Mr. Blaine was the author of the Robertson nomination; that it was his revenge on Conkling. Garfield said repeatedly, even on the bed of pain, that it was his own in every sense, and that Blaine had not known that it was intended to be made.

Whatever President Garfield intended by the nomination of Robertson, Senator Conkling treated it as a declaration of war. In their views of what followed, men will differ. It is not for these pages, penned so soon in the darkness of an awful assassination, to do more than relate the facts, though it is impossible for a biographer of the dead to do other than sympathize with him. Senator Conkling said that Hayes had never done a thing so terrible. He said that the nomination of Robertson, the most objectionable man possible—without consultation with the Senators from New York, or without their being informed of the intention to make a change in the most important office in the State, was a grievous personal 506and political wrong. He said that the long dispute as to whether a small faction of New York Republicans, or four-fifths of the party in the State, as represented by him, were to be treated by the Administration as the Republican party of New York, had at last to be settled finally and forever.

The situation was one of intense interest. Popular opinion supported the President, though not a few took the side of Conkling. The latter, together with Platt, the junior Yew York Senator, resolved to fight the confirmation of Robertson. They believed that, with the Senate evenly balanced, they could, with the help of the Democrats, prevent Robertson’s confirmation. It was a battle of giants. Men wondered whether, when war was declared, Garfield would strike back or not. The Stalwarts offered only one way of compromise—the withdrawal of Robertson’s nomination. But the President was firm. Efforts were made to induce Robertson to ask the President to withdraw his name in the interest of harmony. But he scouted the idea. The State Senate of New York, of which Robertson was the presiding officer, passed a resolution in support of the Administration. On behalf of the President’s action it was claimed, that it was his constitutional right to nominate; that the New York Senators overstepped their prerogative in attacking his action; that the office of Collector of the Port was a national office, and not rightfully a part of the local patronage; that the Executive should select the man through whose hands passed nine-tenths of the tariff revenues of the country.

There had been a dead-lock of the Senate over the nomination of its officers, and this still continued, and the President was, in consequence, embarrassed by the failure to act on any of his nominations. It began to be thought that this delay, covered by the pretense of securing Mahone, of Virginia, to the Republicans, was really a scheme to prevent any action on the President’s nominations.

Meanwhile, the administration had to deal with problems more important to the country than the Robertson nomination. 507Two hundred millions of six per cent. bonds were shortly to become redeemable. It was every way desirable that the bonds should be redeemed and the rate of interest on the public debt reduced. To issue bonds under the existing laws, in order to raise money to redeem the six per cents., would require the new bonds to be issued at four per cent. for thirty years, or four and a half per cent. for twenty years. These rates of interest were too high, and the time for the bonds to run too long. In case the Government acquired the means to pay them off before they were due, still the interest would keep running. There were grave objections to calling an extra session of Congress. Garfield and the country were afraid of the unsettling influence of our national legislature. Early in his Congressional career, Garfield had said, “if the laws of God were as vacillating as the laws of this country, the universe would be reduced to chaos in a single day.” Above all things, the business of the country demanded a rest from congressional tinkering.

When powerful, and it was thought overwhelming influences pressed upon President Garfield the policy of an extra session of Congress, he sent to the Secretary of the Treasury a call for full information as to the powers he had under existing laws. It was a wise conclusion that it might be easier to hunt up old laws than to have new ones made. Whatever the old laws permitted was certain, but a fresh Congress is uncertain, especially on finance.

The Secretary found that there was no law to prevent the Government from using its credit and business foresight in handling and refunding its indebtedness. The plan which President Garfield and Secretary Windom evolved was absolutely original and proved to be the highest statesmanship. Garfield was at home on questions of finance.

A circular was issued to the holders of the six per cents., saying that after the following July 1st, interest would cease, and the bonds be redeemed as fast as presented. If, however, the holders preferred to retain the bonds, and receive 508three and a half per cent., at the pleasure of the Government, they could do so.

As the event showed, hardly any bonds were presented for redemption. And without any legislation the interest on that portion of the public debt was reduced from six to three and a half per cent., and all that without the expense of a new issue of bonds, or the disadvantage of a debt not maturing till long after the Government would probably be ready to pay it. This financial feat attracted the attention of European States, and was pronounced one of the most masterly financial schemes of history.

While the Senate was still at a dead-lock over the offices of Secretary and Sergeant-at-Arms, and the Robertson quarrel grew blacker and blacker, President Garfield and his cabinet found time to commence an investigation of the alleged gigantic frauds in the post-office department. It promised to engulf and destroy some of the best workers of the Republican party, but the President, in spite of terrific pressure, and in spite of the battle raging over the Robertson matter, set his face like brass against all corruption. The Star Route contracts, though they may not fall within reach of the law, were of the following character: In lonely mountain districts of the West, where a mail for miners’ camps would be needed about once in two weeks, a contract would be let for carrying the mail at say $500 a trip, making the cost for the line for the year about $13,000. Then, under pretense of the need of more mails on account of the development of the West, Congress would be induced to order a daily instead of a biweekly mail. By this “expediting,” the contractor was enabled, under the old rate of $500 per trip, to make $150,000 a year out of the line. Many times the mail bags in these “expedited” routes are said to have been empty as they were carried through the mountains. Postmaster-General James and Attorney-General MacVeagh were the principal prosecutors of the investigation.

Meanwhile, the storm raged with ever-growing fierceness 509around the President. The Republican Senatorial caucus sent committee after committee to him to induce the withdrawal of Robertson’s name. He was subjected to every possible pressure and influence, but Grant himself never held a position with greater firmness. Conkling, however, proposed and carried through the Republican caucus the following plan, by which the dead-lock was to be broken temporarily, allowing the Senate to go into executive session: All nominations that were not opposed by one Senator from the nominee’s State were first to be acted upon. The rest could take care of themselves. This admitted about every one except Robertson to the consideration of the Senate. The plan was popularly supposed to mean the confirmation of all unopposed nominations, including those of Senator Conkling’s friends, and then either an adjournment sine die, or a breaking of the quorum, by absentees, so as to prevent any action on Robertson’s name till December. This would be a victory for the New York Senator.

But the President, though possessing too much self-respect to make this a personal controversy, was yet brave and strategic. Shortly after the Senate went into executive session, the President’s private secretary arrived with a message which fell like a thunderbolt on that body. The message withdrew the nominations of Senator Conkling’s friends. It was a checkmate. The plan of the caucus was foiled. President Garfield assigned as his reason simply that the discrimination which was attempted, in acting on all the nominations from the Stalwart element and refusing to act on the solitary representative of the opposite element, was wrong and unfair. He said that the President’s duty was to nominate, and that the Senate’s sworn duty was to confirm or reject. To refuse to do either was surpassing their prerogative. To show how consistent the President was in this struggle, with views held long years before he ever thought of the Presidency, we insert an extract from an article by him on “A Century of Congress,” in the Atlantic Monthly, for July, 1877:

“In the main, the balance of powers so admirably adjusted and distributed among the three great departments of the Government have been safely preserved. It was the purpose of our fathers to lodge absolute power nowhere; to leave each department independent within its own sphere, yet, in every case, responsible for the exercise of its discretion. But some dangerous innovations have been made.

“And first, the appointing power of the President has been seriously encroached upon by Congress, or rather by the members of Congress. Curiously enough, this encroachment originated in the act of the Chief Executive himself. The fierce popular hatred of the Federal party, which resulted in the elevation of Jefferson to the Presidency, led that officer to set the first example of removing men from office on account of political opinions. For political causes alone he removed a considerable number of officers who had recently been appointed by President Adams, and thus set the pernicious example. His immediate successors made only a few removals for political reasons. But Jackson made his political opponents who were in office feel the full weight of his executive hand. From that time forward the civil offices of the Government became the prizes for which political parties strove; and, twenty-five years ago, the corrupting doctrine that ‘to the victors belong the spoils’ was shamelessly announced as an article of political faith and practice. It is hardly possible to state with adequate force the noxious influence of this doctrine. It was bad enough when the Federal officers numbered no more than eight or ten thousand; but now, when the growth of the country and the great increase in the number of public offices occasioned by the late war, have swelled the civil list to more than eighty thousand, and to the ordinary motives for political strife this vast patronage is offered as a reward to the victorious party, the magnitude of the evil can hardly be measured. The public mind has, by degrees, drifted into an acceptance of this doctrine; and thus an election has become a fierce, selfish struggle between the ‘ins’ and the ‘outs,’ the one striving to keep and the other to gain the prize of office. It is not possible for any President to select, with any degree of intelligence, so vast an army of office-holders without the aid of men who are acquainted with the people of the various sections of the country. And thus it has become the habit of Presidents to make most of their appointments on the recommendation of members of Congress. During the last twenty-five years, it has been understood, 511by the Congress and the people, that offices are to be obtained by the aid of Senators and Representatives, who thus become the dispensers, sometimes the brokers, of patronage. The members of State legislatures who choose a senator, and the district electors who choose a representative, look to the man of their choice for appointments to office. Thus, from the President downward, through all the grades of official authority, to the electors themselves, civil office becomes a vast corrupting power, to be used in running the machine of party politics.

“This evil has been greatly aggravated by the passage of the Tenure of Office Act, of 1867, whose object was to restrain President Johnson from making removals for political cause. But it has virtually resulted in the usurpation, by the Senate, of a large share of the appointing power. The President can remove no officer without the consent of the Senate; and such consent is not often given, unless the appointment of the successor nominated to fill the proposed vacancy is agreeable to the Senator in whose State the appointee resides. Thus it has happened that a policy inaugurated by an early President has resulted in seriously crippling the just powers of the Executive, and has placed in the hands of Senators and Representatives a power most corrupting and dangerous.

“Not the least serious evil resulting from this invasion of the Executive functions by members of Congress is the fact that it greatly impairs their own usefulness as legislators. One-third of the working hours of Senators and Representatives is hardly sufficient to meet the demands made upon them in reference to appointments to office. To sum up in a word: the present system invades the independence of the Executive, and makes him less responsible for the character of his appointments; it impairs the efficiency of the legislator by diverting him from his proper sphere of duty and involving him in the intrigues of aspirants for office; it degrades the civil service itself by destroying the personal independence of those who are appointed; it repels from the service those high and manly qualities which are so necessary to a pure and efficient administration; and, finally, it debauches the public mind by holding up public office as the reward of mere party zeal.

“To reform this service is one of the highest and most imperative duties of statesmanship. This reform can not be accomplished without a complete divorce between Congress and the Executive in the matter of appointments. It will be a proud day when an Administration Senator or 512Representative, who is in good standing in his party, can say, as Thomas Hughes said, during his recent visit to this country, that though he was on the most intimate terms with the members of his own administration, yet it was not in his power to secure the removal of the humblest clerk in the civil service of his government.”

It is easy to see the principle which lay behind the nomination of Robertson independently of the New York Senators, and the demand that it should be acted upon by the Senate. It is idle to say that Mr. Blaine or any other man made the President his tool. President Garfield’s policy was the logical outgrowth of his opinions, and it was he who, opinions and all, was elected by the people.

The withdrawal of the other nominations, it was conceded, defeated the New York Senators. The country watched the situation with interest, if not anxiety. The next move of Conkling was anxiously expected. It came.

On May 16, 1881, Vice-President Arthur handed the Reading Clerk a little sheet of note-paper containing these words:

Sir: Will you please announce to the Senate that my resignation as Senator of the United States from the State of New York has been forwarded to the Governor of the State.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servant,

He read it in the monotonous sing-song, uninflected way of which he is master, but before he had finished all eyes were upon him, and all ears were opened to receive the announcement. Astonishment sat on every face. Each man looked to his neighbor in questioning wonder. A murmur of surprised comment crept around the chamber. Then some incredulous Senators demanded a second reading of the momentous missive. Once more the clerk chanted its contents, while the incredulous ones, convinced against their will, drank in the simple statement of the startling fact. Then the Vice-President handed the clerk another note of like tenor, running thus:

Sir: I have forwarded to the Governor of the State of New York my resignation as Senator of the United States for the State of New York. Will you please announce the fact to the Senate?

This was read amid the increasing hum of astonishment in the galleries and on the floor. Mr. Hill, of Georgia, had the cruelty to suggest that the officers ought now to be elected. Then Mr. Burnside, endeavoring very hard to look as though nothing unusual had occurred, rose nervously and presented the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, recommending the adoption of the Morgan-Monroe Doctrine resolution, which he gave notice he would call up to-morrow. His carefully prepared report was read, but nobody paid the slightest attention to it. All were absorbed in the consideration of the step taken by Conkling, its meaning, and its probable effect.

Three days after, William H. Robertson was confirmed Collector of the Port of New York, with scarcely a dissenting voice.

No more exciting and stormy experience ever fell to the lot of any Administration than that which marked the first seventy-five days of Garfield’s. The first days in the Presidential chair are full enough of embarrassment without a tremendous struggle with a powerful element of the incumbent’s own party. A new President feels that fifty millions of people are watching him critically. From the privacy of the citizen’s life, the new President passes into the most glaring sunlight. He is surrounded by hundreds of detectives and spies, and subjected to the most impudent scrutiny. Things which all his life have been sacredly private, the sweet affections of the fireside, care for parents, anxious consultations with the wife, training of the children, all suddenly become public property. The number of coats he wears, the size of his hat, the purchase of a new pair of gloves, the dresses of his wife, a walk or drive, attendance at church, all these things are spread before the eyes of the world in the most exaggerated and distorted form.

514If a member of the Cabinet calls and remains in private consultation for two hours, the President is said to be the cat’s-paw of secretary so-and-so. If the same secretary calls again and remains but five minutes, it is reported that a disagreement has occurred, and the said secretary’s resignation will be demanded. If the President, worn out and disgusted with the besetments of office-seekers and the malignant attacks on his character, slips away from the cares of State for a day or two, he is said not to be earning his salary. If he does not take up with every whispered scandal, and call upon Congress for a committee of investigation, he is openly charged with corruption and a disposition to cover up frauds. If, on the other hand, he does ask for an investigation, he is said to be using his official power to injure his enemies. The strain, the worry, the insults, the outrages, the scrutiny, the misconstruction, which a new President has to undergo are enough for one human heart to bear. Add to this such an unparalleled battle as that into which Garfield was forced almost from his inauguration day, and one would think the burden hard to increase.

But this was not all he had to endure. In the midst of the storm, his wife, from whom he had so long drawn consolation and support, was stricken down with the most malignant form of typhoid fever. Dr. Boynton, her home physician, was hastily summoned from Ohio. But the sufferer grew worse. This was a calamity which no courage, no calm conservatism, no intellectual resources, no popular support, could remedy. Up to this time the President had kept heart bravely, but the mighty shadow which seemed about to darken his life forever, was too much for his great, loving soul. Hurrying away from the crowded office of State, he sought the sufferer, sat by her side hour after hour, denying himself necessary sleep, and nursed her with the most devoted care. Every day the papers told of the critical condition of the President’s wife, and it seemed that her death was an assured and grievous calamity. The people’s hearts swelled with sympathy for the suffering husband. Day after day the story of his silent watching at the bedside of the wife brought tears unbidden to the eye. But the calamity which seemed impending was turned 515aside. On the 20th of May, Dr. Boynton announced a slight change for the better, which proved permanent. Days and weeks were required before Mrs. Garfield could leave her bed, but the shadow gradually lifted.

On the same day that her improvement was announced, the Senate of the United States adjourned. The President had sustained himself. No man ever stood higher in the hearts of the people. After his victory, he had returned to the Senate all but one of the nominations of Mr. Conkling’s friends, which had been withdrawn in order to force action one way or the other upon Robertson’s name. As for Senators Conkling and Platt, after their resignations, they presented themselves to the New York Legislature, then in session, as candidates for reëlection. The story of the memorable struggle at Albany is beyond the scope of these pages. Vice-President Arthur, being so closely attached to Conkling, was, of course, completely out of harmony with the administration. He was attached, heartily and honestly, to the other side. At one time he said he would resign the Vice-Presidency if he thought it would benefit Mr. Conkling. But the calm level of popular opinion to which President Garfield was so fond of referring, was overwhelmingly with him. The prospect was, for the first time, comparatively bright. As the weeks passed, Mrs. Garfield grew steadily better. The President was wearied by the arduous duties of the past three months, and needed a vacation. A time or two, in early June, he took his children for an afternoon trip to Mount Vernon. His face grew brighter and his step more elastic. As the struggle at Albany proceeded, the Administration steadily rose in public esteem, until the admiration of the people knew no bounds. The President paid especial attention to his Departments. The Star Route cases were pushed with tremendous vigor. Irregularities in the Treasury and Naval Departments were dealt with most heroically. Altogether the sky was clear, and men looked forward to the future with confidence. Mrs. Garfield’s health being still precarious, the question of where to spend the summer was carefully and thoughtfully discussed.

On the 19th of June, the President and Mrs. Garfield, accompanied 516by their daughter Mollie, and their two sons, Irvin and Abram, Colonel Rockwell and Dr. Boynton and wife, left Washington for Long Branch.

The President, with a loving husband’s care, secured pleasant rooms in a quiet hotel for his wife, where she would get the full benefit of the sea breezes. On the 27th of June he returned to Washington to hold a cabinet meeting. The session was long, but characterized by great cordiality. The whole situation was gone over, and the President and his Cabinet separated for the summer, as they thought, with kindly hope and a multitude of good wishes for each other. The President was to return to Long Branch, meet his wife and family, and commence a carefully laid out summer trip, including a visit to Williams College. The journey to Long Branch was not taken till two months later, and the remainder of the trip never was and never will be taken.

THE GARFIELD FAMILY.

CHAPTER XIII. SHOT DOWN.

The Senate had adjourned. The bitterness of the political contest at Albany had subsided. Washington was deserted for the summer. Mrs. Garfield, slowly recovering from her long illness, was regaining health and courage at Long Branch. It was the purpose of the President, as soon as the pressing cares and anxieties of his great office could be put aside, to join his wife by the sea-side, and to enjoy with her a brief respite from the burdens and distractions which weighed him down. His brief life at the White House had been any thing but happy. Sickness had entered almost from the date of his occupancy. The political imbroglio in the Senate, and afterwards in New York, had greatly annoyed him. He had had the mortification of seeing, in the very first months of his administration, his party torn with feuds, and brought to the verge of disruption. The clamor for office was deafening, and he had been obliged to meet and pacify the hungry horde that swarmed like locusts around the capital. All this he had, during the spring and early summer, met with the equanimity 518and dignity becoming his high station. So with the coming of July he purposed to rest with his family for a brief season by the sea. Afterwards he would visit Williams College and make arrangements for the admission of his two sons to those same classic halls where his own youthful thirst for knowledge had been quenched.

On the morning of the 2d of July—fatal day in the calendar of American history—the President made ready to put his purpose into execution. Several members of the Cabinet, headed by Secretary Blaine, were to accompany him to Long Branch. A few ladies, personal friends of the President’s family and one of his sons, were of the company; and as the hour for departure drew near, they gathered at the dépôt of the Baltimore and Potomac Railway to await the train. The President and Secretary Blaine were somewhat later than the rest. On the way to the dépôt the Chief Magistrate, always buoyant and hopeful, was more than usually joyous, expressing his keen gratification that the relations between himself and the members of his Cabinet were so harmonious, and that the Administration was a unit.

When the carriage arrived at the station at half past nine o’clock, the President and Mr. Blaine left it and entered the ladies’ waiting-room, which they passed through arm in arm. A moment afterwards, as they were passing through the door into the main room two pistol shots suddenly rang out upon the air. Mr. Blaine saw a man running, and started toward him, but turned almost immediately and saw that the President had fallen! It was instantly realized that the shots had been directed with fatal accuracy at the beloved President. Mr. Blaine sprang toward him, as did several others, and raised his head from the floor. Postmaster-General James, Secretary Windom, and Secretary Lincoln, who had arrived earlier at the train, were promenading on the platform outside. They, together with the policemen who were on duty in the neighborhood, immediately rushed to the spot where their fallen chief lay weltering in blood. A moment afterwards the assassin was discovered, and before he could lose himself in the crowd the miserable miscreant was confronted 519by the rigid, passionate faces and strong uplifted arms of those to whom their own lives were but a bauble if they might save the President. The dastardly wretch cowered before them, and in the middle of B Street, just outside of the dépôt, was seized by the policemen and disarmed. A pistol of very heavy caliber was wrenched out of his hand, and it became clear that a large ball had entered the President’s body. The assassin gave his name as Charles Jules Guiteau, and begged to be taken safely to jail. He was instantly hurried to police head-quarters and confined; and it was well for him that he was thus out of the way of the angry populace, who would not have hesitated to put an instant and tragic end to his despicable career.

The poor President was borne on a couch to a room in the second story, and a preliminary examination of his wounds was made; but the ball, which had entered the right side of his back, near the spinal column and immediately over the hip bone, could not be found. The sufferer moaned at intervals, but otherwise uttered no complaint; was conscious at all times except when under the influence of opiates, and was cheerful. When, in answer to his eager question, the physicians informed him that he had “one chance in a hundred” of living, he said calmly and bravely: “Then, doctor, we will take that chance!” Before he was removed from the dépôt his heart turned anxiously to his wife, and to her he dictated, by Colonel Rockwell, the following touching and loyal dispatch:

“The President wishes me to say to you from him that he has been seriously hurt. How seriously he can not yet say. He is himself, and hopes you will come to him soon. He sends his love to you.

Colonel H. C. Corbin, Assistant Adjutant-General, immediately telegraphed for a special train to convey Mrs. Garfield to Washington, and frequent dispatches, giving the latest intelligence of the President’s condition, were sent to meet her at different stations. In a few minutes after the shooting several physicians were beside the wounded President. First of those who were summoned 520was Dr. D. W. Bliss, who from first to last remained in charge as chief attending surgeon. Associated with him were Surgeon-General J. K. Barnes and Drs. J. J. Woodward and Robert Reyburn. It was at once determined to remove the President to the White House at the earliest practicable moment. Within a half hour preparations to that end had been made. At ten o’clock every thing was in readiness. The main room of the dépôt building was cleared, and in a few moments the wounded President was borne through the building and placed in an ambulance which was in waiting on the outside. He bore the removal with great fortitude, not uttering a complaint or groan. The ambulance was surrounded by a cordon of police, and the horses were whipped into a gallop all the way to the White House. An excited crowd followed at a run, but were stopped at the White House, and none but a select few admitted.

Meanwhile the excitement was at fever heat throughout the panic-struck city. Even before leaving the dépôt the pressure for admittance to the room where the President was lying was so great that the police could not keep back the crowd. Men persisted that they must see the President, despite the surgeons’ orders that the room and hallways must not be filled up. Upon the arrival of the ambulance at the White House the gates of the Executive grounds were immediately closed and guarded by soldiers and policemen, and nobody was admitted without authority from the President’s private secretary. Those members of the Cabinet who were not at the dépôt when the shooting took place were immediately summoned, and all of them remained in attendance at the Executive Mansion during the day.

After the President’s removal, he began to react from the first shock of the wound. Several encouraging dispatches were sent out. At 11:30 A. M. the first official bulletin was issued by the physicians in attendance. It was as follows:

“The President has returned to his normal condition. Will make another examination soon. His pulse is now 63.”

An hour later a second bulletin was issued:

521“The reaction from the shot injury has been very gradual. The patient is suffering some pain, but it is thought best not to disturb him by making an exploration for the ball until after the consultation at 3 P. M.”

From that hour, however, the symptoms became unfavorable; and at 2:45 P. M. the following unofficial dispatch was issued:

“No official bulletin has been furnished by Dr. Bliss since 1 o’clock. The condition of the President has been growing more unfavorable since that time. Internal hemorrhage is taking place, and the gravest fears are felt as to the result.”

As yet no critical knowledge of the President’s injury had been reached. There was nothing on which the people could base a judgment of the relative probabilities of recovery and death. The shadows of evening gathered, and the darkness of night settled over fifty millions of sorrowing people.

The minds of all naturally reverted to the assassin. The hope was cherished that he would prove to be a lunatic or madman, and that the American people would thus be spared the horrid contemplation of a cold-blooded attempt against the life of the noble statesman who had been called by the voice of his countrymen to the highest place of honor. This hope, however, was soon dispelled. The assassin was found to be a mixture of fool and fanatic, who, in his previous career, had managed to build up, on a basis of total depravity, a considerable degree of scholarship. He was a lawyer by profession, and had made a pretense of practicing in several places—more particularly in Chicago. In that city and elsewhere he had made a reputation both malodorous and detestable. In the previous spring, about the time of the inauguration, he had gone to Washington to advance a claim to be Consul-General at Paris. He had sought and obtained interviews with both the President and Mr. Blaine, and pretended to believe that the former was on the point of dismissing the present consul at Paris to make a place for himself! Hanging about the Executive 522Mansion and the Department of State for several weeks, he seems to have conceived an intense hatred of the President, and to have determined on the commission of the crime. Unless his motive can be found in this, it would seem impossible to discover for what reason his foul and atrocious deed was committed. In the whole history of crime, it would, perhaps, be impossible to find a single example of a criminal with a moral nature so depraved and loathsome as that displayed by Guiteau in the cell to which he was consigned.

The second day.—The morning was anxiously awaited. The first news from Washington gave grounds of hope. The President’s mind had remained clear, and his admirable courage had had a marked effect in staying his bodily powers against the fearful effects of the wound. Mrs. Garfield had, meanwhile, reached Washington, and was at her husband’s bedside. Both were hopeful against the dreadful odds, and both resolved to face the issue with unfaltering trust. In the course of the early morning the President was able to take nourishment, thus gaining a small measure of that strength so needful in the coming struggle. The morning bulletins from the attending surgeons were as follows:

“The President has been quietly sleeping much of the time since 9 P. M., awakening for a few moments every half hour. He has not vomited since 1 A. M., and is now taking some nourishment for the first time since his injury. Pulse, 124; temperature, normal; respiration, 18.

“4 A. M.—The President has just awakened, greatly refreshed, and has not vomited since 1 A. M., having taken milk and lime-water on each occasion, frequently asking for it. Pulse, 120—fuller and of decidedly more character; temperature, 98 2–10; respiration, 18. The patient is decidedly more cheerful, and has amused himself and watchers by telling a laughable incident of his early career.

“6 A. M.—The President’s rest has been refreshing during the night, and only broken at intervals of about half hours by occasional pain in the feet, and to take his nourishment of milk and lime-water and bits 523of cracked ice, to relieve the thirst, which has been constant. He is cheerful and hopeful, and has from the first manifested the most remarkable courage and fortitude.

“7:50 A. M.—This morning the physicians decide that no effort will be made at present to extract the ball, as its presence in the location determined does not necessarily interfere with the ultimate recovery of the President.

“7:57 A. M.—Most of the members of the Cabinet who watched at the Executive Mansion last night remained until a late hour this morning.

“11 A. M.—The President’s condition is greatly improved. He secures sufficient refreshing sleep; and, during his waking hours, is cheerful, and is inclined to discuss pleasant topics. Pulse, 106—with more full and safe expression; temperature and respiration, normal.

In the afternoon of the second memorable day, however, the President’s symptoms grew worse, and news well calculated to alarm was telegraphed to all parts of the country. Of one thing there could be no doubt, and that was that the heart of the Nation was stirred to its profoundest depths, and that the whole civilized world was in sympathy with the American people and their stricken head. In London the news created the profoundest sensation. The Queen, from Windsor Palace, at once telegraphed to learn the facts, and then ordered her Minister of Foreign Affairs to send the following dispatch:

“To Sir Edward Thornton, British Embassy, Washington: The Queen desires that you will at once express the horror with which she has learned of the attempt upon the President’s life, and her earnest hope for his recovery. Her Majesty wishes for full and immediate reports as to his condition.

From almost every civilized nation came similar messages of sympathy. Hardly a distinguished man in America failed to go on record in some way to express his horror and detestation of the crime that had been committed. The spirit of party was utterly forgotten. The South and the North were at last as one. 524The old Southern soldiers who had fought many a fierce battle under Lee and Johnston, as well as the legionaries who sprang up at the call of Lincoln, burst into tears at the thought of Garfield bleeding!

The afternoon bulletins of this first sad Sunday of July were well calculated to excite apprehension. The physicians said:

“2 P. M.—The President has slept a good deal since last bulletin, though occasionally suffering from pain in both feet and ankles. Pulse, 104; respiration, 18; temperature, nearly normal. While the President is by no means out of danger, yet his symptoms continue favorable.

“6 P. M.—There is no appreciable danger since last bulletin. The President sleeps well at intervals. Pulse, 108; temperature and respiration normal.

“10:30 P. M.—The condition of the President is less favorable. Pulse, 120; temperature, 100; respiration, 20. He is more restless, and again complains of the pain in his feet.

The third day.—For the American people the morning sun of the Glorious Fourth shed only a disastrous twilight. Never before did this vast and sensitive citizenship waken to the realization of such a Fourth. In almost all parts of the country preparations had been made to observe the day with more than the usual outburst of patriotism. All this was turned to doubt and sorrow. The orator could speak of nothing but the wounded President and his probable fate. The people would hear nothing but dispatches that told of either reviving hope or coming despair. In many cities and country places the celebration was wholly abandoned; in others the ceremonies were changed so as to be in keeping with the great national calamity. The people sat down in the shadow of their grief and waited for the worst.

On the morning of the Fourth the distinguished Dr. D. Hayes 525Agnew, of Philadelphia, and Dr. Frank H. Hamilton, of New York City, arrived at Washington, having been called thither as consulting surgeons. On their arrival they made a critical examination of the President’s condition and the method of treatment adopted by the physicians in charge, and thereupon issued the following bulletin:

“We held a consultation with the physicians in charge of the President’s case at 7 o’clock this morning, and approve in every particular of the management and of the course of treatment that has been pursued.

The regular announcement appeared at the same time and carried to the people, far as the lightning’s wings could bear it, the following message:

“8:15 A. M.—The condition of the President is not materially different from that reported in the last bulletin (12:30 A. M.). He has dozed at intervals during the night, and at times has complained of the pain in his feet. The tympanitis has not sensibly increased. Pulse, 108; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 19.

To this bulletin was added the report of a free conversation with Dr. Bliss, in which he said of the President’s condition and prospects:

“I admit that his state is very precarious, and the balance of probabilities is not in his favor, and yet there is reasonable ground for hope. We can not say that he is better or worse than he was last night, except that he has gained eight hours of time, and his strength appears not to have declined. The symptoms of peritoneal inflammation are not more grave now than they were eight hours ago.”

The morning wore away in suspense, and the noonday report of the physicians was anxiously awaited. It was felt, however, that every hour now added to the President’s life was a fair indication 526that he would have some chance in the final struggle for recovery. Just after noon the following report was issued by the surgeons:

“12:30 P. M.—There has been but little change in the President’s condition since the last bulletin. Complains much less of the pain in his feet. Light vomiting occasionally. Pulse, 110; temperature, 100; respiration, 24.

Meanwhile a diagnosis of the President’s condition had been made, and though there was not entire unanimity as to the course of the ball and the consequent character of the wound, yet the physicians gave it as their opinion—some of them positively so declaring—that the ball, after striking the President’s back above the twelfth rib and about two and a half inches to the right of the spine, had plunged forward and downward, fracturing the rib, penetrating the peritoneal cavity, piercing the lower lobe of the liver, and lodging perhaps in the front wall of the abdomen. The treatment during the first week after the President was wounded was based upon this diagnosis, but gradually thereafter the idea that the ball had traversed the body in the manner indicated was abandoned and a modified theory adopted in its stead.^[1]

527As the Fourth wore away the fear of immediate death somewhat subsided. At half-past seven in the evening the surgeons’ bulletin carried the following message to the public:

“7:35 P. M.—The President this evening is not so comfortable. He does not suffer so much from pain in the feet. The tympanitis is again more noticeable. Pulse, 126; temperature, 101.9; respiration, 24. Another bulletin will be issued at 10 P. M., after which, in order not to disturb the President unnecessarily, no further bulletins will be issued until to-morrow morning.

Taken all in all the advices during the day respecting the President’s condition had been more encouraging than those of the day before, when despondency seemed to be making itself generally felt in Washington and throughout the country.

An unofficial bulletin at midnight—the last issued for the day—announced a further improvement, the pulse and temperature having again changed slightly for the better. At that hour the President was sleeping quietly. The peritoneal inflammation had decreased somewhat during the evening, and there was, generally speaking, a larger ground for hope. During the day from the extremes of the earth had come the profoundest expressions of sorrow for the great calamity to the Republic. From Prince Charles, of Bucharest, was received the following touching dispatch:

“I have learned with the greatest indignation, and deplore most deeply, the horrible attempt against your precious life, and beg you to accept my warmest wishes for your quick recovery.

On the same day from far-off Japan this message of sympathy was sent to the Minister resident of the Royal Government at Washington:

“The dispatch announcing an attempt upon the life of the President 528has caused here profound sorrow, and you are hereby instructed to convey, in the name of His Majesty, to the Government of the United States, the deepest sympathy and hope that his recovery will be speedy. Make immediate and full report regarding the sad event.

So the sun went down upon the national anniversary, and the stars of the summer night looked upon an anxious and stricken people.

The fourth day.—The morning of the 5th of July broke with a more cheerful message. The President was decidedly better. The improvement in his condition was noticed shortly before midnight of Monday, and had become marked. The first bulletin of the morning was so reassuring that the feeling of relief became general, and a cheerful hopefulness succeeded the dread of the previous day. The crowds of anxious people in all parts of the country returned slowly to their vocations—not, indeed, with a feeling of security, but with a good degree of hope for the President’s ultimate recovery. The members of the Cabinet experienced such a sense of relief that they were enabled to give consideration to their official duties. The President’s physicians, while not taking a sanguine view of his case, did not discourage the hope of final recovery. The President—so said the bulletins—took nourishment and retained it. His pulse was lower throughout the day, and altogether his symptoms were such as to afford no little encouragement. The first official bulletin was issued at half-past eight in the morning. It was as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a comfortable night, and his condition this morning is decidedly more favorable. There has been no vomiting since last evening at 8 o’clock, and he has been able to retain the liquid nourishment administered. There is less tympanitis and no abdominal tenderness except in the wounded region. Pulse, 114; temperature, 100.5; respiration, 24.

529Drs. Agnew and Hamilton had both, in the meantime, been called to their homes. To them the attending surgeons communicated their views of the President’s condition more fully in a message during the forenoon, as follows:

“After you left the urgent symptom continued. There was much restlessness, constant slight vomiting, and by 8 o’clock P. M. the President’s condition seemed even more serious than when you saw him. Since then the symptoms have gradually become more favorable. There has been no vomiting nor regurgitation of fluid from the stomach since 8 o’clock last evening.

“The President has slept a good deal during the night, and this morning expresses himself as comparatively comfortable. The spasmodic pains in the lower extremities have entirely disappeared, leaving behind, however, much muscular soreness and tenderness to the touch. There is less tympanitis, and no abdominal tenderness whatever, except in the hepatic region. Since 8 P. M. he has taken an ounce and a-half of chicken broth every two hours, and has retained all. The wound was again dressed antiseptically this morning. Altogether but one-half a grain of morphia has been administered hypodermically during the last twenty-four hours, and it has been found quite sufficient. His pulse, however, still keeps up. At 8:30 A. M. it was 114; temperature, 100.5; respiration, 24. Seventy-two hours have now elapsed since the wound was received. We can not but feel encouraged this morning, although, of course, we do not overlook any of the perils that still beset the path toward recovery. The course of treatment agreed upon will be steadily pursued.

In the course of the day the feeling of confidence grew apace. There were not wanting many grave apprehensions, the most serious of all being the fear that the dreaded peritonitis would set in and destroy the President’s life. But the hours crept by, and no symptoms of such inflammation appeared. The President, though restless and somewhat weakened, kept in good courage; and during the forenoon, awaking from sleep, denounced with not a little spirit the “wishy-washy” food which the doctors prescribed for him. During the day it was quite clearly determined from the 530natural indications of the case, that, contrary to the previously expressed views of the attending physicians, the President’s internal organs had not been perforated by the ball. This discovery gave additional grounds of hope. The noonday bulletin strengthened rather than discouraged the idea of ultimate recovery:

“12:30 P. M.—The favorable condition of the symptoms reported in the last bulletin continues. There has been no recurrence of the vomiting. Pulse, 110; temperature, 101; respiration, 24. The President lies at present in a natural sleep. No further bulletins will be issued till 8:30 P. M., unless in case of an unfavorable change.

Under the assurances given by the surgeons the people began to find time to discuss the collateral circumstances of the crime, the character of the criminal, what should be his punishment, the course of events in case of President Garfield’s death, and the danger in general to be apprehended from political assassins. At first it was believed that the criminal had committed the deed on account of rebuffs received in seeking an appointment. This, Guiteau himself stoutly denied, declaring that he had tried to destroy the President wholly and solely for the good of the country, and at the command of God! He had been influenced only by high and patriotic motives! When the people came to understand the reasons why he had shot the President, against whom he had not the slightest enmity, they would change their mind as to him and his deed! Every utterance of the monstrous villain was of the self-same character, and to all his loathsome speeches was added the disgusting cowardice which he constantly exhibited in his cell.

Many incidents in the previous life of Guiteau came to the surface and were published. It was found that he had come to Washington shortly after March 4. On April 8 he made his appearance at the Navy Department library and registered his name on the visitors’ book. He returned on April 14, and from that time up to the time of the adjournment of the Senate he was a daily 531visitor. On one occasion he had told the librarian, Captain J. Ross Browne, that he was going to be appointed Consul to France. He had been on hand every day, sometimes before the library was opened, and remained all day. He had never shown himself very communicative, and when spoken to he responded in monosyllables. He seemed to be of a morose disposition, but was quiet and orderly in his manner. While in the library he sat in a corner reading a book. He had thus read Lang’s American Battles, and frequently called for the manual of the Consular Service, over which he would sit pouring for hours. The last book he had read was John Russell Young’s Tour of General Grant. Mr. Browne one day said to him: “I should think if you wanted a place you ought to be up at the Senate or at the State Department. Some one will get ahead of you.”

“I can attend to my own affairs,” was the rather sullen retort, and then glancing up suspiciously, he asked: “Have you told any one about my place?” Further efforts at conversation he repulsed.

The possible event of the President’s death was a subject of the gravest anxiety. It was well known that Vice-President Arthur had not, in the recent imbroglio between the friends of the administration and Senator Conkling, been in sympathy with the President. It was to the Senator indeed that General Arthur owed his nomination. And so among the immediate supporters of the President and a large part of the people generally, there were, in prospect of the Chief Magistrate’s death, deep forebodings of a disastrous reversal of the policy of the government and a universal uproar in the circles of office-holding. General Arthur became the central figure among the possibilities of the future. To the Vice-President the situation was exceedingly trying; but fortunately for the good name of the Republic he so demeaned himself as to win universal respect. His whole bearing from the day of the crime to the close of the scene was such as to indicate the profoundest sorrow and anxiety. His forbearance from comment, beyond giving expression to his grief, was noticed as the result of the exercise of sound common sense under trying circumstances, and the hasty opinions which had been pressed in many quarters when the 532worst was feared were quickly revised and recalled.^[2] General Arthur visited the Executive Mansion on the afternoon of the 5th, and remained for an hour in conversation with members of the Cabinet. He did not see the President, the physicians deeming it unwise to admit him. The members of the Cabinet, however, spoke of him in terms of warm friendliness, feeling that he fully shared with them the sympathy and sorrow which they entertained in common with the Nation at large.

The evening bulletin, issued at half-past eight o’clock, was briefly as follows:

“8:30 P. M.—The condition of the President continues as favorable as at the last bulletin. Pulse, 106; temperature, 100.9; respiration, 24. No further bulletin will be issued till to-morrow morning, unless in case of an unfavorable change.

At eleven o’clock of this (Tuesday) evening, Secretary Blaine sent out a dispatch announcing, as the result of the day, “a substantial gain.”

The fifth day.—It was now the crisis of summer. The intense heat was an unfavorable circumstance with which the physicians in charge of the wounded President had to contend. Wednesday was ushered in with a fearfully high temperature. In order to relieve the President as far as possible from the oppression caused by the intense heat, the attending physicians put into operation a simple refrigerating apparatus, which it was thought would render the atmosphere of his room much more comfortable than it had 533been hitherto. It consisted of a number of troughs of galvanized iron, about ten inches in width and fourteen feet in length, placed on the floor along the walls, and filled with water and broken ice. Over these troughs, and corresponding with them in length, were suspended sheets of flannel, the lower edges of which were immersed in the ice-water which filled the troughs. The water was thus absorbed and carried upward by capillary attraction in the flannel, as oil is in the wick of a lamp, until the sheets were saturated. This cold water, both by direct contact with the air, and by the rapid evaporation which took place over the extended surface of the saturated flannel, lowered the temperature of the room. Very soon after this apparatus was put into operation, it made a perceptible change in the temperature, and the President was greatly refreshed. The morning bulletin was given to the public at half-past eight. It said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a most comfortable night, and has slept well. His condition has remained throughout as favorable as when the last bulletin was issued. The pulse is becoming less frequent, and is now 98; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 23.

This was decidedly the best report which the physicians had yet been able to make. The effect was immediate and wide-spread. What might almost be called a feeling of confidence supervened; the channels of trade flowed on, and the people were elated at the prospect of a complete restoration to life and the duties of his high office of him whom their votes had raised to that high eminence. In all parts of the world expressions of sympathy continued to be given and transmitted to our Government.

His Majesty, the Emperor of Germany, inquired with great anxiety about the condition of President Garfield, and directed his Charge d’Affaires, Count Beust, to inform him thereof by cable. In consequence of Count Beust’s report, His Majesty ordered him to express to Secretary Blaine his satisfaction on account of the favorable information, and his best wishes for the speedy recovery 534of the President. Count Beust, in obedience to the wishes of his Government, and in manifestation of his personal sympathy, called three times during the day at the Executive Mansion.

The noonday bulletin was brief, but satisfactory:

“12:30 P. M.—The President remains quite as comfortable as at the date of the last bulletin. He takes his nourishment well. Pulse, 100; temperature, 99.7; respiration, 23.

Presently, after this report was made, the attending physicians sent to the consulting surgeons a somewhat lengthy dispatch, stating in detail the progress of the President’s case. The general effect of this, as well as of the previous bulletin, was further to allay public anxiety and to strengthen the belief that the President would triumph in the fearful struggle which he was making against the effects of his wound. And to this end, whatever the faith and hope of a great and sincere people could do to alleviate and save was gladly and earnestly given in sympathy and words of cheer. The bulletin of the evening was in the same general tone as the two preceding. It said:

“8:30 P. M.—The President’s condition continues as favorable as at last report. He has passed a very comfortable day, taking more nourishment than yesterday. Pulse, 104; temperature, 100.6; respiration, 23. Unless unfavorable symptoms develop, no further bulletins will be issued until to-morrow morning.

Altogether, the day was the least eventful—certainly the least exciting—of any since the great crime was committed. Discussions as to the character of the President’s injury, and of the probable disposition of Guiteau, took the place of those eager inquiries and indignant comments of the first few days after the deed was done.

The sixth day.—The morning brought nothing in the nature of 535the unexpected, in relation to the President’s condition or his surroundings. If his chances for recovery had not advanced, they had at least not become less than on the previous day. Callers at the White House came and departed in considerable numbers, and the natural tendency of the human mind to build high hopes upon narrow foundations, served to keep the general public, as well as those having more intimate relations with the President, in excellent spirits. While a hundred dangers yet surrounded the path toward restored health, confidence that the courageous Chief Magistrate would travel that path in safety, prevailed more and more. During the day, Dr. Boynton, of Cleveland, for a long time the friend of the President’s family, and recently the attending physician in the case of Mrs. Garfield’s protracted illness, reached Washington, and although not invited to become one of the consulting surgeons, he took his place as an attendant upon the President, and remained near him to the end. The morning bulletin was almost sanguine in its tone:

“The President has passed a most comfortable night, and continues steadily to improve. He is cheerful, and asks for additional food. Pulse, 94; temperature, 99.1; respiration, 23. There will be no further bulletins issued until 1 o’clock.

This report incited additional hope, and the belief prevailed more and more, both in medical circles and among the people at large, that the President would win the battle. One of the episodes of the day was the publication of a letter from Senator Conkling, which, though really an earnest expression of sympathy for the President and his family, was largely devoted to the question as to whether a discrimination should not be made in the punishment of attempted murder, based on the rank of the person assailed. The distinction was drawn between murder, which seems to require the same punishment whoever may be the victim, and the 536attempt to murder. The Senator’s letter was addressed to Attorney-General MacVeagh, and was as follows:

“My Dear Sir: In the abhorrence with which all decent men alike shudder at the attempt to murder the President, I have given thought to a matter to which your attention may or may not have turned. Our criminal code treats premeditated homicide in all cases alike, irrespective of the victim. Murder being visited by the greatest penalty, perhaps no distinction between one case and another could be founded on the public relations held by the person slain. But in case of attempt to murder broad distinctions can be made between assailing the life of an individual, and an attempt to take a life of special value to the whole people. The shocking occurrence of Saturday I think demands that the definition and punishment of assaults aimed at high executive officers, whether successful or not, should be made thoroughly rigorous. The man who attempts the life of the President, if morally responsible, commits an offense which the Nation ought to guard against, and punish by the exertion of all the power civilized nations may employ. I suggest this as deserving consideration.

“My profound sympathies are with the President, and with all of you every hour. The conflict of reports keeps hope and fear striving with each other, with nothing stable except faith and trust, that the worst is overpassed. I wish you would express to the President my deepest sympathy in this hour, which should hush all discords and enlist all prayers for his safe deliverance. Please also give to Mrs. Garfield my most respectful condolence. Trusting that all will be well, cordially yours,

In the early afternoon another bulletin was issued by the surgeons. The report said

“The condition of the President continues quite as favorable as this morning. Pulse, 100; temperature, 100.8; respiration, 23. Unless some unfavorable change should occur no further bulletin will be issued until 8:30 P. M.

It was noticed during the day that the preparations made by the surgeons in attendance on the President indicated their belief 537in a long illness, and the public came to understand that an indefinite period of suspense might be anticipated. As it related to the criminal, it was clear that he would simply be held in custody until such time as might, by the recovery or death of his victim, indicate the technical character of the crime committed, and the punishment consequent thereon. The bulletins sent abroad by Secretary Blaine during the day, especially the one directed to Minister White at Berlin, stated that for the preceding thirty-six hours the improvement in the President’s condition had been steady and constant, and the evening report of the attending surgeons was essentially a repetition of that issued in the afternoon.

The seventh day.—With the morning of Friday there was practically no change to record in the President’s condition. He had passed the night as usual, sleeping and waking at intervals. The weather was excessively hot. Many contrivances and machines were invented and offered to the authorities, the purpose of which was to reduce, by mechanical means, the temperature of the President’s apartment. Several of these instruments were tried, and one, invented by Mr. Dorsey, a skillful mining engineer, was selected and set up in the Executive Mansion. The temperature of the room where the patient lay was thus brought under control and reduced to the desired degree. The morning bulletin of the surgeons was considered especially favorable:

“The condition of the President continues favorable. He is more comfortable than on any previous morning. Pulse, 96; temperature, 92; respiration, 23. The wound is beginning to discharge laudable pus.

Soon after this report was issued, however, there was an unfavorable turn in the case, and one of those flurries of excitement, so common in the subsequent history of the President’s progress, occurred. The President grew restless, and complained of weariness. The temperature and pulse and respiration ran up, indicating the presence of considerable fever. This change, however, was 538explained by the physicians as the necessary concomitant of suppuration then beginning in the wound. The noonday bulletin was brief:

“12:30 P. M.—The progress of the President’s case continues to be favorable. Pulse, 108; temperature, 101.4; respiration, 24.

One of the marked circumstances attending the tragic event, the course of which is outlined in these pages, was the universal desire of the American people to do something to contribute towards the President’s recovery. It would be vain to attempt to enumerate the thousand and one expedients and suggestions which, out of the goodness of the popular heart, came from every direction. Each out of his own nature added his own gift. The poet contributed his verse; the physician, his cure; the inventor, his contrivance; the gardener, his choicest cluster; and even the crazy beldam her modicum of witchcraft. From the center of the crowded city to the remotest corners of the prairie the slightest syllable of indifference to the President’s condition would have been instantly resented—first with a look of contempt and then with a blow. The evening bulletin, though pitched in a tone of encouragement, still indicated fever:

“8 P. M.—The President’s condition continues favorable. He has passed a very comfortable afternoon, and has taken more nutriment than on previous days. Pulse, 108; temperature, 101.3; respiration, 24. The conditions continue so favorable that there will be no further bulletin until to-morrow morning.

During the day a brief but touching dispatch was received from the surviving members of the family of the Marquis de LaFayette. Another message came from St. Petersburg expressing, as well it might, the horror of the Czar and his government for the crime of 539assassination.^[3] A third was received from the minister for foreign affairs of the Argentine Republic, expressing the sorrow of that government for the great crime which had darkened the annals of American history.

The eighth day.—A week had now elapsed since the President was wounded. His condition was not materially changed. His will and courage were unimpaired, and the reports of the surgeons and attendants indicated—indeed positively declared—a continual improvement. During the day, for the first time since the President was wounded, the three younger members of his family were permitted to visit their father, one at a time. The President had repeatedly asked for them, but it had not been thought advisable to gratify his wish before. Vice-President Arthur also called during the morning.

The morning bulletin appeared as usual, and was as follows:

“The President has passed a tranquil night, and this morning expresses himself as feeling quite comfortable. We regard the general progress of the case as very satisfactory. Pulse, this morning, 100; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 24.

Whatever might be the progress of the President’s wound towards recovery, there could be no doubt that the vigor of his mental faculties was nearly up to the standard of health. At times, indeed, there seemed to be an unusual, and, perhaps, unnatural, exhilaration of his faculties. He heard every thing, and 540was eager to talk and to read the papers. Of course, all exciting causes were excluded by the physicians, but the President was restless under the restraint. Sometimes he wished to debate questions with his attendants, and, anon, when that was forbidden, he would indulge in some pleasantry, as was his custom in health. The surgeons noticed that he managed to convey a great deal in a few words. Sometimes he comprised sentences into a single expression. When some one told him that the heart of the people was in bed with him, he replied: “Sore heart.” He did not complain, however; not a querulous word escaped his lips. When he was inclined to debate propositions, and reasons were given him why a thing should be thus, he was very ready to point out any weakness in the reasoning. In a word, the President was himself, and retained possession of all his mental faculties.

The afternoon and evening bulletins were issued at the usual hours. They said:

“1 P. M.—The condition of the President continues to be favorable. Pulse, 104; temperature, 101.2; respiration, 22. The next bulletin will be issued at 8 P. M.

“8:15 P. M.—The President’s condition has continued favorable during the day. The febrile reaction does not differ materially from that of yesterday. Pulse, 108; temperature, 101.9; respiration, 24.

So, after a week of intense anxiety, the twilight of Saturday evening closed around the world, hiding in its folds alike the hopes and the fears of the people.

The ninth day.—It was Sunday again. The Christian public had, from the first, taken up the President’s cause with heartfelt anxiety. Scarcely a pulpit or pew in the land had failed to respond in yearning and prayer for his recovery. This anxiety had been confined to no sect or creed or party. From Romanist to Free-Churchman it was all one voice of sympathy and entreaty 541to heaven for the President’s life. In greater or less degree, millions of men found in themselves a change of feeling, and a growth of appreciation, of thorough trust and of high regard, as they looked anxiously to the bedside of the President. His calm resignation and readiness to meet death, with his cool courage and unwavering resolution to do his best to preserve a life useful and precious to millions; his patient endurance of pain, and of all the restraints deemed essential to his recovery; his tenderness of feeling and his royal strength of will, made him loved with an unspeakable love by millions of true-hearted men and women throughout the land. It was not too much to say that the week which had elapsed had lifted the National standard of true Christian manhood for all time to come. The whole nation was educated by the affliction of one. The people will, perhaps, never realize how much they learned by the bedside of the wounded President. In knowledge of merely material things the whole Nation grew wiser. It had been studying physical injuries, their nature and treatment, with such intense interest, that there were thousands of school-boys who knew more of such subjects than their fathers did when the crime was committed. This, however, was an insignificant part of the knowledge gained. Moral culture was advanced; how much, the people could but surmise. There were millions of men and women who realized, as they had never done before, the value of calm fortitude, resolute will, and strict obedience in time of trial.

The first bulletin of Sunday morning was specially encouraging. It said:

“The President has passed the most comfortable night he has experienced since he was wounded, sleeping tranquilly, and with few breaks. The general progress of his symptoms continues to be favorable. Pulse, 106; temperature, 100; respiration, 23.

The church services of the day were almost exclusively devoted to sermons on the lessons derived and derivable from the Nation’s 542sorrow, and to prayers for the restoration of the beloved Chief Magistrate. Lessons not a few were drawn from the great national catastrophe, and more particularly from the example which the afflicted chieftain had set to all the people—an example so full of patience and courage as to be cited in praise and panegyric for all time to come. For more than a week it had been as if the Nation were sitting at the bedside of a man in sore distress, counting his pulses, noting his temperature and breathing, and listening for every whispered word. But neither the imminent presence of death nor the agony of long-continued suffering had drawn from the President a single word of anger or vindictiveness toward any one. Such a lesson was not to be lost on the American people, and it was clearly foreseen that if his life should be spared, he would rise to an influence over the public mind and destiny not equaled in the case of any man since the days of Lincoln. In the early afternoon, and again in the evening, the usual bulletins came with brief but encouraging words from the surgeons:

“1 P. M.—The President’s symptoms continue to be favorable. Pulse, 102; temperature, 100.5; respiration, 22. 7 P. M.—The President’s symptoms continue to make favorable progress. Pulse, 108; temperature, 101.9; respiration, 24.”

Unofficial information from the President’s bedside was, however, less favorable than the official reports. Many candid and cautious observers about the sick-room were more apprehensive than the physicians seemed to be, that the President was not so clearly on the road to recovery as could have been hoped. Among the latter was Professor B. A. Hinsdale, of Hiram College, who sent to Cleveland during the day a dispatch for publication among the old friends of the Garfield family, in which he said:

“The President is by no means out of danger, and I do not think it wise for people to settle down in a belief that he is. Of course we have a strong reason to hope that he will recover, but people ought to remember that the road to recovery will be a long one, beset with many dangers.”

543One of the peculiarities of the President’s case was the invariable cheerfulness of the patient. He seemed to regard it as a part of his duty to keep those about him in good spirits, and to aid the physicians in the work of bringing him through. He frequently asked to see the bulletins, and sometimes made humorous remarks about their contents. His food was many times a subject of some jest, and when it did not suit him, he had his revenge by perpetrating some pleasant satire about the offending article, or the cooks who had prepared it. On one occasion, the President asked for a drink, whereupon Major Swaim handed him some milk, to which the physicians had added a small quantity of old rum. The President, after drinking it, looked at Major Swaim with a dissatisfied expression, and said: “Swaim, that’s a rum dose, isn’t it?” On other occasions the sufferer spoke gravely, but always hopefully, of his conditions and prospects, expressing the most earnest hopes for speedy and perfect recovery.

The tenth day.—The weather was still oppressive, and the President was distressed with the heat. The artificial contrivances hitherto employed to reduce the temperature of his room, and to maintain the same at a given degree, had been but partly successful. An effort was now made on a more elaborate scale to overcome the heat by artificial means, and thus to furnish the President as much comfort as a moderate and equable temperature could afford. Monday, the eleventh of July, was mostly devoted to this work. Several fire-engines and large cast-iron boilers were put in position near the east basement door of the White House, and carpenters and machinists were set to work putting up apparatus of enormous proportions, connected with the ventilating machinery. Locomotive head-lights to illuminate the scene were supplied, so that there should be no interruption until the work was done. The basis of the refrigerating apparatus was the Jennings machine, heretofore referred to; but Professor Newcomb and Major Powell jointly assisted in perfecting some additional appliances for drying and purifying the air to be admitted to the sick chamber. Several other devices of an entirely different character were brought to the attention of the physicians in attendance, and experimental machinery 544was set up to exhibit some of them, but they were mostly unsuccessful. The President was not aware of the efforts of their inventors to benefit him.

DR. D. W. BLISS.

But by means of the Jennings machine an even temperature of 77° Fahrenheit was preserved in the sick room, and the capacity of the machinery was found to be sufficient to reduce the temperature several degrees lower, if it should be thought necessary to do so. The windows of the President’s room remained open, so that the air which was forced into his chamber found ready exit, thus insuring perfect ventilation.

The bulletin issued by the surgeons on Monday morning was more encouraging. The report said:

“July 11—8 A. M.—The President passed a comfortable night, and his condition shows an improvement over that of yesterday. Pulse, 98; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 22.”

The President continued talkative. Only the positive injunction of the physicians could keep him from speaking out on all subjects that came into his mind. During the day he indulged in his accustomed pun. To one of his attendants he said, jocosely: “I wish I could get up on my feet; I would like to see whether I have any backbone left or not!” The sly backward look at the recent political struggle in which his administration had been engaged, involving the question of the presidential backbone, was not bad for a sick man battling for his life.

Justly or unjustly, the regular bulletins came to be somewhat 545distrusted by the people. The feeling began to spread that, although the naked facts of temperature, pulse, and respiration reported in the bulletins were not to be questioned as to their accuracy, yet the comments and construction put by the attending surgeons upon the facts, were too rose-colored to meet the conditions of exact truth. At the same time this opinion gained ground with the public, a feeling of quite implicit confidence sprang up respecting the official reports of the President’s condition sent abroad, more especially in reference to those sent to Lowell, Minister at St. James, by Secretary Blaine. These messages from the principal member of the President’s cabinet came, by and by, to be looked for with fully as much confidence as to their accuracy as did the surgeons’ official bulletins. On the 11th of July, Secretary Blaine sent out one of these messages which gave great comfort, as follows:

“At the beginning of the tenth day since he was wounded, the symptoms of the President are all hopeful and favorable. Suppuration goes on with no higher pulse or temperature than should be expected. His milk diet, of a pint and a half per day, is relished and digested. His physical strength keeps up wonderfully, and his mind is entirely clear and active, without showing excitement. His physicians do not count him beyond danger, but the general confidence in his recovery is strengthened every hour.

Later in the day, however, the condition of the President was less favorable than that presented in Mr. Blaine’s dispatch, and the evening bulletin was constrained to admit a higher fever than at any time previously. The afternoon and evening official reports were as follows:

“1 P. M.—The favorable progress of the President continues. Pulse, 106; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 24. 7 P. M.—The President has had rather more fever this afternoon. In other respects, his condition is unchanged. Pulse, 108; temperature, 102.8; respiration, 24.”

The eleventh day.—As the President’s case progressed, the public 546became divided in their views of the prospect of recovery. Physicians themselves disagreed as to both the diagnosis and the treatment of the President’s injury. The distinguished Dr. Hammond, of New York, did not hesitate openly to condemn the course pursued by the attending surgeons. Other noted physicians, not a few, held similar opinions; and a series of able and exhaustive articles appeared in the New York Herald, criticising with severity the methods and views of those who were immediately responsible for the management of the case. The attending surgeons were considerably annoyed by these strictures, and many sharp replies were returned to those physicians who, without having personally examined the President’s wound, ventured to express definite opinions on questions which those for more than a week in immediate attendance upon the patient, had been unable to decide. The newspapers also divided, one part of them publishing all the favorable, and the other all the unfavorable news from the sick chamber of the White House. The former felt called upon to explain away every unfavorable symptom which appeared; and the latter, to becloud all the favorable news with doubt. This diversion in public opinion continued manifest during the remainder of the President’s illness.

The first news for Tuesday, the 12th of July, came in the bulletins of the surgeons, and was as follows:

“8 A. M.—The President is comfortable this morning. Pulse, 96; temperature, 99.6; respiration, 22.”

SURGEON-GENERAL J. K. BARNES.

In addition to these regular reports of the attending physicians, much unofficial information of the President’s condition was constantly given to the public through the daily press. Nearly all of the leading newspapers had regular correspondents at the Capital, and the reports which they sent each day were quite extended and generally full of interest. These unofficial communications were, in large part, made up of conversations which the reporters held from time to time with the surgeons and nurses of the President; and, although in many cases the news sent out from these sources 547was conflicting and contradictory, yet the public was greatly indebted to the industry and skill with which each morning’s accounts were prepared. During the 12th of July, Dr. F. H. Hamilton, one of the consulting surgeons, was asked by a reporter of the New York Tribune to give his opinion of the President’s condition. He replied that nothing had occurred within the preceding twenty-four hours to cause the alarm that some professed to feel. The rise in temperature and increase in pulse had occurred for several evenings, and both were natural at that time of day, even in a well person. He added, however, that the President’s condition would be more favorable, if these symptoms were absent altogether. There was nothing discouraging in the official bulletins, which he thought were scrupulously correct, as in the private intelligence sent him by the attending surgeons. He repeated the assertion that he had made from the beginning, that every hour that elapsed without more dangerous symptoms, increased the patient’s chances of recovery.

The bulletins of the afternoon and evening were couched in the usual language; but it was evident, on critical examination of the figures, that the construction put by the surgeons upon them, was hardly justified by the facts. The reports said:

“1 P. M.—The President is passing a comfortable day. Pulse, 100; temperature, 100.8; respiration, 24. 7 P. M.—Pulse, 104; temperature, 102.4; respiration, 24.”

548The twelfth day.—During the second week of the President’s prostration the public mind settled down to the expectation of a long, tedious illness. The suspense of the first few days had passed—as such things always pass—and people came to understand that they must wait until the silent forces of nature should restore, if they ever could restore, the wounded Chief Magistrate to health. The Wednesday morning bulletin was of the most cheering kind—more so, for once, than was expressed in the words of the surgeons:

“8:30 A. M.—The President is doing well this morning. Pulse, 90; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 20. His gradual progress toward recovery is manifest, and thus far without serious complication.”

DR. J. J. WOODWARD.

The temperature of the President’s room had now been completely mastered by artificial means. The degree finally decided on as most favorable to the patient was 81° Fahrenheit. About 10,000 cubic feet of fresh air was forced into the room each hour, and this great volume making its escape through the open windows carried away all odors and impurities. The President’s wound was now in full process of suppuration. This became a heavy drain upon his constitutional and reserved forces, and his strength was rapidly depleted. He grew worse—unable to move his body or even his limbs without great exertion. At intervals, moreover, the stomach refused to perform its functions, and there was, in consequence, instant anxiety on the question of keeping life in the President until he could get well. The fluid food, upon which only he was nourished, neither satisfied the longings of nature nor furnished sufficient aliment to sustain the flagging powers of life. Moreover, at this epoch began the great blunder in the President’s treatment. Owing to the mistaken diagnosis of the surgeons the course of the ball had been altogether misjudged. According to the theory of the physicians the ball had gone forward and downward. As soon as the wound began to suppurate it was found desirable to insert therein a drainage tube to the end that the discharge might be perfectly free. This tube—though 549pliable—was, in the process of insertion, constantly so manipulated by the surgeons as to carry it forward and downward in the supposed track of the ball, rather than horizontally to the left, in the real course of the ball. It thus came to pass that the natural tendency of the pus, making its way to the external opening of the wound to sink into the tissues before reaching the wound, was augmented by the erroneous theory and manipulation of the surgeons. Having once started an opening downward through the tissues, this was immediately filled with pus, and into this pseudo wound, at each insertion in the path of the burrowing pus, the physician’s tube was thrust further and further. This mistake—albeit unforeseen and possibly undiscoverable—was the rock on which all hope of recovery was ultimately shivered. The noonday and evening bulletins came at the appointed hours and were as follows:

“1 P. M.—The President’s condition continues favorable. Pulse, 94; temperature, 100.6; respiration, 22. 7 P. M.—The President has had less fever this afternoon than either yesterday or the day before. He continues slowly to improve. Pulse, 100; temperature, 101.6; respiration, 24.”

The large and not very reputable army of busybodies now made a great discovery. It was the great question of the 550President’s “disability” to be President any longer. Certainly he was wounded, stricken down, lying at death’s door. He was disabled; there was no doubt of that. The Constitution indicates disability of the President as one of the contingencies under which the Vice-President shall discharge the duties of the presidency. But was President Garfield disabled in the sense contemplated by the framers of the Constitution? Does that kind of prostration of the bodily powers, in which there is still a prospect of recovery, which leaves the will free to act, and the mental powers unimpaired, really involve disability? These were the questions which now came up for public discussion. However they might or should be decided as abstract questions of constitutional construction, certain it is that, as a practical issue, there was quite a universal judgment that, as yet, President Garfield was not “disabled” in the sense of the Constitution. Such was the temper of the people, moreover, that they would not have patiently brooked any real effort to make the Vice-President acting Chief Magistrate of the Nation.

The thirteenth day.—Thursday, July 14th, was a quiet day at the White House, and a like quiet was gradually diffused through the country. The President was reported as having gained a little strength—a very desirable thing. The unofficial accounts from the sick chamber were more than usually encouraging. The reports of the President’s condition occupied a less conspicuous place in the papers of the day, and there was less popular discussion. The morning bulletin said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a comfortable night and continues to do well. Pulse, 90; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 22.”

Hardly second in interest to the regular bulletins were the dispatches constantly arriving from foreign powers, expressing either some hope of recovery or asking for the latest news. On this day, the Secretary of State received the following telegram from Mr. Lowell:

“I have received the following from the Queen: ‘I wish to express 551my great satisfaction at the very favorable accounts of the President, and hope that he will soon be considered out of danger.’

The Japanese Minister also handed to the Secretary of State a telegraphic communication which he received from his Government, of which the following is a copy:

“His Majesty was greatly rejoiced to receive your dispatch announcing the steady recovery of the President, and commands you to present his hearty congratulations.

DR. ROBERT REYBURN.

During the day Senator Conkling, of whose attitude towards the Administration so much had been recently said, again visited Washington. In the evening he called at the Executive Mansion and handed the usher his card for Mrs. Garfield. He said he did not wish to disturb her, but desired that his sympathies might be made known to her, as well as his gratification that the President was recovering from his wounds.

The afternoon and evening bulletins were duly issued, and gave the following account of the President’s progress:

“1 P. M.—The progress of the President’s condition continues to be satisfactory this morning. Pulse, 94; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 22. 5527. P. M.—The febrile rise this afternoon has been less pronounced, and has not caused the President so much discomfort. His general condition is good. Pulse, 98; temperature, 101; respiration, 23.”

The interpretation put by the surgeons upon these reports, and generally—though not universally—accepted by medical men, was that the so-called “surgical fever,” that is, a certain exacerbation of bodily temperature always noticeable in persons recovering from physical injury, had passed its crisis and would soon disappear. This belief was strengthened during the day by the presence of perspiration and other concomitants of a waning fever.

For the first time in five days the patient’s temperature fell to the normal degree (98.6°). A new drainage pipe of rubber was inserted into the wound to a greater depth than the original pipe had reached.^[4] The President was able to move his limbs more easily than heretofore, and in other ways manifested his improvement. He asked more frequently about public affairs, and his curiosity was gratified in matters which would not produce excitement.

Thus day by day the battle went on between the recuperative forces of nature and the destructive agency of a dreadful wound.

The fourteenth day.—The improvement in the President’s condition, first distinctly manifested about the beginning of this week, was now more marked than hitherto. The patient took food with relish. The wound showed signs of healing. The febrile symptoms during most of the day were wholly wanting. Taken all in all there was a distinct progress toward recovery. The morning bulletin said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has rested well during the night, is doing admirably this morning, and takes his food with relish. Pulse, 90; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18.”

553The physicians, on the strength of these indications, declared in unofficial conversation that the progress of their distinguished patient toward recovery could not be more satisfactory. So both surgeons and people fell to the discussion of minor topics instead of the great question of life or death. One question about which all were specially curious was the location of the ball in the President’s body. Several electricians thought to determine this matter by a new application of scientific principles. It was suggested that the deflection of an electric needle, when brought near to the ball, could be used as an index of the exact spot where the missile was hidden. Professor Bell, of New York, was specially confident of success by this method. He was firm in the belief that, by the application of Hughes’s induction balance to the surface of the President’s body, he would be able to mark definitely the spot where the ball lay imbedded. The attending surgeons gave their consent that the attempt might be made, and it was agreed that as soon as Professor Bell had completed some modifications in the instrument, and some experimental tests for the discovery of leaden balls under similar conditions, the trial should be made.

The afternoon and evening bulletins of the fourteenth day were of the most encouraging purport:

“1 P. M.—The President continues to do very well this morning. Pulse, 94; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has continued to do well during the day. The afternoon fever has been slighter than on any day since the 3d. Pulse, 98; temperature, 100.4; respiration. 20.”

There was, at this epoch in the history of President Garfield’s case, a good deal of monotony. The regular reports were in a measure duplicates of each other, and the unofficial accounts which were sent out by the newspaper correspondents were not characterized by the sensational quality which marked the early reports of the tragedy. The people, moreover—and with good reason—grew somewhat suspicious of startling dispatches, for it was found that the stock jobbers of New York City were not unwilling to use the President’s condition as a basis of speculation. With sorrow 554and mortification it was discovered that there were men so lost to the sense of shame as to wager fictitious shares against the hopes of the Nation and to speculate on a manufactured death-rattle in the throat of the Republic!

The fifteenth day.—From the beginning of the healing of the President’s wound, the surgeons had been more or less apprehensive that the blood of their patient would be poisoned by the absorption of purulent matter, and his life be thereby imperiled. There are two secondary diseases thus likely to arise from the presence of a wound in the body—pyæmia and septicæmia. The first of these is by far the most to be dreaded. The malady results from the absorption of the poisonous pus corpuscles into the circulation with the consequent horrors of rigors and burning fever. The latter disease, septicæmia, is a less fearful complication, resulting from the absorption of the fluid ichor peculiar to healing wounds and the infection of the blood thereby. Both of these ills were to be feared in the case of the President. Day by day went by, however, and the dreaded symptoms did not appear. The bulletins of the 16th of July were of a sort to indicate that blood poisoning was hardly to be apprehended. The reports said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed another good night, and is steadily progressing toward convalescence. Pulse, 90; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has passed a better day than any since he was hurt. The afternoon fever is still less than yesterday. His pulse is now 98; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 19.”

In view of the favorable progress of the President’s case the surgeons decided, for the time, to issue bulletins only in the morning and evening, thus dispensing with the noonday report.

One of the most interesting episodes in connection with the assassination of the President was the raising of a fund for the support of his family. The enterprise was proposed by Cyrus W. Field of New York, who headed the subscription with $25,000. The fund was for Mrs. Garfield, and was to be hers absolutely independent of any contingencies. It was proposed that any and all who felt disposed should add to the sum until the amount contemplated 555was secured. Then it was designed to invest the whole in Mrs. Garfield’s name, the interest to go to her and her family in perpetuity. Notwithstanding the strong hopes which were entertained of the President’s recovery, the subscription was rapidly augmented until, before the President’s death, the sum had reached more than $300,000. After the tragedy was ended the trustees having the fund in charge invested $275,000 of the amount in four per cent. Government bonds, placing the whole to Mrs. Garfield’s credit. It was thus that the American people, of their own accord, made provision for the wife and children of the great citizen who had never found time to get riches.

The sixteenth day.—The news on this day opened with the cheering information that the President was now permitted to order his own meals, and that he was making good use of the privilege. The day at Washington was one of the least exciting in the whole course of the President’s illness. The future was freely discussed—how soon the wounded Chief Magistrate might go abroad and what measures should be adopted for his more rapid restoration to health. The morning and evening bulletins were almost a mere matter of form:

“8:30 A. M.—The President continues to improve. He passed an excellent night and has a good appetite. This morning, pulse, 90; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—Our expectations of favorable progress have been fully realized by the manner in which the President has passed the day. He has taken more solid food and with greater relish than hitherto, and his afternoon fever, which is as slight as that of yesterday, came on later. His pulse is 98; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 20.”

The informal reports of the day showed, from the conversations of the surgeons, that they were still in some measure under the delusion that the ball had passed through the President’s body and was imbedded in the anterior wall, in a position of easy removal in the future.

The seventeenth day.—This was similar to the day before. Notwithstanding the febrile rise of the preceding evening, the 556President was reported as having passed a restful night. In the morning he had a friendly altercation with the doctors, he contending that he might smoke a cigar and they refusing. He was cheerful, confident, and strong in the faith that he was on the way leading to recovery. The symptoms had a reassuring complexion in the general view and to the immediate attendants. The President felt that he was better, and he said so. There was no question about his fever; that showed for itself; but it did not lead to serious apprehension. Improvement in his condition was what the people wanted to hear about, and they did not expect any thing else. The great majority had determined upon not hearing any thing contrary to their hopes, and this feeling was participated in by the public press. Under these conditions it is not surprising that the physicians, who knew just how the popular heart was throbbing, made extraordinary effort to respond to its requirements. No one accuses them of deception. No one believes they were actuated by any but the best motives in their examinations and reports. Admitting that a portion of their theory was wrong, who will contend that a better theory could have resulted from the examination of any equivalent number of physicians and surgeons? This question has been widely discussed, without finding a conclusion in anywise discreditable to the corps of eminent scientists who ministered to the sufferings of President Garfield.

The physicians explained to the public that the present feverishness of the patient had arisen from his recent over-eating of solid food. The more thoughtful, however, who had carefully scanned the reports for the last few days, were not satisfied, and awaited the morning bulletin with a little fear. The report ran thus:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed another comfortable night and is doing well this morning; pulse, 88; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.”

This was reassuring; so the people took up the subject of the thanksgiving which had been proposed by Governor Charles Foster, of Ohio. During the day a letter was published from Hon. O. M. Roberts, Governor of Texas, giving his hearty approval of what Governor Foster had proposed. An 557interesting conversation with Dr. Bliss was also reported for the Eastern press, in the course of which he declared that the President’s wound was in the healing stage, and that the track of the ball was slowly but surely clearing by the processes of nature. The evening bulletin, however, was not as fair as had been hoped. It said:

“7 P. M.—The President has had a little more fever this afternoon, which is regarded as merely a temporary fluctuation. At 1 P. M. his pulse was 98; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. At present his pulse is 102; temperature, 100.7; respiration, 21.”

The eighteenth day.—Something has already been said of the Hughes Induction balance with which Professor Bell was to discover the position of the ball in the President’s body. The preliminary experiments had been continued, and the electricians had strong hopes of success, but the test had not yet been made. The press reports of the day were largely devoted to descriptions of the delicate apparatus which was to enable the scientists to determine the exact location of the ball. The great difficulty in the way was the non-susceptibility of lead to the inductive effect of electricity. Professor Bell and his co-electricians were, however, quite confident that this obstacle could be overcome and the position of the ball determined. The two bulletins of July 19th were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a very good night, and this morning he is free from fever, and expresses himself as feeling quite comfortable. Pulse, 90; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has passed an excellent day, and the afternoon fever has been less than on any day since he was wounded. At 1 P. M. his pulse was 92; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 19. At present his pulse is 96; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 19.”

The nineteenth day.—The reports, both official and unofficial, were of a sort to justify a belief in the early convalescence of the President—if indeed convalescence had not already supervened. The fever was so slight as to be scarcely any longer 558noticeable. The President’s appetite and spirits were of a sort to suggest immediate recovery. It was said by the attending surgeons on the 20th of July, that the wounded man had passed his best day since his injury was received. He was still represented as weak and weary from lying so long in bed. He was looking forward eagerly to the time when he could take the trip upon the Potomac, and possibly a sea voyage, which had been promised him by the middle of August, if he should continue to improve. Arrangements were already made so that the trip might be as safe and comfortable as possible.

The Tallapoosa, a United States steamer, underwent repairs and was made ready for service. The Secretary of the Navy issued orders to put additional men at work upon her, so that she might be ready to sail at any time after the 15th of August.

The bulletins of the surgeons were issued as usual, morning and evening. They said:

“8:30 A. M.—The progress of the President toward recovery continues uninterruptedly. He has passed another quiet night. Pulse this morning 86; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has passed an excellent day. At 1 P. M. his pulse was 88; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. At the present time his pulse is 98; temperature, 99.6; respiration, 19.”

The twentieth day.—The physicians were unwilling to say that their patient was out of danger, but they permitted the attendants to think so, and the people accepted it as true. At the morning dressing of the wound a discovery was made. It was found that some of the clothing had entered the wound with the bullet. There came away, spontaneously with the pus, from the deeper part of the wound, what the surgeons called a “morsel of clothing,” about one-quarter of an inch square. Upon being examined under the microscope by Dr. Woodward, it was found to consist chiefly of cotton fibers, with a few woolen fibers adhering. It was a portion of the President’s shirt, with a few fibers of wool from the coat.

The two bulletins of the day were brief but satisfactory:

559“8:30 A. M.—The President has had a good night and is doing excellently. This morning, pulse, 88; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has had another good day. At 1 P. M. his pulse was 92; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. At 7 P. M., pulse, 96; temperature, 99.9; respiration, 19.”

For some time past the consulting surgeons had not been called to the President’s bedside, but daily reports were made to them by the physicians in charge. These reports, however, were but a more extended statement of the facts contained in the official bulletins, and generally added nothing in the way of information.

The twenty-first day.—The recovery of the President was now generally believed to be assured. The surgeons gave it as their opinion that about the only danger to be apprehended was the prolonged suppuration of the wound. Under the influence of this drain the President was wasting from day to day, and the amount of food which he was able to take was hardly sufficient to supply the waste. Nevertheless he held up well under this exhaustive process, and although greatly reduced in flesh and strength, his vital energies did not as yet seem to be seriously impaired. Almost the only item of news which came from the White House was the somewhat monotonous bulletins, which said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President rested well during the night and is quite easy this morning. Pulse, 88; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 17. 7:30 P. M.—The progress of the President’s case continues without material change. At 1 P. M. his pulse was 98; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. At 7 P. M., pulse, 98; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 19.”

The twenty-second day.—Bad news! The President was worse. The morning bulletin did not appear. At first this fact created no anxiety, but soon there was alarm. At ten o’clock a bulletin was posted by the surgeons, which said:

“10 A. M.—The President was more restless last night; but this morning at 7 A. M., while preparations were made to dress his wound, his 560temperature was found to be normal; pulse, 92; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. At 7:30 he had a slight rigor, in consequence of which the dressing of his wound was postponed. Reaction followed promptly, and the dressing has just now been completed. At present his pulse is 110; temperature, 101; respiration, 24.”

“Rigor” was a bad word. Physicians understood it to portend blood poisoning. It was remembered, moreover, by the attendants that for the last two days the President had complained of a sense of great fatigue. The symptoms were well calculated to inspire a fear that the dread pyæmia had made its appearance. The consulting surgeons were immediately sent for. At half-past eleven the President had another chill, and the news given to the people in the afternoon papers was of a kind to create the most serious apprehensions. The evening bulletin was awaited with the utmost anxiety. In the towns and cities crowds filled the streets as had happened three weeks before when the news came of the assassination. At seven o’clock the bulletin came as follows:

“7 P. M.—After the bulletin of 10 A. M. the President’s fever continued. At 11:30 A. M. he again had a slight rigor, and his temperature subsequently rose, until, at 12:30 P. M. it was 104, with pulse 125, respiration, 26. Between this time and 1 P. M. perspiration made its appearance, and the temperature began to fall gradually. It is now 101.7; pulse, 118; respiration, 25.”

Soon after this bulletin was made public, Drs. Agnew and Hamilton reached Washington, but it was thought not best to disturb the President further, and so no consultation was held until the morrow.

The twenty-third day.—This was an anxious day in Washington and throughout the country. With the coming of morning it was learned that during the night the President had had another chill. It also transpired that at the evening dressing of the wound, the physicians discovered in the region below where the ball had entered, a pus sac, that is, an accumulation of purulent matter in a cavity inclosed in the tissues of the back. At nine o’clock there 561was an examination by the attending and consulting surgeons, and an operation was determined upon. An incision was accordingly made about two inches in length, an inch and a half in depth, reaching down to the bottom of the cavity or sac. It was about three inches below the wound and farther back toward the spine. A large drainage tube was inserted, and in the afternoon, when the wound was again dressed, it was found that the pus was escaping from the tube and not from the old wound at all.

SCENE IN THE SICK CHAMBER.

In making this artificial opening some farther discoveries were made regarding the character of the wound. It was found that the eleventh rib had suffered a compound fracture, being broken in two places. The piece of bone thus displaced 562was driven inwards from its natural position. This the surgeons restored to its place, and it was decided that in a few days the old opening, where the ball had entered, should be allowed to heal, leaving only the orifice made by the surgeons. During the operation the President displayed his usual courage. He neither flinched nor moved, though nothing was given him in the nature of an anæsthetic. Probes were thrust down through the old wound to the bottom of the pocket, and against these probes the surgeons cut their way to the lower end of the sac. The operation thus performed was in every way successful. The beneficial effects were immediately apparent in an improved condition of the sufferer. The bulletin issued by the surgeons in the evening was as follows:

“7 P. M.—The President has been much relieved by the operation of this morning, and the pus has been discharging satisfactorily through the new opening. At noon to-day his pulse was 118; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 24. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 23.”

The unofficial conversations of the surgeons with reporters and others was to the effect that, taken all in all, the prospects for the President’s ultimate recovery were not lessened by the events of the last two days.

The twenty-fourth day.—The news was somewhat reassuring. There had been no very marked change in the President’s condition, either for better or worse. But he had passed a comparatively comfortable night, sleeping at intervals, and suffering no recurrence of the chill. The operation performed had entailed no serious consequence, and the outlook again began to be hopeful. The surgeon’s bulletins were of a sort to cheer rather than discourage. They said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a more comfortable night, and has had no rigor since that reported in the bulletin of yesterday morning. He is doing well this morning. Pulse, 96; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has done well during the day. His afternoon fever did not come on until after three o’clock. It is somewhat 563higher than yesterday, but there has been no chill. At noon his pulse was 104; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 20. At 7 P. M. his pulse was 110; temperature, 101; respiration, 24.”

The attendants upon the President who were often at the bedside, and had every opportunity of judging of the general course of the case, and also the members of the Cabinet, reiterated in many informal conversations the views expressed officially by the surgeons in charge. None the less, to one who could read between the lines and could not be blown hot or cold with every rumor, it was clear, even from the surgeons’ bulletins, that the recovery of the President was still problematical.

The twenty-fifth day.—The reports for Tuesday, July 26th, showed that the President was gaining ground, and that he had in a good measure realized the relief hoped for from the operation of the previous Sunday. This belief was plainly present in the dispatch of the cool-headed Mr. Blaine. He said:

“At 11 o’clock P. M. the President’s physicians report temperature and respiration normal, and pulse, 96—best report at same hour for five nights. The entire day has been most encouraging, and a feeling of confidence is rapidly returning.

This dispatch of the Secretary of State was, of course, based upon the official bulletins of the surgeons, who said in their reports for the day:

“8:30 A. M.—The President was somewhat restless during the night, and the fever which had subsided after the last bulletin rose again about midnight, and continued till three o’clock, after which it again subsided. He is now about as well as yesterday at the same hour. Pulse, 102; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has done well during the day. At noon his pulse was 106; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. At 7 P. M. pulse, 104; temperature, 100.7; respiration, 22.”

One of the distressing features of the times was the presence in Washington of great numbers of irresponsible newspaper correspondents who shamed their profession by the publication of 564whatever came uppermost. The Capital appeared to be at the mercy of sensational rumor-mongers, and they made the most of their opportunity. According to them, the doctors had said that the President would not live an hour; mortification had set in; an important surgical operation had been necessary, and the result had been unsatisfactory; the surgeons refused to give any information concerning it or the President’s condition; it had been decided by the surgeons that an attempt must at once be made to find and extract the bullet as a last desperate effort to save the President’s life; the flag on the building occupied by the Department of Justice was at half-mast, as a sign of the President’s death, etc.

The twenty-sixth day.—There could be no doubt that the reports of the 27th indicated a marked improvement in the President’s condition. He continued all day without fever. The bulletins were unequivocal:

“8 A. M.—The President slept sweetly last night from about 8 P. M. to 5 A. M., with but a slight break of short duration at 11 P. M. There have been no rigors. He takes his nourishment well, and his general condition is improving. He expresses himself as feeling better and more rested. Pulse, 94; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 12:30. P. M.—The President’s wound was dressed just after the morning bulletin was issued. Since then he has rested quietly, and takes his nourishment readily and without gastric disturbance. At present his pulse is 90; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President is still resting quietly. He has been able to take more nourishment to-day than for several days past, and, up to the present hour, has had no febrile rise of temperature. His wound has just been dressed. It looks well, and has continued to discharge healthy pus in sufficient quantity during the day. His pulse is now 95; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 20.”

The news sent abroad by Secretary Blaine to Minister Lowell was of the same tenor. The dispatch said:

“At 11 o’clock P. M. the President’s physicians gave a most favorable account of his condition. There is a conspicuous improvement in his 565digestion and in the restfulness of his sleep. We are by no means relieved from anxiety, but are growing more hopeful.

In a conversation during the day, Dr. Bliss, referring to the outlook, said: “There is only one more danger to be apprehended in the President’s case. That danger is pyæmia, and it is not likely to occur for a long time; and we are extremely confident, almost certain, that it will not occur at all. The President is doing very, very well. We could not hope to have him do better. His sleep last night was the best that he has had since he was wounded.”

The twenty-seventh day.—The incident of the day was the removal of the President from his room, in order that the apartment might be thoroughly cleaned and aired. The removal was effected without difficulty, and the President remained in the adjacent room until five o’clock in the afternoon, when he was quietly returned to his own chamber. He greatly enjoyed the slight change of scene thus afforded, and was much pleased with the maneuver by which his room had been brought to order. His spirits were revived not a little, and an improvement in his appetite was again thankfully noted. The official bulletins of the day were as follows:

“8 A. M.—The President rested well during the night, and no rigor or febrile disturbance has occurred since the bulletin of yesterday evening. This morning the improvement of his general condition is distinctly perceptible. He appears refreshed by his night’s rest, and expresses himself cheerfully as to his condition. Pulse, 92; temperature, 98.4: respiration, 18. 12:20 P. M.—The President bore the dressing of his wound this morning with less fatigue than hitherto. It appears well and is discharging sufficiently. His pulse is now 94; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has passed a pleasant day, and has taken his nourishment with apparent relish. His temperature continued normal until about 5 o’clock, when a moderate afternoon rise occurred, which, however, gives the patient but slight discomfort, and causes no anxiety. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 100.5; respiration, 20.”

During the day a sensational report was started to the effect that 566Dr. Agnew—in whose skill as a surgeon the people had come to have the greatest confidence—had said that the President’s life could not be saved unless the ball was excised at an early day. This rumor, however, was promptly denied, as were also some alleged unfavorable remarks of Dr. Hamilton. About this time, however, some eminent surgeons—notably Dr. Hammond, of New York City—began to express, and even to publish, very serious strictures upon the views and treatment adopted by the attending and consulting physicians of the President; and, in some instances, the reasoning of the critics seemed to be so well borne out by the facts as to put the medical and surgical skill of those who managed the President’s case to a very hard strain.

The twenty-eighth day.—On the 29th of July a Cabinet meeting, at which all the members except Attorney-General MacVeagh were present, was held at the White House. Public matters were discussed, and certain routine official business disposed of in the usual way. All this indicated a belief, on the part of the members, that the President was on the road to recovery. There was, however, no marked change in his condition or prospects. He had passed a comfortable night—so said the attendants—and the afternoon fever was less pronounced than on the previous day. The three bulletins of the surgeons contained about the only information which could be obtained of the progress of the distinguished patient. They were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—Immediately after the evening dressing yesterday the President’s afternoon fever began gradually to subside. He slept well during the night, and this morning is free from fever, looks well, and expresses himself cheerfully. A moderate rise of temperature in the afternoon is to be anticipated for some days to come. At present his pulse is 92; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 2:30 P. M.—The President bore the dressing of his wound well this morning, and exhibited very little fatigue after its completion. He rests well, and takes an adequate quantity of nourishment. At present his pulse is 98; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has been comfortable and cheerful during the day, and has had quite a nap since the noon bulletin was issued. At present his pulse is 98; temperature, 100; respiration, 20.”

567To these reports very little can be added for the day, except the confirmation of their substance in the evening dispatch of Secretary Blaine, which was as follows:

“The President’s afternoon fever was less to-day than yesterday, and at this hour—half-past 11 P. M.—has almost disappeared. Temperature very nearly normal. His wound is in a healthy condition, and he is doing well in all respects. His physicians are greatly encouraged.

The twenty-ninth day.—With the morning of the 30th of July came the report of a farther—though slight—improvement in the President’s condition. He was said to have waked early in the morning after a refreshing sleep. He showed no fatigue from the dressing of the wound in the course of the forenoon, and ate with relish a moderate quantity of solid food. He was able, with the aid of a contrivance placed under the mattress, partly to sit up in bed. The afternoon rise in temperature was moderate. Several times during the President’s illness the question of malarious influences about the White House, as affecting his prospects of recovery, was discussed by the physicians and the general public. It was noticed that several of the employes had been taken sick in a way to indicate malaria in the surroundings. The condition of the Executive Mansion itself was reported as being unfavorable to health. So the question of removing the President to a more healthful place was again raised and seriously debated by the surgeons. Dr. Bliss, who was a member of the Washington Board of Health, which several years before, after a long struggle, had succeeded in having a large number of disease-breeding tenement-houses removed, was very emphatic in his condemnation of the “conveniences” of the White House, and said the family of the President should be removed while engineers should overhaul and renovate the entire plumbing arrangements of the premises.

Of course all possible means are taken to keep the unhealthy influence arising from this condition of affairs from the sick-room of the President; and the closed doors, together with the elaborate 568new ventilating apparatus, were believed to furnish ample protection.

Mr. Blaine, in his night dispatch to Minister Lowell, spoke encouragingly of the situation, and the official bulletins were pitched in the usual hopeful key:

“8:30 A. M.—The President enjoyed a refreshing sleep during the greater part of the night. A gradual improvement of his general condition in all particulars is observable, and is recognized by himself. His pulse is now 92; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President showed no fatigue from the dressing of his wound this morning. His general condition continues gradually to improve. A moderate quantity of solid food has been added to his nourishment, and was eaten with relish. At present his pulse is 98; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 20. 7 P. M.—The President has passed the day comfortably and without drawback or unpleasant symptoms. The afternoon rise of temperature is moderate, and did not commence until about 5 o’clock. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 20.”

The thirtieth day.—The physicians again found time to discuss the location of the ball in the President’s body. The majority had still held the opinion that the missile had passed through the peritoneal cavity, and was lodged in the front wall of the abdomen. In a dispatch of the day, it was even alleged that the surgeons were now agreed in this opinion.

It was believed that the black-and-blue spot, which had been visible on the right side of the abdomen for several days after the President received his injury, marked the bullet’s location, and this theory was apparently confirmed by such results as had thus far been obtained with the induction balance. However this might be, it was said by the physicians, with much confidence, that the ball was, by this stage of progress, encysted, and that not much further trouble would or could arise from its presence in the body. The bulletins of the thirtieth day were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept well during the night, and awoke refreshed this morning. His appearance and expression this morning indicate continued improvement. At present his pulse is 94; temperature, 56998.4; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President bore the morning dressing of the wound without fatigue. It continues to look well and discharge adequately. The quantity of nourishment now taken daily is regarded as quite sufficient to support his system and favor the gradual increase in strength, which is plainly observable. At present his pulse is 100; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has passed an excellent day. The afternoon rise of temperature has been quite insignificant. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 99; respiration, 20.”

On this day it was announced that Professor Bell had completed his instrument for determining the location of the ball. A description of the apparatus was given to the public, which, though couched in scientific language, may prove of interest to the general reader. The induced electrical current, and the interference therewith by the presence of a metallic body, were the fundamental facts of the invention. The instrument consisted of two circular primary coils of insulated copper three inches in diameter and half an inch in thickness, the one being constructed of No. 19 wire, and containing between seven and eight ohms of resistance, forming the primary coil, and the other of No. 28 or 30 wire, giving more than eighty ohms of resistance, forming the secondary coil, the two being connected in separate metallic circuits. In the circuit with the former there was placed an electrical battery and a spring vibrator, the latter so adjusted as to make a very rapid series of “breaks” of the circuit, sending a hundred or more electrical pulsations over the circuit and around the primary coil of wire per second. A hand telephone only was placed in the circuit with the secondary coil. The batteries being connected, and the vibrator set in motion, the secondary coil was placed so as to cover the primary, and the operator having the telephone at his ear, hears the pulsations of the primary current sent through the vibrator with each motion of its spring, an induced current being produced in the secondary coil by its contiguity with the primary.

Up to this point the ground traversed had been familiar to all electricians for many years. Professor Bell’s discovery, which made the subject of special interest, consisted in the fact that if the 570secondary coil be gradually turned to one side, so as to uncover a portion of its primary, the inductive effects and the resultant tone from the vibrator diminish until a point is reached, where only about one-third of the surface of the secondary coil remaining upon the primary coil, the sound-producing effect of the induction ceased altogether. If the secondary coil be moved beyond the point of silence the sonorous results become immediately apparent.

At the point of silence it was discovered that that portion of the secondary, which still covered an equal portion of its primary, was very sensitive to the presence of metallic substances not connected in any way with the circuits of which the two coils formed a portion, disclosing their proximity by making again audible the sounds from the vibrator. The results obtained from this instrument were equal to those given by the Hughes balance, but the latter furnishing a more convenient form for general use, it was first adopted as the basis of experiments.

Such was the instrument which the electricians completed, but would it work in practically discovering the place of the ball? It was determined that on the morrow the apparatus should be tested.

The thirty-first day.—Two things on this day occupied the public attention: First, the regular reports; and second, the experiments of Professor Bell. The bulletins were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept well during the night, and this morning is cheerful, and expresses himself as feeling better than at any time since he was hurt. He appears stronger, and has evidently made progress toward recovery during the last few days. His pulse is now 94; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President’s wound continues to do well. At the morning dressing it was found to be in all respects in a satisfactory condition. At present his pulse is 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has taken nourishment well and in sufficient quantity, and in all respects continues to do well. The rise of temperature this afternoon is slight. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 99.5; respiration, 20.”

After the morning dressing of the President’s wound, it was 571decided to make a formal trial of the induction apparatus for determining, if possible, the location of the fatal bullet. Professor Bell was accordingly brought, with his instrument, to the President’s bedside, and there conducted his experiments. Later in the day he wrote out and presented to the surgeons an official report of the results, as follows:

“Gentlemen—I beg to submit for your information a brief statement of the results obtained with the new form of induction balance in the experiments made this morning for the purpose of locating the bullet in the person of the President. The instrument was tested for sensitiveness several times during the course of the experiments, and it was found to respond well to the presentation of a flattened bullet at a distance of about four inches from the coils. When the exploring coils were passed over that part of the abdomen where a sonorous spot was observed in the experiments made on July 26, a feeble tone was perceived, but the effect was audible a considerable distance around this spot. The sounds were too feeble to be entirely satisfactory, as I had reason to expect, from the extreme sensitiveness of the instrument, a much more marked effect. In order to ascertain whether similar sounds might not be obtained in other localities, I explored the whole right side and back below the point of entrance of the bullet, but no part gave indications of the presence of metal, except an area of about two inches in diameter, containing within it the spot previously found to be sonorous. The experiments were repeated by Mr. Taintor, who obtained exactly corresponding results. We are therefore justified in concluding that the ball is located within the above-named area. In our preliminary experiments we found that a bullet like the one in question, when in its normal shape, produced no audible effect beyond a distance of two and a-half inches; while the same bullet, flattened and presented with its face parallel to the plane of the coils, gave indications up to a distance of five inches. The same flattened bullet, held with its face perpendicular to the plane of the coils, produced no sound beyond a distance of one inch. The facts show that in ignorance of the actual shape and mode of presentation of the bullet to the exploring instrument, the depth at which the bullet lies beneath the surface can not be determined from our experiments.

The thirty-second day.—Less space was given to-day in the public press to reports of the President’s progress than on any previous 572day since the assassination. An incident of the hour was the reception by Mrs. Garfield of a draft for a hundred pounds sterling, sent by the Disciples, of England, to aid in the reconstruction of the church in Washington where the President was in the habit of attending worship. The reports for the day were of the same general tenor which they had borne since the surgical operation of the 25th July. The bulletins were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President passed a very pleasant night, and slept sweetly the greater part of the time. This morning he awoke refreshed, and appears comfortable and cheerful. Pulse, 94; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President is passing the day comfortably. At the morning dressing his wound was found to be doing admirably. His pulse is now 99; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has continued to progress favorably during the day, and appears perceptibly better in his general condition than yesterday, a more natural tone of voice being especially perceptible. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 100; respiration, 20.”

The thirty-third day.—“President Garfield continues,” says the New York Tribune, “to gain steadily. In a fortnight more, if all goes well with him, he will probably be able to sit up and give some attention to the business which awaits his action. He is still very weak, but when the healing process in his wound is well begun, he will, no doubt, gain strength rapidly.” Such was the opinion of the country. The physicians in charge, and the attendants upon the President, all seemed to believe confidently in his early convalescence. The most noticeable change in his condition was the return of his voice to its wonted fullness and resonance. His attendants said that the change in this respect had been very marked as compared with three or four days previous. The quantity of morphine given by the physicians, in order to produce sound sleep, had now been reduced to one-eighth of a grain daily, and the President was able to take more than the usual amount of nourishment, including beefsteak, milk, meat extract, toast saturated with beef juice, and a little coffee. His strength had increased, and he was able already to do more in the way of turning 573himself in bed, and helping others to raise his body, than the surgeons thought it prudent to allow.

The bulletins of the day were in every way satisfactory and encouraging:

8:30 A. M.—The President slept tranquilly the greater part of the night. This morning his temperature is normal, and his general condition is satisfactory. Another day of favorable progress is anticipated. At present his pulse is 90; temperature, 96.4; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President continues to progress steadily toward convalescence. He has taken to-day an increased proportion of solid food. His wound is doing well, and his general condition is better than yesterday. At present his pulse is 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has passed a very satisfactory day. The rise of temperature this afternoon is slight. At present his pulse is 102; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 19.

The proposed removal of the President from the White House was again under discussion. It was decided, however, to do nothing definite in regard to such removal until he could himself be taken into the counsel of the physicians, and indicate his preference. Two plans had thus far been discussed: one to take him upon a naval vessel, and depart for any point upon the coast where the surroundings seemed to promise most for his physical improvement; the other, to take him to the Soldiers’ Home, three miles from the White House, and keep him there until he should be able to make the journey by rail to Mentor, his Ohio home.

The thirty-fourth day.—No news of interest to-day. The space allotted in the newspapers to accounts of the progress and condition of the President was still further reduced. In conversation about the President’s condition, Dr. Hamilton was reported to have discussed the situation quite freely, and expressed the opinion that President Garfield was advancing toward recovery in a very satisfactory manner. In reply to the direct question: “Do you think the President will recover?” the Doctor said: “I have no doubt whatever of his ultimate recovery.” Dr. Hamilton also expressed the opinion that there was no malaria in the patient’s 574system. In response to interrogatories relative to moving the patient from the Executive Mansion, the doctor said that nothing could yet be determined, as the President was in no condition to be moved. He thought, however, when the proper time arrived, that a trip down the Potomac would be decidedly beneficial, and would hasten his recovery.

In accordance with the custom which the physicians had now adopted, only two bulletins were issued during the day, and they were of a sort to create no excitement.

“8:30 A. M.—The President continues to improve. He slept well during the night, and this morning looks and expresses himself cheerfully. Another satisfactory day is anticipated. At present his pulse is 90; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—As the morning bulletin indicated would probably be the case, the President has passed another good day without drawback or unpleasant symptoms of any kind. At 10:30 P. M. his pulse was 96; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. The afternoon rise of temperature came on late and was moderate in degree. Now his pulse is 102; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 19.”

Thus from day to day, and from week to week, the time wore on, the people regarding it merely as a matter of time when their beloved President would be restored to life and health. At this date they did not anticipate an alternative issue.

The thirty-fifth day.—In the leading papers of August 5th, no more than a quarter of a column was devoted to President Garfield. The citizens of Newport, Rhode Island, sent, through the mayor of the city, an invitation to the President to come to their famous resort as soon as his wound would permit, and to remain as their guest until complete recovery. The bulletins of the day contained the only information. They said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept naturally the greater part of the night, although he has taken no morphia during the last twenty-four hours. His improved condition warranted, several days ago, a diminution in the quantity of morphia administered hypodermically at bedtime, and it was reduced at first to one-twelfth and afterward to one-sixteenth of a grain in the twenty-four hours, without any consequent unpleasant result, and finally has been altogether dispensed with. His 575condition this morning exhibits continued improvement, and another good day is anticipated. At present his pulse is 88; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has passed another good day. He has taken an adequate quantity of nourishment, and has had several pleasant naps during the day. At 12:30 P. M. his pulse was 98; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. After 4 P. M. his temperature began to rise as usual, but to a moderate degree and without perceptible dryness of skin. His pulse is 102; temperature, 100.4; respiration, 19.”

The thirty-sixth day.—The public had now accepted, with abiding trust, the oft-repeated assurances of the surgeons that the President was on the road to health. The White House, from being the center of interest for the people of the whole country, as it had been two weeks before, had become the dullest place in Washington. Doctors came in and went out, and casual inquirers continued their visits. The military guards patrolled the space in front of the one gate through which access was had to the grounds, but beyond this nothing in the appearance or surroundings of the place indicated that public attention was, in any marked degree, turned in that direction. Great interest in the progress of the case continued, but it was not so intense and all-absorbing as hitherto. The bulletins were again the only news:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed an excellent night, sleeping sweetly the greater part of the time. This morning he is cheerful, and all the indications promise another favorable day. Pulse, 92; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President passed a comfortable morning, his symptoms and general condition being quite satisfactory. At 12:30 P. M. his pulse was 100; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 19. The afternoon rise of temperature began as late as yesterday, but has been higher, though unaccompanied by dryness of skin. At 7 P. M. his pulse was 102; temperature, 101.8; respiration, 19. The appearance of the wound at the evening dressing was, however, good, and there has been no interruption to the flow of pus.”

The thirty-seventh day.—The 7th of August was probably the most quiet day since the President was wounded. There was some comment about the city regarding the information contained in the morning bulletin, the language of which was, that the President 576“this morning is in good condition, although the effects of the febrile disturbance of yesterday are still slightly perceptible in pulse and temperature.” Many persons construed this sentence as indicative of unfavorable symptoms; but the general public accepted it as reassuring, and consequently there were but few inquiries at the Mansion in the course of the day.

Within a narrower and better informed circle it was suspected that another pus sac was forming in the President’s body, but the opinion did not, for the time, obtain publicity. The two official bulletins of the day were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—Shortly after the bulletin of last evening was issued the President fell into a pleasant sleep, during which the febrile rise subsided and was no longer perceptible when he awoke at 10 P. M. Subsequently he slept well, though with occasional breaks during the rest of the night. No morphia or other anodyne was administered. This morning he is in good condition, although the effects of the febrile disturbance of yesterday are still slightly perceptible in pulse and temperature. At present his pulse is 96; temperature, 98.7; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President has been comfortable during the day, although his temperature began to rise earlier than yesterday, and rose almost as high. At 12:30 P. M. his pulse was 104; temperature, 100; respiration, 20. At this hour his pulse is 104; temperature, 101.2; respiration, 20. He has taken nourishment as usual, and has had several refreshing naps during the day.”

One of the unofficial reports of the day was to the effect that an effort was making to trace out exactly the course of the wound, and that to this end an instrument, called the electric probe, was to be inserted in the track of the ball. Professor Taintor was called to the Executive Mansion late in the afternoon to consult with the attending surgeons regarding the use of the electric probe. After the consultation, he was requested to return in the morning and to bring with him a battery of two cells. The purpose was, should it be determined to experiment with the instrument, to endeavor to ascertain the exact course of the wound from the surface of the body to the spot where the ball was lodged, and if possible to discover whether there was a pus cavity, and, if so, its exact location.

577The thirty-eighth day.—On this morning the physicians held a consultation. The question of the President’s afternoon fever was discussed, and Dr. Agnew was reported as having urged upon the surgeons the fact that the febrile rise was greater and more persistent than it should be if occasioned by the natural and inevitable processes of healing. The opinion was freely expressed that the channel of the wound was in some measure obstructed, and the propriety of a second operation to relieve the difficulty was suggested as the proper remedy. Accordingly, after the morning dressing of the wound, a second operation was performed, of which Dr. Bliss has given the following official account in the Medical Record for October 8, 1881:

“The necessity of the operation was plainly developed by passing a flexible catheter through the opening previously made, which readily coursed toward the crest of the ilium, a distance of about seven inches. This cavity was evacuated twice daily, by passing through the catheter, previously inserted in the track, an aqueous solution of permanganate of potash from a small hand-fountain, slightly elevated, the water and pus returning and escaping at the opening externally.

“The indications for making a point of exit in the dependent portion of this pus sac were urgent, and on August 8th the operation was performed by extending the incision previously made, downward and forward through the skin, subcutaneous fascia, external and internal oblique muscles, to a sinus or pus channel. The exposed muscle contained a considerable number of minute spiculæ of bone. Upon carrying a long, curved director through the opening between the fractured rib downward to the point of incision, there was a deeper channel which had not been exposed by the operation thus far, and the incision was carried through the transversalis muscle and transversalis fascia, opening into the deeper track and exposing the end of the director. A catheter was then passed into the portion of the track below the incision, a distance of three and one-half inches, and in a direction near the anterior superior spinous process of the ilium. The President was etherized during this operation.”

This description of the operation, as narrated by Dr. Bliss, may doubtless be accepted, though involving many technical expressions which, under the circumstances, are unavoidable, as in every 578way correct and adequate. The regular bulletins were issued as usual and presented the following summary of symptoms:

“8:30 A. M.—The President passed a comfortable night and slept well without an anodyne. The rise of temperature of yesterday afternoon subsided during the evening, and did not recur at any time through the night. At present he appears better than yesterday morning. Pulse, 94; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.

“10:30.—It having become necessary to make another opening to facilitate the escape of pus, we took advantage of the improved condition of the President this morning. Shortly after the morning bulletin was issued he was etherized. The incision tended downward and forward, and a counter-opening was made into the track of the ball below the margin of the twelfth rib, which it is believed will effect the desired object. He bore the operation well, and has now recovered from the effects of the etherization and is in excellent condition.

“7 P. M.—After the last bulletin was issued the President suffered somewhat for a time from nausea due to the ether, but this has now subsided. He has had several refreshing naps, and his general condition is even better than might have been expected after the etherization and operation. At noon his pulse was 104; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 20. At present his pulse is 108; temperature, 101.9; respiration, 19.”

The thirty-ninth day.—The effect of the surgical operation was salutary in so far as to make it practicable to dispense with the drainage-tube, to the great relief of the patient. The effects of the etherization, however, were somewhat distressing, and the shock of the operation no doubt told unfavorably on the President’s small reserve of vitality. None the less, his condition was so far from unfavorable that Dr. Agnew returned to Philadelphia and Secretary Blaine made preparations to take a brief respite from care by a visit to his own State. The ripple of anxiety, excited by the recent operation, passed away, and matters went on as before. The official reports of the day were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—Notwithstanding the effects of yesterday’s operation, the President slept the greater part of the night without the use of morphia. This morning his pulse is 98; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 19. Since yesterday afternoon small quantities of liquid nourishment, given at short 579intervals, have been retained, and this morning larger quantities are being administered without gastric disturbance.

“12:30 P. M.—At the dressing of the President’s wound this morning, it was found that pus had been discharged spontaneously and freely through the counter-opening made yesterday. He has been quite comfortable this morning, and taken a liberal supply of liquid nourishment. His pulse is now 104; temperature, 99.7; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has been very easy during the day, and has continued to take the nourishment allowed without gastric disturbance. The degree of fever this P. M. differs little from that of yesterday. Pulse, 106; temperature, 101.9; respiration, 19.”

It was one of the incidents of the day, that the President wrote his name, with the date, August 9, 1881, in a comparatively steady hand and without a serious effort.

The fortieth day.—The morning news recited that the President’s appetite had somewhat improved, but this cheering information was coupled with the announcement that the sufferer had not recovered sufficiently to be raised, as hitherto, into the semi-recumbent position. It transpired that the writing of the President’s name on the previous day had been an official act, namely, the attestation of a paper of extradition in the case of an escaped Canadian forger, who had several years yet to serve in prison. The general indications were thought so favorable that Secretary Blaine did not longer delay his departure, but left on his contemplated visit for home. In the afternoon Mrs. Garfield sat for a long time beside her husband, talking with him, in a quiet way, of things most dear to each. The physicians’ official report closed the history of the day, as follows:

“8 A. M.—The President slept soundly during the night, and this morning his temperature is again normal, although his pulse is still frequent. At present it is 104; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 19. 12:30 P. M.—The President is getting through the day in a very satisfactory manner. He has asked for, and taken a small quantity of solid food in addition to the liquid nourishment allowed. His temperature and respiration continue within the normal range, though the debility following the operation is still shown by the frequency of pulse. At present his pulse is 110; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 19. 7 P. M.—The President has passed 580an excellent day. The drainage of the wound is now efficient, and the pus secreted by the deeper portions has been coming away spontaneously. The afternoon rise of temperature is almost a degree less than yesterday and the day before. Pulse at present 108; temperature, 101; respiration, 19.”

The forty-first day.—The passing epoch was again marked by a division of opinion among the newspapers. A series of leading articles in the New York Herald, understood to be from the pen of Dr. Hammond, were not only despondent in tone and severe upon the attending surgeons, but positively prophetic of a fatal termination of the President’s case. This view of the matter was, however, ably controverted in other leading papers, and the people were thus both led and misled. Looking to the sick room itself, there seemed to be not much cause for alarm. The President had improved somewhat in strength and appetite. He conversed freely. Especially did he surprise and gratify his attendants by calling for a writing tablet and penning a short but affectionate letter to his mother,—the last he ever wrote.

Turning to the official reports of the day, the following summary of the President’s progress was presented:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed an exceedingly good night; sleeping sweetly with but few short breaks, and awaking refreshed this morning at a later hour than usual. At the morning dressing, just completed, it was found that the deeper parts of the wound had been emptied spontaneously. His temperature shows an entire absence of fever this morning, and his pulse, which is less frequent than yesterday, is improving in quality. At present it is 100; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 19.

“12:30 P. M.—The President is doing well to-day. Besides a liberal supply of liquid nourishment at regular intervals, he has taken for breakfast, with evident relish, an increased quantity of solid food. He continues free from fever, his skin is moist, but without undue perspiration. Pulse, 102; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 19.

“7 P. M.—After the noon bulletin was issued, the President’s condition continued as then reported until about 4 P. M., when the commencement of the afternoon febrile rise was noted. In its degree it did not differ materially from that of yesterday. His pulse is now 108; temperature, 101.2; respiration, 19.”

581

FAC-SIMILE OF THE LAST LETTER WRITTEN BY GARFIELD.

582The forty-second day.—Not much change. The President was weary and longed for a change of scene. The day when he could be safely removed from the White House was anxiously anticipated both by himself and the physicians. The United States steamer Tallapoosa, which had been undergoing repairs and fitting out for sea during the past month, was finally in complete readiness, and would be manned on the morrow. Assistant Paymaster Henry D. Smith, formerly of the Dispatch, had been transferred to the Tallapoosa. In a conversation of the morning, Mr. Smith gave a description of the manner in which the vessel had been fitted out. A suite of rooms had been prepared expressly for the use of President Garfield in the event of its being found practicable to take him out on the water, and at this time the suggestion of such a cruise seemed to please him greatly. The suite consisted of four comparatively large rooms, including a bed-chamber, reception and ante-room, and a bath-room. Paymaster Smith said further, that if it should be determined to take the President on the vessel, a swinging bed would be hung in his chamber so that the patient should not be annoyed by the motion of the vessel. Such were the plans and hopes which were never, alas, to be realized.

The surgeons’ reports for August 12th contained about all that could be said concerning the President’s condition for the day:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept well during the greater part of the night. The fever of yesterday afternoon subsided during the evening, and has not been perceptible since 10 P. M. His general condition this morning is good. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 19.

“12:30 P. M.—The President has passed a comfortable morning. He continues to take, with repugnance, the liquid nourishment allowed, and ate with relish for breakfast, a larger quantity of solid food than he took yesterday. At present his pulse is 100; temperature, 99.3; respiration, 19.

“7 P. M.—The President has passed a comfortable day. At the evening dressing the wound was found to be doing well. The quantity of pus secreted is gradually diminishing. Its character is healthy. The rise of temperature this afternoon reached the same point as yesterday. At present the pulse is 108; temperature, 101.2; respiration, 19.”

583Thus from hour to hour, from day to day, from week to week, did the President tread the long and weary way onward and—downward.

The forty-third day.—It was about this time that the attending surgeons finally abandoned their original diagnosis of the wound; that is, in so far as it concerned the direction of the ball. For some time Dr. Hamilton had given it as his view that the bullet, instead of entering the peritoneal cavity, and perforating the liver, had been turned downward at nearly a right angle to its course, and was lodged in the region behind the ilium. This view of the case was now accepted by the physicians in charge. In a conversation of the day, Dr. Bliss said that the latest examinations of the wound had clearly shown that the ball did not go through the liver. The liver was certainly injured by the shot, either by concussion or inflammation. At the present time, however, every indication corroborated the idea that the ball was in the region of the iliac fossa, and also that it was doing no harm.

Things had not gone well during the night. The President had been restless; and, contrary to the usual history of the case, fever was reported in the morning bulletin. The foreign dispatch of Hon. R. R. Hitt, Acting Secretary of State, referred to the President’s excited condition, and could only reiterate the somewhat uncertain echo of the bulletins, that the surgeons thought him “doing well.” The official reports themselves were couched in the following language;

“8:30 A. M.—The President did not sleep as well as usual during the early part of the night. After midnight, however, his sleep was refreshing, and broken only at long intervals. This morning he has a little fever, nevertheless he expresses himself as feeling better than for several days past. Pulse, 104; temperature, 100.8; respiration, 19. 12:30 P. M.—The President has been cheerful and easy during the morning, and his temperature has fallen a little more than a degree and a half since the morning bulletin was issued. His pulse is now 102; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—Since the last bulletin the President has continued to do well. The afternoon fever has been half a degree less than yesterday. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 100.7; respiration, 19.”

584The forty-fourth day.—One of the difficulties with which President Garfield had to contend was a certain weakness of digestion. Notwithstanding his great bodily strength and general robustness, it appears that never after the war were his assimilative powers equal to superficial indications. He had been, both by preference and necessity, a plain liver. The “eating” of the White House had not suited him. The French cookery of the establishment had proved at once distasteful and injurious to his health and spirits. After he was wounded, this weakness in his bodily functions became at once more pronounced. Great difficulty was experienced in securing an alimentation sufficient to sustain life and repair the fearful waste to which he was subjected. The sensitiveness of the digestive organs at times became critical. It was so on the 14th of August, when the physicians were almost baffled in the attempt to maintain nutrition. For the first time there was talk of the stronger stimulants. Whisky and brandy were both used, though not in large quantities. It could be plainly seen that under the outwardly confident tone of the official reports there lurked the shadow of fear. The regular bulletins of the day came out as usual, with the following account of the sufferer’s condition:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept well during the night, and this morning expresses himself as feeling comfortable. His temperature is one degree less than at the same hour yesterday. His general condition is good. Pulse, 100; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President has done well this morning. His temperature has fallen one-half a degree since the last bulletin was issued. At the morning dressing the condition of the wound was found to be excellent, and the discharge of pus adequate and healthy. Pulse, 96; temperature, 99.3; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The condition of the President has not materially changed since noon. The afternoon febrile rise is about the same as yesterday. Pulse, 108; temperature, 100.8; respiration, 19.”

The forty-fifth day.—A day of great alarm; and the alarm was fully justified. There was evidence of weakening all 585around. The respiration had gone up. The temperature had gone up. So had the pulse to a fearful rate. The enfeebled stomach had broken down. That was the secret of the difficulty. Without food a well man can not live. How much less a man wounded to death and wasted by forty-five days of suffering! With every attempt to feed the President, his stomach rejected the food. If this state of things should continue, life would go out like a taper. It was to the credit of the surgeons in charge that they took the situation coolly and set about devising the best possible means of triumphing over the fearful obstacle which lay squarely across the possibility of recovery. The plan suggested and resorted to was artificial alimentation by the administration of enemata. In the after part of the day, Washington, and indeed the whole country, was filled with wild rumors which conveyed very little information and could be traced to no authentic source. The only trustworthy information was to be obtained from the official bulletins of the surgeons, which were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President did not rest as well as usual last night. Until toward three o’clock his sleep was not sound, and he awoke at short intervals. His stomach was irritable and he vomited several times. About three o’clock he became composed, and slept well until after seven this morning. His stomach is still irritable, and his temperature rather higher than yesterday. At present his pulse is 108; temperature, 100.2; respiration, 20. 12:30 P. M.—Since the last bulletin, the President has not again vomited, and has been able to retain the nourishment administered. At the morning dressing, the discharge of pus was free and of good character. Since then his pulse has been more frequent; but the temperature has fallen to a little below what it was at this time yesterday. At present his pulse is 118; temperature, 99; respiration, 19. 6:30 P. M.—The irritability of the President’s stomach returned during the afternoon and he has vomited three times since one o’clock. Although the afternoon rise of temperature is less than it has been for several days, the pulse and respiration are more frequent, so that his condition is, on the whole, less satisfactory. His pulse is now 130; temperature, 99.6; respiration, 22.”

586These reports clearly indicated the most serious crisis which had yet occurred since the President was shot. Unless the functions of the stomach could be restored by rest, there could be but one issue, and that was near at hand.

The forty-sixth day.—All that could be said was that there had been slight improvement in some particulars. In the main matter—that of nourishment—the case was as bad as ever. Neither the city nor the country would have been surprised to hear that the President was dying or dead. The whole question, as matters now stood, was this: How long can he live? He himself was conscious, in good measure, of the appalling odds against him, but his calm heroism never wavered for a moment. From the first he only once—and that but for an instant—gave way to despondency, when he said to his wife that, considering the fact that he was already fifty years old, and that the brief remainder of his life would, perhaps, be weakened—possibly helpless—from his injury, it hardly appeared to be worth the struggle which his friends and himself were making to save it. This thought, however, found but a moment’s lodgment; and even now, when his vital forces seemed to be flowing out to the last ebb of despair, he stood up manfully and faced the enemy. His will remained vigorous, and he was cheerful in spirit—this, too, when the very water which was tendered him to refresh his exhausted powers was instantly rejected by the stomach. It was clear that no human vigor could long withstand so dreadful an ordeal; and the physicians recognized and acknowledged the fact that their unnatural system of alimentation was but a makeshift which would presently end in failure. Then death. The bulletins said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President was somewhat restless during the early part of the night. Since three o’clock he has slept tranquilly most of the time. Nutritious enemata are successfully employed to sustain him. Altogether the symptoms are less urgent than yesterday afternoon. At present his pulse is 110; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President has been tranquil since the morning bulletin, but 587has not yet rallied from the prostration of yesterday as much as was hoped. The enemata administered are still retained. At present his pulse is 114; temperature, 98.3; respiration, 18. 7 P. M.—The President’s symptoms are still grave, yet he seems to have lost no ground during the day, and his condition on the whole is rather better than yesterday. The enemata are retained. At present his pulse is 120; temperature, 98.9; respiration, 19.”

The forty-seventh day.—Notwithstanding the desperate extreme to which the poor President was reduced, the dispatches came, on the morning of August 17th, with the news that he was better. The dreadful nausea had passed, and two or three times some nutritive food had been swallowed and retained. Moreover, he had slept as much as an hour at a time. The examination of the wound, too, showed some little ground for encouragement, for the process of healing had gone on, notwithstanding the terrible exhaustion of the last three days. In the inner circle about the President’s bed there was a more hopeful feeling. “Little Crete,” the darling wife of the suffering Chief Magistrate, ventured out, with her three boys, to take a drive in the open air. Mr. Smalley, of the Tribune, thus spoke of her, as her carriage passed through the gateway:

“Her face, as she gave a nod and a smile of recognition, looked bright and hopeful. I knew that the agony of apprehension must be over and the President must be on the upward road again. The brave little woman! What a terrible strain she has endured and with what wonderful courage and patience she has met every fresh draft upon her strength and resolution, keeping always out of her face the pain and dread tugging at her heart, lest the slightest glimpse of it should discourage her husband in his long battle with death! I remember that at Elberon, just before the fatal journey to Washington, General Garfield spoke of her with tenderness and pride, as a steel-spring sort of a woman—supple, bright, enduring, and rebounding after the severest strains. If he wins his way back to health again he will owe his recovery, I firmly believe, as much to the loving and cheerful ministrations of his wife, as to the six doctors who wait upon him, skillful and devoted as they are.”

588Later in the day, Mrs. Garfield received a dispatch from the Queen—there has been only one Queen since the President was shot—which was answered by the wife in her own way. The dispatches were as follows:

“I am most anxious to know how the President is to-day, and to express my deep sympathy with you both.

“Your Majesty’s kind inquiry finds the President’s condition changed for the better. In the judgment of his medical advisers there is strong hope of his recovery. His mind is entirely clear, and your Majesty’s kind expressions of sympathy are most grateful to him, as they are gratefully acknowledged by me.

The regular bulletins gave the usual epitome of symptoms, as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a tranquil night, sleeping most of the time. He continues to retain the nutritive enemata, and has not vomited since the last bulletin. His general condition appears more hopeful than at this time yesterday. Pulse, 110; temperature, 98.3; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President’s condition has not materially changed since the last bulletin. He has been tranquil and has slept some, has not vomited, and the nutritive enemata are still retained. Pulse, 112; temperature, 98.7; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The President’s condition is even better than it was this morning. The wound continues to do well. At present his pulse is 112; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 18.”

Meanwhile the trusted Secretary Blaine had reached Washington and was again at the bedside of his chief. In the evening he sent abroad two dispatches containing a brief summary of the President’s condition as determined by the official reports and by his own observation. And so the day closed in hope rather than despair.

The forty-eighth day.—The President was still further improved—so thought and said his physicians. The mutinous stomach, which 589had threatened to end his life by refusing to perform its work at a time when it was not possible for his weakened system to bear for any lengthened period the strain of the wound and the fever without sustenance, had renewed its functions, and the experiments made during the day gave reasons to hope that nourishing food might now be administered with safety. It was good news indeed, and it would have been better if it had not been coupled with the statement that the President was reduced almost to a skeleton. From 210 pounds—his weight when shot—he had wasted away till his weight was hardly 135 pounds. Yet with only this pitiful bony structure of himself left he was reported as cheerful and brave! He was able to take more nourishment than on the previous day, and it appeared that his alimentation was now likely to be sufficient; but just as this beneficial reaction became noticeable, another complication arose which threatened to overbalance all the expected good. On the 17th of August a slight inflammation was noticed in the right parotid gland. By the following morning the swelling was more pronounced, and immediately became a source of annoyance and alarm. The tumefaction assumed the appearance of a carbuncle and there were indications of approaching suppuration of the gland. The face, especially on the right side, became distorted, and the President suffered great pain from the inflamed part. It was clear that in some measure the blood of the sufferer had been poisoned by the discharges of the wound, and that nature was attempting to relieve her distress by the destruction of a gland. The official bulletins of the day, though pervaded with the same spirit of optimism which characterized them all, were not of a sort to inspire confidence. They said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a very comfortable night, sleeping well the greater part of the time. This morning his pulse is slower and his general condition better than yesterday at the same hour. Pulse, 104, temperature, 98.8; respiration, 17. 12:30 P. M.—The President is suffering some discomfort this morning from commencing inflammation of the right parotid gland. He has asked for and retained several portions of liquid nourishment, much more than he could swallow yesterday. The nutritive enemata continue to be used with success. At present his 590pulse is 108; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The President has done well during the day. He has taken additional nourishment by the mouth this afternoon with evident relish and without subsequent nausea. His general condition is rather better than at this time yesterday. Pulse, 108; temperature, 100; respiration, 18.”

The forty-ninth day.—With the 19th of August a more hopeful feeling again predominated. It was alleged by the surgeons that the President had made some improvement. Some was better than none. His nutriment for the day amounted to nine ounces of liquid food. The physicians gave assurance to the public that the inflamed gland did not necessarily imply blood poisoning. The President slept at intervals. In his waking moments he was still cheerful, but expressed a great yearning to get away from Washington and return to his home at Lawnfield.

In these days of alternate hope and anxious alarm the question naturally arose as to what had become of the Executive Department of the Government. The President was still himself in a certain sense, but he was without doubt utterly incapacitated to perform any executive duty. There was no acting President, and to tell the truth the people did not desire one. Some leading papers advocated the assumption of certain of the duties of the President by members of the Cabinet; but this untried and—it may be added—unconstitutional measure was not attempted; and so all executive functions remained in abeyance. The acts usually performed by the President were simply omitted until he should recover. Fortunately in a time of peace and during a recess of Congress, these acts could be postponed without any great detriment to public interests. The appointing power, except in so far as it is delegated by law to the heads of Departments, was in a state of complete suspension, but this fact occasioned no trouble, except to applicants for office. Under our system, where vacancies in Presidential appointments occur, by death or resignation, there is usually a deputy or some other officer who is authorized by law to perform temporarily the duties of the office. In the cases of post-offices where there are no deputy postmasters, the Post-Office Department is authorized to send special agents to take charge until the 591vacant postmastership can be filled. If the President’s prostration should continue—so reasoned the people—until the meeting of Congress—a contingency wholly improbable—there would be no stoppage of any part of the machinery of Government. In short, the American people were taught by a practical, though painful, example the great lesson, how little need there is for a nation of freemen to be governed—how amply able such a people are to adapt themselves to any emergency. The official reports of the day gave as usual the facts on which various opinions of the President’s prospects were based:

“8 A. M.—The President slept much of the night, and this morning is more comfortable than yesterday. The swelling of the right parotid gland has not increased since yesterday. Nutritive enemata are still given with success, and liquid food has been swallowed and relished. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 17.

“12:30 P. M.—The President’s condition has perceptibly improved during the last twenty-four hours. He is taking to-day an increased quantity of liquid food by the mouth. His pulse is now 106; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 17.

“6:30 P. M.—The President has been very easy during the afternoon and the favorable conditions reported in the last bulletin continue. Pulse, 106; temperature, 100; respiration, 18.”

The fiftieth day.—There could be no denial of another rally—though slight—on the part of the President. During the day a surgical experience occurred. Dr. Bliss, in treating the wound, succeeded in passing with a flexible tube what he supposed to be an obstruction in the path of the ball. When this was done, the tube suddenly dropped, almost of its own weight, down the channel^[6] to the depth of twelve and a half inches! The end of the probe was thus brought, as was confidently believed, into immediate proximity with the ball. The parotitis, from which the President was now suffering so severely, 592was reported as “about the same.” As a consequence of this inflammation, though no acknowledgment of the fact was made at the time, the patient’s face suffered a partial paralysis, which continued seriously to afflict him to the last. The summary of symptoms was published at the usual hours by the surgeons and presented the following statement of the President’s condition.

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a quiet night, and this morning his condition does not differ materially from what it was yesterday. The swelling of the parotid gland is unchanged and is free from pain. This morning his pulse is 98; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.

“12:30 P. M.—The President continues to do well. He is taking liquid food by the mouth in increased quantity and with relish. The nutritive enemata are still successfully given, but at longer intervals. His pulse is now 107; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.

“6:30 P. M.—The President has passed the day quietly. He has been able to take more liquid food by the mouth than yesterday, and the quantity given by enema has been proportionately diminished. The parotid swelling remains about the same. Pulse, 110; temperature, 100.4; respiration, 19.”

The fifty-first day.—It was a long and sorrowful journey. There were pitfalls in the way. That inflamed gland now became a source of profound anxiety. The salivary secretions were so augmented and at the same time vitiated as constantly to fill the patient’s throat, threatening strangulation. The tendency to nausea was thus excited, and the President’s stomach again rejected food. This fact told immediately on the modicum of strength still remaining, and as the day progressed it appeared that medical skill was about exhausted in a hopeless struggle against the inevitable. The surgeons, however, as is the wont with the profession, still renewed the battle, now with this expedient and now with that, but always with the purpose of keeping the President alive until some kind of favorable reaction could supervene. The feature of the day’s history was that the most serious alarm was spread 593abroad after the issuance of the evening bulletin. The three official reports were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President awoke more frequently than usual, yet slept sufficiently during the night, and appears comfortable this morning. The parotid swelling is about the same, but is not painful. He took liquid nourishment by the mouth several times during the night as well as this morning. Pulse, 106; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 18.

“12:30 P. M.—The President’s condition continues about as at the morning bulletin, except that there is a slight rise of temperature. Pulse, 108; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 18.

“6:30 P. M.—The President has vomited three times during the afternoon; the administration of food by the mouth has, therefore, again been temporarily suspended and the nutritive enemata will be given more frequently. Pulse, 108; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 18.”

To these regular bulletins may well be added the foreign dispatch of Secretary Blaine, who, at a late hour, sent to Minister Lowell the following message:

“The President’s sleep last night was broken and restless. His symptoms throughout the day have been less favorable, and his general condition is not encouraging. He is unable to retain food on his stomach, having vomited twice during the afternoon, the last time at 5 o’clock. This evening he has been able to drink water and retain it. The swelling of the parotid gland has not increased. Pulse and temperature about the same as yesterday. His sleep up to this hour (11 P. M.) has been somewhat disturbed. We are all deeply anxious.

The fifty-second day.—The question was, how much longer the wheels of vexed and exhausted Nature could continue to revolve. Every power of life within the uncomplaining man was prostrated or dead. The inflammation in the gland had now progressed to a terrible extent, and an operation for its relief was already contemplated. That blood poisoning to some extent now existed, could hardly be controverted. Even the oversanguine Dr. Bliss was forced to admit it. In a conversation 594of the day, and in reply to questions with regard to the inflamed gland, he said: “The glandular swelling is still hard, and shows no signs of subsiding. The swelling of the surrounding parts has pretty much disappeared. Whether suppuration will take place or not we can not yet tell. I am inclined to think it will. I do not, however, apprehend any serious consequences even in that case, provided we can maintain the patient’s strength. The pus which forms is likely to be of a healthy character, and we shall liberate it promptly by an incision. There has been no pain in the gland this afternoon, and it has caused the patient little annoyance.”

With regard to the septic tint in the blood, which was the predisposing cause of the glandular inflammation, Dr. Bliss said: “In cases of this kind, where the patient becomes enfeebled by long-continued fever and suppuration, there is always a low and impoverished state of the blood. It is, indeed, a sort of mild blood poisoning, but it is very different from pyæmia. Pyæmia is caused by absorption into the blood of the disunited elements of broken down pus. Small fragments of fibrine are carried into the circulation, and wherever such a fragment lodges in one of the minute blood-vessels it becomes a center of suppuration. The symptoms of pyæmia, such as the disorganization and peculiar odor of the pus, the yellowish tint of the skin, the odor of the breath and the increased temperature of the body, are all marked and unmistakable, and none of them has at any time appeared in the President’s case.”

Thus with vain conjectures and provisos did the distinguished surgeon attempt to keep up his own courage and that of the public. But it was now well known that, bulletins or no bulletins, the President, unless promptly relieved either by medical skill or some unexpected revival of nature, was down to the very door of death. The official reports of the day were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has not vomited since yesterday afternoon, and this morning he has twice asked for and received a small quantity of fluid nourishment by the mouth. He slept more quietly 595during the night, and this morning his general condition is more encouraging than when the last bulletin was issued. Pulse, 104; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.

“12:30 P. M.—The President has continued this morning to retain liquid nourishment taken by the mouth as well as by enema. There has been no recurrence of the vomiting and no nausea. Pulse, 104; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.

“6:30 P. M.—The President has continued to take nourishment in small quantities at stated intervals during the entire day, and has had no return of nausea or vomiting. The nutrient enemata are also retained. Pulse, 110; temperature, 100.1; respiration, 19.”

The fifty-third day.—How is the President this morning? The President had made a gain. Of a certainty, he was not any further in the shadow of the valley than on yesterday. He had taken in all, since the morning before, about thirty ounces of liquid food without disturbing his stomach. Several times he called for food himself. One of the physicians said during the day that the President had taken more than sufficient food to repair the day’s waste. At one time his pulse was down to ninety-six—the lowest point it had reached for more than a fortnight. Secretary Blaine—in whose dispatches the people had learned to place the highest reliance—expressed himself somewhat more hopefully to Minister Lowell, in the night message, which read as follows:

“The President’s condition is more encouraging than it was at this time last night. During the last twenty-four hours he has swallowed ten ounces of extract of beef and eighteen ounces of milk, retaining and digesting both. He has twice asked for food, which he has not done before for several days. Pulse and temperature are both somewhat lower. The swelling of the parotid gland has not specially changed. Its long continuance at the present stage increases the fear of suppuration. At this hour—11 o’clock—the physicians report that the President has rested quietly the entire evening.

Anxious concern about the President’s condition on the part of the public was tempered with so much hopefulness that the evidences 596of excitement somewhat abated. The street gatherings about the bulletin-boards in the principal cities were not so large as they had been, although the three official bulletins from the physicians and Secretary Blaine’s message to Minister Lowell were eagerly waited for and much talked of in public places. These bulletins were, in the usual form, as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept the greater part of the night, but awoke at frequent intervals. He has taken since last evening a larger quantity of liquid food by the mouth than in the corresponding hours of any day during the past week. The use of nutrient enemata is continued at longer intervals. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18.

“12:30 P. M.—The President continues to take by the mouth and retain an increased quantity of liquid food. At the morning dressing the wound looked well and the pus was of a healthy character. The mucus accumulations in the back of the mouth are less viscid. At present his pulse is 104; temperature, 98.9; respiration, 18.

“6:30 P. M.—The President has continued to take liquid food by the mouth at regular intervals during the day, and has had no recurrence of gastric disorder. Pulse, 104; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 19.”

The fifty-fourth day.—The events of the day were two: First, the lancing of the inflamed gland—an operation but partially successful in its results; secondly, a consultation of the surgeons in regard to removing the President from the White House. Dr. Agnew was summoned to the city by telegram. He was driven at once to the Executive Mansion, where the cabinet and medical council were in consultation, and remained closeted with them until nearly midnight. The consultation lasted rather more than an hour; and, so far as could be ascertained, it resulted in a disagreement. All of the participating surgeons who could be seen refused to talk upon the subject, as did also the members of the Cabinet, most of whom were at the White House until after eleven o’clock.

A third circumstance of the day’s history was the reported delirium of the President. This was for awhile concealed, and then palliated by those nearest the bedside. Colonel Rockwell, one of 597the attendants, in conversation with a reporter, described the mental disturbance thus: “The President is sometimes a little incoherent for a moment after he awakes and before he fully gets control of his senses, just as any body would be in his weak and debilitated condition and after seven weeks of fever; but at all other times his mind is as clear as ever.”

The dispatch of Secretary Blaine was very much less hopeful than the one of the night before. It read as follows:

“The President has not gained to-day. He has had a higher fever, which began earlier than is usual with his febrile rise. In the afternoon an incision was made in the swollen parotid gland by Dr. Hamilton. The flow of pus therefrom was small. The one favorable symptom of his swallowing liquid food with apparent relish and digestion has continued, but the general feeling up to midnight is one of increased anxiety.

To this might well be added the additional hopeful circumstance that during the day the President’s assimilative powers appeared to be again in such condition as to warrant the physicians in dispensing with the system of artificial alimentation. The regular bulletins for the day were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a very good night, awaking at longer intervals than during several nights past. He continues to take liquid food by the mouth with more relish, and in such quantity that the enemata will be suspended for the present. No change has yet been observed in the parotid swelling. The other symptoms are quite as favorable as yesterday. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 17.

“12:30 P. M.—The President continues to take liquid food by the mouth as reported in the last bulletin. His temperature has risen slightly since that time. In other respects his condition is about the same. Pulse, 104; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 17.

“6:30 P. M.—Shortly after the noon bulletin was issued an incision was made into the swelling on the right side of the President’s face for the purpose of relieving the tension of the swollen parotid gland, and of giving vent to pus, a small quantity of which was evacuated. He has taken a larger quantity of liquid food by the mouth to-day than yesterday, 598and has been entirely free from nausea. Pulse, 108; temperature, 100.7; respiration, 19.”

The fifty-fifth day.—The first report of the morning indicated that there was no more than a bare possibility of President Garfield’s recovery. His condition was such as to cause the gravest apprehensions as to the immediate result. He continued to take food, but there was no perceptible increase in strength. His condition—with his wasted form, distorted and half-paralyzed face, dreadful wound, and suppurating gland—was pitiable in the last degree. Hallucinations came on, and he talked incoherently—now of his immediate surroundings, and now of his old home at Mentor. There was little remaining for the surgeons to do. Their effort for the time was directed chiefly to the alleviation of the inflamed gland, which was now playing havoc with the few springs of vitality yet remaining as a source of hope. The whole gland was found to be infiltrated with pus, and the outlook, even for the night, was grave in the extreme. The physicians’ bulletins, four in number to-day, were published, as usual, and presented to the anxious country several points of interest:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept most of the night. He has taken liquid food by the mouth at stated intervals and in sufficient quantity, so that the enemata have not been renewed. No modification of the parotid swelling has yet been observed. Pulse, 106; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18.

“9:15 A. M.—The subject of the removal of the President from Washington at the present time was earnestly considered by us last night and again this morning. After mature deliberation the conclusion was arrived at by the majority that it would not be prudent, although all agree that it will be very desirable at the earliest time at which his condition may warrant it.

“12:30 P. M.—Since the issue of this morning’s bulletin a rise in the President’s temperature similar to that which occurred yesterday morning has been observed. Pulse, 112; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 19.

“6:30 P. M.—There has been little change in the President’s condition since the noon bulletin was issued. The frequency of his pulse is now the same as then. His temperature has risen somewhat, but it is 599not so high as yesterday evening. No unfavorable change has been observed in the condition of the wound. He has taken by the mouth a sufficient supply of liquid food. Pulse, 112; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 19.”

The fifty-sixth day.—The morning papers were almost exclusively devoted to the President and the prospect of death. The great New York dailies presented page after page of dispatches, interviews, and discussions. The sum of it all was this: The President was alive, but, in all probability, on the verge of death. His pulse rose to a mere flutter. The abscess in the gland burst into the cavity of the ear. His mind still wandered, but there was slightly less aberration than yesterday. Washington was a strange scene. There was suppressed excitement, but no noise. Little knots of people gathered in groups here and there before the bulletin-boards, where the latest intelligence was posted, while negro newsboys in their picturesque costumes cried their extras in the mellow Southern accent peculiar to their race. The intense August sun poured down his rays on the broad streets and asphaltum boulevards. The trees were browned with the dust and heat, and the patches of grass here and there in the yards and parks were withered into hay. Above it all, gleaming white and silent, rose the great dome of the Capitol. Alas, what was it all to him?

There was in the midst of infinite rumors and conjectures only a modicum of news. It was this: the President could still take food. His mind had cleared a little since yesterday. As for the rest, he lay helpless, ready to die. The bulletins said:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept most of the night, awaking at intervals of half an hour to an hour. On first awaking there was, as there has been for several nights past, some mental confusion, which disappeared when he was fully roused, and occasionally he muttered in his sleep. These symptoms have abated this morning, as on previous days. His temperature is slightly above the normal and his pulse a little more frequent than yesterday morning. Pulse, 108; temperature, 99.1; respiration, 17.

“12:30 P. M.—His pulse and temperature are at present higher than 600at the corresponding hour for some days. He continues to take by the mouth the liquid food prescribed; nevertheless, we regard his condition as critical. Pulse, 118; temperature, 100; respiration, 18.”

“6:30 P. M.—The President’s condition has not changed materially since the last bulletin was issued. He continues to take, by the mouth, the liquid food prescribed, and occasionally asks for it. Since yesterday forenoon, commencing at 11:30 A. M., the enemata have again been given at regular intervals, as a means of administering stimulants, as well as nutrition. They are retained without trouble. Pulse, 116; temperature, 99.9; respiration, 18.”

The fifty-seventh day.—Another long day of suspense. It was the peculiarity of President Garfield’s illness that just as some great crisis came and his constitutional forces seemed to break hopelessly, at some other point there would be a rally. In this last case, when the distressing abscess in the parotid gland had added its aggravating horrors to horrors already accumulated, and just as tired nature seemed sinking to everlasting rest, there was a rally in the assimilative powers. Unexpectedly, the stomach began to perform its work; and thus the tree of life, shaken back and forth by conflicting forces, still rose feebly and stood. It was a melancholy sight to see this enfeebled and wasted life, so dear to the Nation, still standing, with its glorious foliage torn away—withered, blighted, dying.

The Queen on this day again expressed her great anxiety about the President. Her dispatch, and Mr. Blaine’s answer, were as follows:

“I have just received from Her Majesty the Queen, at Balmoral, a telegram in these words: ‘I am most deeply grieved at the sad news of the last few days, and would wish my deep sympathy to be conveyed to Mrs. Garfield.’

“I have submitted to Mrs. Garfield your telegram conveying the kindly message from Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs. Garfield is constantly by her husband’s bedside and does not give up all hope of his recovery. 601Her request is that you will return to the Queen her most sincere thanks, and express her heartfelt appreciation of the constant interest and tender sympathy shown by Her Majesty toward the President and his family in their deep grief and most painful suspense.

BLAINE READING LETTERS OF SYMPATHY TO MRS. GARFIELD.

The Americans, in a political point of view, do not like kings and queens; but it will be many a long year before the womanly greatness and tenderness of Victoria, manifested in our hour of sorrow, will be obliterated from the American heart. Vivat semper Regina!

602The daily bulletins of the surgeons told all that could be known of the beloved President:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept from half an hour to an hour or more at a time throughout the night. He continues to retain the liquid food administered by the mouth and the stimulating enemata. Nevertheless, his pulse has been more frequent since midnight and he is evidently feebler this morning than yesterday. Pulse, 120; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 22.

“12:30 P. M.—There has been no improvement in the President’s condition since the last bulletin was issued. He continues to retain the liquid food administered by the mouth as well as the enemata. At present the pulse is 120; temperature, 99.6; respiration, 22.

“6:30 P. M.—The President’s symptoms show slight amelioration this afternoon. His pulse is somewhat less frequent and his temperature lower. The liquid food given by the mouth and the enemata continues to be retained. Pulse, 114; temperature, 98.9; respiration, 22.”

The fifty-eighth day.—The reports of the morning were briefer. They were also more encouraging. It was clear that the President, notwithstanding his desperate condition, had held his own for thirty-eight hours, and that there were some unmistakable signs of improvement. It could not be said with truth that the change was great or marked, but there had been some amelioration. The shadow of death was lifted, at least for a day. The people, quick to run to extremes, gave a sigh of relief at the more cheering reports of the morning, and went whither they listed. It was said that the President had had another relapse and was now better again. Even the cautious Secretary of State was impressed with the belief that the President’s improvement was more than a temporary rally. In his foreign dispatch he summed up the case thus:

“The condition of the President at 10 o’clock continues as favorable as could be expected. Within the past thirty hours his improvement has given great encouragement to the attending surgeons. He swallows an adequate supply of liquid food; the parotid swelling discharges freely, 603and gives promise of marked improvement. His mind is perfectly clear. He has, perhaps, a little more fever than was anticipated, and his respiration is somewhat above normal. The general feeling is one of hopefulness. Two or three days more of improvement will be needed to inspire confidence.

The monotonous official reports were telegraphed as usual, in the following messages:

“8:30 A. M.—The amelioration of the President’s symptoms announced in last evening’s bulletin continued during the night. Since midnight some further improvement has been observed, the pulse diminishing in frequency. The stomach has continued to retain liquid nourishment administered, and last evening he asked for and ate a small quantity of milk toast. Stimulating and nutrient enemata continue to be retained. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 17.

“12:30 P. M.—At the morning dressing of the President several yellowish points were observed just below the ear over the swollen parotid, and an incision being made, about a teaspoonful of healthy-looking pus escaped. Pulse, 104; temperature, 99.5; respiration, 18.

“7:30 P. M.—The improvement in the President’s condition, declared yesterday afternoon, is still maintained. He continues to take willingly the liquid food given by the mouth, and is apparently digesting it. The stimulants and nutrients given by enema are also retained. At the evening dressing an increased quantity of healthy-looking pus was discharged from the suppurating parotid. But little rise in temperature or pulse has taken place since noon. Pulse, 110; temperature, 99.7; respiration, 20.”

The fifty-ninth day.—More than eight weeks had now elapsed since the President was shot. The country had become used to alarms. It had also learned to make allowance for the shortcomings of newspaper reports, born of the heat of an oversanguine imagination. It had learned, too, the more valuable lesson that the Government of the United States is not to be shaken from its pedestal by the bullet of an assassin. Guiteau was a fool. Perhaps the despicable wretch thought the course of events, sweeping on like the planets, could be changed by the crack of a pistol. He might as well have fired 604into the air. The glorious institutions of the Republic will perish when Americans are no longer fit to be free; but until then the assassin’s rage and frenzy is the most futile folly of the world. All the officers of the United States may be murdered in a day, but the Nation will stand immovable as adamant. Let the assassin foam and gnash upon the iron bars of the cage of fate! It is only a mad-dog gnawing his chain.

The President, they said, was better. Thoughtful men doubted it. As a matter of fact, the judgment of the country had given him up to die. Sentiment still kept him alive; reason said that the time of the fatal foreclosure was near at hand. It could be said, truthfully, that the local symptoms traceable to the abscess in the President’s face had measurably abated. It could also be said that he was still able to receive food enough to sustain life—nothing more. Mr. Blaine’s dispatch for the evening was, however, rather hopeful than desponding. It said:

“At half-past ten to-night the general condition of the President is favorable. Late in the afternoon his pulse rose to 112 and his temperature to 100, both a little higher than the surgeons expected. Pulse has now fallen to 108, and fever is subsiding. The parotid swelling is steadily improving, and is at last diminishing in size. Apprehensions of serious blood poisoning grow less every hour.

These dispatches of the Secretary were generally but the pith of what the surgeons said in their official reports. These, for August 29th, were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President’s symptoms this morning are as favorable as yesterday at the same hour. He slept, awakening at intervals, the greater part of the night. At these intervals he took and retained the liquid nourishment administered. His mind continues perfectly clear. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 17. 12:30 P. M.—Nothing new has been observed in the condition of the wound. The usual daily rise of temperature has not yet occurred, and the general condition has not materially changed since morning. Pulse, 106; temperature, 60598.6; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The daily rise of the President’s temperature began later this afternoon than yesterday, but rose eight-tenths of a degree higher. The frequency of his pulse is now the same as at this hour yesterday. He has taken willingly the liquid food prescribed during the day, and had, besides, during the morning, a small piece of milk toast. At the evening dressing a pretty free discharge of healthy pus took place from the parotid swelling, which is perceptibly diminishing in size. The wound manifests no material change. Pulse, 110; temperature, 100.5; respiration, 18.”

MORNING GREETING BY MRS. GARFIELD AND MOLLIE.

The sixtieth day.—The President still held out. All the world 606knows the story, how, day after day, owing to the native robustness and essential soundness of his constitution, he stood out against the death that awaited. As usual there were some who said he was better. Others said he was not. Once for all it may be said that such contradictions regarding the President’s condition can easily be accounted for when the surroundings of the White House are considered. Only a few persons knew of their own observation how he appeared from day to day. Visitors were strictly, and necessarily, excluded from the sick-room. From the Tuesday after General Garfield was shot, not more than ten persons in all, excluding the physicians, had seen him, and, of these ten, some only once or twice. Mrs. Garfield and her children, Mr. Blaine, General D. G. Swaim, Colonel A. F. Rockwell, Dr. Boynton, Dr. Susan Edson,—one of the nurses,—the President’s private secretary, Mr. J. S. Brown, and Mr. Pruden, completed the list. Mr. Blaine had seen him once, Mr. Pruden once, and Mr. Brown had been in five times, being usually called because the force of persons necessary to lift the President was a little short. Indeed, of all the strange impressions to be got from this novel event, there was none more peculiar than to stand in the private secretary’s room in the second story of the White House, and feel that only a few yards away was the sick-room on which the eyes of the world were centered, and yet that not more than three persons besides the physicians, nurses, and family, have passed the door in two months! It can thus be easily seen how correspondents and reporters were generally at sea, particularly when the physicians were reticent or out of sight. Mr. Blaine continued to express all that could be reasonably said of better prospects. His dispatch was as follows:

“The President, if not rapidly advancing, is at least holding his own. His fever is less than last night, and his swollen gland steadily improves. His pulse continues rather high, running this evening from 110 to 114. Perhaps the best indication in the case is, that the President himself feels better, and his mind, being now perfectly clear, he readily compares one day’s progress with another.

607The regular bulletins of the day were fuller if not more explicit:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept the greater part of the night, awakening at intervals, and retaining the liquid nourishment administered. His general condition this morning is about the same as at the same hour yesterday. Pulse, 102; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—At the morning dressing another small incision was made in the lower part of the swelling on the right side of the President’s face, which was followed by a free discharge of healthy-looking pus. A similar discharge took place through the openings. The swelling is perceptibly smaller, and looks better. The wound remains in an unchanged condition. Pulse, 116; temperature, 98.9; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The President has passed comfortably through the day. He has taken the usual amount of nourishment by the mouth, with stimulating enemata at stated periods. Pulse, 109; temperature, 99.5; respiration, 18.”

The sixty-first day.—In these stages of the President’s illness neither the optimist nor the pessimist newspapers were to be trusted in their accounts of the sick man and his surroundings. Even the dry records of the surgeons’ reports were so many bones of contention among the wranglers, some of whom would have the President well while others would have him dead. The optimists on this last day of August head-lined their reports: “On the high road to recovery;” “Still better;” “Almost out of the woods,” etc.; while the pessimist said: “The valley and the shadow;” “The end at hand,” etc. Unfortunately the pessimist—not from any virtue in himself—was the truer prophet. It could not be denied, however, that in some material points the President had improved with some steadiness for several days. These favorable points, rather than the dark ones, were dwelt on in the official reports, which presented the summary of symptoms for the day:

“8:30 A. M.—The President has passed a tranquil night, and this morning his condition is quite as favorable as yesterday at the same hour. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—At the dressing of the President this morning the parotid swelling was found to be discharging freely. It looked well and has materially diminished in size. The wound remains in about the same state. His general condition is evidently more favorable than at this hour yesterday. Pulse, 95; 608temperature, 98.4; respiration, 17. 6:30 P. M.—The President has passed a better day than for some time past. He has taken his food with increased relish, and the usual afternoon rise of temperature did not occur. Pulse, 109; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 18.”

The sixty-second day.—The fall month dawned with little additional news. The little that was presented was not good. The luxuriance of the scribes who had written up and written down almost every circumstance and symptom were about this time clipt of some of their superfluity. The public had grown stern and angered at being trifled with on so grave a matter as the condition of a dying President. A few manufactured conversations were still published, but the amount of space so devoted in the journals of the day showed a pronounced shrinkage. Mr. Blaine’s dispatches, always honest and sincere, were more than hitherto sought after as giving the hungry and heart-sore people the most authentic information concerning their stricken Chief Magistrate. The Secretary’s telegram for the evening was as follows:

“The President continues to do well in his eating and digestion, and the swollen gland steadily improves, but in the past twenty-four hours he has made no substantial progress in his general condition. In the judgment of his physicians, however, he still holds the ground gained on Sunday and Monday last. His pulse and temperature to-day have shown marked increase over the record of yesterday. The weather has been exceedingly warm and sultry, and this may account in part for the adverse changes noted. Even in the September climate of Washington such an oppressive day as this has been is rare.

The views of the surgeons were presented as usual in their official bulletins:

“8:30 A. M.—Toward nine o’clock last evening the President had some feverishness, and his pulse ranged from 108 to 116. He had on the whole a good night, and his condition is fully as favorable as yesterday at the same hour. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 60917. 12:30 P. M.—At the morning dressing of the President the abscess of the parotid was found to be discharging freely. It looks well and continues to diminish in size. The state of the wound remains the same. His general condition is not materially different from what it was at this hour yesterday. Pulse, 108; temperature, 98; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The condition of the President has not materially changed since the last bulletin, except that there has been a moderate rise of temperature this afternoon. The President has had no rigors for several weeks. Pulse, 108; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 18.”

The sixty-third day.—It was said, in the dispatches of the morning, that the President had still further improved, and that he was now better than at any time since the setting in of the parotid inflammation. Perhaps he was. There was no doubt that for some days he had held his own. The question of the day, however, was the revival of the project to remove the sufferer from Washington. This proposition had been previously voted down in a consultation of the physicians and the members of the cabinet. But since then things were changed. Doubtless the surgeons were now convinced that, remaining where he was, the President must inevitably die in a very short time. To this should also be added the persistent entreaties of General Garfield himself, who never forbore, on proper occasions, to urge upon those who were in responsible charge of his case, his earnest wish to be taken away from the scenes of his glory and grief. By the 2d of September it was understood that the minds of the physicians were about made up to attempt the hazardous enterprise. It was known also that the Pennsylvania Railway had already prepared a special train with a view to readiness in case the removal should be finally decided on. The train even now stood in readiness.

A publication in the London Lancet, for the current week, was perused with great interest by thousands of professional and unprofessional readers. Some encouragement was gleaned from the excerpt, which was as follows:

610“We do not think the healing of President Garfield’s wound will be promoted by probing to learn how far granulation has proceeded. The most favorable signs are the fall of temperature to the normal, and the frequency of the pulse. This is a thoroughly safe criterion of increased strength and the subsidence of blood poisoning; and, together with the improved power of digestion, ability to sleep soundly, mental clearness and cheerfulness, affords solid grounds for the hope of recovery.

“The case is a striking illustration of the power of a good constitution to hold up against illness that would certainly have killed a feebler person; but another failure in the President’s digestive powers, or symptoms of blood poisoning, might at any time turn the balance against him; and what we have hitherto insisted upon so often we are bound to repeat, that President Garfield will not be out of danger until the wound is healed.”

The usual bulletins, from the surgeons in charge, were published thus:

“8:30 A. M.—The President slept well during the night, and this morning his condition is in all respects as favorable as yesterday at the same hour. Pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 17. 12:30 P. M.—The President’s condition has not materially changed since the morning bulletin was issued. Pulse, 108; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The President has passed a comfortable day, and this evening appears better than for some days past. This evening his pulse is 104; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 18.”

The sixty-fourth day.—The removal of the President was fully determined on. The surgeons were unanimous that it should be undertaken. Long Branch was settled upon as the resort to which the wounded man should be removed. The physicians were unanimous in their selection of this place, and all necessary precautions were taken to insure the President’s comfort during his removal. It was a perilous business, and for the remaining days of the sojourn at the White House the energies of those who were responsible for the President’s well-being were constantly engaged in making suitable arrangements for the removal. The account of the 611President’s progress for the day, notwithstanding his critical condition, was almost overlooked in the keen interest immediately excited by the project now imminent. The surgeons themselves were unusually brief in their official reports, which ran thus:

“8:30 A. M.—The President was somewhat more restless than usual during the early part of the night, but slept better after one A. M. There is a slight increase in the frequency of the pulse. Pulse, 104; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The Presidents condition has not materially changed since the morning bulletin was issued. Pulse, 104; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The President has done well during the day, and has taken with some relish a sufficient quantity of nutriment. Altogether, his general condition exhibits some improvement over yesterday. Pulse, 102; temperature, 99.6; respiration, 18.”

The sixty-fifth day.—The President himself was somewhat excited about his removal. In some respects this excitement was beneficial and in others hurtful to him. His spirits and hopes were in some measure aroused, and a stimulus thus afforded to his exhausted powers. But the energy thus awakened was withdrawn from the long enfeebled stomach, and twice during the day his food was rejected. Otherwise, there were no alarming symptoms for the passing hour, and so public attention was wholly turned to the preparation. President Roberts, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, commissioned George C. Wilkins, general superintendent of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, to take direction of the train which was to carry the President away. Mr. Wilkins was also directed to issue orders to his men, which would enable him to stop every freight and passenger train that might be on the road between Baltimore and Washington on half an hour’s notice, and to give the special train the right of way at any hour of the day or night. On the 4th of September, Mr. Wilkins accordingly issued orders to carry out the following arrangement: When the day and hour of departure of the 612train is known, he should be informed, and a message would be sent along the entire road, stopping all freight trains that might be on the road. Passenger conductors would at each station receive an order either to stop or proceed to the next station, where the subsequent movements of their trains must be governed by the orders there awaiting them. In this way, which is, in fact, the “blocking” system in force on many roads, the movements of all trains would be controlled from the Union Depot, and they would be so handled as to give the special train the right of way and at the same time prevent the “regulars” while in motion from passing the special. This was done to prevent the President being disturbed by any jarring or disagreeable noise.

No stops were to be made at any of the stations between Baltimore and Washington; but should it be necessary to rest the nerves of the patient, the special train was to be halted in the open country, where fresh air and the absence of noise and crowds would be insured. Immediately on hearing of the appointed hour, Mr. Wilkins was to leave Baltimore for Washington in a special car, and come over to Baltimore with the President’s train. This train was to be run around the city to Bayview, where William Crawford was to take charge of it and convey it to Philadelphia. His arrangements were like those of Mr. Wilkins. An engine of the New York division of the Pennsylvania road, and two Pullman palace cars, which were in part to compose the train, arrived at Baltimore on the 4th, and became subject to the orders of Colonel Wilkins whenever needed.

The reports of the surgeons contained about the only authentic account of the President’s condition during the day. These were as follows:

“8:30 A. M.—The President vomited once last evening and once about an hour after midnight. Notwithstanding this disturbance, he slept well most of the night, and this morning has taken food by the mouth without nausea, and has retained it. His pulse is somewhat more frequent, but in other respects his condition is about the same as at this hour yesterday. 613Pulse, 108; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—The President’s condition has not changed materially since the last bulletin was issued, and there has been no further gastric disturbance. Pulse, 106; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—The President has passed a comfortable day. He has taken his food with some relish, and had no return of the irritability of stomach reported in the morning’s bulletin. The parotid swelling continues to improve. The wound shows no material change. The rise of temperature this afternoon has been very slight, but his pulse was more frequent, and he showed more fatigue after the dressings. Pulse, 110; temperature, 99; respiration, 18.”

The sixty-sixth day.—It is the last day in Washington! Again the President is almost forgotten in the hustle of preparation. Mr. Francklyn, owner of one of the finest cottages at Elberon, Long Branch, has tendered it as a home for the wounded Chief Magistrate, and Colonel Rockwell has accepted the offer with thanks. So it is thither we are going on the last of our earthly pilgrimages. Every thing is ready for the departure, and it is set for to-morrow morning at six. A retinue of strong men has been appointed to carry the President down stairs to a wagon specially arranged to convey him to the depot. The day is hot; the air like a furnace. Down at Elberon there is a weird scene to-night. Three hundred skilled engineers and workmen—a loyal company of sturdy patriots—are laying a temporary track to connect the main line with the cottages on the beach. To perform this work laborers have been gathered together; a supply of ties and rails lie waiting the strong hands that are to fling them into place. The length of the new track is 3,200 feet. It is to be laid directly to the hotel grounds, describing a curve to the very door of Francklyn cottage, from whose windows we shall once more look upon the sea. Crowds of men and women, gathered from the various hotels, stand witnessing the scene. Anon the clouds gather. Headlights are put in place to furnish illumination. At intervals the workmen are served with refreshments from the Elberon. All night long the work goes bravely on, and ere the dawn of morning the track is completed over which the suffering President is to take his last journey in the land of the living. And now, while the shadows steal across the landscape in this sultry September evening, let us once more stand before these now familiar bulletin boards and read:

614

LAYING A SPECIAL RAILROAD TRACK TO FRANCKLYN COTTAGE.

615“8:30 A. M.—The President was somewhat restless during the early part of the night, but slept well after midnight. He has taken by the mouth and retained the nutriment prescribed. This morning his pulse is less frequent than yesterday. Pulse, 102; temperature, 99.5; respiration, 18. 12:30 P. M.—Pulse, 114; temperature, 99.5; respiration, 18. 6:30 P. M.—No material change has taken place in the condition of the President since morning. The parotid abscess continues to improve, and the wound remains about the same. Pulse, 108; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 18. Should no untoward symptoms prevent, it is hoped to move the President to Long Branch to-morrow.”

And here is the faithful Mr. Blaine’s dispatch to Minister Lowell, in London:

“This has been the hottest day of the season, and the heat has told upon the President. His pulse and temperature have been higher than for several days past. In other respects there has been no special change, either favorable or adverse. It is expected that he will be removed to Long Branch to-morrow. It is hoped that the sea air will strengthen him.

Can the journey be made with safety? The morrow will tell the tale. Here in the twilight of that last day in Washington, as the hum of preparation settles to a calm, and as our eyes turn toward him whom we have followed so long in his heroic struggle, doubting yet hoping, we may well say with the London Punch:

CHAPTER XIV. GAZING ON THE SEA.

The finger of hope pointed unmistakably in the direction of Long Branch, and as the morning of September 6th dawned upon the White House, all conditions appeared favorable for the removal of the beloved President beyond the malarial influences of the Capital. Preparations for this event were complete. The anxiety of the President to leave Washington had been imparted to all his friends and attendants. Even the physicians were convinced that nothing would bring relief to the sufferer so effectively as the pure, bracing salt breezes of the Atlantic, and their opinion increased the confidence and animated the hope of the country.

The condition of the President seemed peculiarly favorable for the journey. He had eaten well on the previous day, and retained his food. He had slept peacefully, and his wound was doing well. The parotid swelling had almost disappeared, and the general conditions were thought to be remarkably good. It was even said that a considerable increase of strength was manifest in his movements, 617but this was evidently a mistake. The excitement of the occasion for the time overcame his weakness.

All necessary arrangements for the journey were completed on the 5th. They were elaborate and well-developed. For the special railroad train the plan detailed in the previous chapter was adopted and successfully carried out. During the entire evening of the 5th, trunks, boxes, and a great variety of packages, were sent from the White House to the depot for shipment. Messengers were constantly arriving and departing, workmen were busy in special labor connected with various devices for the comfort of the President, and every thing indicated the eve of a great event. The crowd around the bulletin-board, at the front gate, was largely increased, and many held their positions there during the weary watches of the whole night. Every passer-in or out, who was supposed to have information regarding the wounded man, was eagerly besought to impart it. In reply to a question, Colonel Corbin said to a reporter that the trip could not hurt the President, “because,” he added, “he has been traveling all day.” By this, Colonel Corbin meant that the President had been talking and thinking all day about the trip. This anxiety had characterized the President’s moods for some weeks, and it was therefore believed that the realization of his long-cherished desire would have a salutary effect upon his weakened system.

At a few minutes past five, on the morning of the 6th, several carriages were grouped on the drive in front of the White House, and near the main entrance stood an Adams Express wagon, of the largest size, covered, and furnished with side and end curtains. It was near 6 o’clock when quite a commotion became apparent in the Executive Mansion, and a moment later the President, lying upon a stretcher, was borne carefully and slowly to the express wagon, which had previously been connected with the stone steps of the White House by a wooden platform. It was arranged to permit the men to walk directly into the wagon, where they let the bed down slowly until it rested firmly upon its supports. Then the immediate attendants of the President ranged themselves around him, three on each side. At the head of the bed, on the right, sat 618Dr. Boynton, next was General Swaim, and at the foot was O. E. Rockwell. On the left were Colonel Rockwell, Dr. Bliss, and Dr. Reyburn, the other physicians having gone on before. The horses were attached, and at once the little procession was in motion, led by Private Secretary Brown, in his buggy.

As the President’s van passed out through the gate, the eyes of the invalid were closed, and that part of his face which could be seen looked pinched and pallid with suffering. In his general contour, there was something to suggest the face of Garfield to those who had known him long and intimately; but the change was astounding to every one unaccustomed to the daily observation of its progress. Perhaps it was not the face of a dying man, but many observers thought it was. There was something intensely pitiful and tear-compelling in the wasted features, and quiet, passive manner of the Nation’s chief executive, and he was thus driven away from his official home, with all the apparent chances largely against his return.

The van was but fairly outside the gate when the horses were urged to a lively walk, which occasionally increased to a slow trot, the pedestrians meantime keeping well up on the pavements. Three policemen walked on either side the wagon to keep the street clear; but there was no attempt at crowding. There was no boisterousness; no unseemly haste to be first; no loud talking. All passion was hushed. The agony of the great soul now going forth to find health for its encasement, subdued and quieted every thing within range of its influence. At one point the President recognized an acquaintance on the street, and slowly lifting his hand, waved a feeble salutation and farewell. At precisely six o’clock this sad procession drove alongside the car, specially fitted up for the martyred Chief Magistrate, the horses were detached, and twenty strong and willing hands backed the wagon to the opening in the car. Then the attendants lifted the stretcher and entered the car with its precious burden. The President was carefully adjusted upon his new bed, the foundation of which was a mattress of extraordinary thickness, and so constructed that the motion of the train could not be felt, a few farewells were said, and then the 619train moved slowly and smoothly away. Away, with fond hearts full of hope, but soon to be surcharged with dismay and grief!

This seven hours’ journey of 233 miles is now historical, and its principal features are full of interest. The train came to a stop in a few minutes after leaving the Washington dépôt, to permit an approaching train to move out of the way on a siding. “What does this mean?” inquired the President. “Only a momentary detention,” replied Colonel Rockwell. “But important events are ofttimes the issue of a moment,” rejoined the sufferer. This is the only conversation he joined in during the trip. The train soon proceeded, gradually increasing its speed where the track was straight enough to permit, to fifty-five miles an hour, and for a few miles after leaving Philadelphia, it actually attained a speed of sixty miles an hour. The President was watched very closely during the first hour of the journey, in order to detect any symptom of danger from the excitement of the occasion. To the relief and great satisfaction of the physicians, he seemed actually to enjoy the ride and to be improving. His pulse, which reached 118 early in the morning, fell to 110 and then to 108. He did not talk. His voice was too feeble to make his words distinguishable amid the noise of the running train, without too much effort. He occasionally inquired the hour, and once or twice desired to know the names of stopping places. Beef-tea was the sole nutriment given him during the journey, and on two occasions he relished it like a hungry man.

At every one of the forty-six cities and towns and villages, through which the train passed, great crowds thronged the streets. They stood silently, with uncovered heads and eyes wet with tears. The grief of the people was too deep for other demonstration. Words could not express it, and weeping came unbidden. Strong men, rough men, weak men and cultivated men; women of all grades and classes, and even little children, joined in their silent anguish with each other and the world, and poured their lamentation from streaming eyes. In many places, crowds of workingmen left their mills and forges as the train approached, and, ranging themselves alongside the track in an orderly line, 620stood with hats in hands and heads bowed till it passed beyond range of their vision. Then they solemnly returned to their vocations. There was a feeling of awe beyond expression in the mind of every spectator, and to some extent it entered every thinking mind in the land. Life and death were in fierce conflict upon that lightning train, and the madness of its speed looked like an effort to distance the subtle foe of mortality; but it was only in appearance. Death had long before marked our noble President for his own, with the bullet of the assassin. More than sixty days before the date which identifies this chapter with current history, he was as surely slain at Washington as was Richard III. at Bosworth, in 1485. Such was, in large measure, the feeling of the people. The dark foreboding of calamity began to overshadow them when the foul work of Guiteau’s pistol was flashed over the land on that fatal second of July, and now their hearts were sick with the President’s wounds. They felt with him the pain, and, without his hopefulness, saw the beloved head of the Nation approaching the last dread extremity, with faith undimmed and bravery undaunted.

It was a time for weeping and anguish and silence. And a time for thought. For severe self-examination. For national inquiry. A time to find out for what new crime atonement is required, in such measure as impoverishes all that is noble, and all that is above reproach in our poor world! Do we ever explore the logic of crime until forced to the task? And the lesson of Lincoln’s martyrdom—how was that learned? Had it been remembered, would there have been occasion for this later sacrifice upon the altar of political acrimony?

The lightning train sped onward. A pilot engine preceded it, and its passage was a signal to all approaching trains to get out of the way and remain silent until the convoy had passed. Trains upon side-tracks, wherever they were encountered, were crowded with people, all desirous of obtaining a glimpse of the President, but not obtrusive nor demonstrative beyond the overwhelming influence of great sorrow. Their silence was more expressive than language. It indicated the deepest sympathy, the profoundest 621respect, the heartiest love. On three or four occasions the poor sufferer waved his hand feebly to the people, but the effort was painful. The journey was devoid of incident beyond what has been related. The train arrived at Elberon at three minutes past 1 o’clock, and the transfer of the President from the car to his quarters at Francklyn Cottage was promptly made, without trouble or disturbance. His room had been elegantly prepared for his occupancy, and it was made pleasant with many beautiful bouquets and rare plants sent by personal friends. The physicians pronounced the arrangements perfect, and could suggest no improvement. They stated that the journey had done the patient no harm, although in the official bulletin, issued at 6:30 P. M. on the day of arrival at Long Branch, they announced his pulse at 124; temperature, 101.6; respiration, 18,—a condition not calculated to reassure the country.

Prayers had been offered during the day in thousands of churches, and by millions of people in their homes and places of business, for the restoration of the President. Faith in the efficacy of prayer seemed to be almost universal, and it is thought that thousands upon thousands of people who had never prayed before, made Garfield the object of their supplications at the throne of God. At a concert of prayer held at the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City, which was largely attended by Christians of all denominations, the following extract from a letter written by the President’s pastor in Washington, Rev. Frederick D. Power, was read:

“His life is before the world, a living epistle, to be known and read of all men. To you I may say he has had the ever-present Comforter, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, during all these weary days and nights of suffering. He remembers the Lord’s day when it comes; on Sunday morning last, as he opened his eyes to its holy light, he said: ‘This is the Lord’s day; I have great reverence for it.’ He takes great comfort in prayer. Knowing that my little church was continuing daily in prayer to God for him, he said: ‘The dear little church on Vermont Avenue! They have been carrying me as a great burden so long, but when I get up they shall have no cause to regret it.’

622“Of his own peril of death he has been mindful, and over and over again has said: ‘I must be prepared for either.’ This has been the principle of his life, ruling in all his experience, as he explained it to me: ‘When I meet the duties of each day as best I can, I cheerfully await whatever result may come.’ When he was first stricken he declared: ‘I believe in God, and trust myself in his hands,’ and there he is, my brethren, and God will keep him, and God will glorify His own great name, whether it be in his life or his death. I could say many things, but my heart and hands are both too full. He is better to-day, but still on the borderland. We are all still besieging the mercy-seat, and we expect God’s answer with great anxiety, but not, I trust, without great faith and submission.

“In conclusion, I may say in the words of President Garfield to me, in a season of like distress—the death of his little son: ‘In the hope of the Gospel, which is so precious in this affliction,’ I am affectionately your brother in Christ.”

The subjoined copies of dispatches are selected from several hundred of a similar tenor, as indicative of the general solicitude:

For the purpose of enabling the people to unite with those of other States in petitioning the Ruler of the Universe for the restoration to health of the President of the United States, the 8th day of September, instant, I hereby set apart and designate as a day of fasting and prayer. It is recommended that all ordinary avocations be suspended, and the people, in their usual places of worship, humbly acknowledge their faults and reverently supplicate the mercy of the Heavenly Father that the national peril, which now appears so imminent, may be averted. Let the prayers of all be united for the early and complete recovery of the President’s health and strength. May the blessing of Almighty God rest upon the stricken sufferer and the afflicted family.

Given under my hand and seal at the Capitol in the City of Albany, this 6th day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one.

By the Governor—Henry E. Abell.

The meeting for prayer in behalf of the President was largely attended. From twenty to twenty-five prayers were offered by clergymen and laymen, which were remarkable for their earnestness and importunity. The bulletins announcing the departure of the President from the White House and the progress of the train were read at the opening and close of the meeting.

Philadelphia, Sept. 6.—In accordance with the proclamation of the Governor, the churches of the city were generally thrown open, between the hours of 10 and 12 this morning, for worship for the recovery of President Garfield. At Harrisburg business was entirely suspended from 10 o’clock until noon. Services were held in the churches and in various industrial establishments. The dispatches 623relative to the President’s journey were read from a number of pulpits. In most other places in the State services were held and business was suspended during the hours named.

Cincinnati, Sept. 6.—The proclamation of Governor Foster was observed by meetings for prayer in the Christian churches, and a union meeting was also held in the First Presbyterian Church from 10 to 12 o’clock. The public schools were dismissed. The Mayor’s office and all the Government offices were closed, and deep interest was felt in regard to the result of the President’s journey from Washington to Long Branch. At the Republican County Convention prayer was offered by Dr. Kumler, who made a most fervent petition for the recovery of the President. After the prayer, on motion, the convention gave three cheers for the President. The convention also adopted a resolution condemning the attempted assassination, and extending sympathy to Mrs. Garfield.

Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 6.—Religious services were held in several of the churches here from 10 to 12 o’clock to-day, and many prayers were offered for the recovery of the President. The bulletin-boards were eagerly watched by anxious crowds, and each dispatch telling of the favorable progress in the Presidential journey from Washington to Long Branch was joyfully discussed. The feeling that the President will recover seems to permeate all classes, and nothing but hopeful expressions were heard to-day.

Chicago, Sept. 6.—The church services and union meetings to-day for the purpose of invoking Divine aid for the President’s restoration to health, were well attended and fervently participated in. Business was generally suspended in the public offices, business boards, etc. The announcement of the easy trip of the President to Long Branch and his improved condition, is the subject of great rejoicing to thousands who eagerly inquire for accounts of his progress.

Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 6.—In response to the Governor’s proclamation, the Hall of Representatives here was filled to-day with the members of the General Assembly and citizens, to offer up prayers for the recovery of President Garfield. Religious services were held, and addresses and prayers were made by leading ministers of the city.

Wilmington, N. C., Sept. 6.—To-day was very generally observed here as one of prayer for the recovery of the President. Services were held in all the churches in accordance with the proclamation of the Governor, and between 10 and 12 o’clock, the hours devoted to religious services, business was almost entirely suspended. A feature of the day which attracted some attention was the fact that nearly all the bar-rooms were closed.

Raleigh, N. C., Sept. 6.—In accordance with the Governor’s proclamation, to-day was generally observed here as a day of prayer for the President. Federal and State buildings and offices of manufacturers, etc., were closed. Impressive services were held at the churches.

Augusta, Ga., Sept. 6.—The day of prayer was very generally observed here. The Mayor issued a proclamation, and all the public offices, banks and many stores were closed. Services were held in the churches, and prayers offered for the restoration of the President to health. Some pastors mentioned that the wounding of the President had the effect of cementing the sections together as one people.

San Francisco, Sept. 6.—A special service of prayer for the recovery of the President was held this morning in the hall of the Young Men’s Christian Association. The Ministerial Union was present in a body. Every seat in the hall was occupied, and crowds were forced to stand.

Indianapolis, Sept. 6.—Religious services were held, in obedience to the Governor’s 624proclamation, in a number of the leading churches to-day, and prayers were offered in behalf of the President. Many of the business houses were closed from 10 to 12 o’clock.

Cleveland, O., Sept. 6.—Business was generally suspended throughout Northern Ohio between 10 o’clock and noon to-day, while people of all denominations gathered in their houses of worship, in town and country, and joined in prayer for the restoration of President Garfield to health.

The sixty-eighth day.—On the following day, the 7th of September, there was still no positive change in the President’s condition. The early morning dispatches announced: “He is no worse than when he left Washington, neither is he any better.”

Such a statement was, of course, quite unsatisfactory to the country, because, the people argued, “no better” always means “worse.” There is no neutral ground in a case of this kind. The morning bulletin found the pulse at 106; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. In the evening the pulse was 108; temperature, 101; respiration, 18. The day was very warm, the thermometer ranging from 90° to 100°, and the people were remarkably anxious over the reports of the physicians. When it was learned that after the issue of the evening bulletin, the pulse ran up to 114, there was wide-spread apprehension. The gentle sea-breezes, from which so much was expected, were not doing their appointed work. For most of the day there was a dead calm of the atmosphere at Long Branch, and the temperature was described as almost unbearable by people in health. To the sufferer it was wonderfully oppressive, and there were apprehensions that, unless change of temperature in an abatement of the furnace-like heat soon came, there would be reason to conclude that the journey of Tuesday was in vain. Every body complained but the President. He proved himself the most patient of invalids, and but once during the entire day made a remark which indicated any thing like discontent with the situation. Opening his eyes from a short nap, he turned them toward the windows and said to an attendant, who was fanning him: “Oh, those windows are so small.” For a few moments he breathed laboriously, and his pulse increased to a high rate, and the reaction caused unusual weakness.

625Throughout the day the bulletin-boards at the various newspaper offices, and places of public resort in every part of the country, were besieged by large crowds of anxious men and women of every grade in the social scale, eager for the smallest scrap of information to sustain the earnest prayer of their hearts—that the revered President was now upon the sure course of recovery; but all the facts reported by the physicians pointed to a calamitous result. Only their comments were encouraging, and whatever of encouragement they conveyed was not accepted by the mind of science. It was seen that the President’s bravery had imparted a strange degree of assurance to his immediate attendants, whose reports were unconsciously colored by the mental force rather than the physical condition of the sufferer; and thus at least nine-tenths of his fellow-countrymen were buoyed up with hopes which had no foundation beyond the tenacity of a gigantic will.

The sixty-ninth day.—So wonderful was the exercise of the President’s mental force that on Thursday two of his medical attendants announced his convalescence! Surgeon-General Barnes, Surgeon J. J. Woodward and Dr. Robert Reyburn had been relieved from duty at Garfield’s bedside on the previous day, at the wish of the President, as he expressed it, “to relieve them of labor and responsibility which, in his improved condition, he could no longer properly impose upon them.” Drs. Bliss and Hamilton remained in their professional capacity, and Dr. Boynton, Mrs. Garfield’s physician, in the capacity of nurse. Between nine and ten o’clock, on the morning of the eighth, a newspaper correspondent said to Dr. Bliss:

“Doctor, you seem to be feeling pretty well this morning.”

“I should think I was; why, the man is convalescent; his pulse is now down to ninety-six.”

This announcement was astounding, but as the correspondent was endeavoring to settle in his own mind whether the doctor was not a little delirious himself, as a result of long watching and continued nervous tension, he turned to some persons who approached, and was soon asserting to them with emphasis, “This is convalescence.” The good news 626traveled with marvelous speed. “Dr. Bliss says the President is convalescent,” was soon on every lip, but was received with incredulity.

“We had better wait awhile before we toss up our hats,” was the comment of a member of the Cabinet.

As the day wore on, confirmation from every trustworthy source was obtained of the good tidings from the sick-room. Before noon Dr. Bliss and Dr. Hamilton appeared together on the veranda, and Dr. Bliss repeated his belief that the President was convalescent. “That is good news,” said a gentleman to Dr. Hamilton. “Yes,” was the reply, “and it is true.” Dr. Boynton came out of the President’s cottage about noon and strolled toward the edge of the bluff, with his hands behind him and with a far-away look in his eyes, which were turned to the east, whence the rising breeze was coming and the increasing weaves were rolling up on the beach at his feet.

“Doctor, this is a fortunate change.”

“Yes; the President is better.”

“You are, of course, hopeful, as all the rest are?”

“Yes, the change is not enough to base any medical statement of improvement upon, but what there is is in the right direction.”

Colonel Rockwell was more emphatic. “Dr. Bliss says the President is convalescent. What do you think?” asked a correspondent.

“Yes,” said the Colonel, “Dr. Bliss thinks so. The doctor said to the President this morning, in my presence: ‘Mr. President, you are convalescent; you are getting out of the woods.’ He is certainly doing very well and we shall have him propped up before many days. We have sent to-day for his reclining chair. It is one of those chairs which you can make any thing of, from an upright chair to a bed, and is softly cushioned. With a few days more of improvement, we will have him up where we can roll him to the windows.”

“And out upon the lawn, too, I presume, after a time?”

“Well, perhaps.”

“And you will, doubtless, take him to Mentor before many weeks?”

“Yes, probably he wants to get home, but he enjoys this place very well. We turned him on his side this morning, so that he could look out over the ocean, and he was very much pleased. He longed to get here. Two or three days before we started, I remember a queer remark he made. I said to him, ‘Mr. President, how would you like to have us put you on the Tallapoosa and get you down to the salt water?’ ‘That 627would be temporary, tentative and unsettled,’ he said; ‘put me on the cars and take me to Long Branch.’”

“Does he read the papers?”

“No; but he could. Yesterday I read to him a number of dispatches we had just received. Here is one of them now.” The Colonel drew from his pocket a telegram, which he read as follows:

“To President Garfield, Long Branch:

“The Garfield and Arthur Club, of Pittsfield, and people of the town, without regard to party lines, in Berkshire County, to whose hospitalities you were coming when so brutally assailed, and where thousands of Berkshire hearts were waiting to welcome you, all unite in congratulations on your safe arrival at the sea-shore. All hope for your speedy recovery, and to-day the shire town suspends business to meet and ask the Great Healer to be with you and make efficacious the efforts of your earthly physicians.

“The President,” continued Colonel Rockwell, “was greatly pleased by the kind expressions in the telegram, and bade me telegraph his thanks.”

Dr. Hamilton, in conversation with Dr. Pancoast, spoke very encouragingly of the prospects, saying, in effect, that he had the strongest hopes of recovery. Celebrations and thanksgivings to signalize the joy of the people, were freely discussed. The apparent change for the better caused a rebound in popular sentiment, which was quite disproportioned to its cause. Alas! it had no foundation whatever.

At 8:30 in the morning the President’s pulse indicated 104; temperature, 98.7; respiration, 18. At 6:30, evening, pulse 100; temperature, 99.1; respiration, 18. Dr. Bliss declared most emphatically that the favorable symptoms would continue. At 10:30 P. M. Secretary Blaine cabled this hopeful message:

“The President’s rest was much broken during the first half of last night, but to-day his condition has been more favorable. He had less fever this afternoon than for several days past; has better pulse and improved appetite. His surgeons are much encouraged. His comfort has been promoted by a decided change in the weather. Thermometer at this hour (10:30) 75° Fahrenheit; yesterday it was 95°.”

628In many of the States, in response to the proclamations of their Governors, the people gathered at their places of worship and offered prayer for the recovery of the Chief Magistrate. In many cities business was almost wholly suspended for this service, and there was hearty supplication every-where for the Divine blessing upon the languishing President. Faith in prayer seemed to have become universal, and certainly the sentiments which accompanied this faith are an honor to humanity and a solace to the world.

The seventieth day.—September 9th was regarded as “a favorable day,” and the rapid convalescence of the President was confidently announced. The cool atmosphere seemed to invigorate him, and his appetite was fair. The physicians announced a decided improvement, but the morning bulletin did not create a sanguine feeling in non-professional minds, and the more cautious were scarcely satisfied with the symptoms, but preferred to await further developments before resting in the belief that the favorable change would not be interrupted by some unforeseen complication. Naturally, the immediate attendants upon the President exhibited a more decided opinion that the improvement was likely to be permanent, than did persons not so intimately connected with the case. Assurance from those having access to the patient’s room, that he was much better than before leaving Washington, was very generally and gratefully accepted.

At 8:30 A. M. his pulse was 100; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 17. At noon there was scarcely a notable change. At 6 P. M., pulse, 100; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 18. At 10 P. M. Secretary Blaine cabled the subjoined dispatch:

“The medical reports are all favorable to-day—morning, noon, and night. The President has not for many weeks done so well for so many consecutive hours. He has had very little fever; his respiration has been normal, and his pulse has not exceeded 100. He slept without opiates, and gained strength without stimulants. His nights are not so restful as could be desired; but in the twenty-four hours he gets sufficient sleep. The weather, though not excessively warm, continues sultry and oppressive. Much is 629hoped from the clear, bracing air which may be expected here at this season.”

On the same evening, Attorney-General MacVeagh expressed his views in these words: “At present everything looks favorable, and of course we hope that what has been gained will be maintained and added to, but the difficulty is, the President’s blood is in an unhealthy condition, and until he recuperates sufficiently to overcome any bad effects of blood-poisoning, it is not safe to be sanguine.” He thought, furthermore, that the President would convalesce in ten days. This was the 9th of September. Of course he could not foresee the 19th, and we must not anticipate that memorable date.

The seventy-first day.—Saturday, September 10th, was ushered in with favorable omens. It was pronounced “a satisfactory day” by Dr. Bliss. He expressed the opinion that the wound was healing from the bottom. The temperature was one degree higher than on the previous day, and this was the only change noted in the bulletins. But there was an undercurrent of apprehension more significant than any thing which appeared in print. The people had learned from an unofficial and unauthoritative source that the President was worse, and that blood-poisoning had shown itself in very alarming symptoms. Unfortunately, this information was true. At 8:30 A. M. the pulse was 104; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 18. At noon, pulse, 100; temperature, 98.5; respiration, 18. At 5:30 P. M., pulse, 100; temperature, 98.7; respiration, 18. Secretary Blaine cabled as follows, at 10 P. M.:

“After dispatch of last night the President had considerable increase of fever. Indeed, a rise of pulse and temperature every night has become a significant feature in his case. Through the day, and especially this afternoon, he has grown more comfortable. A cold easterly storm has prevailed since early morning without evil effect thus far on his condition. Secretary Windom had a brief interview with the President at noon. He found him much reduced in strength, but clear in his mind. 630He asked the Secretary about the success of the refunding of the public debt.”

The seventy-second day.—A day of anxiety. The President was unmistakably worse. It was ascertained that a portion of the matter discharged from the mouth was not pus from the parotid gland, as had been supposed, but pus from a badly diseased lung. The situation was regarded as critical, and especially so when the patient’s cough returned with considerable violence. At 8:30 P. M. his pulse was 104; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 19. At noon, pulse, 110; temperature, 100; respiration, 20. At 5:30 P. M., pulse, 110; temperature, 100.6; respiration, 20. The increase in respiration was attributed to the affection of the lungs. At 10:30 P. M. Secretary Blaine cabled the following report:

“The President had an increase of fever last night and was very restless until 5 o’clock A. M. During the day he has been somewhat better, but his pulse, temperature, and respiration have been higher for the entire twenty-four hours than on any preceding day since he reached Long Branch. His other symptoms are not reassuring, and his general condition gives rise to anxiety.”

The seventy-third day.—Monday was pronounced “favorable.” A decided improvement in the President’s symptoms was reported by the attending physicians, who pronounced the anxiety of the previous day “a senseless panic.” The lung difficulty was spoken of as of little importance now that it was understood, except by Dr. Boynton, who contended very strongly that it was an effect of blood-poisoning. Yet he thought the President’s vitality sufficient to overcome any serious results from it, provided no further complication of a similar nature occurred. At 8:30 A. M. his pulse was 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 18. At noon, pulse, 106; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 20. At 5:30 P. M., pulse, 100; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 18. At 2:30 P. M. the following message was cabled by Secretary Blaine:

“The President slept well last night, and his condition to-day is more comfortable and more favorable. During my absence for a short time Dr. Agnew or Dr. Hamilton will send you a daily report.”

At 10 P. M. Attorney-General MacVeagh sent, by cable, the following dispatch:

“In the absence of Mr. Blaine, the attending physicians have requested me to inform you of the President’s condition. He has during the day eaten sufficient food with relish, and has enjoyed at intervals refreshing sleep. His wound and the incisions made by the surgeons all look better. The parotid gland has ceased suppuration, and may be considered as substantially well. He has exhibited more than his usual cheerfulness of spirits. His temperature and respiration are now normal, and his pulse is less frequent and firmer than at the same hour last evening. Notwithstanding these favorable symptoms, the condition of the lower part of the right lung will continue to be a source of anxiety for some days to come.”

The seventy-fourth day.—Tuesday, September 13th, was for the most part uneventful, except that at 11 A. M. he was placed in a semi-recumbent position upon an easy chair, in which position he remained half an hour without fatigue or discomfort. In reply to a question by Dr. Bliss, President Garfield said he experienced no pain and did not even feel tired. At 8:30 A. M. the pulse was 100; temperature, 99.4; respiration, 20. At noon, pulse, 100; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 20. At 5:30 P. M. pulse, 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 20. A favorable report was cabled by Attorney-General MacVeagh to Minister Lowell.

The seventy-fifth day.—“Still gaining slowly,” was the morning report. It was announced that the patient suffered from a septic infection of the blood, but this was not believed to be very serious. Dr. Boynton was the only physician who expressed much anxiety about it, and his views were invariably soothed by the belief that the President’s robust constitution would eventually 632conquer all his physical complications. At 8:30 A. M. the pulse was 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 19. At noon, pulse 104; temperature, 98.8; respiration, 20. At 5:30 P. M., pulse 112; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 21. The bulletins looked sufficiently unfavorable, but the physicians viewed them with complaisance. Dr. Boynton, however, informed a reporter that the pulse frequently reached 120, but this fact was kept from the family and the public. At 10 o’clock Attorney-General MacVeagh reported as follows:

“There is an increase this evening in the President’s temperature, pulse, and respiration; but it is so slight as not necessarily to indicate that the condition of the blood is producing any new complications. The trouble in the right lung is not increasing, and is causing him less annoyance. He has taken adequate nourishment, and his sleep has been natural and refreshing; so that, if he has gained nothing, he has probably lost nothing during the day.”

The seventy-sixth day.—“Slight progress toward recovery” was reported. The surgeons concluded not to admit that the septic condition of the patient’s blood amounted to pyæmia, and they expressed confidence that the difficulty would be overcome. The President took food in variety, but not with a strong appetite. In the early morning hours he was quite wakeful, and gave way to fits of despondency. In one of these he called aloud to an attendant: “Save me; don’t let me sink.” Words of encouragement were uttered, but for a time he could not bring himself to believe that he yet had hope of recovery. “I fear bringing me here will prove but a roaring farce after all,” said he. He was not readily reassured, and the incident was not regarded as favorable. Still the physicians and newspaper correspondents sent out fair reports to the country, and the people were therefore quite unprepared for the events so near at hand. At 8:30 A. M. the pulse was 100; temperature, 98.4; respiration, 20. At noon, pulse 102; temperature, 98.9; respiration, 21. At 5:30 P. M., pulse 104; temperature, 99.2; respiration, 21. Attorney-General MacVeagh reported to Minister Lowell that all the symptoms were substantially 633the same as on the previous day, except that the expectoration from the right lung was rather less difficult and less profuse.

The seventy-seventh day.—A day of “unfavorable symptoms.” Great anxiety was experienced by the immediate friends of the honored sufferer, and the physicians acknowledged the gravity of the occasion. His physical weakness had never before been so apparent, and his utter exhaustion seemed ominous of the end. Those who had never before questioned his ability to rally, now began to doubt it; and, when it was found that the pulse frequently reached 130 beats, intelligent men and women were struck with wonder at the persistent vitality of the man. At 8:30 A. M. the pulse was 104; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 21. At noon, pulse 116; temperature, 99.8; respiration, 21. At 5:30 P. M., pulse 104; temperature, 98.6; respiration, 22. Attorney-General MacVeagh cabled as follows:

“There has been no very marked change in the President’s condition, but it is not at this hour reassuring. The different symptoms are almost all slightly aggravated. The temperature and the pulse have fluctuated more than usual, and the respiration is rather more frequent, while the character of the discharges continues to be unsatisfactory. There is, therefore, a sensible increase of anxiety.”

The seventy-eighth day.—“A day of deep anxiety.” The President was worse. He was sinking beyond reach of the strong arm of science and the willing hands of love, never to be reclaimed by earthly agencies. A chill, continuing half an hour, was followed by perspiration and a rapid rise of temperature. The situation was alarming, although the immediate effects of the chill did not appear as serious as might have been expected,—for the pulse fell, in a few hours, from 120 to 102, the temperature from 102 to 98, and the respiration from 24 to 18. These were phenomenal changes. Yet the word “rigor,” as translated in the medical vocabulary, is invested with nameless terrors, and the condition of the patient was assumed, on all sides, to be precarious in the extreme. The attending physicians were startled, but 634they did not fail to predict another rally, and a decided improvement in a few days. They did not seem to realize that the crisis was upon them, and the country certainly did not. The Attorney-General cabled to Minister Lowell that “the situation is now probably more grave and critical than at any time heretofore.”

The seventy-ninth day.—Sunday was marked by an increase of fear and anxiety. Another chill, but of shorter duration, was one of the untoward incidents of the day. Dr. Bliss declared that the frequent recurrence of chills would soon wear out the President’s life, but he hoped to devise some means to prevent them. During this last attack the President’s pulse reached 134, possibly 140. Dr. Boynton had some clear ideas regarding the case. On Sunday night he said:

“The President’s condition to-day, compared with yesterday, shows a slight improvement.”

“Do you not think the low pulse and temperature of last night and this morning were favorable indications?”

“I do not. The low pulse and temperature, the sound sleep, and the freedom from cough and expectoration were indications of a very low state of vitality, and can not be considered as favorable symptoms. If he grows stronger, there will be a rise in the pulse and temperature, and his cough and expectoration will return.”

“Is it true that you stated last night that the President’s condition was hopeless?”

“No, sir. I said his case was extremely critical, but not hopeless.”

“What is your opinion to-night?”

“The same as last night. For several weeks he has at times made satisfactory progress, but, in each instance, the improvement has been followed by a relapse, which left him on a lower plane of vitality than before. This feature of his case is peculiar to most cases of chronic pyæmia. The President has a wonderful constitution, but it is doubtful if it is sufficient to carry him on to recovery.”

This conversation is interesting from the fact that it shows the very correct logic of one of the President’s most intimate attendants only twenty-four hours preceding the final catastrophe. Dr. Bliss was slightly more confident than Dr. Boynton. No points 635are given from the physicians’ bulletins, for the reason that it was thought best on Sunday to suppress some of the more unfavorable indications, and the bulletins are therefore not history. At 10 P. M., Attorney-General MacVeagh cabled the following:

“The President passed a comparatively quiet and comfortable day, but this evening he had another chill of less duration than that of yesterday, but sufficient to increase the very great anxiety already existing. He has also been slowly growing weaker, and his present condition excites the gravest apprehensions.”

The last day.—Monday, September 19, brought the final eclipse of hope. It is not easy to describe it in these pages in such way as will do full justice to the subject for the American people; because, first, its facts are so incredible as to appear quite outside the range of history; and, second, the people, the great masses, can not yet understand how their beloved President could be so foully murdered without the swift annihilation of the murderer. The human mind does not always remember that the methods of justice must be quite distinct and wholly dissimilar from those of crime, and that the cause of law and order is promoted by this distinction. And possibly it will never be taught to remember this lesson invariably.

Upon this fateful Monday morning, the President was prostrated by a severe chill, called “rigor” by the physicians. It proved to be weakening beyond precedent. During its continuance, the pulse ran up to 143, and for a long time remained above 140. It decreased gradually in the afternoon, and when it was found that there was no recurrence of the chill in the evening, the promise of a restful night was thought to be good. The physicians were not agreed as to the responsible cause of the patient’s crisis. Dr. Boynton lost his hopeful tone early in the day, but Dr. Bliss remained comparatively sanguine till the last moment. No one immediately connected with the case anticipated the death of the sufferer, however, for several days yet, and it was remarked that even Mrs. Garfield, although greatly fatigued, was by no means despondent. She could not realize that death was even then robbing her of her heart’s dearest treasure.

636

CHART SHOWING THE PULSE, TEMPERATURE, AND RESPIRATION OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD, THROUGHOUT HIS ILLNESS.

637

GENERAL D. G. SWAIM.

The President rested quietly during the afternoon, and it was found that he had rallied from the effect of the chill in a manner to surprise the physicians. His mind was bright, the dressing of the wound did not fatigue him, and after it was over he asked for a hand-glass, taking which he examined his face and said he could not understand how he should be so weak when he looked so bright. This was at 6 P. M. Dr. Bliss remarked, that after such a rallying there was hope, but the trouble was want of strength. After the closest examination, the surgeons said it was possible for the patient to live a week, even granting that present conditions were to carry him off. Drs. Bliss, Agnew, and Hamilton, all concurred in this view, and it was sent out to the country in the dispatches of the associated press. Although such a message was designed to be pacifying, people every-where were startled. It was a virtual concession that all hope of recovery had been abandoned, and that the 638clouds of death were already lowering. But there was something infinitely more startling to come shortly.

At 10 P. M., while the President was asleep, General Swaim noticed that his limbs were cold. To warm them, he procured a flannel cloth, heated it at the fire and laid it over the knees. He heated another cloth and laid it over the President’s right hand, and then sat down beside the bed. The sad occurrences of the night are thus related in General Swaim’s words:

“I was hardly seated when Dr. Boynton came in and felt the President’s pulse. I asked him how it seemed to him. He replied: ‘It is not as strong as it was this afternoon, but very good.’ I said: ‘He seems to be doing well.’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, and passed out. He was not in the room more than two minutes.

“Shortly after this the President awoke. As he turned his head on awakening, I arose and took hold of his hand. I was on the left hand side of the bed as he lay. I remarked: ‘You have had a nice comfortable sleep.’

“He then said, ‘O Swaim, this terrible pain,’ placing his right hand on his breast about over the region of the heart. I asked him if I could do any thing for him. He said, ‘Some water.’ I went to the other side of the room and poured about an ounce and a half of Poland water into a glass and gave it to him to drink. He took the glass in his hand, I raising his head as usual, and drank the water very naturally. I then handed the glass to the colored man, Daniel, who came in during the time I was getting the water. Afterward I took a napkin and wiped his forehead, as he usually perspired on awaking. He then said, ‘O Swaim, this terrible pain—press your hand on it.’ I laid my hand on his chest. He then threw both hands up to the sides and about on a line with his head, and exclaimed: ‘O Swaim, can’t you stop this?’ And again, ‘O Swaim!’

“I then saw him looking at me with a staring expression. I asked him if he was suffering much pain. Receiving no answer, I repeated the question, with like result. I then concluded that he was either dying or was having a severe spasm, and called to Daniel, who was at the door, to tell Dr. Bliss and Mrs. Garfield to come immediately, and glanced at the small clock hanging on the chandelier nearly over the foot of his bed and saw that it was ten minutes past 10 o’clock. Dr. Bliss came in within 639two or three minutes. I told Daniel to bring the light. A lighted candle habitually sat behind a screen near the door. When the light shone full on the President’s face I saw that he was dying. When Dr. Bliss came in a moment after, I said: ‘Doctor, have you any stimulants? he seems to be dying.’ He took hold of the President’s wrist, as if feeling for his pulse, and said: ‘Yes, he is dying.’ I then said to Daniel: ‘Run and arouse the house.’ At that moment Colonel Rockwell came in, when Dr. Bliss said: ‘Let us rub his limbs,’ which we did. In a very few moments Mrs. Garfield came in, and said: ‘What does this mean?’ and a moment after exclaimed: ‘Oh, why am I made to suffer this cruel wrong?’ At 10:30 P. M. the sacrifice was complete. He breathed his last calmly and peaceably.”

The great President was dead! It could not be realized at the moment, and yet within the ten minutes succeeding his demise the bells in a hundred cities were tolling his solemn knell. Long before the morning light of the 20th illumined the earth, the hearts of millions throughout the world were heavy with the tidings.

Dead! whispered the wires with lightning haste. Dead! clanged the bells, with their brazen tongues. Dead! was echoed around the world, from lip to lip, until the mournful chorus resounded in a wail of heart-piercing agony. Dead! dead! dead! exclaimed all the people. But not so. Garfield will live forever in the better thoughts of those who loved him, and who are made better for having loved him. The brave heart, the open hand, the great soul, generous and true—these will bless the world for evermore! Garfield is deathless.

“No man was better prepared for death,” remarked a prominent member of his Cabinet. “No, sir, nor for life, which requires infinitely superior preparation,” may be safely responded. The life which he lived required the practice of all the virtues; the crucifixion of all the vices; bravery of the severest type; gentleness, trust, and clear-cut integrity. Practice had perfected in him these rules of life, and for many years he had furnished an example of purity and probity for his fellow-men. This is not taken away with the removal of the body. It can not be taken away. The pages of history will be brightened with it as long as eminent worth remains the goal of human ambition.

640His removal has chastened and sweetened the national life. The hearts of all men, from every party, have been drawn together in a common brotherhood, and the country to a man denounces and resents “the deep damnation of his taking off.” Every difference is annihilated in the presence of the universal bereavement. His death forced a cry of grief from the pained heart of every man and woman in christendom who loves good deeds, and reveres the example of an honest life: who admires the power to withstand trial, to bear suffering, and to confront danger; who reveres those that possess the courage of their convictions, however resisted by menace and scorn. No mourning was ever before so universal, so heartfelt, so spontaneous, so lasting. Every consideration of business, of pleasure, of political preferment, of social enjoyment, of speculation, of whatsoever men and women were engaged in, gave way at once to the general lamentation. These things were most observable in our own land, but in some measure they prevailed in every civilized country, and extended even to the isles of the sea. His had been a precious life to his own people for many years. It has become precious to all the world’s millions now, and will remain so through all the ages.

He proved himself a hero many times and on many trying occasions before his eighty days of heroic endurance of the assassin’s stroke; but never was there a brighter example of Christian fortitude and uncompromising submission than that furnished by him during those eighty days. And never was there any thing more heroic and queenly than the devotion of his noble wife from the beginning to the close of this eventful period. Where is there a grander picture of womanhood than Mrs. Garfield? The history of neither ancient nor modern times furnishes its superior. What was position to her, with its pride and circumstance, when placed in the balance with love and duty? Elevation to the place of the most envied woman in the land—the leader of society at the National Capital—she practiced that grand simplicity which made her the fit companion for the eminently practical and busy President while in health, and, when overtaken by his great calamity, nursed him day and night with unceasing devotion. What example could 641be more admirable than this for the women of the present age? Well may great queens acknowledge this true woman their peer, and treat her as a sister.

For the two weeks at Long Branch, and probably for other weeks at Washington, he was kept alive by the indomitable power of his own will and the gentle care of those who loved him better than life. The “little woman” to whom he sent his love before the first shock of his wound had subsided, was the prominent object in his heart of hearts, and well has she proved her title to the place she occupied there. Well did she remember her vow to love, honor, and cherish, in sickness and in health, till death. With what faithfulness, with what untiring devotion and pathetic zeal was that vow kept; and how holy must be the associations which now cluster around every act and every aspiration of the womanly faith and love which animated the noble wife in her hour of trial. History furnishes no more prominent example of devoted affection, forgetfulness of self, sacrifice of all comfort, carelessness of every thing except the poor sufferer upon the bed of pain. He was her only object in life. And to him, she was the bright star of destiny, the ever-present angel of hope, the trusty sentinel upon the ramparts of eternity, who menaced and kept at bay the arch-enemy, death. Her faith and hope and love were the medicaments which sustained him through all those weary days, when the services of physicians became as naught in the process of healing. No one could perform for him the tender offices of nursing so well as she; no voice so sweet as hers; no hand so gentle nor so ready to anticipate his wants. In those other years, when they toiled together for the mental, moral, and material advancement of themselves and their children, and knew little of the gay world, he learned this; and now, when they had reached the summit of the loftiest earthly ambition, and she, by right as well as courtesy, was acknowledged the first lady in the land, he still found her the same faithful nurse, with the old devotion to her wifely duty which makes the true woman an angel of mercy, and of more worth in the chamber of sickness than any physician. She never left him in all those weary days of pain, and she it was who, on many occasions, 642brought him back to consciousness and life by tender care, when it seemed to others that the slender thread which bound him to earth was too weak longer to hold.

THE LAST LOOK AT THE SEA.

Her loving devotion under these conditions was the subject of daily encomiums; and even the medical attendants were unanimous in according her the first praise for attentions which were more important to the patient than any they could render. Without her soothing ministrations, it is thought the life of the President would have been much abridged; and when it is remembered that this toil was constant, day by day, without intermission, except a few hours 643for sleep, wholly self-abnegating, and to the exclusion of all thoughts for her own health or comfort, she may well be cited as one of the noblest examples of true wifehood in any age or country. The ancients were filled with admiration at the devotion of Penelope to Ulysses. How weak and tame is the example when compared with that which now causes American womanhood to be so lovingly reverenced!

That is indeed a sorrowful picture where the President, from his room at Elberon, takes his last view of the sea. Those calm eyes surveyed the mighty waters, whose lashings are regular as the movement of the pendulum, with sensations which will never be known, for he was wholly absorbed in meditation. Once or twice he turned to the faithful wife with a smile upon his attenuated features, but nothing referring to the scene or the situation was said by either. With his hand locked in hers, they communed in spirit, conscious of the presence of God in His works and in His mercy. The anxiety of the people for the great President was not shared by himself, except as his sympathies were now, as always, with the people; but who shall describe the agony of the poor wife as she noted the weakness, daily increasing, of the noble form upon which, for so many joyous years, she had leaned for support? Who shall depict her anguish as she now realized that the sea breezes, which had brought so much health for others, could bring none to her languishing husband? Whatever may have been the hopes of the country, there were no hopes of recovery in this sick chamber now,—only prayers, and possibly something like a dream of a miracle—yearned for, but impossible. What picture can be more saddening, or convey a deeper meaning in its illustration of a holy presence in the chamber of pain, than that individualized by the wife of the President!

The name of Lucretia Garfield will remain linked indissolubly with that of the great soul whose love she honored, so long as wifely heroism is honored of man. In his youth, in the days of his poverty, she made him rich with the countless wealth of her woman’s love. She pointed the way to a great future. To her careful management and sound advice is much of his early success 644to be attributed. Standing beside him at the coronation of his ambition, in the hour of his glory, she looked upon him with a pride beyond language, as, under such conditions, what wife would not; but in the dark days, which measured the period from July 2d to September 20th, and ended so deplorably to her and the country, it was a wifely love, destitute of all vainglory, with which, in full view of Christendom, she ministered, as only angels do, to the wounded form of her dying husband. No picture could be more pathetic, more instructive, more valuable as an example to all women of this day and coming ages; and it will be so remembered. Garfield’s struggle for a life that had become historic for its manly courage, was brave indeed; but with the history of that struggle there must forever be associated the imperishable name of a wife as great as he in all that makes greatness worth living or dying for in the eyes of men. “Man is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man.”

Now the land was covered with a pall. The insignia of mourning greeted the eye everywhere. It was the spontaneous expression of the people, without premeditation or system. Concert of action in a matter where every one moved upon the instant was not feasible; but it was as if the President were lying dead in every habitation. Prompted by a sentiment which defies analysis, but which sprang from that wearisome vigil at his bedside; from those long weeks of testing his pulse, listening to his breathings, and wondering at his courage; from hope deferred, gloom, despair, death—it agitated the depths of universal humanity, and impelled a response to the holiest dictates of every heart. Notwithstanding the all-pervading grief, the demonstration was wonderful and without a parallel. Quite as wonderful for its universality as for any of its physical conformations. A poor widow, in a Western city, draped her doorway with her one black dress. She had no other means of joining in the general expression of grief. Doubtless many other widows did the same thing for exactly the same reason. Others, who had not even a decent dress, hung out a single yard of black muslin, or a less quantity of crape. The poor made as emphatic expression of their grief as the wealthy, and the humblest offering 645of honest poverty invariably carried to the heart of the observer a deeper pathos than the ornate decorations with which the rich man symboled his lamentation. This is not said in a spirit of criticism, but to record a fact which is a part of this history, and which teaches a lesson germane to its object.

Not in this country alone were these things prominent, but they were part of the mourning of every land that regards the usages of civilization; and wherever there is recognition of mental and moral worth, there was heartfelt grief at the death of Garfield. The world missed him. He occupied a place of great responsibility, which no one could be better fitted for. His administration gave promise of good results. He was anxious to do good for the sake of good, rather than for popularity. He was resolved to do right regardless of those who might stand in his path. He did every thing in his power that he believed to be right. He opposed, with all his might, every thing he believed to be wrong. He was a just man and forgiving, with no hooks upon which to hang grudges. He was a Christian statesman—the highest type of a chief executive. How much the country lost in his death will never be computed. It is beyond estimate. It is more than any one has yet attempted to figure out. The sum of such a man’s value is quite beyond the reach of mathematics. It can not be measured; therefore grief for his loss is illimitable.

CHAPTER XV. THE SOLEMN PAGEANT.

The President was dead. The curtain had fallen at last between an anxious people and the first citizen of the Republic. It only remained for fifty millions of freemen to take him up with tender hands and bear him away to the narrow house prepared for all living. It was a sad duty which the Nation was not likely to neglect or leave to others to perform.

In the preparations made for the President’s funeral there was neither passion nor excitement. When Cæsar fell there was an uproar. The benches of the Senate House were torn up by the maddened populace to make a pyre for the burning of the dead Imperator’s body. We have improved upon all that. The temperate spirit and self-restraint of the American people promise well for the perpetuity of the Republic. However much cause there may be for anger and alarm, it is not likely that our institutions will ever be endangered by an outburst of popular fury.

The shutters of Francklyn cottage were closed. The sun’s face wore a coppery tint as he came up from the sea to look on the scene of death. The wind, which had blown stormily 647for a week, fell to a calm. A September haze filled the air and sky, and an indescribable quiet settled over the long, low shores of Jersey. With the rising of the sun a single craft far out at sea, floating, as it seemed, on nothing, broke the line of the horizon.

At the cottage the silence of death prevailed. At a little distance, on all sides, armed sentinels, with fixed bayonets, paced their beats, guardians of the border line between now and hereafter, beyond which the living might not pass. The flag, which, since the arrival of the President at Elberon, had been floating from a pole thrust out of an upper window of the cottage, was draped with black; but beyond this somber signal no outward sign of mourning was apparent. The first comers were the journalists; but in their demeanor the customary eagerness of competition was no longer apparent. Fifty millions of people would, before night, read the truths which these reporters had come to gather, but their subject of inquiry was now death rather than life; and their demeanor was calm and respectful in that shadowy presence.

At half-past 10, Secretaries Windom, Kirkwood, and Hunt and Postmaster-General James arrived at Elberon, and were invited at once to the Attorney-General’s cottage, situated about as far to the north-east of the hotel as the Francklyn cottage, in which the body of the President lay, is to the south-east. There they remained during the forenoon discussing the details of the events which had just transpired, in which they were all so deeply interested. A half hour later General Grant, with his son and a friend, drove up and spent an hour in gathering information of the last hours of President Garfield.

Meanwhile, the undertaker and his assistants had arrived and were preparing the body of the President for embalming and burial. The body showed the loss of flesh to a degree painful to look upon. Only the face preserved any thing like the appearance of the living Garfield. The beard, in a measure, contributed to this, serving to conceal the hollowness of the wasted cheeks. The body was laid upon rubber cloths placed 648upon the floor to await the autopsy, which was to take place in the afternoon.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR.

In the afternoon President Arthur arrived at Elberon. He had already taken the oath of office in New York City, and had then come immediately to Long Branch to tender condolence to the friends of the dead and to confer with the Cabinet. The question under consideration was the arrangement of a programme for the funeral of the President. After the conference, the following plan for the funeral services was ordered by the Cabinet, and was given for the information of the public by Secretary Blaine:

“The remains of the late President of the United States will be removed to Washington by special train on Wednesday, September 21, leaving Elberon at 10 a. m., and reaching Washington at 4 P. M. Detachments from the United States Army and from the marines of the Navy will be in attendance on arrival at Washington to perform escort duty. The remains will lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol on Thursday and Friday, and will be guarded by deputations from the Executive Departments and by officers of the Senate and House of Representatives.

“Religious ceremonies will be observed in the rotunda at 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon. At 5 o’clock the remains will be transferred to the funeral car and be removed to Cleveland, Ohio, via the Pennsylvania Railroad, arriving there Saturday at 2 P. M. In Cleveland the remains will lie in state until Monday at 2 P. M., and be then interred in Lakeview Cemetery. No ceremonies are expected in the cities and towns along the route of the funeral train beyond the tolling of bells. Detailed arrangements for final sepulture are committed to the municipal authorities of Cleveland, under the direction of the Executive of the State of Ohio.

Meanwhile, on the afternoon of the 20th, a post-mortem examination of the President’s body was made with a view of clearing up the many uncertainties which existed concerning the nature of the wound and the secondary causes of death. The autopsy lasted for about three and a half hours, and was conducted by the attending and consulting surgeons, assisted by Dr. D. S. Lamb, Assistant Surgeon of the Medical Museum at Washington, and Dr. A. H. Smith, of New York. The revelations made by the examination were of an astonishing sort, chiefly so as it respected the diagnosis of the President’s injury, which was found to have been utterly at variance with the facts. At 11 o’clock P. M. an official bulletin—last of many—was prepared by the surgeons, setting forth the results of the autopsy, as follows:

“By previous arrangement, a post-mortem examination of the body of President Garfield was made this afternoon in the presence and with the assistance of Drs. Hamilton, Agnew, Bliss, Barnes, Woodward, Reyburn, Andrew H. Smith, of Elberon, and Acting Assistant Surgeon D. S. Lamb, of the Army Medical Museum of Washington. The operation was performed by Dr. Lamb. It was found that the ball, after fracturing the 650right eleventh rib, had passed through the spinal column in front of the spinal cord, fracturing the body of the first lumbar vertebra, driven a number of small fragments of bone into the adjacent soft parts, and lodging below the pancreas, about two inches and a half to the left of the spine, and behind the peritoneum, where it had become completely encysted.

“The immediate cause of death was secondary hemorrhage from one of the mesenteric arteries adjoining the track of the ball, the blood rupturing the peritoneum, and nearly a pint escaping into the abdominal cavity. This hemorrhage is believed to have been the cause of the severe pain in the lower part of the chest complained of just before death. An abscess cavity, six inches by four in dimensions, was found in the vicinity of the gall bladder, between the liver and the transverse colon, which were strongly adherent. It did not involve the substance of the liver, and no communication was found between it and the wound.

“A long suppurating channel extended from the external wound, between the loin muscles and the right kidney, almost to the right groin. This channel, now known to be due to the burrowing of pus from the wound, was supposed during life to have been the track of the ball.

“On an examination of the organs of the chest, evidences of severe bronchitis were found on both sides, with broncho-pneumonia of the lower portion of the right lung, and, though to a much less extent, of the left. The lungs contained no abscesses, and the heart no clots. The liver was enlarged and fatty, but not from abscesses. Nor were any found in any other organ except the left kidney, which contained near its surface a small abscess about one-third of an inch in diameter.

“In reviewing the history of the case in connection with the autopsy, it is quite evident that the different suppurating surfaces, and especially the fractured, spongy tissue of the vertebra, furnish a sufficient explanation of the septic condition which existed.”

During the first day after the President’s death several incidents occurred worthy of note. Among others, came two dispatches from Cleveland, whose people were profoundly touched by the death of their friend. The first was from a committee of the city council, and said:

Mrs. J. A. Garfield, Elberon, New Jersey:

In behalf of the trustees, we tender you ground in Lakeview Cemetery for the burial of our lamented President, such as you or your friends may select.

651This was supplemented by the following dispatch sent by the Mayor of Cleveland:

Mrs. James A. Garfield, Long Branch, N. J.:

The people of this city, who have borne such love and honor to your husband, most earnestly and sincerely desire that his grave may be made here among us. Allow me, dear madam, to add to this publicly expressed desire of our citizens my own personal and official concurrence.

These cordial offers, concurring with Mrs. Garfield’s own wishes and the express desire of her dead husband, determined the choice of the spot where his body was to be laid to rest.

Another incident was the breaking of the news to the aged mother at home. Early in the morning a message came to Mrs. Larabee, sister of the President, who lives at Solon, Ohio, and with whom the poor old mother was for the time residing. The dispatch said:

To Mrs. Eliza Garfield:

James died this evening at 10:35. He calmly breathed his life away.

For awhile the dreadful intelligence was held back from the faithful heart that had sheltered James A. Garfield in his childhood. At length, after breakfast, she sought, as usual, the daily telegram from her son. Finding the dispatch, she was about to read, when her granddaughter took the message from her trembling hands.

“Grandma,” she said, “would you be surprised to hear bad news this morning?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said the old lady.

“Well, I should not,” said Mrs. Larabee, “I have been fearing and expecting it all the morning.”

“Grandma,” said Ellen Larabee, “there is sad news.”

“Is he dead?” asked the old lady, tremulously.

“He is.”

The quick tears started in the sensitive eyes. There was no violent paroxysm of grief. No expression of frenzy told of the anguish within.

“Is it true?” she asked, with quivering lips. “Then the Lord help me, for if he is dead what shall I do?”

652It was the bitterest of all the outcries of sorrowing human nature—the anguish of a mother’s breaking heart. The morning of the 21st of September broke calmly from the sea. Every thing was in readiness for the departure. For a brief period in the morning the people of Elberon were permitted to view the face of the dead. The coffin rested upon supports draped in black. There were few decorations. Upon the top were two black palm leaves. Some white flowers and a hanging basket of ferns with some branches of cycas leaves, emblematic of heroism, completed the decorations.

At half-past nine a brief funeral service was pronounced over the dead by Rev. Charles J. Young, of Long Branch, and then preparations were made for the immediate departure of the sad cortege on its sorrowful journey.

The train which was to bear away the President’s remains was backed up to the cottage on the track that had been so magically laid over the lawns on the night before he was brought to Long Branch. It consisted of an engine and four cars, which were all heavily and tastefully draped in mourning. Almost all the woodwork on the sides of the cars was covered with crape, only the number of the car being left exposed. The front car was for the baggage. The next was specially arranged for the coffin. In the center of this was a large catafalque for the casket to rest upon. It was covered with crape arranged in graceful folds. It rested upon a raised platform also draped in mourning and surrounded at the bottom by flags. The sides and top of the car were entirely covered with black cloth. Cane chairs were provided for the military guard of honor which occupied the car with the coffin. The third car was a combination one for members of the Cabinet. It was also draped in mourning inside and out. The last car was the private car of President Roberts, of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was reserved for Mrs. Garfield and family, and was the same car in which she came to Long Branch on the 6th of September. This car was also tastefully draped in black.

653Promptly at 10 o’clock the train moved slowly away toward the Elberon station. At this time there were two or three thousand persons lining the track, and the roadway was crowded with carriages for half a mile. Men stood with uncovered heads watching the train as it disappeared from view.

MISS MOLLIE GARFIELD.

It was expected that President Arthur would arrive at Attorney-General MacVeagh’s house in the morning, and with the Cabinet visit the house where President Garfield lay dead. The mixed crowd of city and country people who had gathered from many miles thought they would witness the closing scenes of the dead President’s career and at the same time catch a glimpse of his successor. The arrangements were subsequently changed, however. President Arthur decided to take a special train from Jersey City and meet the funeral procession at the Elberon station.

Without further delay the funeral train moved slowly along the track which had been laid across the fields specially to convey President Garfield to his new home by the sea. Nearly every hat was removed from the heads of the observers when the train approached. It moved along the left-hand track until the last car was parallel with the rear car of the special train from Jersey City, which stood on the right-hand track. President Arthur and the rest of the party then stepped into 654the car where the Cabinet were seated. After greeting the persons in the car, the President seated himself behind Secretary Blaine, and the two engaged in conversation. General Grant took a seat immediately behind President Arthur, when he was soon joined by Chief-Justice Waite. The engine which drew the train from the Francklyn cottage drew the train only to the main road. Engineer Paige and Fireman Gwinnell, who had charge of the engine when President Garfield was removed from Washington, were waiting with the same engine on a side track. Deep folds of mourning hung from the engineer’s box and pieces of crape covered the brass and other portions of the engine. Paige, who has always felt great pride in the successful removal from Washington, backed his engine on the main track and coupled it to the car which contained the coffin. At twelve minutes past 10 o’clock, the conductor told Paige that all was ready. A few puffs was the only noise made, and the funeral train moved quietly away.

At the various points en route there were tokens of the deepest popular sorrow. At Ocean Grove, the railroad for half a mile on both sides was lined with people. On the platform of the dépôt were from 4,000 to 5,000 men and women. As the train passed the men stood with uncovered heads, absolutely silent. The bells tolled, and then the crowd dispersed. Flags were at half-mast, and the buildings were draped in black.

There was a brief stop at Monmouth Junction, and at Princeton, where the students from the College of New Jersey were gathered to catch a glimpse of the passing train. They stood five hundred strong along the track, which had been strewed with flowers by the people. At Trenton, which was passed just before noon, an immense crowd of people had assembled. Every man took off his hat, and the women bowed their heads as the train went by. Many persons were affected to tears.

At 12:50 P. M. the cortege reached Grand Ferry Junction, opposite Philadelphia, where a great crowd, standing in silence, caught a glimpse of the casket containing the remains of the dead President. At Wilmington, fully ten thousand people were assembled. 655The bells of the city hall, court-house, and fire-engine houses were tolled while the train was passing through the city. At Baltimore there was no stop. Several thousand persons were gathered about the dépôt, who uncovered as the train passed, preserving the most respectful silence. Only three or four persons on the train were visible and recognized, the curtains of the cars being closed.

JAMES R. GARFIELD.

At 4:35 P. M. the cortege reached Washington City. As the train came into the dépôt, there was a hush among the throng, and then every head was uncovered. The scene that followed was impressive in the extreme. Mrs. Garfield, heavily veiled and dressed in deep mourning, alighted, leaning on the arm of Secretary Blaine on the one side, and supported by her son Harry on the other. Members of the Cabinet followed, and among them towered the form of President Arthur, on whose face was written the various emotions which must have struggled within him as he was welcomed by the sad and silent thousands of the people of Washington. This party was followed by the pall-bearers, consisting of trained artillery sergeants. As the cortege reached Sixth Street, where the military was massed, the Marine Band began slowly to play “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” As the notes of this beautiful melody filled the air all heads were bowed in reverence, and even the rabble in the streets was awed into silence.

The scene at the east front of the Capitol was an imposing one. The wide plateau was filled with the various military organizations in bright uniforms, conspicuous among which were the marines. The General and staff officers of the Army and the officers of the Navy formed in two lines leading to the foot of the broad marble steps 656on the east front, standing on which President Garfield had delivered his inaugural address. Directly in front was the hearse, drawn by six magnificent gray horses. At the foot of the steps stood the officers of the Senate and of the House, and the Reception Committee. When the band had played a dirge, the pall-bearers advanced, followed by the President, Cabinet, Justices of the Supreme Court, Senators and Representatives, and filed slowly and sadly up a pathway which had been kept open in the middle of the broad flight of stairs, the sides being densely packed with people who had crowded in to see this part of the pageant.

On reaching the center of the vast rotunda, the casket was placed on the catafalque which had been prepared for it, and then the President and the Cabinet, together with General Grant, the Senators and the Representatives, stood for a moment in silence. Then a panel covering the face of the dead President was removed, and they looked for the last time upon the wasted features of him who so lately was chief of the Nation, and then solemnly moved away. The sight of the face of the dead President was indeed terrible, and upon most who saw it an impression was left which time can never efface. It was pinched and haggard to the last extreme; the skin yellow and glistening; the eyes sunken, and the lips tightly drawn. The nose looked unnaturally long, sharp, and hooked; and altogether there was but the slightest resemblance to the heroic form and face of him who had been James A. Garfield.

The arrangement made was that for two days and nights the body of the illustrious dead should lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol. This plan was carried out. A guard of honor stood right and left, and very soon, in orderly procession past the mortal remains of their dead friend, the people began to pour in a continuous stream. It was now night-fall, and the shadows came down around the magnificent structure which for eighteen years had been the scene of the toils and triumphs of Garfield, now, alas, about to witness the last ovation in his honor.

On the morning of the 22d of September Washington City became, at sunrise, the scene of such a pageant as had never but 657once been beheld within those spacious avenues. By six o’clock the crowds had assembled, and were filing through the east door of the Capitol. As the day advanced the throng increased; and, as it became absolutely necessary that each person should have his turn in the solemn procession, the latest comers were obliged to take up their stations at the end of a long line to the rear. By ten o’clock this was found to reach to the crossing of Second Street and the avenue south-west—considerably more than a quarter of a mile away. All along this line policemen walked back and forth, to prevent stragglers from the outside from coming into the line out of turn. The people forming this procession were of the highest and lowest; among the number, thousands of women and children.

The time required to pass from this extreme limit of the line to the catafalque was, at the most crowded period, three hours and a half, and this under a broiling sun and upon a broad asphaltum pavement, which scorched the feet that pressed it.

During the day there were no incidents in the rotunda worthy of mention. Beyond the ceaseless tramp of the people, who poured through in a continuous stream, there was no sound—the desire for conversation being swallowed up in the awe which the presence of the dead President inspired. Some of the people passed the coffin without lifting their eyes from the floor, unwilling to trust themselves to gaze upon the awful sight. Others, more curious, looked as long as they could, and then reluctantly moved away. There were a great many colored people in the throng, of both sexes and of all ages and conditions. Common laborers in tattered clothing crowded upon sumptuously-dressed ladies and gentlemen, all inspired by a common motive. At one time during the day it was ascertained by actual count that sixty persons passed the coffin in one minute, or at the rate of 3,600 an hour, or more than 40,000 during the day. This is probably not above the actual number which passed through the rotunda.

At the farther end of the catafalque were some beautiful floral decorations. There was a broken column of white roses of the Marshal Neil variety, about three feet high, surmounted by a white 658dove with wings outspread, as if in the act of alighting. Next came a lovely design representing “The Gates Ajar.” These columns were also of white roses, and the bars of the gate were of variegated white and green. The gate-posts were surmounted by globes of immortelles. Next to this was a crown of white rosebuds, the points being tipped with fern. Beyond this was a bank of white flowers from which sprang a column on which was perched a white dove. Upon the bank of white was worked in green the words: “Our Martyr President.” At each end of the floral display was a wreath of ivy leaves lying on the floor. In the afternoon there was sent from the British Legation a massive wreath, one of the most beautiful ever seen in Washington. It came in obedience to orders telegraphed from the Queen, and the accompanying card bore the following touching and significant inscription:

“Queen Victoria, to the memory of the late President Garfield. An expression of her sorrow and sympathy with Mrs. Garfield and the American Nation.”

“September 22, 1881.”

The interior of the rotunda was hung in black, though not so heavily as to produce a marked effect. In all other respects this portion of the Capitol was of the usual appearance.

After passing the catafalque, most of the visitors left the building by the west staircase and departed; but many mounted to the dome and viewed the crowds assembled at the east front from that point of vantage. All day the streets were thronged with people. The street-cars, which had been appropriately draped, were filled to overflowing both to and from the Capitol, and all the conveyances in the city were brought into requisition. The trains brought many visitors from all parts of the nation to the city; and many country people from Maryland and Virginia took advantage of the pageant to visit the city.

During the afternoon there were some indications that the decomposition of the body had set in; and, it being understood that in such event it was the wish of Mrs. Garfield that the features 659of her husband should be shut out from the public gaze, the lid of the casket was closed, by order of Secretary Blaine, at about 6:30 in the evening.

JAMES A. GARFIELD.

Thus, with the evening twilight, the face of James A. Garfield, which, for so many years, had shone with a great radiance among the people, was shut forever from the sight of men.

The morning of the 23d of September witnessed a renewal of the scene of the day before. At half-past eleven all the doors and avenues of approach were closed in order that Mrs. Garfield might go in and remain for a few minutes alone with her dead. What passed behind those silent curtains belongs not to curious 660history, peering ever with sleepless eyes into the secrets of life and death, but only to the stricken woman who went in alone to her honored dead.

After this affecting episode the procession was renewed for a season, and then preparations were made for the observance of the formal ceremonies of the day. At two o’clock the services began. Appropriate passages of Scripture were read by Rev. Dr. Rankin, and this was followed with a touching prayer by Elder Isaac Errett, of Cincinnati. As the closing words of the invocation died away, the Rev. F. D. Powers, of the Vermont Avenue Christian Church, of which President Garfield was a member, delivered a feeling address. He spoke in a clear voice, and was distinctly heard in every portion of the hall:

“The cloud so long pending over the Nation has at last burst upon our heads. We sit half-crushed amid the ruin it has brought. A million million prayers and hopes and tears, as far as human wisdom sees, were vain. Our loved one has passed from us. But there is relief. We look away from the body. We forget, for a time, the things that are seen. We remember with joy his faith in the Son of God, whose gospel he sometimes himself preached, and which he always truly loved. And we see light and blue sky through the cloud structure, and beauty instead of ruin,—glory, honor, immortality, spiritual and eternal life in the place of decay and death. The chief glory of this man, as we think of him now, was his discipleship in the school of Christ. His attainments as scholar and statesman will be the theme of our orators and historians; and they must be worthy men to speak his praise worthily. But it is as a Christian that we love to think of him now. It was this which made his life to man an invaluable boon, his death to us an unspeakable loss, his eternity to himself an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.

“He was no sectarian. His religion was as broad as the religion of Christ. He was a simple Christian, bound by no sectarian ties, and wholly in fellowship with all pure spirits. He was a Christologist rather than a theologist. He had great reverence for the family relations. His example as son, husband, and father, is a glory to this Nation. He had a most kindly nature. His power over human hearts was deep and strong. He won men to him. He had no enemies. The hand that 661struck him was not the hand of his enemy, but the enemy of the position, the enemy of the country, the enemy of God. He sought to do right, manward and Godward.

“He was a grander man than we know. He wrought, even in his pain, a better work for the Nation than we can now estimate. He fell at the height of his achievements, not from any fault of his; but we may, in some sense, reverently apply to him the words spoken of his dear Lord: ‘He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him.’ As the nations remember the Macedonian as Alexander the Great and the Grecian as Aristides the Just, may not the son of America be known as Garfield the Good?

“Our President rests; he had joy in the glory of work, and he loved to talk of the leisure that did not come to him. Now he has it. This is the day, precious because of the service it rendered. He is a freed spirit; absent from the body, he is present with the Lord. On the heights whence came his help he finds repose. What rest has been his for these four days! The brave spirit which cried in his body: ‘I am tired,’ is where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. The patient soul which groaned under the burden of the suffering flesh: ‘O, this pain,’ is now in a world without pain. Spring comes, the flowers bloom, the buds put forth, the birds sing. Autumn rolls round, the birds have long since hushed their voices, the flowers have faded and fallen away; the forest foliage assumes a sickly, dying hue:—so earthly things pass away, and what is true remains with God.

“The pageant moves; the splendor of arms and the banners glitter in the sunlight; the music of instruments and of oratory swells upon the air; the cheers and praises of men resound. But the spring and summer pass by, and the autumn sees a Nation of sad eyes and heavy hearts, and what is true remains of God. ‘The Eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’”

At the close of the address another prayer was offered by Rev. J. G. Butler. As the last words of the service died away a beautiful rainbow appeared upon a bank of clouds in the east, and while this arch of promise rested calmly against the background of black, the casket was taken up by the pall-bearers and borne away to the hearse. The funeral train was already in waiting at the dépôt of the Pennsylvania Railway, and every thing was in 662readiness for the departure. The streets were lined with people, and no visible sign of grief was lacking to testify the sorrow of the people for the dead, and their sympathy for the living. The Marine Band played a solemn dirge, and at sixteen minutes past five o’clock the train started for Cleveland.

The journey from Washington to the west was made without remarkable incident. Crowds, large beyond all precedent, awaited the passage of the train at every point. In Baltimore, which was reached before dark, the whole city had apparently turned out to see the draped coaches go by. As the train reached the outer edge of the waiting throng, Mrs. Garfield was seated in her car looking out of the window. Knowing her disposition to shrink from publicity, one of her companions arose to put down the shade. But she asked that it be allowed to remain open, saying that she was glad to see the crowds which had assembled to do honor to her husband.

All on the funeral train retired early and remained in bed until they arrived in Pittsburgh. In the night, however, those awake saw everywhere the crowds which were in waiting. At Altoona a weird scene impressed itself upon the minds of those who saw it. The place was passed in the middle hours of the night. The darkness was made visible by large numbers of pine torches held by workingmen stationed at intervals along the streets. At East Liverpool the members of a Post of the Grand Army of the Republic awaited the passage of the train. At another place the track was strewn with flowers. At Pittsburgh, which was reached a little after six o’clock, the whole town was astir, and the train made its way between dense and silent masses of humanity. In the morning all on the train called on Mrs. Garfield to pay their respects. She had borne the fatigue of the night and the long journey quite well.

At nearly every station along the route, bells were heard tolling as the train passed, and at one or two places dirges were played by brass bands. It was noticed by the passengers that the women in the crowds through which the train passed were weeping. Very good time was made as far as Pittsburgh, but at that point a dispatch 663was received from Cleveland asking the railroad authorities to delay the train an hour or two, as the citizens had not yet completed their arrangements for the reception. On this account the speed was decreased, and the train did not arrive at Cleveland until 1:15 in the afternoon.

The ceremony of reception at the latter city was simple, and every thing was decorously done. Long before the train was expected the people of the town, in carriages, street cars, and on foot, made their way toward the station. Military and civic organizations were already on the spot, and although there was some inevitable bustle, every thing was in place when the train arrived. As the draped engine drew near, every head was uncovered. When the train stopped, the citizens’ committee of reception, which had met the cortege as it passed into Ohio, stepped off the train, and formed into double line. The Judges of the Supreme Court, Senators and Officers of the Army and Navy followed, and took their positions in the line without delay.

The coffin containing the body was then lifted from the car by the regular soldiers who accompanied it on the train, and carried to the hearse. The personal friends and attendants of Mrs. Garfield, including the members of the Cabinet and their wives, then passed between the two lines. Last came Mrs. Garfield leaning upon the arm of her son Harry, and escorted upon the other side by Secretary Blaine. Mrs. Garfield and her family were taken to a carriage and driven directly to the house of James Mason, which became her temporary home.

JAMES AND HARRY GARFIELD.

It had been determined that the remains of the President should be conveyed to Monument Square, and there be laid in state until the day of interment. To this end a pavilion, perhaps the finest structure of the kind ever erected, had been built in the middle of the square at the intersection of Superior and Ontario Streets; and here the body of the President was to lie until the 26th of September, which had been fixed upon as the day of sepulture. The pavilion, tasteful in design and rich in decoration, was a fit exponent of the gorgeous solemnity of sorrow. The structure was forty feet square at the base. The four fronts were 664spanned by arches thirty-six feet high and twenty-four feet in width. The catafalque upon which the casket rested was five and a half feet high, covered with black velvet, and handsomely festooned. Long carpeted walks ascended to the floor from the east and west fronts. The pavilion was seventy-two feet high to the apex of the roof. From the center of the roof rose a beautiful gilt sphere, supporting the figure of an angel twenty-four feet high. The columns at each side of the arches were ornamented by shields of a beautiful design and exquisitely draped. Over these were suspended unfurled flags. The centers of the arches bore similar shields. On the angles of the roof were groups of furled flags. Projecting from the angles of the base were elevated platforms, occupied by fully-uniformed guards. Each platform was provided with a suitable piece of field artillery. The structure was appropriately decorated, from base to dome, with black and white crape. Flowers and flags were displayed in various portions of the pavilion.

The interior was beautified with rare plants, choice flowers, and 665exquisite floral designs, two carloads of which had been brought from Cincinnati. The whole was a magnificent piece of work, both in design and execution.

At the east and west entrances to Monumental Park were heavy Gothic arches with drive-ways and openings for foot passengers on each side. They were situated at a sufficient distance from the catafalque to appear to be a part of it. The eastern one was covered with crape, with white and black trimmings running down each column, and the top bordered with blue and white stars. Added to these were several golden shields. The western gateway was similar in construction, and seemed fairly to close up Superior Street to the view. On the extreme outside pillars were the names of the States in black letters.

Into this solemn and beautiful structure, at the head of an almost endless procession, and drawn in a beautiful hearse, surrounded with guards of honor, was borne the body of the dead Garfield. Here the casket was laid upon the catafalque prepared for its reception. The day was already worn to evening, but it was decided not to admit the throng of people until the morrow.

Meanwhile, a last resting-place had been chosen where the great Ohioan should be at peace. The place selected for the tomb was at the top of the most commanding knoll in Lakeview Cemetery. Below it lie two ornamental lakes of considerable size, and on all sides, except the south, stand the marble and granite monuments of the dead. Northward, in the distance stretching along the horizon on either hand for twenty miles, can be seen the blue waters of Erie. The selection of this site was made by the trustees of the cemetery, subject to Mrs. Garfield’s approval, which was promptly and thankfully given.

So one more day closed in the shadows of the autumnal twilight, and Ohio sat still beside her dead.

It was the morning of Sunday. A strange vision rose with the sun. Cleveland was thronged with illimitable crowds of people. The murmur of the multitudes, though subdued, grew, and became continuous. At nine o’clock the guards about the public square made an opening in their line upon the west side 666through which the multitude began to pour. They were kept in line four and five and six abreast, marching in families, squares, groups, and indiscriminately, but still keeping their ranks, and sweeping steadily and rapidly onward at the east and west sides of the catafalque. Inclined planes had been erected and carpeted so that the throngs marched easily up on the one side and down on the other. The pace was too rapid to make the visit a satisfactory one—for the exquisite floral adornments were tempting enough to furnish pleasure for a visit of an hour—but all had an opportunity to get one glance at the coffin which contained the remains of him they had met to honor.

As the morning wore on the procession grew in length and volume. In an hour after the movement began the line stretched away to the distance of a square; then two squares; then a half mile. The people passed at the rate of one hundred and forty to the minute. Still there was no abatement of the tide which poured past the catafalque. In the afternoon the immense volume of humanity was swollen to a river whose surging, silent waters seemed filled from fountains exhaustless as the ocean. Later in the day came a storm of thunder and wind; only a few were driven from the column; others filled the vacant places, and still the tide surged on. As the crowds, never ending, swept by the catafalque, every hat was raised, and with uncovered heads, often with tears in their eyes and half-suppressed sobs, the people moved on. Late into the night they continued to come in unbroken ranks, the old and young, the pure and vile, the lame upon their crutches, the infirm leaning upon their companions, and babes in the arms of their mothers. It was the day of the people. It was estimated that during the day 150,000 human beings passed silently by the casket whose mute tenant recked no longer of earthly pomp and pageant.

On the evening of the 25th, Monument Square was set aglow with electric lights, which, from high places here and there, threw over the strange scene their brilliant, almost unearthly, splendor. On the outskirts of the guard-lines great masses of 667men and women still lingered, gazing silently towards the catafalque surrounded by sentinels. At midnight only a few guards and workmen remained inside the line, though many persons were yet on the streets outside. The scene was singularly impressive at this hour. The almost perfect silence, the bright glare of the lights, the ceaseless movements of the sentinels, the sighing of the wind through the trees, combined to create a feeling of awe in the breasts of all beholders. The massive structure, reared so quickly in the large square, seemed the work of magic. The fact that the noble, patriotic Garfield lay calmly sleeping the final sleep amid the scenes of his early manhood, carried its sad lesson to every heart, and then came, quick as thought, the reflection that the morrow would hear the mournful monologue of “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes.”

It was the morning of the last day on earth. Well-nigh all the formalities, many and sometimes tedious, peculiar to the burial of one falling in high office and high honor, had been observed, and to these had been added a thousand tokens, extemporized out of the nation’s grief, befitting the funeral of a beloved Chief Magistrate. It only remained for the people once more to lift the casket containing the body of their friend, and to bear it to the home prepared for all living.

At 9 o’clock on the morning of the 26th the line of people leading toward the pavilion found itself suddenly confronted by a line of muskets. The order had been given to clear the gates. Men and women who had been in line for hours were unable to proceed further, and many with ill-disguised resentment turned aside to seek a favorable point to view the exercises. The troops now formed along each side of the Park, in a hollow square six hundred feet in length. The beautiful canopy stood in the center, at the intersection of the two streets, and under it lay the casket. An opening was made at the western end leading up to Superior Street, and this was maintained with some difficulty by a regiment of State troops. From this point to the canopy itself was stationed a line of marines from the Washington Navy-yard—a broad avenue, a half a mile in length, being thus kept open, so that the 668carriages of those entitled to admission could enter without difficulty. It was a beautiful sight from the canopy to look down this long double file of soldiers and knights, and the photographers were busy in their efforts to preserve the picture.

At 9:30 A. M. the funeral car, which was to convey the body to the cemetery, was drawn into the square by twelve black horses with black draperies fringed with silver lace. The horses were arranged four abreast. At the head of each of the six outside horses was a negro groom in long black coat, high silk hat, and white gloves.

The car was elaborately decorated and surmounted by large black-and-white plumes, with folded battle flags at each corner. Next came a procession of carriages bearing the family and intimate friends of the dead President. Draped chairs were arranged about the catafalque, and here were seated not only those who were bound to the Garfield family by the ties of nature and intimate affection, but also a great number of the most distinguished statesmen, jurists, and soldiers of the nation. The sound of a minute-gun broke the silence, and the services were opened with the reading of the Scriptures by Bishop Bedell and an invocation by the Rev. Ross C. Houghton. At eleven o’clock the Rev. Isaac Errett, of Cincinnati, pronounced the funeral oration, which was a chaste and touching tribute to the memory of the great dead.

At the close of this eloquent address, Rev. Jabez Hall announced General Garfield’s favorite hymn, “Ho! reapers of life’s harvest,” which was sung by the choirs gathered about the catafalque. Then followed a closing prayer and benediction by Rev. Charles S. Pomeroy, and then the removal of the casket to the cemetery. It was now noonday, and the heat was very oppressive. The funeral car had been drawn up to within fifty feet of the foot of the incline leading from the canopy, and a roll of carpeting covered the ground. The trained soldiers from Washington stood in line at the foot of the canopy, ready to carry out the body whenever the word was given.

The members of the Cleveland Greys, with their high bearskin hats, stood like statues at the four corners of the canopy. The 669long line of soldiers stood, all attention, and the signal that all was ready was given. At the word of command the soldiers, with their white helmets, stepped briskly up the incline, and turning “about face,” readily lifted the casket to their shoulders. Then, grasping each other by the shoulder, thus giving the casket all the support necessary, they marched with slow and steady step down toward the funeral car. Not a word was spoken. The men were too well drilled to need more than a nod of command, and they carried the body to the car and laid it on the bier in silence. Then they marched back, and, turning again, took up their position on either side of the coffin.

A line was now formed outside of the square in order that the cortege might pass on its way to the mansion of the dead. The wife and mother and children of the President, accompanied by a great throng of intimate friends, arose to follow, and then the procession began to move towards the cemetery, three miles away.

The funeral car proceeded beyond the city hall, and stopped until the first carriage started out. As the carriages containing the friends of the family and eminent men were filled, the car continued its journey until the massive archway at Erie Street was reached. Another jam of people were waiting here. And as the procession slowly passed onward these joined the ranks. Turning into the broad and beautiful Euclid Avenue, the mournful cortege wended its way toward the cemetery in the distance. The great difficulty with the moving pageant was its immense volume. If all applicants had been given a place it would have been twice the length of the entire route. The weather had been very warm during the morning, but about two o’clock a refreshing breeze cooled the atmosphere, and an hour later a heavy storm of rain came down, rendering the march very disagreeable. Then there was a stampede of the crowd for shelter. The rain lasted for about fifteen minutes, and the bright uniforms of the soldiers, and the feathery plumes of the Knights Templar, and other societies, were drenched and soiled.

The procession continued its weary march without further event until the head of the column arrived at a point about half a mile 670distant from the cemetery gate, when a halt was ordered. The societies then opened their ranks, and the funeral car, with escort and following carriages, passed through and onward to the vault which was to receive the President’s remains.

Here was the last scene of the solemn pageant, begun afar by the sea. The surroundings were grand and beautiful. Art had led Nature by the hand to this last shrine of the earthly pilgrimage. On every side lay the soft carpet of green. Over the space from the roadway to the entrance of the vault was a magnificent canopy, draped in the gorgeous trappings of woe. The air was burdened with the perfume of a thousand flowers. Leading into the vault was a dark carpet strewn with roses so thick that the carpet could not be at first recognized. On entering there was presented a somber darkness and sacred shade, equal to the catacombs of antiquity. There was a vault within a vault. The interior was hung all about with dense mourning, having large flags as a background. The choicest floral designs occupied every space on the walls, and the floor was deeply bedded with choice flowers. A large cross and crown, from the Belgian Legation, was in the center of the south side, and an elegant lyre, sent from Washington, was on the opposite side, while numerous designs from the people of the city were placed here and there. It was impossible to use all the floral offerings sent to this place of rest, and many of them were kept in the boxes at the vault. The walls of the chamber were trimmed with smilax, and the doors with crape festooned with trailing vines. On the first step of the entrance, at the right door, was a group of three elegant crosses of roses, jasmine, carnations, with the words,

the gift of the Bolivian Legation at Washington. The steps were covered with evergreens and strewn with a thick carpet of rosebuds, tuberoses, and carnation. A large wreath, presented by the ladies of Dubuque, Iowa, was fastened near the ceiling, so that it could be seen at some distance. Looking through the open door 671at the head of the bier was a lyre of roses, carnations, and tuberoses, bearing in immortelles the words:

At the foot of the bier stood a heavy cross, the gift of Mrs. Garfield herself to the Decorative Committee, for that place. The sides of the vault were draped with rich black. The canopy of the interior consisted of many flags so arranged as to give the impression of an interior roof. The inner west wall was beautifully draped with flags festooned with black, and ornamented with a wreath of white roses. The floor was covered with a carpet of arbor vitæ and roses. The heavy doors were removed, and the gates were draped with bunting and festoons of smilax. In the center of the vault stood the bier, a beveled parallelogram, with a base of black velvet and draped entire with heavy black broadcloth, rich fringe, and a liberal trimming of evergreen.

The procession halted. It was the last stage in the journey. The chief mourners, except Harry and James Garfield, did not alight. The clouds still wept at intervals. The band removed to a distance, sounding the notes of a solemn requiem. The Forest City Guards formed on the right and the Knights on the left. The funeral car was then drawn up over the heavy carpeting of evergreens and flowers. The long lines of Guards presented arms. There was a moment of death-like silence—a most impressive pause—when the inclined plane was adjusted to the car. The Marines marched up into the car and carefully bore the casket down and directly into the vault. It was set gently on the bier. The Guards stood silent. A brief historical sketch of the dead President was read by the Rev. J. H. Jones, former chaplain of the old Garfield regiment. The Vocal Society of Cleveland then chanted in beautiful measure the Twenty-second Ode of Horace. The friends and attendants were thanked for their presence and sympathy, and the benediction was pronounced by President B. A. Hinsdale, of Hiram College. The door was closed. A guard was placed about the sepulcher, and all that the earth could claim of James A. Garfield was left to sleep the sleep that knows no waking.

672To moralize on the Life and Work of Garfield would be superfluous. He has furnished to the people of the United States one of the brightest and noblest examples of American citizenship. Both in public life and private life he has contributed to the annals of our times a record unsullied as the azure sky. His steps were the steps of a pure man climbing up to greatness. His ambitions were chastened—his aspirations the aspirations of a patriot. Over his great talents was shed the luster of noble activities, and his path was illumined with something of the effulgence of genius. His integrity was spotless, his virtue white as the snow. Of all our public men of recent times, Garfield was in a certain sense the most American. He had suffered all the hardships of the common lot. He had known poverty and orphanage and toil. To himself he owed in a preëminent degree his victory over adversity and his rise to distinction. He carried into public life, even to the highest seat of honor, the plainness and simplicity of a man of the people. Ostentation was no part of his nature, and subtlety found no place in his practices. In an age of venality and corruption—the very draff and ebb of the Civil War—he stood unscathed. He went up to his high seat and down to the doorway of the grave without the scent of fire on his garments. His name smells sweet in all lands under the circle of the sun, and his fame is a priceless legacy which posterity will not willingly let die.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES