^%!4«2«%%%SS««Si%ee««4S«82S«S^%Si>%SS^;S%^^ K?<^%4;%!%%%S^^ 4 '^ .'^■■s sgaaK' j gS i gaaigaiaaa^^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Chap. J^..9r^.y^ Shelf J3^..4^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ^::L-y4l^l^i^(^ The Life, Character PUBLIC SERVICES AS, A, Garfield, BY A, G. RIDDLE, Axithor of "STUDENTS AND LAWYERS:' "BART R/DGELV," "ALICE BRAND," Etc., Etc. u Philadelphia— Wm. Plfnt. New York— F. S. V.oaxm. Chicaw- Tyler & Co. Detroit— R. D. S. Tyler & Co. han FraiK-isco— A. L. Bancroft & Co. Hartford— CoLUMiiiAN Dook Company. Washington— James J. Chapman. EnTKRP.I) ACCORPINO To A(T of CoNURfLSS, IN THK YkAK 1?\.S(I, |;V W. W. WILLIAMS, LN THK OKFICK ok TIIK LIBRARIAN OF CONORKSS, AT WA.SIIINlil'ON. % DEDICATION, \o THE WIFE who shares the great and noble life, without being lost in and absorbed by it, who has contributed so much to form and cherish it, this attem[>t to translate it to his countrymen is, with many treasured memories, by permission, dedicated. .\. G. R. Cleveland. July, iS8o. To The Reader. Part First of the following volume appeared two years ago ill "Williams" History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio." It has a completeness in itself, not quite in harmony with the more extended work with which it is now incorporated. It was written for the purpose of ex- hibiting the man during the years of his growtii, to show what he grew to be, and was capable of, rather than to set forth what he had already achieved. It has a freedom of criticism not to be expected in a sketch produced on the eve of a national canvass to influence voters in favor of a candidate for the Presidency. For these reasons it is inserted here entire with no changes, save the brief mention of the ancestry and other touches, such as the author would have given on a final revision of the proof. It covers the period from the birth of Mr. (iarficld until he appears in congress, where I now take up the rapid sketch of his career, and in the spirit of that which precedes it, shall endeavor to carry it forward to the present. In so broad a life the incidents and events of it must be selected from, and subjected to, a rapid treat- ment. His connection with the leading policies of the government are brought out, with extracts from his TO THE READER. speeches, a broad treatment of the charges against him, his standing as a lawyer, with a final estimate of his char- acter and qualities. Much of my information is at first hand. The treatment of it, and of the subject of my sketch, is entirely my own. A. G. R. Mentor, July, 1880. CONTENTS. PART FIRST. CHAPTER I. Birth and early incidents Great men — Causes which produce unlcnown Garfields of England Garfields in America .... Abram Garfield, the father, account of Eliza Ballou, the mother James Abram, birth of Cabin where born Death of father . Intellect, early development of Critics, young club of Cousin Harriet Contest with a school-master School-house's lock broken five ti Growth, size of his head Dreams of the sea Lake Captain, his brutality Canal — on the tow-path Battle and victory Distance post Abandons the canal, and why Return — Mother's prayer Ague cake Chester and school Page. 17 17 19 20 20 21, 389 21 22 23 24 24 24 25 25 26 28 29 30. 394 30 31 33 34 35 35 CHAPTER H. Educational Life Professor, the first one A servant, and how he retired PAGE. 36 36 37 CONTENTS. PAGE. Six cents at Chester 38 Jim Gaffil becomes Mr. Garfield 38 Disciples — Conversion .... 38 Tiip to Southern Ohio 39 Sees a college ..... 40 School life ..... 40 Hiram Institute ..... 41 Career there for two years 42 Why he went to Williams College . , 42 Feelings and experience 43 Graduates after two years .... 44 Metaphysics ..... 44 Means and money ..... 45 Professor of language at Hiram 46 Preaches among the Disciples 47 A public speaker .... 49 CHAPTER HI. War experiences .... Elected to the Ohio senate, 1859 Plans of life ..... Studies law .... Approach of the war and preparation J. D. Cox— James Monroe War studies ..... Cox gets the start .... Ohio Seventh and Cross Lanes Ohio Forty-second, lieutenant colonel of Buell General, interview with Garfield plans the campaign of Middle creek Brigade, command of ... Campaign against Humphrey Marshall Battle and incidents .... Flight of Marshall Estimate of the campaign Stears the Sandy Valley up the Big Sandy Brigadier general, his command Battle of Corinth .... Ordered to Washington Porter, Fitz John, trial of General Hunter selects him Army of the Cumberland, becomes chief of staff of Rosecrans and re-organization Recommends change of officers 50 50 50 51 52 54 54 55 56 56 56 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 63 63 64 64 64 64 64 CONTENTS. Overrules the seventeen generals Campaign of Tullahoma Chickamauga .... Right wing broken — panic Garfield tries to rally it, in vain Joins Thomas on the left Battle terrible Last guns— Thomas remains on the field Washington again Promoted for gallantry on the field Scheme to supplant Lincoln Garfield suppresses it . . ■ Elected to Congress CHAPTER IV. Characteristics Estimate of the man What is his lack His plans of life . . . ■ Leaves himself to events Not a self seeker Chivalrous courage Faces the re-nominating convention Growth and development Fear of being brought forward for Presidency prematurely PAGE. , 65 66 66 66 67 ej 63 68 68, 91 94 68 69 69 70 PAGE. 72. 390 72 73 74 75 • 402 75 76 77. 107 78. 402 PART SECOND. CHAPTER L Congressional life .... The House of Representatives A progressive body .... Its true estimate of its own men Personnel of the members Colfax, Stevens, Washburn, and others— old members- Remarkable new men .... Blaine, Creswell, Boutwell ■ . Senate sketches .... Garfield's district ..... •sketched PAGE. 81 81 82 83 85 86 88 88 89 90 CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. Life at the Capital Little Trot Offers of General Thomas Resolves to return to the anny Lincoln's offer Military committee The army in 1863 Army education for the House Residence in Washington Mrs. Lecont's — Semi-headquarters . Knows about anesthesia A reminiscence — Almeda Booth Confiscation speech Status of Rebel States Effect of speech Estimate of it Opposes increase of bounties Garfield measured by a crisis, and is equal to it A picture .... Chief Justice Chase advises him to do the heroic sparingly The draft law and what it did New bill — Debate — Speech — Bill lost Lincoln interviews the committee Prospect ..... Pending election of members Lincoln answers the office seekers Substitute passed Proclamation of President — Answer Garfield asked to resign, and what followed Commercial relations with Canada . Reply to Long — Speech extracts Garfield's position before the country Presidential election, 1864 Wade-Davis manifesto Popular indignation against Garfield Re-nomination — Determination of the district A challenge to him Speech in convention "Truly yours, more truly my own" Re-nominated by acclamation Abolition of slavery Lincoln's offer rejected by slaveholders Tliirteenth amendment 96, P.\GE. 91 91 91 92 92 92 93 93 94 94 95 384 97 98 98 98 99 99 99 100 100 100 100 100 lOI lOI lOI lOI lOI 102, 106 106 106 106 106 107 107 107 108 108 109 109 109 CONTENTS. Pendleton's speech — Garfield's reply — Extracts no. III, 112 CHAPTER III. Assassination — Garfield in Xew York . Restoration — Studies 1865 Chooses to be placed on ways and means Revenue legislation Anniversary of assassination Felicitous speech given entire Estimate of speech — Memory . Great case of Milligan Old Capitol prison — Denounces Stanton Episode — Goes to Europe — Diary Return — State election and platform, 1867 Greenback lunacy .... Re-union at Jefferson Asked to take the platiorm — Reply PAGE. "3 114. "5 115 116, 117 117 117. 118, 119 120 120, 121, 359. 366 120, 122 123, 128 129 129 130 CHAPTER IV. Fortieth Congress Character of the Fortieth congress — Sessions Xew men — Morton and others . War with President Johnson Speech on government of rebel States . Rebuke of General Hancock Final impeachment — Speech Currency speeches .... Arlington oration Ta.xing bonds — Answers Pike and Butler Chairman military committee — Labors . CHAPTER V. PAGE. • 131 132 . 132. 133 133. 134 • 133. 134 135 136. 157. 170 137. 138, 139 139 140, 141 Banking and currency ...... Gold Panic — Black Friday ..... Investigation by Garfield and report . . . 143 Power of Senate to originate money bills — Garfield's speech Banks and banking — Speech . . . -157. PAGE. 142 143 156 176 CHAPTER VI. Political Economy At Williams . . . . Great Speech, January, 1872, Reply to Tucker — E.xtract — Protection PAGE. 171 172 175-183 184 CONTENTS. Curious Heads covering information Hoop iron ...... Transportation — Railroad system — Speech CHAPTER Vn. Appropriation— Expenditure Forty-second congress, famous for Garfield's work Chairman committee on appropriations Committee — Personnel of His preliminary study — Budgets, English Our practice Rules for expenditure War expenses Each member to make his own fame, and wear it Old Hiram experience Civil appropriation bill — Great speech Relation of expenditure to Government How shall expenditure be gauged? Test of population Territory .... Expenditure of England Duration of war expenses Reduction of the public debt Surplus and deficit History and cause of deficits Condition of the treasury Removal of the Flatheads . Returns to hear of the Credit Mobilier PAGE. 184 185 I86-I9I PAGE. 192 192 192 193 195 196 196 193 198 199 200 201 201 204 206 209 210 212 216 PART THIRD. CHAPTER I. Calumny . . • • Three charges and their names Credit :Mobilier Mr. Blaine demands investigation The committee, and sketch of the case Sketch of the ground Credit Mobilier and Union Pacific railroad Fraud on the United States Value of Credit Mobilier stock PAGE. 218 219 220 220 224 224 CONTENTS. Conspiracy a secret Oakes Ames, trustee, sells stocks to M. C.'s Character of the men They were not informed Ames sued for the stock — letters— list Garfield's statement McComb's account of Credit Mobilier Durant's account of Credit Mobilier Resolution creating Poland committee Report on Garfield's case Report criticised ..... 231, Mr. Garfield protests against it ... Case taken up anew Oakes Ames as a witness Contradicts him.self His sworn statements directly contradictory A reason for the change Testimony of Oakes Ames Swears that the after-accruing dividends were never paid or asked for His statement of Garfield's account, with date of payment to Garfield ....... Check by which it is paid dated later Unjust method of procuring untrue answers Comment on same ..... Ames' old book for 1868 finally produced His list dated January 2, 1869 .... Garfield's name on it as one to be paid thereafter Another list — men to be paid, though marked paid — dated June 31, 1868 ...... Swears this was made before men were paid Another account with Garfield .... Swears this was never settled ..... Evidence commented on . Unaccountable conduct of the parties if Garfield is implicated Garfield's statement of May, 1873 — extract His statement to committee Judge Black's statement in support President Hinsdale's Hon. J. P. Robison's PAGE. 225 226 227 . 227 227 228 229 229 230 230 231 233 232 233 233 234 235 235 236, 237 237 238, 242 240, 241 241 242 242 243 244 244 244 245 245 246 246 248 248 249 253 254 255 2.s6 249. Conclusion CHAPTER H. "Salary Grab" Resolution requiring his resignation 257. 374 PAGE. 258 CONTENTS. Public opinion .... Never held the money in his hand Garfield's statement Speech at Warren, 1874, extract CHAPTER III. The DeGolyer contract Sketch of the District of Columbia government J. M. Wilson's letter, concerning Real character of Garfield's connection with contract .... One Glover and his inquisition His enquiring mind — His methods Finally sealed up with seven seals His course with the DeGolyer contract Chicago Times unearths Glover's remains The spry Nickerson as a witness Garfield confronts him Garfield's evidence Conclusive nature of it Nickerson's last words Case summed up . . . PAGE. . . 258 . 259 . 259, 260 • 261 PAGE. 262 t 262, 265 . 26s the DeGolyer . • 265 266, 267 266 266 267 267 267 268, 270 . 270, 275 275 . 275 277 PART FOURTH. CHAPTER I. Life at the Capital resumed End of Republican supremacy New and old men Record of a day — A Washington sketch Society in Washington Garfield's home life in Washington . PAGE. 278 279 279, 282 282, 288 288 289 CHAPTER H. PAGE. The Forty-fourth congress ..... 290 Departure of Sumner ..... 290 New men ....... 291 Fifteen years of Democratic absence and opposition . 291 Garfield's place on committees .... 292, 293 Causes of Republican subsidence . . . . 293 Ex-rebels in their war paint ..... 294 CONTEXTS. Their record in congressional directory Course and temper of the Republicans . Amnesty battle brought on by Blaine New amnesty bill Blaine's speech — Effect Mr. Hill and his great speech in reply . Its effect .... Garfield has the floor His answer to Hill Reply to Hill continued . Proof of Davis' complicity . Hill's charges of cruelty to rebel prisoners Garfield's reply Number of prisoners on each side Reasons for not exchanging prisoners Effect of the speech CHAPTER HI. The Democracy not to be trusted Summer at the Capital A memorable day Mr. Lamar and his work His great speech — Substance of . Alarm of the Republicans Nature of the contest Garfield His leadership — Big-boyism His great reply to Lamar Asks Lamar a question Quotes from Lamar's speech of 1858 How the South accepts the results of the war Democratic fitness for rule Vindicates the Republicans Estimate of the speech — Its effect . Freaks of fortune The visiting statesman at New Orleans CHAPTER IV. Attempted revolution ...... Presidential election of 1876 .... The commission and its work .... 337, Garfield's speech against the bill creating electoral commission Is unanimously placed on the commission . . Opinions in the commission .... PAGE. 294, 295 295 296 296 296, 297 298, 300 300, 301 305. 314 305 307 307. 308 308 309, 311 315 PAGE. 316 316 317 317 318, 320 321 321 321 322 323. 334 325 325 326, 331 332. 334 334 335 336 336 PAGE. 337 337 339 339 340 340 CONTENTS. Other speeches Extra session of the Forty-sixth congress Reasons for it . Fraud and Tilden-Thurman counter-irritant Old army bill — old rider remounted Garfield opens the debate — Speech Question stated Voluntary power of the government Free consent the basis of our law Democrats responsible for the election" law New rebellion .... Course of debate — Replies to Garfield Garfield's rejoinder Effect of his leading speech Speech of April i6 — of June 27 Debate continues .... Gain of the Extra session to the Democrats Noble speech in favor of a survey of the Mississippi Other speeches ..... PAGE. 340 341 341 341 342 342. 349 343 344 345 346 347 349 350. 351 3.';0' 351 352 353 353 354 354 PART FIFTH. CHAPTER I. In other characters — conclusion Resolves to decline the ministry Will study law — method — admitted The Milligan case— his first case . . . i The court and where it sat . Course of the Government and principles involved . The case and counsel .... Argument ...••• Decision of the case .... Mr. Garfield's compensation The Alexander Campbell will case The testator and will .... Garfield retained for the devisees, and his preparation Case tried to the court in 1867 Incidents of the trial .... Result and compensation .... Life insurance cases .... His labors and fees in them Extent of practice and earnings 356 • 357 358 358 359 !0, 121, 359 366 359 360 360, 361 361 362, 363 . 365 371 366 367 367 368 I • 369 371 . 372 372 372 . 373 CONTEXTS. Practice of senators and representatives in the supreme court Amount of earnings at the bar * . Estimate of Garfield as a lawyer — his intellect PAGE. 373 373 374 CHAPTER II. Miscellaneous work Its character and extent North American Review The American congress George H. Thomas Almeda Booth Dr. Robison Eliza Mother CHAPTER III Conclusion The real man — A sketch As he appears Person and manners Old canal memories Warmth, tenderness, love . Judge of men Sense of the congruous Instances — The bare-footed girl The lattice .... Completeness of mind and character Rare memory Arlington oration Constructive power Methods of work Rank as an orator . A born actor Eulogy of Grant in the Wilderness Literary style His life shaped wholly by events Growth on the public Conclusion .... Masterly speech at Painesville . 375 375 376 377. 380 382, 384 96, 384, 387 387 PAGE. 390 72, 73, 390 392 393 394 394 395 396 396 396 397 398 398 399 399 400 400 400 402 402 78, 402 403 403-405 CONTENTS. Chester A. .Arthur. CHAPTER I. Place of birth .... His parentage College life .... Teaches school His course as a lawyer Important cases His course during the war CHAPTER II. Collector of Customs, New York The true story of his removal His warm attachment to General Grant His popularity as a man His domestic life Illustrations. PAGE. 409 409, 410 410 410 411 412, 413 413. 414 414 416, 417 PAGE. . 419, 423 424, 425 426 427 . 427 PAGE. Portrait of General Garfield . . . Frontispiece Birthplace of James A. Garfield . . . .22 Young Garfield's canal experience . . facing 30 Defeat of Humphrey Marshall . . . "59 Private residence of James A. Garfield.^Mentor, O. . 217 Portrait of General Chester A. Arthur . . facing 409 PART FIRST. FROM BIRTH TO CONGRESS, LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND EARLY INCIDENTS. The Generations of the Garfields. — The Mother Birth. — Loss of His Father. — The Home. — Eagerness for Books. — Case vs. a Schoolmas- ter. — Rape of a Lock. — What EUza Thought. — Growth and Size. — A Dream of the Sea. — Repulse by a Lake Captain. — Begins on the Tow-path. — Promotion. — First Fight. — How the Second was not Fought. — Reflection and Return. — Overhears His Mother's Prayer. — An Ague Cake. Great men rarely, perhaps never, appear under similar circumstances. A man and woman under common con- ditions, and yet marked with minor variations, wed, and a genius is born of them. The vulgar observers of his advent look to see it repeated from other twos, under similar conditions. So men who observe something mean or common in the early years of a great man's life usual- ly attribute his success to that. In the boyhood of General Garfield, he drove the horses that dragged a canal-boat on an Ohio canal one or two trips, and his biographers have usually set this forth as the leading event of his youth, and as quite all that is known of him, and this is supposed to have given the bent and impetus 1 8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. which launched him on the world as one of the great men of his time. The birth of a great man is a thing of accident to the parents, and this enhances the wonder in the eyes of men. Nature has no accidents, nor is she surprised at her own work. All are equally prepared for and of equal importance to her. It matters not whether we say Providence had certain results to work out, and prepared a specially endowed man for its accomplishment, or that certain particles of organic matter — protoplasm — have certain properties, which flowing along the vital channels, gathering and losing as they flow, unite, when those channels coincide, with a certain result. The-ordinary incidents of human life push the ordinary man along the usual courses. He does the common work of life, works their processes, because he has the power to do it. because he. can do no other. The same incidents push the extraordinarily-endowed man along the same avenues, and he grapples with the unusual, the extraordinary, and both lives are necessary results of natural causes. A herd of men, strangers to each other, enter the Am- erican house of representatives. Two or three, half a dozen, go sooner or later to the lead, become creators and directors, because it is in them to do that work. The rest are led, because it is in them to be conducted by the others. What has produced the difference, and whence was derived the leading elements and qualities of the men, is the problem. In the instance with which I am to deal I shall not attempt its solution. I can only hint at scanty antece- BIRTH AND EARLY INCIDENTS. 1 9 dents. We know that much, many unusual qualities, went to the making up of the subject of this sketch. Just what they antecedently were, and how they were united in his production, is a matter of the vaguest speculation. The conditions of such an inquiry are not in our hands, and the science which should guide it is of the unborn. Some popular delusions must vanish in reference to him. He did not grow up a stalwart, unlettered, good- natured Orson of the wood, nursed by a bear till seven- teen or eighteen, and then under sudden inspiration rush through school and college in an intellectual rage, rav- ishing from the sciences their sweets and secrets, drawing from books their blood and souls, and devouring and assimilating teachers and professors. Most men who become remarkable finally, have a kind of mythology constructed about their obscure early years. All the curious things of fact or fancy in the region where they live are conferred on them. General Garfield is an eminent example of this fortune, and the busy hand of fiction is supplementing the natural growth with works of its own. One tradition assigns the origin of the Garfields to Wales, and mainly on the ground of the similarity of the name to that of a venerable ruin in that country. The better opinion is that they are of Saxon descent. The family had its seat at Tuddington, Middlesex county, as early as the twelfth century. The crest of the house is a heart, with a hand rising out of it, grasping a sword. The legend, vincit amor patrice. The name is inscribed 20 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. on the roll of Battle Abbey, as that of a crusader, which the arms are said to indicate. The family first appeared in this country at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1635, of which Edward Garfield was one of the proprietors, and where he died in 1672. He had a son, Edward, who became the father of Captain Ben- jamin Garfield, a very conspicuous man, who represented Watertown many years in the general court, and died in 1 7 1 7. One of his sons was Lieutenant Thomas Garfield, who bore on the tide of descent, imparting it to a son Thomas, who, in turn, became the father of a Solomon Garfield. Solomon comes within lingual reach of the gen- eral, being his great-grandfather. He also had a brother, Abraham, who fought at Concord and Lexington, and joined with John Hoar and John Whitehead in a deposi- tion, proving that the British fired the first gun of the war. This Solomon married Sarah Stimson, and pushed off for the wooded hills of Otsego, New York, where his son Thomas was born. His wife, when he grew to have one, was Aseneath Hill, of Sharon. To these were born Abram Garfield, father of the general, and Thomas, of Newburgh, Ohio. Abram was a man of heroic proportions, endowed with marvelous physical strength; one of those large- souled, generous-hearted men who, notwithstanding they might overcome by weight and strength, nevertheless win by the sweetness and richness of their natures. Many legends exist of his great strength. A laboring man, all his implements and tools had lo be of a corresponding si/e and weight; and, though, the best-natured man in BIRTH AXD EARLY INXIDENTS. 21 the world, his courage matched his strength, and on more than one occasion he employed it in resisting others. Once on the Ohio canal, where he had a large job, and was living with his young wife, a gang of hands, the roughs of a neighboring job, led by two bullies, the terror of the whole line, came to get up a row with his men. At the first demonstration of these leaders he sprang upon and overcame them effectually ere their fel- lows came to their aid, and thus secured peace. He was from that moment the acknowledged monarch of the line of work, and ruled generously. Abram had a half-brother, Amos Boynton, his mother's son by another husband, whose fortunes were connected with his. At the foot of Mount Monadnock, in New Hampshire, lived a brother of Hosea Ballou, and of this family were two daughters, Eliza and a sister. Highly endowed in- tellectually, reared with the care and circumspection of New England, with its thrift and prudent economies, these sisters became the wives of these brothers, Eliza wedding with Abram. Of these two — this grandly- formed, large-natured, large-souled, kindly man, and this slight, intellectual, spirited, high-souled, and pious woman — was born James A., their fourth and last child, and ninth in descent from Edward, of Watertown — born to the heart and sword of the Crusader. The event oc- curred in the woods of Orange, Cuyahoga county, No- vember 19, 1 83 1. A picture of the humble dwelling in which our hero was born may be seen on the following page. It has a rustic look. Although long since torn down and removed, it can be reUed upon as a faithful 2 2 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. representation of General Garfield's birthplace, as it was drawn from a full description given by Mr, Garfield him- self. BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL GARFIELD. After the canal job, the brothers took their families to make for them permanent homes in Orange, built their cabins near each other, and, save one, there was then no human habitation within six miles of them. The Gar- fields were alive with a generous ambition to win more than a bare subsistence. The implements of work were to be the weapons with which to conquer labor, and not whips in the hands of necessity to scourge them as the slaves of toil. Work, hard, long continued, and unre- mitting, to make a home of intelligence and virtue for their children, and, with the leisure and opportunity, for better culture for themselves. The forest rapidly yielded to the eight-pound axe of Garfield. In time an exten- sive field, surrounded by the woods, was ripening its BIRTH AND EARLY INCIDENTS. 23 wheat in the summer sun. A fire in the forest threatened its destruction. By a desperate exercise of strength and activity the crop was saved. The overtaxed man, over- come by heat, sat in the cool wind, and contracted a vio- lent sore throat. A quack came, placed a blister upon it, and the strong man was strangled. He only said, "Eliza, I have planted four saplings in these woods. I leave them in your care." He walked to the window, called his faithful oxen by name, and died. When the earth was placed over him, the battle of life for Eliza began. The eldest child was a stout lad of ten. The first work was to complete the unfinished fence, to protect the wheat. The rails for this were split by the slender Eliza, and the two laid them up. The land was unpaid for. Food was to be won from the earth. At his father's death, James was less than two years old; the second and third children were daughters. The eldest inherited his father's generous and devoted nature in large measure. With him, till he was thirty years of age, there was but one purpose in life, — to help his mother, and do all within his power for his sisters and younger brother. -The Garfields and Boyntons, isolated from others, by neighborhood, education, and habits of life, were greatly dependent on each other for society, and grew up almost one family. The young Boyntons, as the Garfield?, espe- cially the daughters and James, were of quick parts and great intelligence. They had between them a few books. They generally managed to have a school at least during the winters. So far as the future statesman was con- 24 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. cerned, instead of growing up untutored until the divine frenzy seized him, he became a good reader when he was three years old, and could almost repeat the contents of some of the volumes at his command, at an age when the children of to-day are thought first eligible to the alphabet. Eliza knew her responsibility, and entered upon the task of his education. He early made great proficiency, and the man who fancies that the stupidity of his son is the counterpart of the child or boyhood of General Garfield is sadly misinformed on a vital matter. So emulous were the young people that, mastering all the branches taught in their early schools, they annoyed and worried their teachers about studies and lessons, and with questions quite beyond their reach. At an early day, and when James was advanced enough to take part in it, they established among themselves a class of critics, to examine and determine the accuracy of the use and pronunciation of words and the construction of sen- tences. To this class and its critical labors General Garfield expresses his obligation for the habit of care- fully scanning the use of words, and their arrangement in sentences and paragraphs, written or spoken. His cousin Harriet and himself associated the most in their literary labors. Somewhere they came across a volume of tales of the sea, — some kind of "Pirates' Own Book," — with which they became fascinated. They went over with the worn, but never worn-out, stories, till the young boy's imagination took fire, and he read and dreamed a boy's impossible career on the ocean. Some vein of a love of roving sea-life and adventure had come BIRTH AND EARLY INCIDENTS. 25 to him with his other gifts from some Norse ancestor, — some old viking, — which this book kindled, and which has never quite burned out or been extinguished. What came of it may be seen later. His father and mother had early become interested in the religious movement on the Reserve, which resulted in the organization of the Disciple churches, and this gave to her maternal care and admonition the religious sanc- tion of her convictions of duty and destiny. A woman of spirit, with a capacity to manage and control children ; to all a mother's solicitude and anxieties was added some apprehension on account of James, a frank, natural, tender-hearted, loving boy. Every fibre of his large frame was redolent of a love of fun, and not without a spirit of mischief, while his eldest cousin, Boynton, was the embodiment of ingenious hectoring. There was one notable winter, in which the boys convicted a teacher, in the then populous district, of incapacity to parse a sentence of ordinary English. They agitated against him, demanded his expulsion, and made so clear and strong a case on him that a school-meeting was called of the patrons, before which they appeared as prosecutors, and sustained their charges. Despite the popular voice, he managed to retain his place, and most of the scholars, with the Boyntons and Garfields, were withdrawn. These were in the habit of holding their lyceum debates and other exercises in the school-house each week. To pre- vent this, the door was locked against them. Boys, under such circumstances, show as little respect for locks as does love. The youths held their meeting inside the 26 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. house as usual. A man was dispatched to Cleveland, twelve or fourteen miles, for another lock, which was out of the way in time. Never was there such a door or such locks, though, doubtless, the world is full of such boys. At the fifth and last of these failures of the locks, careful Mrs. Eliza discovered that the handle of her fire- shovel showed marks of a strange usage, and there is a tradition that the new-fallen snow retained the imprint of a foot — of two feet — that always turned back to her house as home. The good woman was greatly disturbed. She still looks grave at every reference to that magical school-house door. James escaped Middle Creek and Chickamauga, the greater perils of Congress, but expia- tion may still be required for the "rape of a lock." He largely inherited the proportions, strength and per- sonal qualities of his father, and in the open-air life, active exercise, simple fare, and regular habits of such a boy, he grew rapidly, and at sixteen was a full-blooded, rollicking, spirited, light-hearted boy, living and growing. Though quick-witted, with considerable power of mimicry, more exercised than now, we can fancy him a very green- looking boy, with the untrained, uncouth ways of the youth of the country of that day. One would like to know what he thought of himself. Of couse, he sometimes looked in the glass, where he met a broad, round, laughing, richly florid face, laughing blue eyes, expressive of little but animal good nature. What did he think of that immense head ? Of course, he tried on the hats of other boys — of men — and could get it into none of them. Did he ever think of that? Did he all the time carry around BIRTH AND EARLV I^XIDENTS. 27 that callow mass of brain, without a suspicion of what it might become? Did he think he was like other boys — one of the common sort to work and play, be kind, love mother, sister, brother, cousins, especially cousin Harriet; chop wood and clear land, hoe corn, dig potatoes, run and jump, throw down all the boys, live and vegetate in Orange — hilliest and remotest of townships — with no thought or suspicion to the coming? The mule carries alike a sack of coals, a casket of gems, or precious gums, as a horse bears a clown or prince, not knowing the dif- ference. A boy is not a mule — is something better than a horse. When does it dawn upon a man of remarkable parts, not that he is unlike others — every one feels his unlikeness to his fellows — but that he has parts in excess of others. The fool, perhaps, always thinks that. I am not dealing with a fool. A man is as much of a mystery and a revelation to himself as others. It is probably best that impending superiority be hidden from young mor- tals of the male species. His principal business — whatever his ultimate destiny — of these years, was to live and grow strong and healthy. Growing wise was not then in order. It never becomes so to the mass apparently. He was to strengthen and develop, broaden and deepen; must be wide in the shoul- ders, deep in the chest, straight in loin, strong and straight in leg and thigh, with immense lung and heart power. The base of the brain was of more consequence then; no matter what Humphrey Marshall, Senator Lamar, or Judge Kelley might severally be doing in those years, it was his business to grow; by and by he will ripen, and at 28 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. an early day, for use. And so, in his sixteenth year, in the spring, he went to Newburgh to chop one hundred cords of wood — I don't know what he was to receive for it. It is not of the least consequence whether it was twenty or twenty-five dollars. It was not money that was of the chief use to him, though he worked for it. From the margin of the wood where was his work, there was an outlook of the wide lake, on which under the deep blue of the March and April sky, went the white-winged ships. Day by day there to the North was the bright ridge of slaty-blue, "the high seas" of the books. It was like the sea of which he had always dreamed. It was the sea, and there were ships and sailors and sailor-boys. All the latent longings of his nature, quickened and fed by his childish reading, were aroused. Here lay the sea beckoning to him. Here he would begin and master the rudiments, — a funny idea for a boy at his age, this of thoroughness of begin- ning at the bottom. When he had mastered these fields of fresh water, he would go and take the boundless ocean, — that which is itself the boundary. And so he chopped and split and piled his hundred cords of wood, pausing to gaze and sigh and resolve. He was to be a sailor, not "a fisher of men." In one of these mysteri- ous coming and going, never staying, weird phantoms of the blue, he would come and go, toss and beat, and see the far-off regions of the east, which lay in his ardent imagination like colored bubbles or painted dreams, only he knew they were real. And over the wide Pacific, the world of sundown seas and living islands, these should BIRTH AND EARLY INXIDEXTS. 29 rise cut of the blue and come to meet him, and his feet should tread their shores. All this should be his; and thus he dreamed as he chopped and piled his wood. He afterwards hired out to a Mr. Treat during the haying and harvesting season, and still dreamed of the sea. With his small earnings, putting by the persuasions and entreaties of his mother, he made his way to Cleve- land to begin at the bottom and work up. In the harbor he found but a single vessel which he thought he would like to go on. To that he made his way, stepped lightly up the gangway, and asked eagerly for the captain ; was told that he was below, but would be on deck in a minute. He had never, save in dreams and pictures, seen a cap- tain, a poetic hero, a cross of angel and pirate, in feather and spangles, — instead of which there stepped on deck a hardened, red-faced, brutal wretch, half drunk. He was evidently in a towering rage. The nascent rover of the blue modestly asked him if he wanted a hand. The enraged brute turned and poured upon him his pent wTath in curses, oaths, and made no other answer. The men on deck heard this v.'ith illy suppressed chuckles. The poor boy, struck dumb, endured one minute of dis- tressed awkward silence, which seemed an age before he could recover and walk away. So far from curing him of his sea longing, it strength- ened and gave it a new direction, or rather, it suggested a new and the true mode of the entrance upon his ca- reer. The captain's treatment showed him that he was too j'oung and green to become a sailor without some initiatory process. In turning the matter over in his 30 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. mind, the canal presented itself as the true starting-point, and from the canal he would graduate to the lake, and so flow out to the ocean. On the canal the lowest point was that of driver. For this post he would compete. To a canal-boat he went. The first boat he applied to wanted a driver, and he secured the situation. Poor boy I Had his career ended with that trip, as it came near doing, not a woman but would weep for his fate. He had not tlie faintest idea of swimming, and knew noth- ing of water, save as a beverage, and occasionally to wash hands in. On that first and most important tour he fell in- to the canal fcmrieen times, and had fourteen miraculous escapes from drowning. After all he showed his quality, and on return to port, the end of his first and last round trip as driver from Cleveland to Beaver, he was promoted from the tow-path to the deck, as bowsman. This brought a new experience. On his second trip he had his first fight. While in motion, he stood on deck, with a "set- ting-pole" on his shoulder, some twenty feet from Da%'e, a great, good-natured, hulking boatman, with a quick temper, with whom he was on good terms. The boat gave a lurch, the pole was sent with violence in the di- rection of Dave, and reached him before the warning cry. It struck him midships. Garfield expressed his sorrow promptly. Dave turned upon the luckless boy with curses, and threatened to thrash him. Garfield knew he was innocent even of carelessness. The threat of flogging by a heavy man of thirty-five roused the hot Garfield and Ballou blood. Dave rushed upon him with his head down, like an enraged bull. As he came BIRTH AND EARLY INXIDENTS. 3 1 on, Garfield sprang to one side, and dealt him a power- ful blow just back of and under the left ear. -Dave went to the bottom of the boat with his head between two beams, and his now heated foe went after him, seized him by the throat, and lifted the same clenched hand — the left — for another buffet. "Pound the d — d fool to death, Jim !" called the appreciative captain. "If he haint no more sense than to get mad at an accident, he orto die." And as the youth hesitated — "Why don't you strike?" D — n me if I'll interfere." He could not. The man was down, helpless, in his power. Father, as well as mother, stayed the blow. Dave expressed regret at his rage. Garfield gave him his hand, and they were better friends than ever. The victory gave him as much prestige along the canal as that accorded him through the North for thrashing Humphrey INIarshall at Middle Creek. The general says that not long after he came near being thrashed himself, and for cause deemed sufficient by the interna- tional code of the canal. At a certain distance each way from either gate of a lock is set what is called a "distance- post." If it happens that two boats approach a lock at the same time, the one that first reaches his distance- post has the first use of the lock, and the other must lie to and wait. The bowsman who violates this rule of reasonable law does so at the peril of immediate war. At a lonely place in the canal one night, Garfield's boat and one from the other way approached a lock at the same time. The other reached his distance-post first. In an instant's rashness, Garfield, disregarding the other's 32 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. rights, dashed on, opened the lock-gates at his end, and thus took possession of it. The insult was appreciated. The rival bowsman, a burly infuriated Irishman, leaped from his boat and made for his foe, illuminating h!s approach with a shower of Irish threats and curses. Being in for it, Garfield awaited his approach, leaning against the gate with seeming coolness, replying not a word. When the enraged man had approached within a few feet, the youth, in a commanding voice and manner, ordered him to halt then and there, on peril of being instantly awfully whipped. The audacity of taking the lock, the coolness and authority of this command, the height of the young man, looming on the amazed sight of the enemy, arrested his approach, and he contented himself with announcing certain punishment for any future outrage of the kind, and the boats passed. The general admits that his conduct in the first instance was the rashest folly, and in disregard of duty. In the second, it seemed the best way out of a difficulty. He was but sixteen. Garfield himself attributes his early abandonment of the canal and the change of his cherished plans to a combination of circumstances, which, though more nu- merous, resolve themselves to two — his mother and the ague. The memory of his tributes to Neptune in the muddy waters of the canal lingered in his boyish mind,, with the refrain, "It might have been." He had taken one of his many tumbles into the mud, and grasped the dangling end of a drag-rope which hung over the stern. It seems to have been in the night. Hand over hand BIRTH AND EARLY INXIDENTS. 33 he sought to pull himself from the water, too deep for him; and hand over hand it paid out, giving him not the least help. His position became perilous. Himself be- came alarmed, as he struggled seemingly more and more helplessly. Finally the rope became fixed, and lent itself to his aid, and he drew himself on board. Curious to know the cause of its mysterious conduct, he found on examination that it lay in a loose coil, and in running over the edge of the boat, in his grasp, it had been drawn into a crack with a sort of kink, like a knot, at that point, which alone prevented it paying out its whole treacherous length. In his wet clothes he sat down in the cold of the empty night, to contemplate and construe the matter. It seemed then, to him, that there was but one chance in one thousand that a line thus running over the edge of the boat should run into a crack and knot itself; and that one chance had saved him. Then came the thought of home and mother, and how with seeming in- difference he had left her, and under the impression that he was going upon the lake. He remembered he had not written to her during the three months he had been absent, and he pondered over the pain and distress his misconduct had doubtless caused her; and he knew of the constant prayers with which her love had surrounded him, as with an atmosphere, from the dawn of being. He had, in his modest self-abnegation, never regarded him- self of any especial consequence in the world, and the rope had not now fastened itself for him on his own ac- count, but solely at the intercession of that mother. Morning light and the life of the next day came with 34 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. new thoughts. The peril and escape of the last night faded to the memory of an unpleasant dream, the fig- ments of which lost their hold upon him. Be a sailor he would. Then he had broken with home; had gone for himself; had a right to shape his own life, provided he did well, worked, and earned money, and avoided vicious courses. But the drenching, the malaria of the canal, were too strong for the health and will of sixteen. He began to shake incontinently. He called up his will and determination; set, or tried to set, his teeth. How- ever firm his will, his body would shake and his teeth would chatter. The boat was on its way to Cleveland, and he determined there to lie off and get well. From Cleveland he went to Orange. He drew near the old home, consecrated by his mother's presence, in the eve- ning, and weak and shattered stole to the door. Her voice came from within in prayer. With uncovered head he bowed and listened, as the fervent prayer went on. He heard her pray for him, her son, away from her, and only in the providence of God. "Would He preserve him in health of body, and purity of life and soul; and return him to be her comfort and stay." When the voice ceased, he softly raised the latch and entered. Her prayer was answered. Not till after that time did he know that his going away had quite crushed her. He was at once prostrated with the "ague cake," as the hardness of the left side is popularly called. One of the old school IM. D.'s salivated him, and for several awful months he lay on the bed with a board so adjusted as to conduct the flow of saliva from his mouth, while BIRTH AND EARLY INCIDENTS. 35 the cake was dissolving under the influence of calomel, as the doctor said. Nothing but the indissoluble consti- tution given him by his father carried him through. However it fared with that obdurate cake, his passion for the sea survived, and he intended to return to the canal. The wise, sagacious love of the mother won. She took counsel of other helps. During the dreary months of drool, with tender watchfulness she cared for him, with- out the remotest word of his immediate past. She trusted in his noble nature. She trusted in God that, although he constantly talked of carrying out his old plans, he would abandon them. Not for years did he know the agony these words cost her. She merely said, in her sweet, quiet way, "James, you're sick. If you return to the canal, I fear you will be taken down again. I have been thinking it over. It seems to me you had better go to school this spring, and then with a term in the fall, you may be able to teach in the winter. If you can teach winters, and want to go on the canal or lake sum- mers, you will have employment the year around." Wise woman that she was. In his broken condition it did not seem a bad plan. While he revolved it, she went on. "Your money is now all gone, but your brother Thomas and I will be able to raise seventeen dollars for you to start to school on, and you can perhaps get along after that is gone upon your own resources." He took the advice and the money, the only fund ever contributed by others to him, towards a collegiate edu- cation, and went to the Geauga seminary at Chester. CHAPTER II. EDUCATIONAL LIFE. A Professor.— The servant retires. — Whirligigs of Time. — Grand River Institute.— A call to the Ledge.— Goes as Jim Gaffil.— Returns Mr. Garfield.— Is Converted.— Rides Seventy Miles to see a College.— Hiram. — Course there. — Chooses Williams. — Experience there. — First in Metaphysics. — Indifference to Money. — Professor of Lan- guages. — President of Hiram College. — Preaches. I have thus rapidly passed from General Garfield's birth, through the mythical and legendary period of his life, which others have enriched with absurd fables, to that of history. A wider space, in which other matter of interest in those chrysalis years might find place would throw much strong light upon the structure and growth of his character and mind. The period of his school education, with the unfolding of his mental powers, and the development of the latent traits of character which go also to the formation of a life, are of the greatest importance to a correct appreciation of the matured man, but must yield to a more rapid treatment. At the close of the spring term at Chester, he had so far recovered as to enable him to work as a day laborer at haying and harvesting. It is curious the fantastic changes which time and the after- success of a man work in the memories of other persons 36 EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 37 concerning him, and of their own agency in bringing him forward. At an earlier period young Garfield had worked for a merchant at boiling black salts. While so employed, the daughter of the house came home from the Geauga seminary, actually attended by a real pro- fessor, or so they called him. Young Garfield had never seen a specimen before. He really sat at the same table, and was permitted to linger in the same room in a remote corner, where the effulgence was not too strong, until nine o'clock in the evening, when the good mother, in a decided voice, announced that "it was time for serv- ants to retire." Soon after, he found himself in his little bedroom, up stairs, without being conscious of the details of the journey thither. "Servant." It was not a good word for the ears of even an intended sailor boy. His terra was quite out; the merchant sympathized with him, said what he might, and offered an increase of wages, but the servant retired at the end of the month. Ah, "the whirligigs of time," and the compensations they bring! The daughter became the wife of the won- derful professor, and a few brief years later, when on a visit to the lady mother, the three went to a reception tendered to the popular president of a college and elo- quent young senator, when the mother congratulated him with cordiality, and herself warmly, for once having him a member of her family. The servant had retired. And so this summer, a farmer of the neighborhood for whom he did yeoman's service in the harvest field at- tempted to defraud him of his scant wages, and was only foiled by the youth's spirit. He lived to speak of "Jim 38 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD, Gaffil"* as one of his boys whom he had raised and helped forward in his day of penury. With the money thus earned the young man purchased more decent raiment. When he reached Chester for the fall term, he had just six cents, and these he cast into the contribution box on the ensuing Sunday at church, and so he resumed his education. In the neighborhood of the school there was a large two-story house in the course of construction; to the master builder he applied for work, as he had an apti- tude for the use of tools, and was familiar with a jack- plane and jointer. He secured the job of dressing "clap-boards" for the weather boarding at two cents each, and one vacation day he dressed fifty, the first time in his life that he received a full dollar for a day's work. He made his way through easily, and in the au- tumn he received the examiner's certificate as a teacher. When the call came to "the Ledge," (a neighborhood in Orange), in his honest judgment of himself, he shrank from undertaking the school. In his doubt, he applied to his Uncle Boynton. After a moment's thought, he replied, "Take it. You will go as 'Jim Gafiilj' you must come back 'Mr. Garfield,' " and he did. That winter Father Lillie, a Disciple preacher of local fame, held a protracted meeting in the neighborhood, and yielding his assent to the faith of his ever-hopeful mother, he united with her church organization, and this severed the last strand of the cord which bound him to the dream of the ocean. All these it took — imminent * The popular pronunciation at tb.e time in Orange. EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 39 peril of death, illness, devoted love of motner, her prayers and intercessions, an abiding thirst for knowl- edge newly awakened, his conversion and union with the church. The center of them all was the sweet, beaming, tender, lovely face of his mother, the light from which brought out all the alluring or repulsive fea- tures of the other. Not many years since in speaking of these trials and temptations of his early years^ he said, half regretfully, "But even now, at times, the old feeling (the longing for the sea) comes back;" and walking across the room, he turned with a flashing eye, "I tell you, I would rather now command a fleet in a great naval battle than do anything else on this earth. The sight of a ship often fills me with a strange fascination; and when upon the water, and my fellow-landsmen are in the agonies of sea-sickness, I am as tranquil as when walking the land, in the serenest weather." But the sea lost her lover. At the close of his school on "the Ledge," he went with his mother to visit a brother of hers, in the south part of the State. Save on the canal, this was his longest journey and made on the railroad, his first ride on the cars. They stopped at Columbus, where Mr. Kent, the representative of Geauga, showed them much attention, and young Garfield saw the wonders of that capital. At Blue Rock an unfortunate school-master had just been disciplined by the scholars of one of the districts and dismissed, and he was induced to take them in hand for two months, and did. During the time he rode on 40 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. horsebacK seventy miles to Athens to see a real college, the first he had ever seen. What a strong light this incident throws on the uncon- scious working and influence of the real forces of the young man's mind ! The longings of his strong and still undeveloped na- ture were in a new direction. It was no longer the sea, the remote shores of old lands, the lonely islands, and pictured archipelagoes, but the cloisters of learning, its abode. The walls and roof of the mere edifice appealed to an imagination that seems early to have exercised a strong influence over him. He was now to turn all the energies with which he was so abundantly en- dowed, in the new direction. The little seminary of Chester, to which he returned from Blue Rock, was suf- ficient for the present. This must have been the summer of 1850. The ensuing winter he taught school again; thus enlarging his own powers and thoroughness of acqui- sition. An ingenious mind never acquires so surely as where it masters for the purpose of imparting. A man must find his learning so roomy that he can turn in it, and still find it at his hand. A man's soul must be large enough to turn round in, or it cannot be much of a soul. The story of this school life has been told with fair amplitude in history and fiction. Rich and useful as it is, my purpose is more to help finish out the artist's tran- script of the noble head and face, to furnish forth the complete idea of the man, than to tell a tale, however graphic, of the details of a very interesting career. — to show, if I may, what he was and is, rather than what he EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 4^ said and did. There is such incompleteness in a life, running at full tide like a river on whose banks you stand, that even this is scarcely possible. At mid career, per- haps, one can at best furnish a conception of what a man seems, rather than what he really is. That can possibly only be known when his years are completed. Some inteUigent, hard-working farmers, caught up and molded into unity of sentiment by the remarkable relig- ious movement in which Alexander Campbell was a leader — a movement hardly possible save amid a pio- neer people, who are remitted somewhat to the primary conditions of life, which seem to place them nearer na- ture and God — had worked into accomplishment their idea of an institute of learning, needed for the education of their own youth. They had found in the scriptures, pure and simple, not only an abundant formula of faith, but a code for church government as well. They knew it was written in an original language, and, among other things to be provided for, was a means of the thorough mastery of this and the Latin tongue. This was a school much in advance of Chester; it was the central literary light of the new, or the re-organization of primitive Chris- tianity, and to this the young scholar would necessarily make his way. It was an event in the history of Hiram rather than in that of Garfield, when he entered her new fresh halls and rooms. The incidents of school life, which with the passage of time were to become tradi- tions, were yet to occur. With cravings sharpened, facul- ties still wholly immature, broadened and strengthened at Chester, and a capacity for study greatly enlarged, the 42 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. large-headed, broad-shouldered, deep-chested young giant, with his surplus of life, finding vent in loud gushes of laughter, and the thousand ways in which an overtlood of young male animal vitality finds innocent outlets, he concentrated his energies on Greek and Latin. One can almost fancy that a thrill from the grasp of his warm, strong hand, must have run back to the ashes of the old writers, whose thoughts he was to master, with their language. Two years at Hiram and he was largely the best scholar she had, and he became the standard by which to measure her future prodigies. We are not toW what were his methods and peculiarities of study. We know very well that he had no peculiarities. A direct nature of his breadth and force can never become eccen- tric, could hardly be otherwise peculiar. He was differ- ent from other young men rather in quality and quantity. He exhausted Hiram and needed more. He wrote to Yale, Williams, and Mr. Campbell's young college at Bethany, gave a modest account of his acquisitions, and wished to know what time it would require in their classes to complete the university course. They sever- ally answered, two years. Singularly enough, he turned from Bethany. There was a leaning in it toward slavery, by which it was sur- rounded. It was less thorough. The youth who would grow up to a sailor, possibly an admiral, from the tow-path of a canal, would be content with nothing less than the most complete. Beside, he was quick enough to see that his religious association was a little exclusive, though confessedly as broad as the scheme of salvation, and he EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 43 wished to see and mix with a body more cosmopohtan, — preferred the older and more advanced East. "If you come here, we shall be glad to do what we can for you," was the conclusion of President Hopkins' letter from Williams. There was a little warmth, sympathy in these words that touched a nature so responsive, and this de- cided that Williams and not Yale should graduate him. Through the discovery of life insurance the young student raised the necessary means, on a policy he secured on his own life, which was a good risk, and the summer of 1854, in his twenty-third year, saw him in the junior class of Williams. At Williams, the air was warm and close with the styles, fashions, and conventionaUsms, — stifling, with the artifi- cialities and refinements of eastern life. A young man, the product of a city, can never apprehend the emotions and confusions experienced by the country-bred youth who finds himself suddenly in their midst. He is aft aid of a great town, and patronizes a third-rate hotel rather than face the monsters of a first. It is not in nature that the elegant students from the wealthy homes of the East should not note and comment upon the western speci- men. Let it not be supposed that the young athlete, on whom canal water made little impression, was impervious to the glances that ran him over or took him in. He was the most sensitive of mortals. The youth who, abashed by the manner of a drunken brute, went from the lake to the tow-path, had but the humblest conception of himself. What mattered it though he was intellectually a giant, and a genius so 44 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. large and general that it had no special tendency, and therefore not recognized as genius, — that his intellect had the fashion of Cicero, of Demosthenes, his imagination was Athenian, his thought moulded and polished by Virgil and the classics? He knew he was rural. He thought he might be rustic. He could see that he still looked unripe. The full blood was all too near the thin, fine-fibred skin of the face, and that was too broad. He never could see why that head, disproportionately large even for those shoulders and chest, need be quite so big, light as he carried it. He had not thought much of his dress. Now it was impressed upon him that his coat was of Hiram. His boots were Hiramy, and so were his pantaloons. His hat he purchased in Ravenna, but was not Williams fashion. Why had he not gone to Bethany ? Alas ! it is both Darwinian and Taineian that man is the servant of his environments, and more than one man has been made unhappy by his coat. Surely there are crosses enough without putting a man at feud and disadvantage by his garments. Better that he be without. The loftiest ambition, the highest soul has its weaknesses. Young Garfield's nature was roomy enough to absorb Williams, faculty and students, and his magnetism made them his own. They and he forget the lack of grace in his dress in his other abundant graces, and he wore his garments as he might. He kept his place in his class to the close. At the end of two years he received the award for metaphysics, the best honor of Williams. Metaphysics ! who would have suspected that? Who would have sup- EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 45 posed that the kind of power and grasp that clutches the particles of the spirit of things, and follows filmy specula- tion to shadowless, atomless conclusions in the abstract, and so sets Williams wondering, were his ? " Metaphysics, after all, may be a specialty with Mr. Garfield." Yes, I have observed that the subject in hand with him, what- ever it is, becomes a specialty. jNIention has been made of the slenderness of his means and meagreness of compensation he earned, where it seemed to reflect light on his character. Had I ever heard of his higgling over the price of a Barlow-knife, or woodchuck-skin whip-lash, I should mention the oft-re- peated scantiness of his expenditures, and the sum total of his debt when he took metaphysical leave of Williams. It might then help to a better understanding of the man. Great men may be small in money matters ; when they are, it may as well be known. It helps to equalize great and common men. Mr. Garfield seems rather of the temper of the knight who twisted off an unweighed quan- tity of his golden chain, and threw it in silent disdain to the churl who asked wages for hospitality. On his return to Ohio he was honored with the post of languages in the Hiram institute. The next year he became its president. As an instructor, he was famous, so far as such a post can confer distinction. Doubtless there are minds gifted with a special aptitude for instruct- ing. It was now thought this was his gift. He never had any of the pedagogue. He never would have real- ized any man's idea, save his own, of a professor. I doubt whether there was any one or two things that 46 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. peculiarly fitted him for teaching. I think there are few- things to which, if he turned and concentrated himself, that he would not do about as well as the best in that line, and shortly. It is said that Greek and Latin, in his mouth, ceased to be dead languages, in a manner. That the secrets of most of the sciences revealed themselves to him, and so were freely translated. The power lay in the warmth and magnetism of his nature. A gift to ani- mate things, make them move and take color. In some sense a born orator, his rank as such I do not speak of. His mastery of language gave him a copious vocabulary. He was full of enthusiasm. Anything which engaged his attention five minutes awakened it. Never was there such talkings up of lessons as his; nor had any studies ever before seemed so attractive to the pupils. They saw them through his medium, which was warmth as well as light. He was born — had all his days save his Williams days — lived at the heart-beat of the common people, and knew exactly the influences which control them, and that they measure everything by the money standard of cost, and what could be got for it in cash. He knew that they even estimated him by the money he could earn at teaching, and hence the eagerness to know the money cost of his education. A young farmer, in the emulation which the young professor's name produced, would se- cure a quarter in the institute, and became charmed at the world of letters opened to him. His father would refuse, hesitate, was seen and talked with by the young president, who made it clear, to even his apprehension, EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 47 that a more thorougli education enhanced the cash value of the youth. Wou'.d it have been better on the whole that Garfield had remained a college professor or presi- dent? It is pretty certain he would not long have remained at Hiram. His proportions were not suited to that, and he would have grown much faster else- where. Would it have been better if his plans of life had embraced the idea of adhering to some one thing ? Was he incapable of that? Is here the weakness in him? Or is there too much of him or of something, — too much or too little ? The years of his teaching coincide with the years of his preaching. Whatever may have been the effect on others, which must have been salutary, and although it was a useful training-school to the young men, the draw- back — less hurtful to him than to most — is the half-odium attaching to an ex-clergyman. Most of the caUings a man may turn from to others, without a shadow of dis- credit. The clerical is not one of them. He was at the most a lay-preacher. Under the Disciple rule any brother may offer his views. Of all peoples they were most given to discussions, public, private, and all the time; of reading, discussing, and expounding the Scriptures. A young man of Garfield's gifts and temperament, dealing with Scripture texts and lessons, would become a public speaker on the themes of such universal interest. Of course he excelled. I have no doubt he liked to preach. All true artists love to practice their art. For a real born speaker, with warmth of temperament and imagination, the exercise of his gift has a great charm. To feel every 48 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. fibre alive and tremulous with a theme, and rise and launch himself with fearless confidence on speech, "wreak himself on expression," kindle and glow, lift the audi- ence and be lifted till the sentiment and emotion of all become one, and his the utterance of it, give to the speaker a rare delight. The pleasurable glow remains though the physical frame may become exhausted. Gar- field had no call to preach; felt none. Had none of the intense religious enthusiasm that has made so many smaller men famous. He had natural enthusiasm, warmth, sympathy, sensibility, language, rare powers of speech, — had faith. He lacked the kindling inspiration of an intense evangelical spirit that hears the voice of the strong necessities of its own nature. He was never set apart for the ministry of the word by the authority of his people. Though he spoke often, in many places, was famous among his people, who have produced so many able and some widely-famous ministers, few of whom have much of the clergyman about them. Ear- nest, zealous, able, eloquent Christian teachers are they, with a very small modicum of the parson. Perhaps had Garfield remained a college professor or president he would have continued to preach, with what success is not difficult to forecast. In the superabundance of him he did other things beside. Among them, it is even said that in 1858-59 he saved some money, which was a thing he would be less likely to succeed in than in any other field of human enterprise that occurs to me. A weakness in this matter is doubtless amiable; it is a great personal inconvenience, and not by any means EDUCATIONAL LIFE. 49 necessarily allied to excellence of mind, character, or morals. Money values are not to be ruled out as vulgar or vicious. They are the only measures of property, and should be kept in their place. To estimate a man by his worth in money provokes a guffaw of the gods. Whatever he may have done in the way of this acquisi- tion, he made many political anti-slavery speeches. Here was a field broad and standing thick with material, the use of which could not fail to be most effective in his hands. Since the pre-revolutionary period no cause has done so much for American oratory, as we still miscall our public speaking. The other two together, temper- ance and woman's rights, save with the sex, do not approach it. Most of the good platform speakers of middle life of the North were formed in this school, so nearly allied to the more vulgar and very useful political speaking common to all parts of the country. CHAPTER III. WAR EXPERIENCES. Elected to the Senate.— Studies Law.— Plans of Life.— .Approach and Preparation for the War.— General Cox.— James Monroe.— Lieuten- ant Colonel Forty-second Regiment.— General BuelL— Interview with Him.— Plans Mill Creek Campaign.— Finds Humphrey Marshall.— Battle.— Humphrey Hies to Pound Gap.— The Campaign.- Steers the Sandy Vallev up the Big Sandy.— At the Battle of Shiloh.— Wash- ington.— Fitz John Porter's Trial.— Chief of Staff in Army of the Cumberland.— Rosecrans.— Overrules the Seventeen Generals.— Tul- lahoma.—Chickamauga.— Heroism on the Field.— Major General.- Plan to Supersede Lincoln.— The Patriot Boy.— Lincoln Urges Him to Enter Congress. With his great personal popularity Mr. Garfield could net well have avoided politics and becoming ofificially a public man. I don't think he tried. He must have had a relish for affairs. I don't see how, with his robust vital- ity and abounding animal life, he could well have long lived in a college cloister. He was elected to the Ohio Senate in the autumn of 1S59, and was then twenty-eight. This indicates a possible change in the plans of life. So earnest and thoughtful a man had plans and programmes, had long and carefully arranged and adhered to sys- tem for the discharge of his duties and avocations. Such men by such means conquer time and win leisure. There is one other evidence of this change of plan. In the same autumn he entered his name as a student-at-law in 50 WAR EXPERIENCES. 5 I the office of Messrs. Williamson & Riddle, of Cleveland, and had full five minutes' conversation with the junior as to the books and course of reading, from whose hand he subsequently received a paper that he had diligently studied that science two years, under whose instruction was omitted, and was admitted to the bar by the supreme court at Columbus. He doubtless then intended, as he has several times since, to turn himself to the practice of law. Of the cause which could have led to this, specu- lation would be useless. We have a catalogue of the reasons which turned him from the sea, though they did not banish the viking from his heart. Less cogent rea- sons, and perhaps fewer in number, may have been am- ple to lead to change of the plans of life. He was then a member of the Ohio senate, and quite every day from that to the present has been spent in the public service. His figure on the public stage soon be- came conspicuous. The character of his services and the manner in which he has rendered them early called the public attention to him. As his period of service lengthened, his fame broadened; the impressions he pro- duced deepened. As we study and contemplate him he grows upon us. Perhaps I might leave him here. His career is matter of already written history. Its muse will assuredly care for him. This sketch is not written for him or his friends, nor at their dictation. I have undertaken to furnish some sketches of many men well known to me, though less known to fame than he, for a domestic history. I must in the fulfillment of this undertaking so far glance at the 52 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. incidents of these later years, or of some of them, as to suggest the lights and shades they throw upon him, to show the effect they have produced, the changes they have wrought in the man himself, and help as I may to form an estimate of him. It will be remembered that Garfield entered the Ohio senate in 1S59, when the leaders of slavery had so far changed the forms of resistance to the exercise of their constitutional rights by theNorthern people, that the con- test would inevitably escape from the forms of political action and assume those of war. It cannot be said that the North were not amply warned in time. But hardly a man of that region, a year later, believed the South meant an actual collision of arms. It may be that it was as well that the North was incapable of being thus alarmed. The parties were mutually deceived. The South was in earnest, but, in turn, believed that war, inevitable and bloody, would not ensue, for it was assured that the farm- ers, mechanics, traders, and manufacturers would not attempt to enforce the rights and laws of the Nation against them. The South was more foolhardy than the North supposed; the North less timid and pusillanimous than the South believed. Curious it now seems, that the peoples of one blood, language, laws, and actual govern- ment, who had lived, associated, traded, and intermarried, occupied the same lands, and jointly carried on the same political institutions, could be so divided by the single thing of slavery, that they could have so misunderstood each other. So it was. The conflict was rapidly ap- proaching. The domestic agitations and political con- WAR EXPERIENCES. 53 vulsions which must precede a contest so great and near, were shaking and shaping the minds and actions of the peoples of the two sections, and, unconsciously on the part of the North, conducting them to the margin of the inevitable conflict. These interests and agitations super- seded the ordinary themes and interests of legislation and discussion. It was the day for the advent of large- brained, warm-natured men of profound convictions, under the passionate impulses of the fiery blood, beating out the fullest pulse of youth. In a way, Garfield's con- stitutional make, the source from which he sprang, the Ufe he had lived, the training and discipline he had gone through with, fitted him admirably for the important part he performed in preparing Ohio for the contest, and leading her side by side with the more advanced Northern States into it, and preparing himself and fellows for their own individual shares in it. It is still strange how that war fought itself, and though utterly unprepared with materials, soldiers, and commanders, perhaps the most surprising thing, after all, was the admirable and thorough preparation of the people themselves for the war, amazed as they were when it broke upon them. The causes which led to it worked this fitting — the planters, nursers and growers of the ideas, the germinal elements which produced the Northern half of these fashioning causes, were older than Garfield. He and the men of his gen- eration, the young, fiery orators, who, under the impetus of older forces and movements, were but to shape the things at the last moments ere the conflict, were to arouse, marshal, and lead the masses into the field, trans- 54 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. form and be transformed into soldiers and commanders. His share of this work he did faithfully and well. When has he shirked or been wanting? He became almost at once the foremost in it. That, too, is quite his way. Who would expect him long to lag in rear of the most advanced, and that not wholly from emulation, — he has given little evidence of great personal ambition, — as from the qualities and forces of his nature, which, when turned in a given direction, take him as far as men can go, and greatly in advance of all save the very few? With these his race is probably yet to be run. The man's nature makes it inevitable. Seemingly, he leaves himself in the hands of events. No quotation I could make from any speech of the several effective ones delivered by Mr. Garfield in the Ohio senate would do them or him justice. Quotations are always unjust. Of his immediate associates, J. D. Cox, of Trumbull county, and James Monroe, of Lorain county, then in the senate, were his most efficient co- workers. I make no comparisons of these men, nor shall I contrast Mr. Garfield with any. It is probable that with Cox was he the more intimate. When it became probable to these young men that a conflict of arms would ensue, each knew that he should go to the field, each felt that he would be called on to lead others. However that might be, each would be there to meet whatever foe he might find. They at once applied themselves to study the art of war. Both had read Cresar, were familiar with the history of modern campaigning. They now took the subject up as an elementary study. Garfield, as we know WAR EXPERIENXES. 55 from the natural logical thoroughness of his mind, began at the soldier's tow-path. Cox showed all through the war his natural aptitude, and the helps he drew from study never remitted. Whatever may be said of the genius, or talent, or both, necessary to fit forth a great military leader, the glitter and dazzle, the pomp and splendor, which ever attend the movements and encounters of men in arms, throw so much glamour over the names of successful generals that their essential merits are lost sight of The real nature and quality of the faculties, by the possession and exercise of which men succeed as generals, are, after all, a little dubious. The war showed that there was an abund- ance of this talent among us, and of excellent quality. It is useful in war, itself the most absurdly useless of human avocations. Barbarians and savages have it, and doubtless it is developed early in men. Men succeed early in life as commanders, and with us men who failed in everything else, before and after the war, did well as subordinate commanders, and may have had the ability to conduct a campaign. At the start, Cox received the first command. The early three months' regiments were permitted to elect their field-officers. Upon the organization of the Seventh, Garfield was at Cleveland, and at Camp Taylor, and was, perhaps, willing to have been its colonel. The push- ing, dashing Tyler carried off that honor. The first of his exploits was to sit down to breakfast with the boys one morning, at Cross Lanes, in the enemy's country, never thinking that chaps unmannerly enough to break 56 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. out of the Union would break in on a colonel at his breakfast, but they did, and this broke up the Seventh. During the summer, Garfield, who began as lieutenant- colonel, was in command of the Forty-second at Camp Chase, and stamped himself upon it in a month. He was teacher, professor, and colonel in one. On the fif- teenth of December, in obedience to an order from Gen- eral Buell, commanding the department of the Ohio, the Forty-second was sent to Cattlettsburgh, Kentucky, and its colonel proceeded to headquarters at Louisville. The preparations and expectations, the longings, possi- ble doubtings of the eager, anxious months were to be brought to the test of actual war. What a picture the interview of Buell and Garfield would make in the hands of an artist ! Buell, the most accomplished military scholar and critic of the old army, and the most unpopular as well as one of the most deserv- ing generals of volunteers of the war, astute, silent, cold. Garfield, with his glowing thirty years and splendid fisure, made to fill and set off the simple blue uniform, with his massive head well borne, and eager, flushing face, and bringing the warm atmosphere of his generous nature to confront his questioning and undetermined fate. A keen, sharp, searching glance, with a few cold, unconnected questions greeted him. Humphrey Mar- shall was moving down the valley of the Big Sandy, threatening eastern Kentucky. ZoUicoffer was on the way from Cumberland gap, towards Mill Spring. In con- cise words, as if to one skilled in military technics, the general, with a map before him, pointed out the position WAR EXPERIENCES. 57 and strength of Marshall, the locations of the Union forces, the topography of the country, and lifting his cold eyes to the face of the silent listener, said, "If you were in command of this sub-district what would you do? Report your answer here at nine o'clock to-morrow morn- ing." The colonel, with a silent bow, departed. Day- light the next morning found him with a sketch of the pro- posed campaign still incomplete. At nine sharp he laid it before his commander. The skilled eye mastered it in a minute. He issued to its author an order, creating the Eighteenth brigade of the army of the Cumberland, and assigned Colonel Garfield to the command. After directing the process of embodying the troops, came this sentence, brief enough for the soul of wit: "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." Never was order more literally executed, or with greater prompitude. Buell seemingly risked much on the accuracy of his judgment. Garfield, who had never seen an enemy or heard a musket fired in action, suddenly found himself in command of four regiments of infantry and eight companies of cavalry, charged with the duty of driving from his native State the reputedly ablest of its officers not educated to war, whom Kentucky had given to the rebellion, who commanded about five thousand men, and could choose his own position. He was at Paintville, sixty miles up the Sandy, was expected ultimately to unite with Zollicoffer, advance to Lexing- ton, and establish the rebel provisional government in the 58 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. State. He was a man of great intellectual abilities, and .famous for having led the Kentuckians in the charge at Buena Vista. The roads were horrible, the time mid- winter, and the rains incessant. Before nightfall of the ninth of January, 1862, Gar- field had, at the head of fifteen hundred men, driven in the enemy's pickets between Abbott's and Middle creeks. He dispatched orders to his reserves at Paintville, twenty miles away, less than one thousand strong, and bivouacked in the pitiless rain, to await morning and the struggle. Wrapped in his heavy cloak, with his men about him, on the edge of unknown battle, he lay. There was plenty of time to think, — to think of everything. How the mind, armed with incredible flight in such a supreme moment, will flash the world around! Back over all his life — the canal, his boyhood, trivial things, his mother, old Williams ; his wife and babies, and then the Hiram Eclectic boys, a full company of whom were then near him, because he was there. They had followed him. He knew their fathers and mothers. They had, in a way, put them into his hands, and he had brought them here. Somewhere near lay the enemy, of known superior strength. Where should he find him? At odds, in position as in numbers, he must exj^ect. His main force, the Fortieth, the Forty-second, had never faced an enemy. How would they behave? And then he turned to him- self to question— question his innermost self — for weak places, lingering, unexpectedly mayhap, in spirit, perhaps in mere nerve, in some portion of his body, who can tell where may be a treacherous weakness ? Then his WAR EXPERIENCES. 59 thoughts wandered away to things he had always revered. And then came the drowsy numbness of sleep, with a sense of the nearness, the presence of the dear ones in his precious, peaceful home. After all, it was not so easy to find General Humphrey Marshall. Not on Abbott's creek at all. He was so near, his foe could feel his presence; had found his cavalry and artillery. Where was Marshall's self and his army? Garfield could almost hear him breathe. What a day of hunt that was ! He was certainly on Abbott's creek; and Garfield would strike Middle creek, and so get in his rear. In executing this movement, he found the enemy perked up on the side of a ragged, wooded hill, as if to be up out of danger. In fact, he was too much up to defend himself. At about four p. m. a rattling fire began — about as much as could be got out of one thousand muskets that attacked on one side, and three thousand on the other. Never was there such a banging as the rebels made. They, too, were raw, and firing down a steep hill. On level ground raw troops fire too high, and wound the clouds, if in range. The rebels could not get down to our boys, who, under cover of the trees, kept onward and upward. There were too many rebels, for the trees and logs would not cover a fifth of the poor fellows. Though an up-hill business, the Union soldiers did not aim too high, and they were pushing on up to see Avhere they hit. Finally a rebel reinforcement came up over the crest, and the idea seemed to strike them to make a rush down and sweep the Union line — thin as a 6o LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. skirmish-line — out. At this instant Union Colonel Mon- roe and his Kentuckians — four or five hundred — got up so as to get in a very unpleasant enfilading fire, when round a curve in the road came Colonel Sheldon, with his one thousand from Paintville, through twenty miles of mud. Round they came, in the rear of Garfield's little handful of reserves, and gave a loud cheer. The reserves took it up and sent it to the struggling boys on the side-hill, who sent it up to Humphrey Marshall. Sheldon threw his men in line, and though the ground was miry, they started on a double-quick. Too late. That shout and the sight of the shouters did the rest of Humphrey's business. The shoutees did not wait for shot, or anything worse than noise, but turned and scrambled up hill, followed by the Ohio boys. Night came down ; the soldiers gathered up their wounded, and the whole force concentrated on a good position, — pickets thrown out, and preparations made for a final struggle next day. Shortly after dark a bright light blazed up behind the hill of battle. The Union soldiers beheld it with wonder. It was Humphrey Marshall's last fire. In it he consumed every possible thing that might hinder flight or be of value to his foe, and by the light he hied him away to Pound Gap. In reading the histories of the numerous generals on both sides of the war, the greatest stress is laid upon the fact whether a given man has been tried by the only reliable test — a separate, independent command. If he had not, or failed under it, his fame had yet a flaw. Garfield met WAR EXPERIENCES. 6z this at his entrance on the field. I never attempted but once an opinion on the movements of our army. I saw the flight from the first battle of Bull Run, and I ven- tured to suggest that the movement was in the wrong di- rection, and, as I remember, not executed with military precision. For this criticism I was promptly hanged, burned, and drowned — in effigy. I venture nothing on the merit of the campaign. Military writers have awarded it high praise. Its fault was the temerity of the attack, The commander had no knowledge of the character and force and commander opposed to him, save what his un- practiced eye could hastily catch when in a possibly too dangerous neighborhood. Probably the disposition made by Marshall might have revealed all that it was necessary to know, but I have no doubt he would have been at- tacked under almost any circumstances. Garfield was. capable of extraordinary personal exertions, and the weight of his force — in fighting, pluck, and tnoj-ale — was perhaps never surpassed by men of their experience. His own subsequent criticism of his conduct was that, the attack was rash in the extreme. "As it was, having, gone into the army with the notion that fighting was our business, I didn't know any better." The general plan of the campaign must have been based on true military principles, for it was approved by Buell. I have almost exceeded my limits. This hasty outline must shrink to a mere mention of incidents most useful to my purpose. Garfield received reinforcements, and held the conquered territory for a time. Rations grew scarce, and the only source of supply was from the mouth. 62 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. of the Big Sandy, which the long continued winter rains in that mountain region had swollen to an unnavigable torrent, up which a salmon could hardly make his way. The colonel was at the mouth. He had a cargo of pro- visions placed in the little stern-wheel, "Sandy Valley," and ordered it to start up. The captain refused. No craft could be found to attempt it. The river was sixty feet deep; had risen almost to the tree-tops along its wooded banks. Garfield ordered the captain and crew on board, stationed a plucky officer on deck over the captain, and himself took the wheel. Steering a canal- boat had not been wholly in vain. The captain protested; declared that no such craft could stem such a down- sweeping tide. The new helmsman had the steam turned on, and headed the shuddering little craft up-stream. With her greatest power she could not make three miles an hour. Night came. The captain implored that the frightened thing might be tied up, but she was kept head- up, and the determined colonel kept the wheel. She plunged her nose into the bank past digging out. Colo- nel Garfield manned a boat, pushed across the stream, extemporized a windlass, and with a Une pulled her out, and sent her on up to his hungry boys. He started on Saturday. All that day and night, Sunday and Sunday night, and at nine o'clock Monday morning they reached the camp. A tumult of cheers welcomed him. Spite of military rule, the young commander barely escaped being carried to headquarters on the shoulders of his soldiers. Of the whole time in climbing the Big Sandy, he had been absent from the wheel but eight hours. WAR EXPERIENCES. 63 He was formed for a soldier's idol. The Big Sandy campaign could have no wide signifi- cance, save on the fortunes of the two commanders. Humphrey Marshall disappeared in a shower of ridicule and sarcasm from both sides. The attention of the country was for a day concentrated on the young man who had shown such dashing qualities. He was made a brigadier-general, to date from January loth, and ordered to report to General Buell. The separation from the Forty-second was a real affliction to both. His new com- mand was two Ohio and two Indiana regiments; nor did the fortunes of war ever again place his old regiment under his command or in his presence. He was enabled to get into the second day's battle at Pittsburg Landing. He had his share in the tedious siege of Corinth, and finally advanced to Huntsville, where he was at the close of that campaign. He was placed at the head of the court-martial on General Tur- chin, which developed his qualities and fine ability in new directions. The old malarial influences, the result of his early campaign on the canal, quickened by the climate of the South, brought a vigorous return of the old foe, and late in the summer he was obliged to return home. He was ordered to reheve General Morgan on Cumberland Gap, but was still in the clutch of the ague when he was directed to report at Washington as soon as health per- mitted. The eye of the secretary of war had been on him from his first appearance in the army. His knowl- edge of law, the ability in the Turchin case, his admir- able judgment on all occasions, and his ardent patriotism 64 LIFE OF JAMES A. GAKHELU. induced Mr. Stanton to place his name among the first of the court for the trial of Fitz-John Porter. The his- tory of that famous trial is to be re-written, with what re- sult is unknown. It is known that General Garfield then had no doubt of his guilt. He is not one to make or change his opinions lightly. In him, however, the moral qualities which produce a firm, quick sense of justice are strong and active. During this long trial he became intimate with General Hunter, the president, who desired to have him in the contemplated campaign in South Carolina ; and, with his nitensified anti-slavery sentiinents, the assignment to this field was gratifying to the young general. Meantime was fought the sanguinary battle of Stone River. Gerache, the chief-of-staff of the commanding general, was slain, and Garfield, appointed to the vacant post, was sent to Rosecrans, in January, 1863. This commander, in some respects the most brilliant general of the army, was the poorest judge of men; and though one of the best-hearted, he had one of the most unaccommodating of tempers, especially in his dealings with the powers at Washington. His deficiencies were admirably supplied by his new chief-of-staff. There was perhaps not a prominent general in the army who could not have been supplemented in the same way. The quick eye of the new chief saw the defects in the organ- ization of the army. These could be measurably sup- plied. He saw the incapacity of the wing commanders, A. M. McCook and T. L. Crittenden, and promptly recommended their removal. The general could not WAR EXPERIENCES. 65 injure "two such good fellows." The inefficiency of McCook lost the first day at Stone River. They went on to Chickamauga, where he ruined the field. Garfield would have supplied their places with McDowell and Buell. His arrival at headquarters was about the begin- ning of the bitter, acrimonious correspondence between the general of the army and the war office, which laid the foundation for his being relieved from the command under a cloud. Garfield found the army at Murfrees- boro', and here it lay, spite of the urgency, the importu- nity, the almost command of the secretary of war for action, till the twenty-fourth of June, in the presence of Bragg. Rosecrans needed reinforcements, material sup- plies. He had defeated a superior army at Stone River. The secretary could not understand why he should hesi- tate to assail an inferior one now. It needed explanation. Rosecrans required the formal opinions of his corps, division, and cavalry generals as to the safety and ex- pediency of an advance. The seventeen, with singular unanimity, coincided that it should not be attempted. The chief-of-staff collected these opinions, analyzed, and replied to them, showed their weakness, and conclusively that the army could move at once. This bore date June 1 2, and the army marched the twenty-fourth. The paper has been pronounced by high authority the ablest of its kind of the war. On the morning of the advance, one of the three corps commanders, Crittenden, said to Gar- field, at headquarters, "It is understood, sir, by the gen- eral officers of the army that this movement is your work. I wish you to understand that it is a rash and fatal move, 3 66 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. for which you will be held responsible." The army marched on the short and brilliant Tullahoma campaign, which relieved that region of Bragg and his army. Had it been commenced a week sooner, his army undoubtedly would have disappeared from the war. Probably the in- cessant heavy rains only saved him finally. It would have saved Chickamauga. The influence of Garfield on Rosecrans was very great. Better for all had it been entire. Crittenden and McCook commanded two of the three corps in the great battle of Chickamauga — battle of blood, glory, and dis- aster. The armies in array were seventy thousand Con- federate and fifty-five thousand Union soldiers. Thomas commanded on the left and McCook the right. It is said Garfield wrote every order on this field save that fatal one to Wood, which he did not see. This in effect induced him to break the line of battle, and with his division take a position in the rear of another. Long- street saw the blundering gap, and launched the impetu- ous Hood into it. The battle on the right was lost. The whole wing crumbled and dissolved, and McCook's whole corps, panic-stricken, fled, a swarm of frightened wretches, back to Chattanooga. The tramping flood of mere human beings, reft of reason, caught the general and chief-of-stafi" in the rush. One eye-witness says that the conduct of the two men, stripped in an instant of all power to command by the dissolving of the charm of discipline, was superb. Gar- field, dismounted, with his figure above the surging mass, and his resonant voice heard above the din, seized the WAR EXPERIENCES. 67 colors from the fleeing bearer, who had instinctively- borne them off, planted them, seized men to the right and left, faced them about, and formed the nucleus of a stand, shouting his ringing appeals in the dead ears of the unhearing men, reft of all human attributes, save fear. A panic is a real disease, which for the time nothing can sta3^ His exertions were vain. The mo- ment he took his hands from a man he fled. The fleeing tide swept on. With a hasty permission from his chief, Garfield turned away to where the thunders of Thomas' guns proclaimed the heart of the battle to beat fiercest, and against whom the enemy had concentrated his heaviest battalions. If the weakest-pressed wing had been thus crushed, what might be the fate of the left? Thomas was not McCook. While Garfield, with a few staff-officers and orderlies, went to warn and aid Thomas, the general, with firmness and coolness, hurried to Chat- tanooga to gather up, preserve, and reorganize the atoms of McCook's corps. Garfield's mission was by a long and perilous ride, crossing the lines of the fleeing and their pursuers, hav- ing an orderly killed on the way. Finally, almost alone, he reached Thomas, half-circled by a cordon of fire, and explained the fate of the right. He informed him how he could withdraw his own right, form on a new line and meet Longstreet, who had turned Thomas' right and was marching on his rear. The movement was promptly made, but the line was too short to reach ground that would have rendered it unassailable save in front. At that time Gordon Granger came up with Steadman's division. 68 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. met Longstreet at the opening thus left, and, after a fear- ful struggle, forced him back. Thomas, the army and its honor, with the soil of the disaster on the right, were saved. It is said as night closed on that awful day, with the warm steam of blood from the ghastly wounded and recently killed rising from the burdened earth, Garfield and Granger, on foot, personally directed the loading and pointing of a battery of Napoleons, and sent their shot crashing after the retiring foe, and thus closed the battle of Chickamauga. What there was left of the Union army, was left in possession of the field. The battle was fought Septem- ber 20, 1863. After a few weeks, Garfield was sent on to Washington with dispatches — too late to save his honored chief. His best skill and ability had from his arrival at Rosecrans' headquarters been interposed, first to save him from his own pungent temper, and then from its consequences with the department at Washing- ton, where, with the aid of maps, he made a most mas- terly expose of all of the movements of the army of the Cumberland. Montgomery Blair, one of the most sa- gacious observers and judges of men at the capital, was filled with astonishment and admiration at its clearness, force, and completeness. "Garfield," said he, to a per- sonal friend to whom he related the occurrence, "Gar- field is a great man." General Garfield, on his arrival at Washington, found himself a full major-general of volunteers, " for gallant and meritorious conduct at the battle of Chickamauga." One curious transaction, occurring while Garfield was WAR EXPERIENCES. 69 connected with the army of the Cumberland, has never to my knowledge transpired in history, or in any form. It is within the memory of the well-informed that during one or two years, including quite the whole of 1863, there was a strong, decided, and almost bitter feeling of hostility to President Lincoln, personally, on the part of the leading radicals, in and out of Congress — a condem- nation of his policy and management, and a lack of con- fidence in his ability and strength of character. It is known that Mr. Greeley shared this sentiment to the full- est extent. He and the rest naturally felt the greatest anxiety to secure the best possible man as Lincoln's suc- cessor in 1864, and it was largely due to the difficulty of procurmg a candidate that induced these men silently, and sullenly, to acquiesce in the instinctive choice of the masses, who demanded his renomination at Balti- more. The brilliant qualities of Rosecrans, and the fame of the battle of Stone River, drew their eyes to him as the possible man on whom to fix and bring for- ward; and Edmund Kirk,* a writer of some ability and shrewdness, was sent forward with letters to Garfield — in whose judgment they had confidence— with instructions to remain at headquarters, observe, gather up opinions, learn the views of the chief of-staff, and, if all concurred, Rosecrans was to be approached, sounded, and his ac- quiescence in the plan secured if possible. The clear, sagacious mind of Garfield saw the futility and probable evil consequences of the project at once. He gave it such emphatic discouragement that it is be- * Kirk was Iiis nom de plume. His real name was Gilmore. yo LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. lieved no whisper of it ever reached Rosecrans, or any- considerable number of men not in the secret. These reasons he urged among others: that it would be ruinous to the usefulness of his general; that it could not suc- ceed ; that it ought not to. Kirk was convinced, and the idea was abandoned. He, however, cultivated the ac- quaintance of Garfield, to whom, like most men, he was strongly drawn, and managed, in various conversations — in which Garfield is the frankest of men — to draw from him something of his early life. As a consequence, not long after, there appeared "The Patriot Boy," by Trowbridge. Of the hero of this pleasant novel the friends of General Garfield had little difficulty in recognizing the one intended. The military career of General Garfield ends here. A year before, in his absence, the people of his congres- sional district desired, of all things, to place him in the house, and they elected him. Ordinarily, this would have been gratefully acquiesced in; now it came to break a high, brilliant, possibly a great career in arms, where, in his judgment, he could be equally and perhaps the more useful. As a matter of ambition, the sacrifice was great. He was a full major-general, with the largest confidence of the secretary of war, was the idol of the men he commanded, had the entire confidence of the army, save some of the "seventeen generals" of the army of the Cumberland, perhaps, and at that time the promise of a continuance of the war was of the largest. Easily he saw that no man could in the glitter and splen- dor of arms, and the names and fames they made and WAR EXPERIENCES. 7 1 marred, with which the land was filled, made for himself a name in congress; that the executive was substantially the government ; that congress was but a committee of ways and means, and all its powers went but to swell, strengthen, and sustain the executive arm. Mr. Lincoln wanted the aid of his fresh, strong, sagacious intellect in the house. Backed by his fame in arms, he would be a power. He urged and implored him to change his field of labor; and, judge of man, as he was, and hopeful of a speedy end of the war, he foresaw that, whatever might be the aid derived immediately from the young general's turning civilian, his ultimate field was there. Garfield acquiesced. He seems scarcely ever to have controlled his own destiny. CHAPTER IV. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. Partial Estimate of His Character.— Exactions of Friends.— Lacks Egoism.— Had He a Plan of Life.— No Lack of Moral Courage.— The Wade-Davis Manifesto.— Faces a Frowning Convention.— Re- sult.— His Growth on the Public— Fears of Being Named for the Presidency Prematurely. — Marriage. The oft-expressed purpose of this sketch to present a personal view of General Garfield, rather than a meagre history, must be taken as accomplished here. Few lives present richer or more varied and attractive material to the biographer. The opportunity to write a complete life, it is hoped, will not be presented to any man of this generation. The people of Geauga and Lake have him with them. His public life is their property, one of their most valuable possessions. They know his history as well as I do. I have brought forward, from the early, uncertain past, so much of it as will enable them some- what to reaUze his qualities and capacity for service, and help to some appreciative judgment of his stature and position, so difficult to estimate in his presence. Never, till a man can be drawn against a background of the past, when he and all his surroundings have become subject to the law of perspective, and the light about him has become cold and pure, can a historian draw him with accuracy of judgment. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 73 One or two things I may venture further, and mainly in the light of my own narrative, and somewhat in answer to a question asked by friends of the subject of it. "What is the lack in Garfield? What is the thing wanting?" Not large and obvious, or what it is, as well as its absence, would at once be seen. Some little thing wanting to completeness ; a lack felt, not seen, hard to define, yet a coming short of the perfection demanded of him. And, then, instances are mentioned where he has unexpectedly failed, in that he has not met the demand of the occasion, or of his friends' expectations as is claimed ; and in a most baffling and unsatisfactory way, a half-score of times. It has been defined as a lack of moral courage, and ere the words have ceased came some exhibition of that attribute or quality pure and simple. More than once it has appeared in the course of this narrative, if such it may be called, that important changes have occurred in Mr. Garfield's career without much in- telligent action on his part, when the matter was seem- ingly within his control. Men are hardly willing to allow that he could be guilty of fault of judgment, or hesitate from not clearly seeing the right. His failures may not be covered with these charities. In his own and in the affairs of the public there is an unwillingness to credit him with common fallibility, and charge it to the common account of the weakness of human nature. So well endowed is he that he should want in nothing, even that little thing so small and uncertain as to elude identity and escape detection. I do not believe in human per- 74 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. fection. I may only query for this puzzling lack. I go back to this recent remark, that his life, however rich and varied, has lacked the unity of seeming design, or that sort of continuity indicative of plan adhered to, either of which argues possible lack or superabundance. His one passion was the sea. For its indulgence he toiled and schemed, if this last word will apply to the mental processes of such a man. When that was fully given up, not overcome, he turned himself to acquire an education. Yet why, in the ordinary philosophy of life, is the mystery. The son of wealth may be educated, merely because his father is rich, and desires he should have the polish of culture. Garfield was poor, and must make his own way. What did he propose to do with his learning when acquired? What use would he make of himself when educated? It looks much as if, when brought to face this problem, with the stimulus of a strong, eager, hungry mind he pushed into and pushed on from that logical sense of completeness which he early exhibited. So it would seem that he became a teacher because it was there to be done ; he found pleasure in it, excelled in it, but found in time that whatever his pro- gramme was, it did not embrace a college professorship, and so of his preaching. Clearly he studied law by de- sign. If it was with any intention of pursuing it as a calling, it has never in any considerable degree been ad- hered to. He tries cases occasionally, and well, in the supreme court of the United States. I do not believe that he entered public life to make of it a trade, a call- ing, or a profession, and I think he has constantly in- PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 75 tended or expected to retire from it. A man often intends the opposite of what he expects. In short, to a superficial observer, his life, rich and varied, seems rather the result of his surroundings, which he has not resisted, but, with a remarkable adaptability, has turned himself largely and readily into new channels. Why didn't he defeat the salary bill? An answer, two or three of them, can be given without involving any lack of quality or faculty. I am now referring to another thing, which brings this matter of lack to an issue, where some reply is called for. Why don't he lead his party in the house? Long service, rare ability, complete mastery of all the essentials, — position included, quickness, temper, per- sonal bearing, absence of enmities, all unite. The reins trail carelessly through the hall, are thrown over his desk repeatedly, are sometimes in his hands, and admirably used on occasion. Why don't he take them firmly as his, . assert himself, be the man he is, and make the most of it? Why, indeed? That is the question. Why did he not carry off the Seventh Ohio regiment? Why did he permit himself to be appointed lieutenant- colonel of the Forty-second, when he might as well have been full colonel ? Why has he not grasped the Ohio senatorship, or done half a score of things for the not doing of which he is complained of? He is not a self-seeker, never has been. By nature he cannot be. His lack is egoism, if the absence of that quality is a lack; and whenever or wherever that element, if such it is, of men's nature enters into the subject of action, he will be apt to take that course from which it 76 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. is absent, or the least involved. If, other things being nearly equal, a course is open to him which he can take without self-assertion, he will take it. So of that notable case of the salary bill. If all the other considerations were equal, self-assertion, not courage nor firmness, for they were rather needed for the course he pursued; but self-assertion, egoism, the thing I, was the thing to defeat it, and hence the bill passed. That setting of oneself up above all others is not much in his nature, no vestige of arrogance. Courage of the chivalrous order — spirit abundant, but to set himself up, claim for himself, which this involves — is certainly not much in him. Let his party, formally or informally, elect him leader, and see what will come of it. They would have to do it spontaneously. As bearing on this delicate matter, which I touch with •gentle hand, one incident in Mr. Garfield's early con- gressional career may be mentioned. The Wade-Davis manifesto of 1864, containing so much truth, yet so actually revolting to the Republican masses, was a sore thing with them, and for a time cast a cloud even on Mr. Wade. The Republican convention in Garfield's district had assembled in Warren to nominate his successor in con- gress. It wanted to nominate him. It was said that he had not condemned the manifesto; on the contrary, quite justified it. If there was anything predetermined in that body, it was a unanimous condemnation of that paper. And Garfield, and no other man who upheld it, could receive a nomination at its hands. It was in trouble. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. ^^ It loved him. It would compromise, would do anything but approve that paper. It sent a committee to his ho- tel, and respectfully asked his views, certain that he would in some way accommodate himself to their requirements, at least enough to permit his re-nomination. There were not wanting friends to advise some little show of conces- sion. Here was a chance for that lack in the man to help him out. The general went in looking a little grave, took the stand, and, in a ringing, proud, half-defiant speech of twenty minutes, approved the manifesto and justified Wade. Amid the silence of the blank amaze- ment of the convention he strode haughtily out. A spirited young delegate, seeing the silent dismay of the elders, arose with " By George ! the man that has the cour- age to face a convention like that, deserves a nomina- tion," and moved it by acclamation. Ere the feet of the retiring congressman had passed the outer threshold, the building shook with the thundering acclaim that declared him the nominee. That people have little faith in his lack of courage of any kind. Rare and varied as has been the career of this gentle- man, one phenomenon has attended both himself per- sonally, and the estimation of him by the public, — a steady, rapid, uninterrupted growth. Not only has he been tried in many fields, in all of which he has easily and assuredly excelled, but the man has steadily devel- oped, broadened, deepened, and risen in intellectual qualities and excellence, and now, at forty-seven is evi- dently making as steady an advance in healthful mental growth as at any time since known to the public. Men- 78 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. tal old age will come late to him ; probably not at all. He may even overcome the unknown defect in character or mind, or what it proves to be, by sheer growth. Compare him with any man who entered public life at about the same time, with all of them for that matter, or with any man at the period of his career corresponding with the years of Garfield's public life, and who of them has ever attained a wider regard and confidence, and with so few drawbacks, forfeitures, and blemishes of record? Has there ever been a time when his position before the country was so steadily and rapidly growing as now? I foresee but one danger; it springs from no defect of character, but the peril of being named by some super- serviceable friend, or ingenious enemy, for an unnamed place prematurely. I believe him too well poised to be personally injured. Let the future provide for him as has the past. He may leave himself in the hands of the ^ fates or forces which have been so 'kind to him. But the impression that he, or they, or it were shaping things for any special elevation of him would greatly impair his ad- vance in the public confidence and esteem, and render him less useful. Mr. Garfield, in his professor days, was joined in mar- riage with Lucretia, daughter of Zeb. Rudolph, of Hiram, a lady of rare excellence of character, charm of person and manner, alike loved and admired at the capital as in the country. They have a promising family of sons, with one daughter, an attractive cottage and farm in Mentor, a pleasant, modest residence in Washington. PART SECOND. LIFE AT THE CAPITAL, CHAPTER I. CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. The House of Representatives is the Governing Body. — Its Character. — Conditions of Success Compared with the Senate. — Leading Men of the House. — Old Members, Colfax, Stevens, and others. — Remark- able Influx of New, Strong Men.-Blaine, Creswell, Boutwell, Wind- ham, Allison, and others. — Garfield's District. In December, 1863, Garfield entered the house of representatives of the congress of the United States, the governing branch of the legislature of the Republic. Largely the most numerous, so it is the most popular and interesting of the two houses, with a character, laws, tra- ditions, spirit, and usages, peculiar to itself. Its mem- bers the most approachable and often the least dignified and unassuming of men, the house, as a body, is the most despotic, severe, and awful, in its conceptions of its own dignity, and in its bearing toward those w^ho offend it, or who attempt anywhere, at any time, to in- vade its sanctities, or infringe upon the privileges of its members. At times the noisiest and most unruly of as- semblages, it always knows what it is about, and never departs far or tarries long from the line of its duties, as it esteems them. No deliberative body pretending to dispute by rule, ever attempted to govern itself by a code of laws and rules so complex and artificial, and it remains to be seen 6 e; 82 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. whether greatly the new rules adopted at its last session, are an improvement. As a business body it partakes largely of the infirmities of all popular assemblages. It has its times of intelligenoe, order and work, and its days of doing nothing, when its leaders make haste to ad- journ, and betake them to their committee rooms, where more and more its share of the legislative work of the Republic is done. It has already reached that size, when an increase of its numbers would diminish its working capacity. Its average of intellectual cai:>acity greatly varies. One believes on the whole that with the passing years there is a steady advance in this respect, as in the individual character of its members. It always has a fair share of the best minds, but there never was a house that, as a whole, did not greatly resemble a body of ordinary men, and never a day, when the presence in it of a large number, was not a wonder to the thoughtful observer. Common as it appears, a stranger is in danger of greatly underestimating the intelligence of the house. There always are minds of a high order, which by common con- sent, and unconsciously to the average man, direct it, and lead him along the route of safe, and often of wise and enlightened, legislation. An observer for a considerable period comes finally to regard the house as a huge body of immense forces, full of grand instincts and capable of noble impulses, never clearly seeing, often groping and sometimes going wrong, but which on the whole slowly moves on the line of human advance. While the average of intellect is not much above the good common, the house never fails unerringly to know CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 83 Its own men. Sham and pretence never impose upon it for a moment. It will not tolerate dullness and stupidity. It good-naturedly sets apart days for them, and goes home. It knows what it wants, and when found, it appreciates and cherishes the giver. Every man soon takes his proper place, finds his rank, and always at his merit. The house is not a great admirer of eloquence, and is never tickled with sound. To it the mere maker of speeches, is the most useless of men, if not the great est of bores. The time is long past for a man to make a reputation by a speech on the floor, and the house often differs with the country in its estimate of its own man. Whatever may be a man's reputation at home in city or country, he has none at the capital, and whatever may have been his position there, he begins in the ranks here. There is now no harder place in the world of men,, of contest and labor, to make a reputation, win a place,, than in the American house of representatives. Less; ability and tact, will win fame in the senate. Of all the distinguished men now in that body, there are not five, not educated in the house, who, if transferred to it, would ever again be heard of. The conditions of the house, the nature of its service, its laws and usages, its very size and numbers, its traditions and temper, make it the most difficult and trying ordeal to which a man can be subjected. Ability alone cannot master it; will and force of character do not conquer it. Genius is powerless in its presence. Steadiness, intelligence and integrity, with time enough, will win, as they do every- where. But when time depends on the caprice of a 84 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. constituency, it is seen how seldom this element lends itself to any man's advance. Into this body, at a few days past thirty-two years of age, this man, of whom the reader now has a good idea, entered, to take his place in the mass of the unknown and untried representatives, beginning where all begin, and winning, as all must win. To sketch his personal career in that body, to present it with brief reference to his connection with leading measures, is all that can be done, and that imperfectly. To write him up with breadth, and bring out his grow- ing influence on legislation and politics, would be to write the political history of the country, from mid war to the present. We know, in advance, that this large- brained, large-hearted, large-souled man, with his great capacity for the best work, his immense vitality, warm magnetism, and decided personality, will not linger in the undistinguished herd, nor do any but the best and most work; that sooner or later must largely influence, if not control measures. Ere I enter upon my task, something must be said of the persotinel of his associates of the house. Those whom he found there, the more marked who entered with him — a glance at their careers, as of the later comers and goers of the years to follow, and something of the spirit of congressional life may also be found in my pages. The places of the eleven seceding States were vacant in the hall of the house. Schuyler Colfax was elected speaker. This was his fifth congress. He was now forty CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 85 years of age, of good person, pleasant address, a rapid, persuasive speaker, able, politic, admired, and immensely popular; no man at the capital ever more so. Though not a lawyer, he mastered, as well as man may, the laws of the house, and ruled it with dignity and suavity, for six years. The speaker of the house fills the real second place in the American government. From this he re- tired, through the vice-presidency — than which there is no easier or more effective avenue — to private life. Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the ways and means, and titular leader of the house; strong, masterful and arbitrary — not the leader, not a leader of men in any sense ; a driver rather. Though in private life the gentlest and tenderest of men, in a public body, stormy, sharp, sarcastic, with a merciless, caustic wit. Not an eloquent, scarcely a good speaker, who put an end to an ordinary man with a sarcasm, and sometimes answered inquiry for information with aquafortis. He was then seventy-one, and had served in many congresses; was the peer of the Blacks and Merediths of Pennsylvania, and the greatest embodiment of revolutionary forces in the two houses. Elihu B. Washburn, the titular father of the house, though then but forty-seven ; strong, able, forceful, hon- est and brave; more of a leader, and not less masterful, than Stevens ; always direct and above-board, with a temper not of the politic cast, and which sometimes was troublesome — a good man for any time, and one of the men for that time. Justin S. Morrill was one of the prominent men of the Thirty-eighth congress, and one of the most valuable in 86 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the history of our legislation. Second on the ways and means, he was by far its best man. Tariffs and indus- tries were his specialties. Mr, Garfield early attracted his notice, and when he became the head of the com- mittee in the Thirty-ninth congress, the young Ohio re- presentative, at his special request, became his second. William D. Kelley entered the Thirty-seventh con- gress, was conspicuous in the Thirty-eighth, and has filled a large place in the public vision ever since. A man of fine literary tastes, with a quick, eager, sagacious mind, he early took one of the first places as an orator and debater, which he retains. Robert C. Schenck, after an absence of many years, returned to his old seat; coming with the memory of his former high position to fill a larger and higher place. One of the ablest of the hard-workers who ever sat there, and whom it is now the fashion to slur over by men never his peers in ability and usefulness. John A. Bingham, the orator of the house, and one of the hundred best speakers who ever sat in it, and a statesman as well, missed the Thirty-eighth congress, re- appearing in the Thirty-ninth. So of Roscoe Conkling, three years the senior of Garfield — in some respects, one of the strongest men of either house, one of the masters of sarcasm, with a power of producing his thought better and more sharply de- fined and cleaner cut than almost any debater in our parliamentary history. Henr}' Winter Davis returned to Congress this year — an event in itself. Proudest and most reticent of men, CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 87 with the gift of genius, and a rare power of speech, he seems to have added Httle to his former great reputation. He died in December, 1865. Henry L. Dawes, of IMassachusetts, was there at the height of his great usefulness, perhaps better adapted to the house, where he was educated, than to the senate, to which he has been transferred. Samuel S. Cox, the wit and wag of the house, and a good deal more. He was then from Ohio, and had man- aged td- get his growth early. James E. English, of Connecticut, one of the ablest of the Democrats, and a high-minded man. And old melancholy Governor Francis Thomas, of Maryland, was in the house. Daniel W. Voorhees-, an orator, young, vigorous, and growing to the head of the western Democracy. WiUiam H. Wadsworth, of Kentucky, who maintained its fame for eloquence. James F. Wilson, of Iowa, a man of more sturdy vigor and strength than often reaches congress in one man. William Windom, of Minnesota, who has grown steadily, silently and naturally, to the front rank. And there were scores of good men. There was Isaac N. Arnold, one of the two only outspoken friends of President Lincoln, at the close of theThirty-seventh congress ; Fernando C. Beaman, and Portus Baxter; William S. Holman, of Indiana, and George W. Julian, one of the strongest and best cultured men of the house; Frederick Pike, of Maine; Theodore* Pomeroy, of New York, apd Alexander H. Rice, of Mas- sachusetts; and certainly the able and accomplished 88 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. George H. Pendleton should have distinguished mention. Vallandigham was still in exile, while J. M. Ashley, of Ohio, was a very conspicuous figure on the floor and filled much space in the field of general politics. TheThirty-eighth congress is marked in our annals by the appearance of new and strong men upon the national boards; some of whom are remarkable. Among the first stands James G. Blaine, but a year older than Gar- field; a born parliamentary leader — a leader of men every- where ; gifted with great personal advantages, a strong, quick, brilliant intellect, rare powers of speech, with inflex- ibility of will, and great force of character. Aggressive, heroic, no civilian since Henry Clay has had so much magnetism, as certainly since his day there has not appeared in the national lists so intrepid and gallant a leader, or one who dashes along the front of the adverse host so fearlessly. J. A. J. Cresswell also, three years the senior of Gar- field, came in from Maryland, was transferred to the senate, from which he entered the cabinet of President Grant. Able and brilliant, he was selected by the house of representatives to deliver the eulogy on his friend and colleague, Henry Winter Davis, a distinguished honor to each. George S. Boutwell had been governor of Massachu- setts, and now made his advent upon the national plat- form. Sharp, ready, incisive. He went through the treasury department as secretary and from thence into the senate. James Brooks, able, a man of unusual accomplish- CONGRESSIONAL LIFE. 89 ments, and enviable position, whose sad ending would go far to condone even grave faults. William B. Allison, of Iowa, now senator, first en- tered the house in this congress, as did John A. Kasson, minister to Austria, and Senator Kernan, and William R. Morrison, of Illinois; also Godlove S. Orth, of Indiana, and Samuel J. Randall. This congress also received Rufus P. Spalding and Fernando Wood, both able men, with the airs of grand seignieurs. John A. Griswold and John Ganson, of New York; Ebon C. Ingersoll, of Illinois; T. A. Jencks, of Rhode Island; E. R. Eckly, of Ohio, and some others. Distinguished and able men thronged the senate. Sumner and Wilson still represented Massachusetts, and Wade and Sherman, Ohio; CoUamer and Foot, Ver- mont. Pennsylvania had Buckalew and Cowan. One wants to ask what has become of them. Chandler and Howard bore up the honor of Michigan. Grimes and Harlan cared for that of Iowa. John P. Hale was still there, growing lazy and careless. Harris and E. D. Morgan silendy sustained the position of New York. Doolittle was there for Wisconsin. Howe was by his side when not in advance of him. Lyman Trumbull was there for Illinois, with strong, rough Richardson. Rev- erdy Johnson sustained the old fame of Maryland, and McDougal, wittiest and frailest of senators, stood up, when he could stand, for California. Lott M. Morrell represented Maine, while Fessenden was secretary of the treasury. Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota, was alsO' 90 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. then in the senate. It had many conspicuous and able men not here named. On this stage, among these men, old and new, the young general, sun-browned and battle-scorched, from the war, made his appearance, as one of the joint body. He is to know them and be known by them, associate ■with them, become a friend, a rival, an opponent, an enemy never. Will live with them, and grow up with and become a conspicuous part of the legislative history of the Republic, for all the succeeding years to this day. Will remain such part or pass to the highest and most solitary. At his election, he was a resident of the county of Portage. The rest of his district, Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Trumbull and Mahoning, constituted the old dis- trict of Joshua R. Giddings — so much of New England translated into the freer, broader and more fertile west. The people, intelligent, shrewd, not given to enthusiasm, understanding men, and knowing the cash values of things, they had taken to the young man, and nomi- nated and elected him without especially consulting him, which somehow set the fashion in his career. Not all fair weather will it be between them and the youth of their love. Bickerings, misconceptions, and busy tongues, ambitious intriguers will intervene, and he will turn and face them and have a fair and square set-to, and they will never, never doubt him again. CHAPTER II. LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. Lincoln's Offer.— Committee on Military Affairs.— State of the Army. — Increase of Bounties' Speech. — A Crisis. — Meets It.— Chief Jus- tice Chase.— New Army Bill.— Defeated.— Lincoln Meets the Com- mittee. — Substitute. — Speech. ^Passage of Bill. — Proclamation and Answer. — Reply to Long. — Presidential Canvass. — Defies the Nomi- nating Convention at Warren. — Thirteenth Amendment. — Speech in Reply to Pendleton. We resume the thread of our narrative. It was stated in chapter third that General Garfield went to Washing- ton with a mission from his military chief to the Presi- dent and secretary of war. It was late in the season, and near the time of the assembling of congress. On his way, he went around by his home in Hiram. There he found his-first born, "Little Trot," less than three years old, one of the rare sweet buds that perish ere opening, seemingly waiting for his parting kiss ere her departure, and left him as if to show how sweet death might seem, and how near and precious the unseen. He held her in his arms, to secure the last presentiment of her dead face, and left the stricken mother by the little grave's side, to make his darkened, solitary way, to the life and scenes of the capital. The result of his mission to the President has been stated. Nothing could save Rosecrans. Garfield had received a letter from General 92 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Thomas, now at the head of the army of the Cumber- land, offering him the command of a division, and had determined to resign his seat in the house and accept it Every motive and impulse of his heart urged him to this. On expressing his purpose to the President, Mr. Lincoln earnestly dissuaded him from it. He represented that the Republicans had a very slender, if not a doubtful, majority in the house, that he was greatly needed, with his perfect knowledge of the wants of the army; that at least he must remain till the house was organized, and at work, saying that he had assured General Frank Blair," returned to the same house, that as soon aS he could be spared he would restore him his resigned commission, and would do the same by Schenk and himself. It will be remembered that the President carried out this promise to Blair, simply by an order restoring him, contrary to the opinion at this time expressed to him, by Schenk, that, hav- ing resigned, nothing but a reappointment could return him, which was undoubtedly the law. Thus strongly urged, Garfield acquiesced, and on Saturday, December 3d, resigned his commission as major general, and the next Monday was sworn as a representative in the house, and took his seat. General Schenk was placed at the head of the com- mittee on military affairs, and General Garfield received an honorable place with him. It made little difference what figure of the seven represented it, he would soon find his true place; the military was the great brilliant committee of the house and war. The Republic was in the midst of a gigantic struggle, all the people were at LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. 93 war, intense and terrible; all the resources of the Nation were employed; all the powers of the executive and legislative departments were welded into one; a com- pound arm wielded to place and command immense armies in the field. At the head of the legislative stood the military committee of the house. More than one million two hundred thousand soldiers had been in the Union armies during 1873; nearly three hundred thou- sand had left the ranks without leave. That was the last year of Halleck, the year of the first inefi'ective draft, of the ruinous system of bounties so fatal to the army. Vicksburgh and Port Hudson, and with them the Missis- sippi were captured that year; Gettysburgh, Stone River and Chickamauga had been fought. The armies of the Tennessee, Cumberland and Ohio were consolidated, and placed under General Grant; and the season closed with less than five hundred and fifty thousand effective men of all arms in the field. The miUtary committee was the legislative hand that formulated the laws, devised the ma- chinery by which the last raw reserve of material, of men and arms, were to be rendered effective, as well as to pre- serve and make more perfect the vast armies still in the field. Here was an immense, conspicuous field for all the re- sources of ability, invention and experience of the wisest, most energetic and heroic men in the land; the last quality was as much in requisition in congress as in the field. An experience at the front was but little less need- ful to fit a man for great usefulness in congress at that time, than at the head of the armies. In certain direc- 94 LIFE OF JAMES a. GARFIELD. tions the educational process of actual service is effective ; the soldier goes with a bold directness to his purpose, and is a stranger to the doubts and hesitancy, the timid policies, the fear of personal consequences, which para- lyze the average politician, of even good parts. The politician usually feels obliged to devote his time, ability and strength to protect and defend his own rear. Proba- bly no two men were ever better fitted for their places than the chief of the military committee and he who quite at once became his heutenant and friend. Garfield had been in Washington during the trial of General Por- ter. He now took up his solitary residence at the north- east corner of New York avenue and Thirteenth street, just a square below his present residence. Here he re- mained till the holiday vacation, when, at the invitation of General Schenk, he joined him at Mrs. Lecont's house on C, near 4^4, a historic neighborhood of many mem- ories. On one side of it was the house which long shel- tered Professor Morse, on the other the old residence of Dr. Baily, of the National Era, opposite were the residences of Daniel Webster, and of Lewis Cass. This place soon became a sort of army headquarters, where one might meet all the distinguished and other generals when they happened to be at the capital; as all the in- ventors of new arms, projectiles run mad with plans to end the war, enthusiasts, visionaries, the unfortunate and unappreciated great men, with bummers, and loafers on the outside. Here were drawn out, discussed, and ma- tured the great bills to be submitted to the committee, and launched upon the house. LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. 95 During the first week of the session, an incident oc- curred in the young representative's career, so illustrative of the man, as well as of the new service, that I mention it. The use of chloroform and ether, and the history of their discovery and introduction was then little known, and probably nothing in use could then be men- tioned of which a congressman knew less. Anaesthetics were extensively used in the hospitals, and the matter came before the committee, on Dr. Morton's memorial, accompanied by ample testimonials from eminent men of Boston. It was referred to the committee. Dr. Morton claimed to be the discoverer of chloroform, and de- manded a large sum as compensation, for its use, in the hospitals. An inscription, in cuneiform characters, would have been barely more embarrassing to the military com- mittee. The chairman read it, and ran his eyes over the faces of his committee, to choose a luckless victim of chloroform. They nearly all made shuddering haste to disclaim the slightest knowledge of the subject. Garfield casually remarked that it was a remarkable claim. It was at once assigned to him, and the clerk so entered it on the committee's calendar. It had long been Garfield's habit to secure some odd out of the way thing to read up in his hours of leisure on the cars or elsewhere. Some years before, on taking the cars for home from a remote city, he stepped into a bookstore, to secure the required unusual thing. Running his eye along the backs of a row of books, it was arrested by "Anaesthesia," on the back of one of them. He purchased it. It was an ex- haustive discussion of chloroform and ether, and of the 96 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. claims of Dr. Morton who was a dentist; Prof. Jackson, a man of science; Dr. Wells, and perhaps, some others, to be the discoverer. Of course, he mastered it, and this led him to note the current literature upon the sub- ject since. At the next session of the committee, he produced a clear, tersely written, full report, upon the subject. The members were amazed. It settled his place at once. Here was a young man who, off hand, knew all about anaesthesia. Good Lord ! what might not such a man know ! * On the twenty-eighth of January, he made his first * During his school days, he had as a fellow-student, the late Miss Almeda Booth, quite an equal mental associate, and they made it a rule never to pass a word without mastering it. One day they came upon "depositary." supposing it a misprint, for depository, tliey went on. They came up>on it again, and on investigation found it to mean the person with whom a thing was deposited. Early in the Ohio senate, a bill came up for consideration, to protect the moneys of the State from the Breslins or others, modelled after the sub-treasury of the general government, in which ample provisions were made to secure the vaults, safes and all the depositories, but using depositary, to designate the place. Almeda's classmate, called attention to the word, assuming that it was an inadvertent slip, and moved a correction. He was about the youngest man ever in the senate, and as little Icnown there then, and the proposition was received with derision. One senator thought he was more nice than wise ; another, that he was very hypercritical, while a third suggested that the senate had little need of the school-master. He made a snappy rejoinder, defined the words, when there was a rush for the big dictionary on the clerk's desk, when congratulating the senators for resorting to what they seem to have before missed, the schoolmaster, he sat down. A brief consultation of the "unabridged" was followed by a recommittal of the bill. The senate soon learned that t!ie school-master was but a minor character of the young man's repertorj'. The reader will also remember the club of young critics. I LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. 97 speech. The confiscation bill was under discussion. He had already had occasion to make short explanatory statements on the floor, characterized by clearness and directness, and the house came af once to see that the youthful hero of Chickamauga had the power of exposi- tion. Confiscation remained what it was in theThirty- seventh congress — an endless labyrinth, where the law- yers, were like Milton's devils, "Wandering in tangled mazes lost," in the technics and provisions of the English stat- utes. The bill had military features, which made his occasion. There was the never worked out native puzzle, what was the status of the seceded States? Were they still States in contemplation of law? And were they in or out of the Union? If in the Union, what were the rights of their people, and what the powers of congress over them? Of course, the malign thing, slavery, was ever present. As we know, Mr. Garfield brought to the discussion of the complex subject the light to be gained from an exhaustive study of English history and statutes, and he shed through and over the whole a clear, strong light. His replies to the points made by the Democrats were exceedingly well done, and in off-hand answers to their numerous interruptions, he showed a readiness ot resource, and flexible use of his powers, more than sug- gestive of what time and practice were to make of him — one of the very ablest parliamentary debaters of his time. The speech produced a marked impression, alike upon the course of the debate, as well upon the fortunes of the new power, which had entered upon the national 7 98 LIFE OF JAiMES A. GARFIELD. forum. As was their wont, the members gathered about him when he began, to take his measure and estimate his weight. Those who came to criticise remained to admire, and finally to be enlightened. His position in the army, his campaign against Humphrey Marshall, the ability he had shown as chief of staff, his great exertions at Chickamauga, around which the tales of his dashing courage had thrown the halo of heroism, were all in his favor. His fine person, splendid head, musical, sonorous voice and good manner, above all, the firm grasp of his subject, his broad mastery of historic accessories, and thorough study of the law involved, which gave him easy play in the new field, with his flowing, facile delivery, stamped the effort as above a high average of good speeches, ranking it with tne remarkable first speeches in the house. To those who wish for a concise statement of English history, covering the period of the expulsion of the second James, or a forcible statement of the con- stitutional problem of the position of the rebel States, under clear, strong light, will find it of great service. It fixed the position of the young representative on the floor of the house, and opened the . paths to reputation through the country. In April following, on the bill to increase the bounties to soldiers, he made a startling five minute speech against it. Short as it was, it pictured the fatal results of buying, bribing our countrymen to fight their own battles, where- by we secured the bribers' purchase — the very poorest material — did not secure it, for the thus bought at once deserted to re-enlist elsewhere, and flee again. The only LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. 99 gain was a new name to our language — "bounty-jumper." Alas! it was on the eve of a new election, then more im- portant than the pending march through the wilderness. On the passage of the bill, one hundred and twelve re- corded their names in favor of it, to James A. Garfield, solus, against it. Moved by his sublime courage, in view of the pendency of his own re-election, Grinnell, of Iowa, plucked his name away from the herd who would supplement the evil, and secure their own seats, and placed himself by the side of him who heard only the calls of his country. An artist who would seize an incident in our congres- sional history, the portrayal of which should embody the immovable granite which is the basis of heroic charac- ter, and crown it with a courage that will not calculate consequences, will find it in the defiant figure of the young representative, the most youthful of the body, haughtily confronting the whole house of representatives on this vote. The late Chief Justice Chase, then secretary of the treasury, the embodiment of inflexible will, and calm, cold resolution, sought him, and gave him his warmest congratulation. He had measured himself with a great crisis, and towered above it. But he prudently admon- ished him not to go rashly in pursuit of occasions person- ally so perilous to himself Meet them, if they came, as he did this, but it was very important that he remain in public life. Do the heroic sparingly. We shall see how he acted under this characteristic advice. The existing draft-law, framed with such painstaking lOO LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. care, to not draft soldiers for the army, had fully developed its efficiency for that purpose. It had thirteen classes of exemptions, and the man who escaped through none of them could lay down his three hundred dollars, and walk back to his peaceful pursuits. The three hundred thous- and drafted under it in 1863 yielded to the army twelve thousand men. The two generals elaborated a new bill. The first section repealed the commutation clause, and the exempting grounds were frightfully reduced. Six weeks the debate upon it ran on in the house, and Grant was wading his weltering way through the Wilderness. Then came a motion to strike out the first section. In a shot-and-shell speech, Garfield declared that the men who were in favor of striking out did not want to crush the rebeUion. On the vote, the motion prevailed, one hundred to fifty. The next day the President went to the committee room, and had an interview with the Republican members. With the sad, mysterious light in his melancholy eyes, as if they were familiar with the things hidden from mor- tals, and the grand pathos of his voice and manner, he stated the position of things, then — the last of June — three hundred and eighty thousand Union soldiers then in the field would return home, by the ensuing October. Under the existing law, the draft of one million of men would be required to give fifty thousand to the army. If the departing soldiers could not be replaced. Grant could not maintain himself before Richmond, and Sherman must retire from before Atlanta. He was answered : "It is on the eve of the election. Our places in the house LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. lOI depended on that. The President's own election was in- volved; all depended on these two." Drawing himself up on his seat, to a height of grandeur, he answered. " I have thought that all over ; my election is not necessary; I must put down the rebellion; I must have five hun- dred thousand more men." A substitute for the decapitated bill w\as at once intro- duced, and the war over it flashed up anew. On the twenty-fifth of June, General Garfield delivered a masterly and exhaustive speech in its favor. The bill was passed. The President issued his proclamation for five hundred thousand men, and the people responded — " W'e are coming, Father Abraham, Five hundred thousand more." A new inspiration, fresh life, restored strength and courage sprang up and revived the North. Garfield's vote against the increase of bounties was bitterly reprobated in his district. A public meeting near his home wrote him a letter, and retjuired his resignation. He made a temperate reply, and said he should expect from each of the signers a written apology for it, in the calm of the near future. He retained the paper, and was able to score against each name the mark of an apol- ogy received ; and all were thus crossed within a year. He delivered his enlightened and liberal speech on our commercial relations with Canada in the house, in March, to which future reference will be made. On the eighth of April he delivered the awful reply (no other one word so aptly characterizes it), to Alexander Long, of Cincinnati. Probably it is the most complete and per^ I02 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. feet piece of invective, sarcasm, and indignant denuncia- tion ever heard in the American congress. It is a good deal more than that, as the reader will see by the follow- ing passages: reply to honorable alexander long, april 8, 1864. Mr. Chairman: I should be obliged to you if )-ou would direct the sergeant-at-cirms 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 great 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 their number and told him I respected him as a brave man. Though he wore the emblems of disloyalty and treason, still, underneath his vestment, I beheld a brave and honest soul. I would reproduce that scene here this afternoon. I say were there such flag of truce— but God forgive me if I did it under any other cir- cumstances!— I would reach out this right hand and ask that gentle- man to take it; because I respect his bravery and his honesty. I be- lieve what has just fallen from his lips is the honest sentiment 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 — 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 chr-.-acter in Paradise Lost. When he had re- belled against the glory of God and "led away a thi-;d part of Heaven's sons, conjured against the Highest;" when after terrible battles in which mountains and hills were hurled by each contending host "with jacula- tion dire;" when, at last, the leader and his host were hurled down "nine times the space that measures day and night," and, after the ter- rible fall, lay stretched prone on the burning lake, Satan lifted up his shattered bulk, crossed the abyss, looked away into Paradise, and, so- liloquizing, said: "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell." It seems to me in that utterance he expressed the very sentiment to which you LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. I03 have just listened; uttered by one no 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 para- dise of victory and peace, utters his conclusion in this wail of terrible despair, "Which way I fly is hell." He ought to add, "Myself am hell." ♦..♦** But now, when hundreds of thousands of brave souls have gone up to God under the shadow of the flag, and when thousands more, maimed and shattered in the contest, are sadly awaiting the deliver- ance of death ; now, when three years of terriffic war have raged over us, when our armies have pushed the rebellion back over mountains and rivers, and crowded it into narrow limits, until a wall of fire girds it ; now, when the uplifted hand of a majestic people is about to let fall the lightning of its conquering power upon the rebellion ; now, in the quiet of this hall, hatched in the lowest depths of a similar dark treason, there rises a Benedict Arnold, and proposes to surrender us all up, body and spirit, theNation and the flag, its genius and its honor, now and forever, to the accursed traitors to our country. And that propo- sition comes — God forgive and pity my beloved State ! — it comes from a citizen of the honored and loyal Commonwealth of Ohio. I implore you, brethren in this house, not to believe that many births ever gave pangs to my mother State such as she suffered when that traitor was born ["suppressed applause and sensation]. I beg you not to believe that on the soil of that State another such growth has ever de- formed the face of nature, and darkened the light of God's day [an audible whisper, "Vallandigham"]. ♦ » « 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 rev- olution 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 nation — If the eleven southern States are determined and resolved to leave the Union, to secede, to revolutionize, and can maintain that revolution by force, they have the revolutionary right to do so ; grant it. 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 I04 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. order to reach it, I beg to call your attention, not to an argument, but to the condition of affairs which would result from such action — the mere statement of which becomes the strongest possible argument' \VTiat does this gentleman propose ? Where will he draw the line of division ? If the rebels carry into successful secession what 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 Air. \'a.l- landigham they would draw it — along the line of the Ohio and the Potomac — if they make good their declaration to him that they will never consent to any other line, then I ask what is this thing that the gentleman proposes to do ? * * * * I tell you, and I confess it here, that while I hope I have something of human courage, I have not enough to contemplate such a result. I am not brave enough to go to the brink of the precipice of successful secession, and look down into its damned abyss. If my vision were keen enough to pierce to its bottom. I would not dare to look. If there be a man here who dare contemplate such a spectacle, I look upon him as the bravest of the sons of women, or as a downright madman. Secession to gain peace ! Secession is the tocsin of eternal war. There can be no end to such a war as will be inaugurated if this thing be done. 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 battlefield of blood, forever now disgraced. Call them back over the territory they have conquered and redeemed. Call them back, and let the minions of secession chase them with derision and jeers as they come — and then tell them that that 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 find no parallel in the records of time. Almost in the moments of final victory the "recall" is sounded by a craven people not deserving freedom ! We ought, every man, to be made a slave forever should we sanction such a sentiment. Tiie gentleman has told us there is no such thing as coercion justifi- LIFE AT THE CAPrfAL. I05 able under the constitution. I ask him for one moment to reflect that no statute was ever enforced without coercion. It is the basis of every law in the universe — human or divine. A law is no law without coercion behind it. You levy ta.xes; coercion secures their collection. It follows the shadow of the thief, and brings him to justice. It lays its iron hand on the murderer; tries him, and hangs. It accompanies your diplomacy to foreign courts, and backs the declaration of the na- tion's rights by a pledge of the nation's strength. But when the life of that nation is imperilled, we are told that it has no coercive power against the parricides in its own bosom. » * * * I said a little while ago that I accepted the proposition of the gentle- man that the rebels possessed the right of revolution. 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. W'hat is the constitution that these gentlemen are perpetually fling- ing 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 its dire necessity. ***«♦•#« Mr. Chairman, let me mention another class of facts in this same connection. We were compelled last year to send our secret service men to ferret out the insidious work of that organization known as the "Knights of the Golden Circle," which was attempting to corrupt the army and destroy its efficiency. It was found that by the most subtle and secret means, the signs and pass-words of that order were being made known to such men in the army as were disaffected or could be corrupted. Witness also the riots and murders which their agents are committing throughout the loyal north, under the head and guidance of the party whose representatives sit yonder across the aisle. And Io6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. now, just as the time is coming when we are to select a President for the next four years, one rises among them and fires the beacon, throws Tip the blue-light, which will be seen and rejoiced over at the rebel capital as the signal that the traitors in our camp are organized and ready for their hellish work. I believe the utterance of to-day is the uplifted banner of revolt. I ask you to mark the signal that blazes here, and see if there will not soon appear the answering signal of trait- ors all over the land. If I am wrong in this prediction, I shall be thankful, but I am only too fearful of its truth. The close of the long session saw Mr. Garfield one of the most conspicuous men of the house. Probably in the annals of congress no fresh young man ever advanced to such a position in so short time, certainly none ever went to it so securely and certainly. Though the public gaze was on the armies and generals, and popular sympathy was with the soldiers, the labors and high qualities of the young representative did not escape general notice, and appreciation. In the presidential campaign of 1864, his services as a speaker were everywhere sought. In it he delivered sixty-five speeches and traveled seven thousand five hundred miles. As he received his first nomi- nation and election while absent in the field, so now he left his people to form their own estimate of him, and continue or reject him, as they would. The district nom- inating convention was called late in the season, and met while he was at home for a short visit. He returned to find the entire Reserve in flames over the Wade-Davis review of the war policy of the President. Unquestion- ably that was the subject of severe and just criticism. He had never seen it, knew nothing of it, save by rumor. He was charged with holding to the views — even with LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. 107 the authorship of the paper. Wade himself was bitterly denounced. Garfield was proscribed by the popular clamor. His re-nomination was wholly dependent on his ability to clear himself from complicity with the man- ifesto, and sympathy with its statements and spirit. He read the paper, approved of it, and felt himself doomed. He was written to, and requested to be at Warren, at the convention and take care of himself, with a very direct in- timation that salvation meant denunciation of Wade and Winter Davis. He felt challenged. The knightly spirit of the old Crusader heard the trumpet call to the listed field. He answered that he would be in Warren on the day at a named hotel. There he remained in seclusion. The convention met, organized, took a recess for dinner, and sent him a delegation, who curtly informed him that the convention requested his presence. He entered, coldly, and proudly took his seat in front of the grim» and frowning body. After an ominous silence he said he had complied with their request. Why was his presence required? Very directly the chairman told him of the manifesto, of his reputed connection with it. The chair hoped he would appreciate the situation. The ■district would not permit any criticism of President Lin- coln, nor any opposition to his policy. The young man arose. His six feet seemed seven, with' his head thrown well back, and his eyes and face flashing. In courteous terms he thanked them for their former trust, venturing to remind them that it had been unsought. It was frank on their part to in^'orm him ol the terms upon which it could alone be continued. He Io8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. denied the authorship of tne paper — had only recently read it. He was sorry to read it. It gave him infinitely greater sorrow that it was entirely true. "I fully approve of it. If you throw over, cut off old Ben Wade, your course is clear with me. Truly yours, I am more truly my own. Good day, gentlemen." He strode out with the certainty that he bore his head, as he had his polit- ical life, in his hand. Down the stairs he stalked, giving them the resounding blows of his spurning heels. They had just crunched the gravel in front of the entrance when the roof of the assembly seemed to be lifted by ac- clamations. This was their shout over his fall, and he walked away haughtier than he had approached. He had not gone half a square when the delegates of the convention came running and shouting after him. His speech electrified the resolved and frowning con- vention. A young man from Ashtabula was the first to recover breath. He sprang to his feet, declaring that the man who had the grit and courage to come there and face a convention like that, ought to be nominated. "I move that he be nominated by acclamation !" And he was. That vote it was, that greeted the ears of the retir- ing hero as he smote his foot upon the ground below. Adjournment instantly followed, when the more eager flew after the restored favorite. In their after cooler mo- ments, many of the usually impassive men felt as if the act marked the convention for ridicule. "Huh!" ex- claimed an old man, "when we had a resolved an' sent for "im to receive his sentence, he jest took us by the noses, pulled our beards, lafed in our faces, an' went LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. I09 off, an' we up an' nominated 'im quicker'n lightnin'. It beats all nater !" So it did, such nature as theirs, which was a very good and true nature, after all. The proclamation of the President abolished slavery in all the rebel States, and immense armies in their bor- ders were giving it bloody effect. An act of congress swept it from the District of Columbia, but it remained in its bad integrity, in Maryland, and though fearfully shaken in Kentucky, it then had the sanction of State authority. During the Thirty-seventh congress, Mr. Lin- coln, by a solemn message to the two houses, proposed a plan of emancipation on compensation, similar to that which purged the District of Columbia. The men of Maryland and Kentucky, with the stupidity of slave- holders, rejected it. Congress and the executive were resolved. Slavery should be abolished. Time and change must compensate slave-holders. This was the work of the second session of the Thirty-eighth congress. The great enterprise was to be accomplished by a solemn amendment of the constitution. It was elabo- rately debated. Mr. Pendleton made an able, adroit speech against it. His argument was, that the central idea of the constitution could not be abrogated by an amendment. That this was that purely State institu- tions (slavery) were placed beyond the reach of a ])ower outside the State. That, in no event, could the concur- rent action of three-fourths of the States so change the constitution as to thus reach a State institution of the other fourth of them. Slavery was a State institution, and therefore, not to be thus reached. He said much no LIFE OF TAMES A. GARFIELD. of the subtle, hidden soul and essence of the constitution. He was answered by Garfield, from whom I quote speci- mens of his reply, and methods of dealing with the questions involved: Mr. Speaker : 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 mar\ellous 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 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 Sallusfs admirable history of the great conspirator, Cataline, 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 char- acterized his hfe. 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. Speaking of the covers of slavery and Pendleton's de- fense, he said : 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 slaver\- in its flight. LIFE AT THE CAPITAL. Ill 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 constitu- tion. In his view, by a strange metamorphosis, slavery becomes an in- visible essence and takes up its abode in the very grain and fiber of the constitution, and when we would strike it he says, ' ' I cannot 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 Re- public to drive it thence." ******* He goes behind the letter of the constitution, and finds a refuge for slavery in its intent, and with that intent, he declares we have no right to deal in the way of amendment. But he has gone even deeper than the spirit and intent of the consti- tution. 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 or Michael. He has marked the hither boundary of this newly discov- ered continent, in his response to t'.ie question of the gentleman from Iowa. Not finding anything in the words and phrases of the constitution that forbids an aiv.cndmcnt abo'.ishing slavery, he goes behind all 112 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. human enactments, and far away, among the eternal equities, he finds a primal law which overshadows States, nations, and constitutions, as space envelopes 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. He grappled the argument, luminously tracing the power to make and amend the constitution from its true source. He demonstrated the constitutional power to change the organic law as the amendment proposed. The speech, like most of its author's, abounds in filicit- ous expressions, and sharply cut points as the reader has seen. The session ended with the congress on the third of JMarch, 1S65. CHAPTER III. IN CONGRESS.— EUROPEAN TOUR. Assassination, Destruction, Restoration. — Studies.— Needs of the Day. — Placed on the Ways and Means. — Eulogy of Lincoln. — Records of the Secretary of War.^The Milligan Case. — Bureau of Education. — Europe. — Return.— What He Found.— Jefferson Receives a Les- son. Mr. Garfield was in New York on the night of the as- sassination. A ghastly colored waiter made his way^ to his room at early dawn and communicated the tale to him. After generations cannot now appreciate the first effects of the blow. For a day the government lay in shattered frag- ments, and had its strength and life resided in physical force, and the trappings of power, it might have been overthrown. Its citadel was in the hearts of millions of people, and its strength their intelligent love. It was, and is, indestructible. For one hour, for one time, the mind of Garfield acted with less than its usual clear- ness and force. He dressed himself, made his way to the street, and saw around him the ominous signs of the breaking down of authority, in the great cosmopolitan cen- ter. He met many utter strangers who, without reserve, spoke their innermost thought and emotion. The streets, too, were full of dark, silent and sinister faces, as of men who had escaped from the pent places of dark- ness and hiding, and were for the first time abroad in 114 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the day — not a full-orbed healthy day, but one of half- twilight, full of shadows, and half-uttered whispers of impending evil. He finally reached the custom house, one of the seats of national authority, where was assembled an immense crowd of fearful, overwhelmed men. Mr. Odell, a representative from New York, re- cognized him, conducted him through the mass, up the steps, and pushed him forward to address the frightened unknowing multitude. A reporter of the Herald gath- ered portions of what was a solemn and impressive address such as a man of his mould would make under the circumstances. RESTORATION. The vacation of the summer of 1865 gave time and opportunity for a survey of the state of the Republic and its needs in the future. To Garfield it was obvious that a period of destruction, of uprooting and overturn- ing had come. It must be succeeded by that of repose, new crystaUizations, and growths; new ideas must orig- inate new policies. They could hardly be expected from the old conductors of the war. They were the most of them warriors, ministers and legislators of the war, having clear vision, fixed purpose, and great power and grasp in creating and using means. Their work was well and thoroughly done. What was the next wise thing seemed hardly to dawn on many minds. Stern, intent, narrow, and hence forceful, with frowning brows confronting the great rebellion, till the habit of mind and form of ex- pression were fixed also. It were easy to destroy. The hand which ruins can hardly restore. There now re- IN CONGRESS. — EUROPEAN TOUR. II5 mained the great work of clearing the ground of the entire Repubhc, of the debris, the cost, debt, and ruin of the war. Disband and pay the army, adjust a pension roll, fund the floating debt, readjust the whole vast sub- ject of revenue, all the forms and sources of taxation and expenditure, search out the true basis of the mone- tary system of the country, govern the subdued States, provide a system of education, change and restore the currents and costs of war to the economies and condi- tions of peace. He Saw a parallel between the condition of the Republic at the close of the war, and that of Eng land at the end of the Napoleonic struggles. He read with great care the entire history of the period of her transit from Waterloo to her resumption of specie pay- ments, the course ana policy of Wellington, and con- trasted them with those of Peel and of those who held with him j mastered the literature of political economy and the history of banking ; and when asked by the re-elected Colfax, what place he should assign him to, he answered that he preferred a place on the ways and means. With much remonstrance, the amazed speaker complied. He had favorably attracted the notice of Justin S. jSIorrell, now to be placed at the head of the committee, who requested that he might be assigned a place with him. Aside from his great value in the committee room, Morrell wanted the aid of his unsurpassed power to master, and of his clear and forcible exposition in committee of the whole and in the house. Roscoe Conkling, who had returned to the house, was on the same committee, as was also John Wentworth, who now appeared after years of absence. Il6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Of old and distinguished members thus returning after many years, may be mentioned Delano, Bingham and Shellabarger. Of the new, were Rutherford B. Hayes, William Lawrence, Henry J. Raymond, Thomas W. Ferry, General Haibert E. Paine, Robert S. Hale, and others. This session is memorable for the overhauling and re- construction of all the revenue legislation, the elabora- tion and enactment of the great statutes of taxation. The internal revenue law was revised and remodelled anew, with delegations representing all the trades and interests. The whiskey crowd, the brewers, the tobacco manufacturers of all sorts, men, craftsmen of all the trades, whose products were to be subjected to the ser- vitudes of the revenue. Then came the tariff, upon which men never have agreed, and never will agree. Below the great schools of protection and free trade were infinite subdivisions of men, who disagreed as to what free trade practically meant, and what was protec- tion ; with every shade from high to low tariff, and here again come the trades and artisans. There was the awful debt to be met, and 1866 saw twelve hundred and ninety millions of dollars appropriated for all purposes. Does history parallel this in the expenditures of any nation for a fiscal year? In all these labors, the strong, clear, well- advised mind of Garfield, luminously and profitably worked, and his firm, strong hand, made itself felt in the fashioning of this legislation. Thus employed the four- teenth of April, 1 866, came upon the over-busy house, unconscious that it was the anniversary of the assassina- IN CONGRESS. EUROPEAN TOUR. II7 tion of Lincoln. President Johnson had been more thoughtful. He issued an order to close the great de- partments in commemoration of the event. The execu- tion of the order reminded the members of the house of their own proper duty. Fifteen minutes before twelve, when the house would be called to order, Colfax rushed breathless into the committee room, where Garfield was hard at work, and told him that when the house was called to order he, the general, was to rise, remind the house of the solemn anniversary and move an ad- journment, and deliver a happy, touching and eloquent speech. If there is anything in the world that would greatly dismay a public speaker, no matter how gifted, original and eloquent, it would be such an announcement. Few can, with ample preparation, do these things well. No one would attempt on such notice, were escape open to him. Garfield, lost in figures and tables, looked up in dis- may. The uncovering of a rebel battery in his front would have startled him less. Colfax turned everybody out of the room, went out himself, and placed a messen- ger at the door. Fifteen minutes ! The imprisoned re- presentative turned himself in on his roomy brain; started the imps of memory in all directions for stores which never did fail, awoke fancy, pathos and reverence. He was at his desk as the prayer ended and the gavel fell, when he 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. Il8 LIKE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. This day, Mr. Speaker, will be sadly memorable so long as this Na- tion shall endure, which God grant may be "till the last syllable of re- corded time," when the volume of human history shall be sealed up and delivered to the omnipotent Judge. 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, cer- tainly 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 individual 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 great 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 laure- ate — written thirty years ago — in which he traces the upward steps of some " Divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, And on a simple village green; "Who breaks his birth's invidious bar. And grasps the skirts of happy chance. And breasts the blows of circumstance. And grapples with his evil star; " Who makes his force by merit known. And lives to clutch the golden keys To mould a mighty State's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne; " And moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope. The pillar of a people's hope, The center of a world's desire." Such a life and character will be treasured forever as the sacred jsos- session of the American people and of mankind. IN CONGRESS. EUROPEAN TOUR. I 19 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 suffer- ings 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 characters and new events, the evil spirit of the rebellion, in the fury ot despair, nerved and directed the hand of an assassin to strike down the chief character in both. 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. Sir, there are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the veil that separates mortals from the 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 these dead he- roes 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, tlie 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 slavery and treason, 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 — " He has sounded forth a trumpet that shall never call retreat ; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat ; Be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant my feet; For Gou is marching on." ^ I move, sir, that this house do now adjourn. I20 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. The motion was unanimously agreed to ; and thereupon (at fifteen minutes after twelve o'clock) the house adjourned. This is justly regarded as one of the most felicitous things of the kind in our congressional history. Perhaps the recalling of the lines of Tennyson, seemingly written and laid away for the occasion, was an effort of memory little short of inspiration. He had not seen them for years. No book, was at hand ; no tongue to recall. They leaped from their ambush in his brain, and gave themselves to the tender and solemn office of an offering never more fitly made than now. The general's rendering was as if the words were a sudden inspiration, now first finding utterance in their own most fitting expression ; rapt, tender, tremulous, and with loving awe. They were taken down with the speech. On comparison with the authorized text, there was the single error of a word. The celebrated case of Milligan and others is referable to this jieriod. It will be brought fully under notice for another purpose. In the order of time, and as illustra- tive of character, it must receive mention here. The secret history of the provost marshal general's office at Washington, and the connection of the war office of which it was an agency with it, never can be written ; perhaps, never should be. It is known, however, that the Old Capitol and Carroll prisons were thronged with men against whom no charges were ever preferred, who were never tried, and yet who were arbitrarily detained against remonstrance, in spite of entreaty, and without a shadow of constitutional authoritv. The writ of habeas IN CONGRESS. EUROPEAN TOUR. 121 corpus was suspended, and there were no legal means of relief. In this condition, a statement of the prisons, with many details, was sent to the military committee, which so startled the generals at its head, that they went to the prisons, and made a personal inquiry, saw several of the prisoners, and heard their stories, which excited their surprise and indignation. On the next day Garfield offered a resolution demanding an inquiry. The house adopted it, and directed the military committee to make it. On the day following. General Garfield was detained from the house at its opening. When he entered, he found it listening to Thaddeus Stevens on his motion to rescind Garfield's resolution of the day before, which the old man denounced as a needless and mischievous intermeddling by a young man, with the management of the war office. Garfield replied with great spirit, stated the origin of the resolution, the petition, his personal inquiry, what he found; related in indignant terms the outrages upon Union men ; told the story of a Union colonel, wounded at the second battle of Bull Run, and denounced the great secretary of war as worthy of impeachment, and told the house to rescind the resolution if it would. It did not do it, but there was an immediate emptying of the prisons, which rendered inquiry useless. The daring of the young tribune, in thus bearding the terrible secre- tary, won the admiration of all men, and especially of Mr. Stanton himself, which was manifested in a strik- ing way. Meantime, Milligan and his co-conspirators were in prison awaiting execution, and the kind Lincoln was sorely perplexed. 122 LIFE Or' JAMES A. GARFIELD. In this exigency Judge Black and one or two leading Democrats approached Garfield, laid the case before him, and asked him to appear in it before the supreme court of the United States. The defendants were poor, abject and odious, but their case involved the same great questions of right, constitutional law, and civil liberty, so promptly and effectively vindicated in the case of the Capitol and Carroll prisoners. He did not hesitate. His sense of duty in the defense of the principles in- volved, compelled him at any personal sacrifice and peril, to undertake the case, and he did. He prepared his great argument, printed his brief, presented the case, con- vinced the court, saved the wretched men, and restored to menaced rights the support of the law of the land.* During this session he introduced a bill to establish the national bureau of education. He secured a special committee for its consideration, and closed the interest- ing and important debate upon it June 8, i86S. The speech was full of the broad, just and enlightened nature of the man, and presents the views in favor of it, with an amplitude of argument and illustration, fortified from history and experience, which would go far to establish the reputation of almost any other man. The bill passed by eighty to forty-four, became a law, and for this the people of the United States are wholly indebted to the young professor of Hiram college. The necessity for subjecting Mr. Garfield's career to a more rapid treatment, in view of the many years yet be- fore us, is apparent, and my sketch must pass with but * See Chapter I, Part V. IN CONGRESS. EUR0PF:AN TOUR. 1^3 slight glances at its more prominent points. I leave the residue of the Thirty-ninth congress without further refer- ence to him or it. EUROPE. In the summer vacation of 1867 Mr. Garfield was able to realize the dream of every intelligent Ameri- can, and visit Europe. He sailed from New York on the thirteenth of July, and reached that city, on his re- turn, November 6th of the ensuing autumn. With a just and tender appreciation of their mutual help and dependence, the husband and devoted wife had made their lives continuously together, and she lived with him at Washington, holding her proper place by his side, sharing his confidence and counsels, and going with him along the way of his rapid advance, herself develop- ing naturally and gracefully in the seemly form of per fecting womanhood, in the atmosphere and social circles of the capital. They carried with them and realized there the tenderness, warmth, and simplicity of their true home life. For this brief absence they made a careful disposition of the loved ones, and now this husband and wife, who have never ceased to be lovers, go away — they two, each having only the other, to stand side by side with a strong arm around a slender waist on the large steamer's deck, and, with a half-sense of bereavement, see the land and light of their home fade into night, and fall below the horizon, then turn to hail the new day, count the days, and look for the new and everlasting old shores, where they are to land — they two, and run, hand in 124 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. hand, like wondering, wandering boy and girl, through Europe. I hold the young man's diary in my hand, and fancy I can see them, and it all seems very sweet and charming. v Here is what he says on the day they started: "When I entered Williams, in 1854, I probably knew less of Shakspeare than any other student of my age and cul- ture in the country. Though this was a reproach to me, I had the pleasure of bringing to the study of those great poems a mind of some cultivation and maturity, and my first impressions were strong and vivid. Some- thing like this may be my experience on this trip." Un- doubtedly it will. They were on the great "City of London." "At eight o'clock in the evening we caught the last glimpse of land." One hour on the high seas, when the land has sunk, brings all that can be seen at sea, unless storms or islands arise, baring sea-sickness. Of course, everything is novel and fresh to one capable of the vivid impressions of Garfield. The ocean, the sun, and, above all, the huge, throbbing ship, and its navigation, were new and pictur- esque subjects, the unusual, to be studied. We must pass over the Atlantic more rapidly, under our recent pledge. We wait for them at Queenstown and find the ship washed and scoured, and the passengers ready to land. Of course, the general got acquainted with everybody on board, and found something to like in everyone. The person he would not like would be unlovely to the odious; and we know they all liked him, though he is careful to say nothing of that. We remember he was a IX CONGRESS. EUROPEAN TOUR. I 25 born sailor, and the voyage awoke all his old longings. On the ship's last day, I find this reflection: "Perhaps each human being has several possible characters in him which changed circumstances could bring out. Certain- ly life on the sea brings me out quite unique. Mine is as much a surprise to me as it could be to any other. I have purposely become absorbed in the parenthetic life, and have enjoyed it so much, that a fellow passenger said to 'Crete' (Lucretia), that I would certainly be sorry to land." He was greatly interested in testing the accuracy of the captain's estimate of his whereabouts, and rate of speed. The captain had assured him that he would see the speck of Little Skelligs not thirty minutes from six p. M. It was sighted at ten minutes to six o'clock of July the 24th. On the twenty-sixth they steamed up the muddy Mersey, and the general is moved to qoute: " The quality of Mersey is not strained." He may have been homesick a little. They visited and lingered about Chester, oldest and sole walled town of England. The general had great aptitude for becom- ing impregnated with the spirit of a place, and saw and felt with the fresh, unsoiled nature of a primitive man, which responded truly to impressions. July 28th, off to London — town of Whittington, lord mayor, and London bridge; stopped at the Langham, and found there Henry J. Raymond; went to the parliament house, and admitted to the gallery; heard Disraeli, Layard and others; surprised with the conversational, business- like manner of the speaking, marred by an almost painful hesitancy; went to the lords, where, sitting on the 126 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Steps of the throne, the future President listened to born law-makers, Lord Russell, Lord Malmsbury, and smaller lordlings, on the reform bill. "I was strongly impressed with the democratic influences nianifest in both houses. There seemed as much of the demagogue here as in our congresses," is his comment. "There is a constant ref- erence to the demands of the people." Next day did St. Paul's and Westminster, and again to the lords, with Senator Morrell, of Vermont; heard Cams, and also Cardigan, of the "light brigade;" later, took rooms ; again at Westminster, and then to parlia- ment; heard Derby, whose gout permitted his attend- ance; also Earl Gray. How these names take one back. Derby was the best speaker he had yet heard; saw Gladstone. Nexfday, August 2d, at the British museum; saw the remains of the Elgin marbles. Of course, he called upon Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and talked up home politics, which may have been interesting to hear; went to Hampton court. Such a reader of English history saw the places, and freshened his im- pressions. The next Sunday, went to see and hear Spurgeon, and gives an interesting account of him, his tabernacle, and people. Next day they went to the Tower, and then home through Billingsgate. They were very busy every day in London. The parliament house had charms for the politician and member of congress, and he managed to hear a good deal of indifferent speaking. He sj^eaks forcibly of it — of the leading men. He made a good study of Disraeli; also of Bright. He was quick to see and apprehend the lines and points of I\ CONGRESS. EUROPEAN TOUR. I 27 these English statesmen. There is a good sketch of Gladstone. It is curious to think of the possible official relations of these remarkable men. Then follows a de- bate and "division."' August loth went to Leamington, and the next day to Stratford-on-Avon, where some good ramblings and musings were done. Many pages bear the notes. Such a man could not help his impressions. I must pass them. From there they visited various places, not on the usual beaten routes to Sheffield. August 15th they were at Edinboro, visited Abbottsford, Holly- rood, the Heart of Midlothian, and all the points which were as fresh as if the way to them had not been beaten hard and smoth by previous visitors. There was Glasgow, the Clyde, and then Burns' cottage, and the "twa Brigs," and the general says he re-read Tam "O Shanter. I believe Morrell and Blaine were with them part of the time in Scotland. August 23d, sailed from Leith to Rotterdam. The passage over the North sea is well described; and the next morning they were in sight of the dykes, and soon after they were looking at Holbein's landscapes, and the men and women whom they saw wore the same clothes as in his pictures. August 27th, went to Brussels, thence to Cologne, and steamed up the Rhine. Read Childe Harold, and estimates Byron's poetry. Stopped at Mayence, thence to Frankfort, and on Baden, September 5th, to Strasbourg, to see the cathedral and clock, then the Alps and Berne, next Lausanne and Lake Lucerne, more mountains, and then to Italy, then come the old names dear to history, and the romances of the medi- eval years and the renaissance, and so, to the still 128 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. "spouseless Adriatic," and Venice, city of dreams, where her annual bridegroom perished centuries ago. Florence, and finally Rome, receptacle of things lost on earth, herself the saddest and greatest loss. Here all ways meet, all journeys end. What must be the impressions of such a man when he buys his last ticket for Rome, and takes his seat in a car ! To Rome by railroad ! What an anachronism ! Wiiat days those Roman days were! On page 217 I find a rude map — the Tiber, and the position of the Seven Hills. Childe Harold accompanied him to Rome. They reached there September 28th, and remained there until October ist, and left with an infinitely greater regret than he ever left home. Away by the blue Mediterra- nean to Leghorn, and by steamer to Genoa and Colum- bus, thence to Turin, and so on, and over the moun- tains, and finally to Paris, where, too, all roads intersect, and many end. Dear Geneva had been left out with a small pang. Paris, and it was the fourth of October; and already thoughts of home and hard work came upon the busy-brained man. Home and the babies were ever in the heart of his companion. There they found Miss Ransom, the artist, and many Ohio friends. It was still the Paris of the second empire, and they left it on the nineteenth. Fifteen days there, then by rail to Dieppe, and there they took a steamer for New Haven. How flat sounds our familiar names after spelling out and fan- cying the otherwise unpronounceable names of continental Europe. Fifteen days of reflection and ocean, recalling, comparing, and the western world received them. IN CONGRESS. EUROPEAN TOUR. I 29 The eager boy and girl came back the grave and thoughtful man and woman, with a world of new images, some perfect, many broken, others vanishing shadows. They had touched the old world of magic and memory. It had laid its hand on them lightly, to be sure, but they were not just the same, though no one could detect or suspect the difiference. I close the little diary with regret ; regretting also that I have but traced its dead outline, its dry sketches. It details briefly, with a bright, brief episode of an interesting, busy life: presents little cabinet pictures, bits of warmth and color, to linger in the memory and my reader s fancy. He came back to find that an election had been lost; some lunacy had put that sham plank in the Repub- lican State platform, which, whatever it said, was popu- larly construed that the United States bonds should be paid in the national currency — greenbacks. It was always an abominable name; a fragmentary party has rendered it unendurable. The bonds were to be paid in paper, no matter at what discount. To the eradication of this pernicious heresy and lunacy which had smitten the entire State in his absence, he was henceforth to be consecrated. Jefferson, the county seat of Ashtabula, the old home of his great predecessor, Giddings, of Benjamin F. Wade, and of several conspicuous personages; a seat of culti- vated men, and the home of the Howells and Rowlands; also where the returned representative had warm friends and admirers, which he had seldom visited, tendered him that modern social invention, a reception, which he 9 130 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. accepted. Of course there would be some speech making. In the speech of welcome the platform was referred to, and it was more than intimated that his unqualified acceptance, or at least acquiescence, would be a condition of his continued public service. I know not that there was special design in it, it looked like that. His very clear and forcible speech of March, 1866, set forth his views, as then fixed and determined, and this was to be taken back or silenced. It was besides, not just the thing under the guise of courtesy and hospitality. Invite a man to a feast and pleasantly ask him to permit his host to poison his meat. They had forgotten Warren. They never forgot the lesson of this night. In his reply, cour- teously, to be sure, he never could be other, he exposed and denounced the policy of the platform ; told them that he would hold his seat on no such condition ; that the dogma was false, pernicious and fraudulent. In short, he administered a most wholesome lecture, which came near being a castigation. I w^as never advised of the social aspects of tnat festive occasion ; I presume it was enjoyable. Garfield is the most social and festive of men. With such a world — overrunning humor, wit and hearty good fellowship, as well as being the most mag- naminous and forgiving of mortals, the time must be hard which his presence did not make a good time. That ended this vacation, and with it we tag out the European episode. Mr. Garfield now went on to the regular long session of the Fortieth congress. It held an extra session before he went to Europe. To that we now return, and present IN CON'GRESS. — EUROPEAN TOUR. 131 nn uninterrupted glance at the entire congress. It will be remembered that there was now not only no harmony, between the Republican congress and President Johnson, but open war. CHAPTER IV. FORTIETH CONGRESS. Extraordinary Character. — Impeachment. — Speech on the Military- Governments. — General Hancock. — Preparing His Presidential Can- didacy. — Arraignment of him. — Their Position now. — Speech on Impeachment. — The Currency Speech. — Arlington Oration. — Taxa- tion of the Bonds. — Reply to Butler and Pike. — Chairman of the Military Committee. The Fortieth congress was one of the most remarkable in our annals. It impeached the President, and sat more times than any under the constitution. It commenced on March 4, 1867, not in obedience to a proclamation of the executive, but in spite of him, and with the declared pur- pose of protecting the Republic from its executive. Its first session sat until July 20th, when it took a recess until November 21st, and sat from that date to the hour of the regular session. That session continued until July 27th, took a recess to September 21st, another to November loth, when it adjourned finally. 132 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. The senate welcomed the return of Sunon Cameron. Fessenden was received at the last congress. Prominent among the new senators were Roscoe Conkling and Jus- tin S. IMorrell, from the house; Garrett Davis, from Ken- tucky, greatest talker of senators or common men; Charles D. Drake, ot Missouri, who was to fill an impor- tant place ; Oliver P. Morton, one of the great forces of that body, strong, fibrous, a moulder of measures and leader of men; Nye, of Nevada, a coarse wit, humorist and wag ; and some others. George F. Edmunds entered the Thirty-ninth. The house became enriched by the presence of General But- ler. It also received General Morgan, of Ohio. General Logan, who resigned his seat for the war in the Thirty- seventh congress, resumed it in the Fortieth. The session was not fruitful in the perfection of laws. Its main purpose was to watch over and care for the ex- ecutive, whom it impeached and tried, and passed some of its important acts over his veto. The regular session opened on the second of Decem- ber, and was but a continuance of the extra session in spirit and purpose. Obviously the pending contest — the first in our history, between the great Republican major- ity — in effect, the congress, the legislative departments and the executive — was to be pursued to a final issue, to the exclusion of many more important matters. This was in some measure due to the mere unspent momentum of the war. The great war leaders could not at once arrest it. They may have misjudged of the point at which its forces should be conducted off. The executive « FORTIETH CONGRESS. 1 33 with a temper as unaccommodating, in utter disregard of the essential spirit of the constitution, seemed to place himself directly across the way of the representatives of the people and of the States. There was no effort to placate, no toleration, not even forbearance, on the part of congress, and so the collision came, and ended as it began. In the great future, when the air becomes clear, and the light white, and distance gives needed perspect- ive, the events of the struggle will be estimated, and the men adjudged. The great contest which, coming ere the great agitations of the rebellion had ceased, for the time re-convulsed the Republic. Of the last work of the Thirty-ninth congress, was the "act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States," passed over the veto. This it was which made them military departments, governed by a general, certainly the best governments the most of them have had since the war. This law came up for amendment at the regular session. The discussion of this amendment and of the act, covered about all the ground of the pending controversy. Mr. Ashley's resolutoin of impeachment had failed, but the matter was in no way even interrupted. Garfield voted against that. On the seventeenth of January, 1868, in a forcible speech of twenty minutes, he gave his views of the pending situation, and it is a good spec- imen of how much a strong man can do in twenty min- utes. As showing his opinion of the main issue I quote a paragraph : "Some of our friends say, since the President is the chief obstacle, 134 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. impeach him. As the end is more important than the means, so is the rebuilding of law and liberty, on the ruins of anarchy and slavery, more important than the impeachment of .Andrew Johnson. ****** * "Let no man suppose that because this house did not resolve to proceed with impeachment that it will abandon the loyal men of the South to the tender mercies of the rebels, or to the policy of the Pres- ident and his party." This is the speech in which he calls attention to the course of a certain major-general (Hancock) of the Union army, while at the head of the department for the government of Louisiana and Texas, under the law referred to, of which, doubtless, much may be said. This passage is given in full : I will not repeat the long catalogue of obstructions which the President has thrown in the way, by virtue of the power conferred upon him in the reconstruction law of 1867; but I will allude to one example where he has found in a inajor-general of the army a facile instrument with which more effectually to obstruct the work of reconstruction. This case is all the more painful, because an otherwise meritorious officer, who bears honorable scars earned in battle for the Union, has been made a party to the political madness which has so long marked the conduct of the President. This general was sent into the district of Louisiana and Te.xas with a law of congress in his hand, a law that commands him to see that justice is administered among the people of that country, and that no pretence of civil authority shall deter him from performing his duty, and yet we find that officer giving lectures in the form of proclamations and orders on what ought to be the relation between the civil and military departments of the govern- ment. We see him issuing a general order, in which he declares that the civil should give way before the military. We hear him declaring that he finds nothing in the laws of Louisiana and Te.xas for a guide to his conduct. It is for him to execute the laws which he was sent there to administer. It is for him to aid in building up civil governments, rather than preparing himself to be the presidential candidate of that FORTIETH CONGRESS. 1 35 party which gave him no sympathy wiien he was gallantly fighting the battles of the country. This is now his position confronting this accusing tri- bune of the people, a candidate for the same high place. It is seen that in this speech, General Garfield bears honorable testimony to the high character and military fame of the major-general. Then came another "act of usurpation" as it was called, on the part of the President, which led to formal articles of impeachment. These were thoroughly dis- cussed, and on the third of March Mr. Garfield ad- dressed the committee in his usually well-considered, fresh, strong way. He had not before deemed it expedi- ent to impeach the President, though he believed him guilty. There was now no alternative. The immediate case was the removal of Secretary Stanton, and the ap- pointment of General Lorenzo Thomas. The question turned on his power under the constitution, and the civil tenure act, of March 2, 1867, enacted for the special purpose of preventing the very or any similar act, by the executive. In this speech the constitution is scanned; the statute carefully and discriminatingly examined, and it was shown that Stanton was removed in violation of the law, and Thomas, meekest and most amiable of mortals, was appointed in violation of the constitution. It is difficult to see how either conclusion can be avoided; certainly not the first. The President was impeached and afterwards tried, with a result which thoughtful men antic- ipated, although thoughtful men did not agree as to its merits. The good and evil of it were perhaps balanced. Ij6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. CURREN'CY. On the fifteenth of May, Mr. Garfield delivered his first exhaustive speech on the currency, which probably did as much as any single speech, to enlighten both con- gress and the country, on the nature and character of money, its paper relative, their ofifice, the laws which control their use — the whole brought out with breadth and clearness. Whatever of history and so-called science as illustrated by writers on political economy — all the liter- ature of the question — he had mastered and brought their united lights, made his own, to bear on the subject. The speech occupied two hours for its delivery. The house is true to itself. To one of its own men — one of its wise and modest children, who always respects it, and never kicks up rows in the family, it is kind and true. Here was its favored one with his great roomy head, full of wise, distilled knowledge, almost wisdom, with the gatherings of the world's experience, gleaned in far journeys to remote regions, by knowing hands, with wise and clear thought of his own. The inexorable Sphinx had propounded its riddle, and he was to instruct them how to answer it. They gave him his time. He used it justly, and to the profit of all. No one will look to my hasty work for a full statement of his doctrines. They are now part of the common thought, have crys- tallized into law, and command as well as instruct. Yet hereafter will be found a fuller statement of them. From the great and fierce warfare of the house, to sweet and peaceful Arlington, where, massed rank on rank, sleep the Republic's dead, what a change ! Here, FORTIETH CONGRESS. 1 37 on the thirtieth of the ensuing May, General Garfield delivered the first of the annual commemorative orations. The choice was apt and the duty aptly performed. Not out of the broad lines of his daily thought was it, and it fell naturally in the order of his labors. The reader shall judge of this; the following is the last fourth, entire. And now, consider this silent assembly of the dead. What does it represent? Xay, rather, what does it not represent ? It is an epitome of the war. Here are sheaves reaped, in the harvest of death, from every battlefield 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 eclipse on the Nation ; that another died of disease while wea- rily waiting for winter to end ; tliat 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 Chicka- hominy, and the James ; solemn voices from the Wilderness, and tri- umphant shouts from the Shenandoah, from Petersburgh, 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 laiid 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 beats some resemblance to that which greets the eye at Rome. In sight of the Capitoline hill, up and across th 138 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Tiber, and overlooking the city, is a bill, not rugged nor lofty, but known as the Vatican mount. At the beginning of the Christian era, an imperial circus stood on its summit. There, gladiatorial slaves died for the sjjort of Rome; and wild beasts fought with wilder men. In that arena, a Galileean 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 have been contributed. And now, after eighteen centuries, the hearts of two hun- dred million people turn towards 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 be- fore 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, this was the home of one who lifted his sword against the life of his country, and who became the great imperator of the rebel- lion. The soil beneath our feet was watered by the tears of slaves, in whose heart the sight of yonder proud capitol awakened no pride, and inspired no hope. The face of the goddess that crowns it was turned towards the sea, and not towards 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 sepulchre of heroic hearts; its dome, the bendmg 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 sugges- tion 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 com- rades who once fought by their side. From many thousand homes, whose light was put out when a soldier fell, there go forth to-day, to join these solemn processions, loving kin- FORTIETH CONGRESS. 1 39 dred 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 coronation no longer. Thus elevated and refreshed, we return to the national arena. TAXING THE BONDS. It will be remembered that laws which created the various bonds issued by the government during the war, prohibited their taxation by all national. State, and mu- nicipal legislation; exemption was thus an inherent ele- ment of their existence; it was a property of theirs, and not an external and effaceable mark. Their taxation was of the class of assaults to which their payment in depre- ciated paper belonged. The proposition in various forms had been brought before the house by amendment to pending bills, and also by resolutions. The questions involved were the power to tax and the morality of so doing. Among the advocates of taxation were P>ed- erick C. Pike of Maine, who should have known better, and does now, and General Butler, of whom it is hard to say what he does or may know, in a straightforward way. They had hoth made elaborate speeches in favor of the policy. To these, jointly and severally, General Garfield replied on the fifteenth of July, in the course of which he gave an abstract of the English history and practice of taxation, which was necessary to dislodge positions fortified from alleged English methods on the other side, during which his opponents questioned him 140 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. and took many issues, to conduct which, on his side, required that roomy knowledge in which a man can turn, knowing all the ground, and all the resources of both sides. Both were able, adroit, and skilful debates, and Butler, aided by clerks and secretaries, whom he always uses, generally has in hand all there is. I do not state the matter unjustly in saying, that in the play of authori- ties, precedents, historical instances and illustrations, Gar- field's opponents were worsted, as well as in dialectics, direct and conclusive. Garfield is the fairest of debaters, and one of the most just and generous of opponents. It cannot be claimed that his speech on this occasion put an end to this, or of the impish brood of bad faith and repudiation, the spores of which hung suspended in the air; but it placed it out of the field of practical enlight- ened discussion. The subject will find further mention. I have gone through with two sessions of this congress, and have not yet stated that Garfield was placed at the head of the military committee. The speaker insisted he must have the chairmanship of an important com- mittee, as a ribbon to his button-hole at the least. And there was no other, without injustice to men of longer service, and I have written in vain, if it is not apparent that no man living appeared less solicitous as to the place nominally assigned him. Well, he was chair- man of the military committee, and on the twenty-sixth of February, 1869, made his famous report on the re- organization of the army, long an imperative necessity, awaiting the hand of a master. It makes a closely printed document of one hundred and thirty-two pages, FORTIETH CONGRESS. I4I with an index. He called before him all the heads of the different departments of the army, quartermaster general, commissary general, paymaster general, surgeon general, as also the adjutant general, and all of the rest, among them General Hancock, and searched into and lit up every corner of the service, from the general down, and tabulated all the results, subjoined with a history of each department, from its organization to the day of the report; making thus a complete magazine of all the needed information on all the branches, as well as fur- nishing much curious matter, with a complete statement of expenditures for the fiscal j-ear. The Fortieth congress under the constitution ended with the third of March, 1869. The Republicans failed to secure the conviction of the President before the high court of impeachment. They had elected Grant to the presidency over Sey- mour, to which General Garfield contributed as largely as any single individual. In the vacation the Cincintiati Commercial sent a re- porter to Jefferson to secure his address on a memorable occasion, and he found time also for other work, to be mentioned elsewhere. CHAPTER V. BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. The Forty-first Congress.— Return of the South.— Accessions to the Houses.— Black Friday.— Investigation and Report.— The Census. — The Currency. — His Bill.— Speech.— Nature of Money.— Need of Banks. —Glance at his Later Labors. This congress was memorable for the return of the seceding States to their places under the constitution, as integers of the Union. Under the law, it assembled on the fourth of March, 1S69, inaugurated the President, raised its two flags over the two houses, and resumed the business of the Republic. In the house James G. Blaine was elected speaker, Mr. Colfax having been reduced to the post of vice- president. The senate received Carl Schurz to its chamber, also from the reconstructed States, Hiram R. Revells from Mississippi, and William Pitt Kellogg from Louisiana, and senators from other States. Georgia remained ab- sent. The accessions to the house, with the exception of Omer D. Conger, were more numerous than great, by the difference between number and size. Mr. Conger proved not only an able man, but, since Joe Root, no one with such a rasping wit has appeared in the house. Mr. Garfield was placed at the head of the banking BAXKIXG AND THE CURRENCY. 143 and currency committee, with John Lynch, his second. Otherwise it was not above a good average. The first session Hngered to the twenty-second of April. BLACK FRIDAY. A noticable thing of the ensuing vacation was the Black Friday of Wall street, falling on the twenty-fourth of September. On the re-assembling of congress, a memorial concerning it, demanding action by that body, was presented, and referred to Garfield's committee. At the holiday vacation he went to New York ; became the guest of General McDowell, his friend, the command- ant of that department, where he remained incog. Se- curing an interview with a man having some information, and from whom he learned the name of one having more, he, by several intermediate steps, got up or down, to the immediate core of the matter. He finally secured an interview with J. B. Hodgkins of the gold board, who- managed to smuggle him into the gold room, where a committee was trying Speyer, the Israelite, in whom there was guile, and the then supposed author of the fraud involved, or one of the conspirators, who were. Here he remained, listening, remembering and writing down when he went away, and then returning for another hearing, until he was compelled to return to Washington. Then he sent the sergeant-at-arms to occupy his place, near the witnesses, who were subpoenaed and hurried off to Washington, the moment they left the gold room trial, and were thus prevented from being communicated with, till thev came to Garfield's hands, and were examined be- fore his committee. Among them were the reticent Jay 144 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Gould, as silent and inscrutable as Grant, the gorgeous and exjn-essive Jim Fisk, with diamond cluster and seal skin overcoat. His discourse sparkled with figures of speech.* An able report on the first of March con- cluded the investigation. So much of this as my limits permit is here found. It thus discloses the purpose and means employed, and reveals conspiracy against the business of the country, seemed to involve the highest officers of the Nation in it. 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, interrapted 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 tD 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 pomt, in spite of speculation, it continued to decline, and on the last day of Tuly stood at one hundred and thirty-si.x. 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. Gould and Mr. A. R. Corbin 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 step-son-in-law, Robert B. Cather- wood, and Mr. Gould joined in the suggestion. This led to an inter- * When asked what became of the twenty-five thousand dollars paid by Gould to Corbin, with a pathetic wave of hands expressive of utter loss, he replied, "Gone where the woodbine twineth." BANKING AND THE CURRENCV. 145 view with Catherwood, the object of which is disclosed in his own testi- mony, as follows: "I went next day to have a conversation with Mr. Gould and Mr. Corbin. and I found that the remark was simply this: That the parties could operate in a legitimate way and make a great deal of money, and that all could be benefitted by it in a legitimate manner. I satisfied my- self that I could not fill the bill." And again, (page 441): "Mr. Gould, Mr. Corbin, myself, and some other associates, had an understanding that we would go into some operations, such as the pur- chase of gold, stocks, &c., and that we would share and share alike." And, (page 441): "I declined to go into this sub-treasurj' business." 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 m.ade 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 have no evidence that Catherwood's name was ever proposed to the President or secre- tary as a candidate for the position, nor 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 m securing it. In addition to these efforts, the conspirators re- solved to discover, if possible, the purposes of the President and the secretary of the treasur^• in regard to sales of gold. The first attempt in this direction, as e.xhibited 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 e\-ening, supper was served on board, and the presence at the table of such men as Cyrus W. Field, with se\eral 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 %'iew. Mr. Fisk says (page 171): 146 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. "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, nuending wliile we were there to nave 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 (page 171): "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, iOld SSSU: opposed to it. After they had all interchanged views, some one asked the President what his view was. He remarked that he thought 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 skilfully-contrived efforts elicited from the President but one remark, and this opened a gloomy prospect for the speculators; for Mr. Gould testifies that early next morning he was at the telegraph otifice, and found there one of his associates telegraphing to New York to sell out his stocks. 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 v.ith their pur- poses 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 in- terests 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 ciops and secure the foreign mar- ket for our grain, it was necessary that gold should be put up to 145. According to Mr. 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 toad- BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. . I47 vocate it. This theory is exhibited very fully in the testimony of Mr. Gould (pp. 4 and 5), and of Mr. Fisk (pp. 171 and 172). Grant was followed to Newport in vain — something else must be done. If the impression could be produced that the secretary of the treasury would withhold gold for a month that would do. On the nineteenth of August the President passed through New York. The Times was to be used, and a seeming semi-official article was written, headed "Grant's Financial Policy," to be used as a leading editorial, its publication to be secured by indirect means. The Times was reached, and the article put in double-leaded lines, ready. The editor became suspicious. It was published in an amended form, with the original in a parallel col- umn, and failed. An effort on Secretary Boutwell was ineffective also. It so happened that he did decide to sell gold sparingly during September. Perhaps this de- sign was penetrated, and gold touched near 138, on the sixth. Gould purchased. His associates became alarm- ed, but he persisted. His means to force it up were various and curious. A pretense that the President had ordered the non-sale of gold in September was one means. That the advance of gold was the depression of the currency, should be kept in mind. At the middle of September Gould had gold at 135 and 136, and Gould was alone. He courted Fisk, who was coy, but became frisky. Fisk was told that Corbin had enlisted the interests of persons high in authority, that the President, Mrs. Grant, General Porter, and Gen- eral Butterfield were corruptly interested in the movement, and that the I4S LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. secretary of the treasury had been forbidden to sell gold. Though these declarations were wickedly false, as the evidence abundantly shows, yet the 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 tiie force of his magnetic and infectu- ous enthusiasm. The malign influence which Cataline 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 apjily the torch and wield the dagger. With the great revenue of the Erie railway company at their com- mand, and having converted the Tenth National bank into a manufac- tory of certified checks to be used as cash at their pleasure, they terri- fied 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. Possessed of these real and pretended powers, the conspirators soon had at their command an army of brokers, as corrupt as themselves, though less powerful and daring. They opened an account for the "pool," which they styled the national gold account, hoping thus to strengthen the pretense that officers of the national government were interested with them. 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. Russell A. Hills, clerk for William Heath & Company, had bough seven millions for the clique. James Ellis, partner of the same firm, had bought for them si.x millions, eight hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars more, under orders to put up the price and hold it there. Woodward testifies that he bought eighteen miUions, of which ten millions were taken by Gould. H. K. Enos testifies that he bought ten millions. E. K. Willard testifies that he bought ten millions. Charles BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 149 E. Quincy, of Heath & Company testifies that he held over fourteen milhons. On the evening of Wednesday, the twenty-second, gold stood at one hundred and forty and one-half, and according to F'isk's testimony the conspirators held calls from fifty to sixty millions. Mr. Gould thinks it was not more than twenty-five millions, but his partner (Smith) testifies that they held from forty to fifty or fifty-five millions, in the purchase of which they had employed from fifty to sixty brokers. No better proof was needed that the natural tendency of gold was downward than the fact that it required these enormous purchases, with all the acompani- ments of fraud, to hold it three cents higher than it had stood sixteen days before. During the ten days in which these purchases were made, the con- spirators were disturbed by the movements of the secretary of the treasury. About the fourteenth of September it became known in New York that within a few days Secretary Boutwell would pass through the city, and that he had accepted an invitation to dine at the Union League club. It was noised about that the dinner was gotten up by parties short of gold, who expected to use the occasion to influence the secretary in favor of increasing his sales of gold, and breaking up the supposed clique. Mr. Gould became alarmed at the confident manner in which the secietary's intentions were spoken of, and solicitous as to what effect the bears and business men might have on the secretary's policy. He called on Coibin, and communicated his fears. The testimony shows that he distrusted Corbin's pretended influence. For nearly a fortnight he had called twice a day, and while studying the situation was narrowly watching Corbin's behavior. He knew that every cent of advance in the price of gold added fifteen thousand dollars to Corbin's profit from the gold movement, and that this fact might explain Cor- bin's pretense of knowing the President's purposes, and of being able to 'influence them. Corbin continued to assure Gould that there was no danger, and on the evening of the seventeenth of September it was agreed that the former should address a letter to the President, urging him not to in- terfere in the gold market by ordering or permitting sales from the treasury. During that night Corbin wrote a long letter on the subject. 150 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. which was not considered worth preser\-ing, but was destroyed soon after it was received by the President. The testimony shows that the letter contained no reference to the private speculations 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 tlie crops. Its contents are exhibited in the testimony of both Corbin (page 249) and Gould (page 155). 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. Cor- bin'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, thirty 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 dehvered 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 pro- ceeded 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. General Porter testifies, (page 448) : 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 carnage and ride some twenty-eight miles from Pittsburgh. This letter, sent in that way, urging a certain policy on the administration, taken in con- nection 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 BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 151 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 him- self from them at once; that he (the President) was very much dis- tressed at such rumors. She wrote a letter that evening, which I did not see. That, I think, was the night after the messenger arrived, and while we were still at Washington, Pennsylvania. Both Mr. Gould and Mr. Corbin have testified in regard to this letter, and they state its contents substantially as given by General Porter. , It was received in New York on the e\ening 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 con- sider its significance. Both have detailed at length in their evidence what transpired between them that night and the following morning. (See Gould's evidence, pp, 156 and 157, and Corbin's evidence, pp. 251 10253.) This letter created the utmost alarm in the minds of both these con- spirators. It showed Corbin that his duplicity was now strongly sus- pected, if not actually discovered. It showed GouJd that he had been deceived by Corbin's representations, and that a blow from the treasury might fall upon him at any hour. The picture of these two men that night, as presented in the evi- dence, is a remarkable one. Shut up in the library, near midnight, Corbin was bending over the table and straining with dim eyes to de- cipher 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. The envelope was e.xamined, with its post-mark and date, and all the circumstances which lent significance to the document. In that inter- view Corbin had the advantage, for he had had time to mature a plan. He seems to have determined, by a new deception, to save iiis credit with the President, and at the same time reap the profit from his specu- lation with Mr. Gould. He represented to Gould the danger of allow- ing the President any reason to believe that he, Corbin, was engaged in speculation, and said he had prepared a letter to the President deny- mg that he had any interest in the movement, direct or indirect, and 152 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. said he must send the letter by the first mail, but that in order to send it, it must be true. He proposed, therefore, to Gould that they should settle the purchase of a million and a half by Gould, paying to him the accrued profits, which, as gold stood that night, would amount to over one hundred thousand dollars in addition to the twenty-five thou- sand dollars he had already received. Gould was unwilling either to refuse or accept the proposition. Fear- ful, on the one hand, of losing his money, and on the other of incur- ring Corbin's hostility, he asked a delay until morning, and in the mean- time enjoined and maintained secrecy in regard to the e.xistence of the letter. Gould went from Corbin's house to the office of the Erie railroad, still keeping Mrs. Grant's letter a secret from Fisk. Later in the day he disclosed only enough of the truth to make Fisk jointly responsible for whatever amount of money he should pay to Corbin. Mr. Gould testifies that the check was drawn, but never paid to Corbin. Mr. Fisk knew only of Corbin's nervousness, but Gould knew far more. He says that Corbin had deceived him in pretending to possess knowledge of the President's purposes, and of being in any way able to influence them. He saw the whole extent of the danger and the ruin which a treasury sale would bring upon him. New victims were prepared, and a new scheme devised to save himself. Gould's old partner, Belden, rushed upon the street and made immense purchases. He managed to induce Speyer to believe he was himself the broker for Fisk, Gould and others, with orders to buy. Others purchased. Gould says •' I was a seller of gold that day. I pur- chased merely enough to make believe that I was a bull, and Fisk was in the gold room offering bets that gold would touch two hundred. Gold that day closed at one hundred and forty-four. The conspirators held a meet- ing, had lists of all the dealers. They had calls for more than one hundred mihions. There were not fifteen millions BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 153; real gold in New York, outside the treasury. Ever}' man who had bought or loaned owed them, and must buy it of them to pay with, and at their prices. More than two hundred and fifty prominent men and firms were short. They resolved to publish the list, demand one hundred and sixty for gold, and if settlements were de- layed later than three p. m. more would be required, but were advised that there was peril in that. It was then determined to push gold up still further the next day, Friday — day of doom. The name of Belden should cover the purchases. Heath's office was the head- quarters. Smith, Osborne, Dater, and Timpson, and other leading brokers of this clique, were to frighten the borrowers of gold into private settle- ments in their office, and Jay Gould, the guilty plotter of all these criminal proceedings, determined to betray his own associates, silent and imperturbable, by nods and whispers, directed all. He knew that day better than ever the value of silence, and as he testified to the com- mittee, (page 143) : • ' I had my own plans, and did not mean that anybody should say that I had opened my mouth that day, and I did not." Speyer was sent to the gold room and run gold up to one hundred and sixty, taking sixty million dollars. The clique needed vast sums of money so as to be able to pay for the gold that parties who declined to place margins in their hands might return to them. For this Gould had made, as he thought, ample pro- vision. He had some time before purchased a controlling interest in the Tenth National bank, and used that institution as a convenience to certify the checks of his firm. To this bank he wrote a letter the day before the panic, guaranteeing them from loss through certifying the checks of William Heath & Co. Russell A. Hills, clerk of Heath & Co. says, (p. 398): "He told me that the Tenth National bank had agreed to certity to 154 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. an unlimited extent, day by day. A short time afterwards one of the officers of the bank came into the office of Wilham Heath & Co., and said that it was impossible for the bank to certify, as there were three bank examiners in there to prevent it." It is in evidence that on Thursday the bank certified checks to the amount of twenty-five milhons, and on Friday, notwithstanding the presence of the examiners, certified fourteen milHons more. 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 every^vhere, from Boston to San Francisco, read disaster in every new bulletin. The price of gold fluctuated so rapidly that the tele- graphic indicators could not keep pace with its movement. The com- plicated mechanism of these indicators is moved by the electric current carried over telegraphic wires directly from the gold-room, and it is in CNadence that in many instances these wires were melted or burned off in the efforts of the operators to keep up with the news. In the meantime two forces were preparing to strike the conspirators a blow. One was a movement led by James Brown, a Scotch banker of New York, and supported by many leading bankers and merchants. The situation of all those whose legitimate business required the pur- chase of gold was exceedingly critical, and the boldest of them, under the lead of Brown, joined the great crowd of speculative bears in des- perate efforts to break down the conspiracy and put down the price of gold by heavy sales. The other was a movement at the national capital. The President returned from Pennsylvania to Washington on Thurs- day, the twenty-third, and that evening had a consultation with the sec- retary 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 strugghng for private gain; but both agreed that if the price of gold should be forced still higher, so as to threaten a gene-^-al financial panic, it would be their duty to interfere and protect the busi- ness interests of the country. The next morning the price advanced rapidly, and telegrams poured into Washington from all parts of the BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 155 country, exhibiting the general alarm, and urging the government to interfere, and, if possible, prevent a financial crash. This was issued; "Treasury Department, September 24, i86g. "Daniel Buttekworth, Assistant Treasurer United States, New York: "Sell four millions ($4,000,000) gold to-morrow, and buy four mill- ions (4,000,000) bonds. "George S. Boutwell, " Charge to department. "Secretary Treasury. "Sent 11:42 A. M." The message was not in cipher, and there was no attempt to keep it secret. It was duplicated, and a copy sent over each of the rival lines. The one sent by the Western Union line was dated at the treas- ury 11:42, Washington time, and reached General Butterfield 12:10, New York time. That sent over the Franklin line was dated at the treasury 11:45, ^"d was delivered to General Butterfield at 12:05, New- York time. The actual time occupied in transmitting the dispatch from the secretary to General Butterfield, including messenger travel at both ends of the line, was eight minutes, the same over each line; but in the branch office of the Western Union company, at Washing- ton, there was a delay of eight minutes before the operator could get control of the wire. Its contents may have been heard in some of the telegraph offices in New York, by outside e.xperts standing near the instnunents, and thus the news may have been known in the gold-room in advance of its publication; but the evidence on that point is not conclusive. A few minutes before noon, when the e.\citement in the gold-room had risen to a tempest, James Brown offered to sell one million at one hundred andsi.\ty-two; then another million at one hun- dred and si.xty-one; and then five millions more at one hundred and sixty; and the market broke. About ten minutes afterwards the news came that the treasury would sell, and the break was complete. Within the space of fifteen minutes the price fell from one hundred and 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 difficuhy that the conspirators escaped from the fur)- of their victims and took refuge in their up-town stronghold — the oflSce of the Erie Railroad comjjany. 156 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. During Thursday and Friday they had sold out, at high rates, a large part of the gold they had previously purchased, and had made many private settlements at rates ruinous to their victims. They at once repudiated all the purchases they had made through Belden, amounting to seventy millions, and it is evident that, either before or after the fact, they bought Belden"s consent to this villainy. The gold clearing-house, with its almost unlimited facilities for set- tling the accounts of gold gamblers, was suffocated under the crushing weight of its transactions, and its doors were closed. This admirable report carries the matter forward with amplitude of detail to conclusion. The blowing up and bursting of the bubble are here shown. It also appears that a congressional investigation in Garfield's hands was a very real thing. Toward the close of the Forty-first congress there arose between the two houses a grave controversy over the right of the senate to originate revenue bills. The house claimed the exclusive power over the subject. Able speeches were made on both sides. The question was not free from doubt, and never was directly settled. The bill out of which it arose went to a committee of conference, which disagreed. On the house report, on the last day of the session, Mr. Garfield made a speech covering the whole ground, prepared in his thorough way, which was accepted as the authoritative exposition of the claims of the house. During the spring session Mr. Garfield raised a special committee to prepare and report a plan for taking the approaching census, a work requiring a vast amount of unrequited labor, which could find no compensation in money or applause. His sub-committee spent forty days BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 1 57 of the vacation, between the sessions, in elaborating his plan. At the request of the American Social Science association, he delivered an elaborate address before it on this subject, on the twenty-seventh of October, and he afterward produced his plan in a complete report, in the house, accompanied b}' a well-considered bill. With almost infinite care and pains he conducted this through the house, explaining, answering objections, and carrying It successfully through. He c(5!ild not follow it to the senate, where it was lost, and the ninth census was taken as happened. Not wholly lost was this bill and labor. Ten years later the bill was reached and reintroduced. The Forty-fifth congress passed it into law, and under its en- lightened provisions the agents of the government are now taking the enumeration and statistics of the Republic. THE CURRENCY. It is time our attention was given more largely to Mr. Garfield's labors in his appointed field of the currency. He had, on the fourteenth of March, 1S70, amply discussed public expenditures and the civil service, a kindred sub- ject, and, on the seventh of June, on his bill "to increase banking facilities, and for other purposes," he discussed *' Currency and the Banks," where he may sparingly speak for himself to my readers. See the clearness with which he sets forth the elementray truths on which his doc- trines rest, deepening the lines of his former speech already spoken of: Before entering upon the consideration of the bill itself, I ask the indulgence of the house while I state a few general propositions touch- ing the subject of trade and its instruments. A few simple principles 158 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 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 stamp- ing are but a certification by the government of the quantity and fine- ness 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, a title to the amount of money promised on its face ; and so long as there is f>erfect confidence that it is a good title for its full amount, it can be used as money in the pay- ment of debts. Being lighter and more easily carried, it is for many purposes more convenient than money, and has become an indispen- sable substitute for money throughout all civilized countries. One qual- ity 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 uncer- tainty, 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 ex- change. The check is comparatively a modern invention,- whose func- BAXKING AND THE CURRENCY. 1 59 tions 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 bein.CT, 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 e.xchanges, 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 uni- form 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 in- clude, 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 coun- tries than in countries cursed by an inconvertible paper currency. Be- sides 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. * * * * * * 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 to 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 cancelled, is dead. After a new bank is established a large portion of that average amount is deposited with the bank, and a smaller amount is carried in their safes and pockets. These accumu- lated deposits placed in tjie bank, at once constitute a fund which can. l6o LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 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, al- ways means a credit in a banker's books in exchange for money or se- curities for money. " — Vol. 2, 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 de- posits 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 coun- ter-checking and transferring of credit, amounts to a sum vastly greater than all the deposits. No stronger illustration of practical use of de- posits can be found than in the curious fact, that all the heavy pay- ments made by the merchants and dealers in the city of .Amsterdam for half a century, were made through a supposed deposit which had en- tirely disappeared, some fifty years before its removal was detected. Who does not know that the si.x 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 ? * If the analysis I have attempted to make of the principles which govern trade and business be correct, it will aid in ascertaining the wants of the country, and in determining what legislation is necessary ;to meet the demands of business. Mr. Speaker. I shall venture to hope that those who have honored •me with their attention thus far, will agree that a mere supply of cur- rency, however abundant, will not meet t'ne case ; coin and currency form only the change — the pocket-money of trade. For the great transactions which the man-elous energies of our people are carrj'ing on they need and will demand that greater instrument of modem invention — that credit, currency, properly secured and guarded, which takes the forms of checks, drafts, and commercial bills. And this •brings me to the question, how is the country now supplied with currency and with these other facilities for the transaction of business? . BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. l6l It ought to be understood everywhere that the great injustice done to the western and southern portions of the country by the present dis- tribution of currency and banking facilities is so flagrant that it will not tnuch longer be endured; and if the wrong be not soon righted the overthrow of the National banking system is imminent. In entering upon this question I am met by our philosophical eastern friends, who say, "Put the currency wherever you please, and, like water on the top of a mountain, it will find its level; the distribution, therefore, makes no difference, for the currency will necessarily find its natural place." Mr. Speaker, I recognize the truth asserted, but insist that it is not applicable to the case in hand. I offer, in answer, the fact that the dis- tribution of banking facilities under the State system before the war is a better test of the wants of btisiness than the present distribution. Wuat are the facts? In 1860-61, in eleven of the southern and south- western States there were two hundred and ninety banks of issue, hav- ing a capital of one hundred and nineteen million, two hundred and twenty-three thousand, si.x hundred and thirty-three dollars, and a cir- culation of seventy-four million, one hundred and fifty-three thousand, five hundred and forty-five dollars, besides specie to the amount of twenty-six million, si.\ty-four thousand, five hundred and three dollars. Contrast that with the present situation. Trace a line from this capital westward, by the south line of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West \'irginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, and we find in the twelve States south of that line, whose population in i860 was nine millions, there are but seventy-one National banks, with a capital of only thirteen million, one hundred and seventy-seven thousand, five hundred dollars, and a circulation of but eight million, nine hundred and thirty-six thousand, one hundred and seventy dollars. Besides the increase of population, the four million slaves have now become users of currency. The people of those States have not more than seventy-five cents each of bank circulation. It is monstrous to pretend that such a distribution is either equitable or just. Thus he states the existing state of things: Ninety-four millions of ciu-rency reserves in the vaults, thirtv millions more than the law requires, money a drug at four and five per cent.. 1 62 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. and all this because speculation in the gold room was dull, while mill- ions of our industrious citizens find it difficult to loan money at ten and fifteen per cent! It is marvelous with what patience the American people permit tliem- selves to be robbed and defrauded. These speculators are now waiting to see what financial laws we pass, as mv friend before me (Mr. Judd) suggests, and what influence they will have on the operations of the gold room. During this suspense, the gamblers of Wall street are letting their money lie idle, to see which way the tide will turn. Let Congress neglect to pass the legislation which is necessary to overcome the difficulties of the situation and we shall see the scenes of July and August, and September last, with its black Friday, re-enacted. I hasten to say that I by no means -indorse the notion that congress can determine, by any artificial mathematical rule, just how the currency ought to be distributed through the country, or how much is needed. But it cannot be denied that our past experi- ence and present situation demonstrate the outrageous injustice done in the West and South in regard to the currency. And now I inquire for a remedy. What shall it be? I^what means shall we supply the West and South with currency and banking facilities to meet the demands of their rapidly increasing population and wealth? Shall it be by an immediate increase of the volume of our paper money, to be followed by a greater depreciation of the whole mass, an increase of prices, and a great and disastrous disturbance of values and of all business transactions? For myself, I do not hesitate to declare that such legislation would be in every way ruinous to the interests and destructive of the credit of the country. I believe that the volume of our paper currency is already too large, and that a resumption of specie payments would reduce it. But, Mr. Speaker, whatever may be our individual opinions, it is clear that no measure of inflation can by any possibility become a law during the present session of Congress. The following resolution passed the Senate, without a dissenting vote, on the twenty-fourth of February last, indicates that no measure of inflation can meet the assent of that body. I quote the proceedings of the senate on this subject as recorded in the Globe of February 25th: " Resolved, That to add to the present irredeemable paper currency of the country would be to render more difficult and remote the resump- BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 163 tion of specie payments, to encourage and foster the spirit of s]:)eciila- tion, to aggravate tlie evils produced by frequent and sudden fluctua- tions of values; to depreciate the credit of the natioii, and to check the healthful tendency of -legitimate business to settle down upon a safe and permanent basis ; and therefore, in the opinion of the senate, the existing volume of such currency ought not to be increased. The \'ice-President. Is there objection to the present consideration of the resolution ? "Mr. Sherman. I hope not. Let it pass. "Mr. Sumner. Let it pass. "The \'ice-President. The chair hears no objection to the present consideration of the resolution, and it is before the senate. "The resolution was agreed to." It is equally clear that no measure for the resumption of specie pay- ment that includes contraction of the currency as one of its provisions can pass this house during the present congress. Shut up within these limitations, practically forbidden either to increase or diminish the volume of the currency, the committee on banking and currency were instructed by the house of repsesentatives February 21, 1870, to per- form the duty described in the following resolution : Resolved, That in the opinion of the house the business interests of the country require an increase in the volume of the circulating cur- rency, and the committee on banking and currency are instructed to report to the house at as early a day as practicable a bill increasing the currency to the amount of at least fifty million dollars. Under these circumstances the duty of the committee w\is very diffi- cult to perform. Shut up between Scylla on the one side and Charyb- dis on the other, and propelled by this peremptory resolution, what could the committee do ? It must give more banking facilities. It must give more circulating currency. But it must neither increase nor decrease the \olume of the currency. * * * ♦ Thus he unfolds his bill and remedy: This bill is the result of a compromise of many differences of o])in- ion, and perhaps suits no member of the committee in all its features ; vet, on the w-hole, they believe it will give the needed relief, with the least disturl>ance to the business of the country, and without injury to the public credit. 164 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I now invite the attention of the house to its provisions. It aims at two leading objects : To provide for a more equitable distribution of the currency without contraction or inflation, and without increasefl expense to the government; and to provide for free banking on a spe- cie basis. Tiie first of these objects the bill proposes to reach by the provisions of the first six and the last three sections of the bill. The second object is provided for in tlie remaining sections, being sections seven, eight, and nine.- The provisions for the more equitable distrilnition of the currency and the increase of banking facilities are the following : First. The issue of ninety-five million dollars of national bank notes in States having less than their proper portion. Second. The cancellation and retirement of the three per cent, cer- tificates, which now amount in round numbers to forty-five million five hundred thousand dollars, and the cancellation and retirement of thirty-nine million five hundred thousand dollars of United States notes. Third. When the whole amount of the ninety -fi\e million dollars of additional notes shall have been issued, circulation shall then be withdrawn from States having an excess, and distributed to States being deficient, in such sums as may be required, not exceeding in the aggregate twenty-five million dollars. After developing the scope of the measure, he is con- strained to say pensively: I wish I were able to demonstrate also that there is no inflation in this bill; and here is the feature most unsatisfactory to me. For four years past I have pleaded for some practical legislation, looking toward a gradual and safe return to specie payments. It has been clear to my mind that resumption was impossible so long as the present volume of inconvertible currency is maintained. I have therefore strenuously op- posed all attempts to increase its volume. But deeply impressed with the necessity of giving more equal facilities to the West and South, and relieving the National bank system from the odium which the present unequal distribution brings upon it, I have consented, with reluctance, to this feature of the pending bill, believing that tlie benefits conferred BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 1 65 bv it will be greater than the evils that will result from the measure of inflation it contains. The actual incVease of circulating notes which it authorizes is about thirteen million dollars; but the great increase of credit currency in the form of checks and drafts will, in my judgment, result in a very consid- eral)le expansion of paper credits. I cannot, in justice to myself, let this feature of the bill pass without expressing regret that the state of opinion in the house and country requires its enactment. And thus he deals with inflation and congressional meddling with the currency. But some gentlemen say, "Increase the greenback currency; issue linore; it is popular; it is safe; it is cheap; give it liberally and satisfy the wants of the country." This brings us to the question whether we will have the National bank currency or a currency issued directly by the government. All those who believe that the national banks should be overthrown, and that the government should itself become the man- ufacturer of the currency of the country, will doubtless oppose this bill in all its provisions. There are a few gentlemen, whose opinions I very greatly respect, who believe such a substitution ought to take place. I disagree with them for the following reasons; In the first place it is the e.xperience of all nations, and it is the almost unanimous opinion of eminent statesmen and financial writers, that no nation can safely undertake to supply its people with a paper currency issued directly by the government. And, to apply that prin- ciple to our own country, let me ask if gentlemen think it safe to sub- ject any political party who may be in power in this government to the great temptation of over-issues of paper money in lieu of taxation.' In times of high political excitement, and on the eve of a general election, when there might be a deficiency in the revenues of the country, and congress should find it necessary to levy additional taxes, the tempta- tion would be overwhelming to supply the deficit by an increased issue of paper money. Thus the whole business of the country, the value of all contracts, the prices of all commodities, the wages of labor, would depend upon a vote of congress. For one, I dare not trust the great industrial interests of this country to such uncertain and hazardous chances. But even if congress and the Administration should be always supe- 1 66 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. rior to such political temptations, still I affirm, in the second place, that no human legislature is wise enough to determine how much cur- rency the wants of this country require. Test it in this house to-day. Let every member mark down the amount which he believes the busi- ness of the country requires, and who does not know that the amounts will vary by hundreds of millions? But a third objection, stronger even than the last, is this: that such a currency possesses no power of adapting itself to the business of th.e country. Suppose the total issues should be five hundred millions, or seven hundred millions, or any amount you please; it might be abund- ant for spring and summer, and yet when the great body of agricultural products were moving off to market in the fall, that amount might be totally insufficient. Fix any value you please, and if it be just sufficient at one period, it may be redundant at another, or insufficient at another. No currency can meet the wants of this country unless it is founded directly upon the demands of business, and not ujion the caprice, the ignorance, the political selfishness, of any jDarty 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 cur- rency, 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. The business of the country is like the level of the ocean, from which all measurements are made of heights and depths. Though tides and currents may for a time disturb, and tempests vex and toss its surface, still, through calm and storm the grand level rules all its waves and lays its measuring-lines on every shore. So the busi- ness of the country, which, in the aggregated demands of the people for exchange of values, marks the ebb and flow, the rise and fall of the currents of trade, and forms the base-line from which to measure all our financial legislation, and is the only safe rule by which the volume of our currencv can be determined. BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 1 67 But there is another point to which I desire to call attention. What- ever may have been our opinions and wishes hitherto, since this session began the supreme court of the United States has made a decision which adds a new and important element to this question. The court has declared that the legal tender notes are not, and cannot be made, a legal tender for debts contracted before their issue. Now, I ask gen- tlemen to remember that my friend from Illinois Mr. Ingersoll] who is the champion of greenback issues on this side of the house, realized at once the importance and effect of that decision; for within two or three days after the decision was announced — I belie\e it was the \ery next day — he proposed an amendment to the cons.itution of the United States, providing that it should be lawful for congress to authorize the issue of treasury notes, and make them a legal tender in the payment of all debts, thereby admitting that he believed such an amendment necessary, in order that such an issue could be made. ***** Mark the conclusive force of these paragraphs: There is another consideration which I desire to present to the house, and it is this: we are not permitted to choose between banks and no banks. We are not permitted to choose between a National banking system managed immediately by the officers of the treasury. The Na- tional banks exist now only because they occupy the field and the ten per cent, tax on State circulation prevents the issue of State bank notes. If we abolish the National banks, and undertake to conduct the busi- ness of this country by the issues of greenback currency, the influence of State banks and of banking capital will soon compel the repeal of the ten per cent, tax; and then will spring up again all the wild-cat banks against which the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ingersoll] de- claimed so eloquently a few days ago. We are shut up, in my judgment, to one of two things; either to maintain, extend, and amend the present National banking system, or to go back to the old system imder which every State was tinkering at the currency, without concert of action and uncontrolled by any gen- eral law. Then banks were established under the laws of twenty-nine different States, granted different privileges, subjected to different re- strictions, and their circulation was based on a great varietv of securi- I 68 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. ties, of different qualities and quantities. In some States the bill- holder was secured by the daily redemption of notes in the principal city; in others by the pledge of .State stocks, and in others by coin re- serves. But as .State stocks differed greatly in value, all the way from the repudiated bonds of Mississippi to the premium stock of Massa- chusetts, there was no uniformity of security, and the amount of coin reserves required in the different States was so various as to make that security almost equally irregular. This is followed with a series of pictures of the explo- plosions of the State banking systems, already sketched, concluding with this: Thus it appears there were more than si.x thousand five hundred va- rieties of fraudulent notes in circulation ; and the dead weight of all the losses occasioned by them, fell at last upon the people, who were not expert in such matters. There were in 1862 but two hundred and fifty- three banks whose notes had not been altered or imitated. • The results of State banking are thus grouped and contrasted with the stability and usefulness of the Na- tional banks. In obedience to a resolution of congress, adopted January 7, 1841, the secretary of the treasury made a report, showing that from 1789 to 1841 three hundred and ninety-five banks had become insolvent, and that the aggregate loss sustained by the government and people of the United States was three hundred and sixty-five million four hundred and fifty-one thousand four hundred and ninety-seven dollars. The re- port also showed that the total amount paid by the people of the United States to the banks, for the use of them, during the ten years preceding 1841, amounted to the enormous sum of two hundred and eighty-two millions of dollars. Startling as these figures are, they fall far short of exhibiting the magnitude of the losses which this system occasioned. The financial journals of that period agree in the following estimate of the losses oc- casioned by the revulsion of 1837: BANKING AND THE CURRENCY. 1 69 On bank circulation and deposits $ 54.000,000 Bank capital, failed and depreciated 248,000,000 State stock depreciated 100,000,000 Company stock depreciated 80,000,000 Real estate depreciated 300,000,000 Total $782,000,000 The State bank system was a chaos of ruin, in which the business of the country was again and again ingulfed. The people rejoice that it has been swept away, and they will not consent to its re-establishment. In its place we have the National bank system, based on the bonds of the L'jiited States and sharing the safety and credit of the go\ernment. Their notes are made secure, first, by a deposit of government bonds worth at least ten per cent, more than the whole value of the notes; second, by a paramount lien on all tlie assets of the banks; third, th.e personal liability of all the shareholders to an amount equal to the capital they hold; and fourth, the absolute guarantee by the govern- ment to redeem them at the national treasury if the banks fail to do so. Instead of seven thousand different varieties of notes, as in the State system, we have now but ten \arieties, each uniform in character and appearance. Like our flag, they bear the stamp of nationality, and are honored in every part of the L'nion. Now, I do not speak for the banks; I have no personal interest in them; but I speak for the interests of trade and the business of the country, which demand that no measure shall pass this house which may rudely shock those interests. These twenty-five million dollars, which are not likely soon to be recjuired, will be taken when needed, from States having a great surplus. About nine million dollars will come from the banks of New York that have over one million dollars of circulation each, and the balance will come from about eighty-four banks in three other States which have still a great excess above their proper proportion. I shall reserve for a later period in this discussion my remarks on the funding provision of this bill embodied in the third, fourth, and fifth sections. I thank the house for its indulgence and the patient attention with which I have been honored. Thus dismembered, we produce but broken fragments I-JO LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. of this massive production, simple and severe in its out- lines and solidity, like a doric temple, and as enduring. This was in i860. Many years were to intervene, much labor, much exposition, by the clear, far-seeing financier, whose career we are yet to trace, beginning on this sub- ject in the house, in March, 1866, casting down his gage to his own people in Jefferson in 1867, and covering a part of the field by the speech just brought to the read- er's notice. Again on the floor January 23, 1872, and in March, 1874, and most effectively in April following. Finally, the great measure authorizing resumption became a law, which had to be defended against all comers, and never more ably than by him November 16, 1877. Then in the form of fiat money, in reply to Mr. Kelly, in March, 1878, and so in his own State in the great campaigns, and where alone he fought the battle in the silver phase of the money-hued contest afterward. By special re- ciuest, he wrote a strong exposition, with ample historical illustration, in the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1876. He made a great speech at Chicago, and another in old Faneuil, in Boston. Both were pronounced great, and those who heard either pronounced it greater than the other. And thus largely has he borne the burdens of this great multiform issue, to the consummation of the labors of himself and the band of the sagacious, far-see- ing, steady statesmen who wrought with him, and which now, in the leisure of the prosperity thus secured to the country, his enemies find time and opportunity to assail him. CHAPTER VI. POLITICAL ECONOMY. The Tarift". — Politics at Williams. — Free Trade. — Protection. — His Williams Speech. — Speech of April, 1870. — Elementary Prices. — E.xpenditure and Prices. — High home prices close the Foreign Mar- ket. — Reduction of Prices. — Internal Revenue and the Tariff. — Speech of 1872. — Speech on .Sugar Tariff, 1879. — Subject exhaust- ively treated. — Hoop Iron. ^Transportation. — The Locomoti\e. — Railroad System considered. Certainly political econom}- is not an exact science, nor is scarcely any branch of it. Like our common law, its texts are clear and its rules certain. The facts depend on human testimonies, and hence are the most uncertain of things. This is charged against the law as a defect, residing in itself, when it consists almost entirely in the difiticulty of ascertaining the facts. The practical appli- cation of the doctrines of either the two schools of polit- ical economy, to industries and trade, encounter the same difficulty, in an exaggerated degree. The determining the conditions of things, and ];roperly estimating results under given rules, by which servitudes are laid upon or omitted from given productions is m.ost difficult. So what is meant by free trade, is sometimes in practice not clearly defined. A slight duty leaves it freer than a heavy one, compared with which it is free. So what is meant by protection is clouded bv the same obvious 172 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. uncertainty. Each under certain conditions seems pref- erable to the other. Can there be found a resting place which shall so far embody the best of the one, as to per- mit the existence in moderate measure, of what is good in the other ? Each school will declare this impossible. When at Willams, on the nomination of Fremont, a gathering of students called on Ciarfield for a speech. In response he declared that he had never voted. His horror of slavery was so great that he would unite with neither of the old parties, while the disunion teachings of the abolitionists, kept him from acting with them. With the Fremont men he could unite and did. So he was a Republican by birth as well as by instinct and reflection. Iri the class-room, the professor stated clearly the abstract theories of the free traders and protectionists, and called for an expression of opinion of their respective merits. Garfield ventured to say, that to him free trade seemed to be absolutely right, but, for the United States, protection seemed an absolute necessity. When called upon for a practical solution, he replied in effect that he would be a protectionist till he could become a free trader. I do not know that this is a key to his views and leadings in congress. That he early studied the subject thoroughly, and thought of it comprehensively, we know. On the first of April, 1S70, he delivered the first of any considerable speech on the tariff. He said that he felt the embarrassment of a man who was to add to the forty-two speeches already delivered in the committee (of POLITICAL ECONOMY. 173 the whole house). It had been an able, searching debate. He quoted Coleridge's declaration that the human race had suftered more iVom abstract definitions than from war, pestilence and famine. He was not pre- pared to question the poet-philosopher's declaration. There were two practical points from which no wide departure was permissible. The needs of the revenue, and the wants of our industries. In a sea of abstrac- tions, these were very real, and ever present. Modern scholarship was on the side of free trade. Mr. Kelly, the champion of protection, denied this, and mentioned Henry C. Carey, and the acceptance of his teachings in Germany. Mr. Garfield admitted what was due to Mr. Carey, but insisted that if England was struck out, half at least of the light of civilization would disappear. Mr. Carey was in the minority. While what he stated was true, every modern nation had in some form enforced the principle of protection. He then presented a rapid and forcible review of the career of American industry. Like liberty, it had won its way by great struggles. The sketch of its colonial fortunes, like all his studies of English history, was very happy. He then defined and illustrated what he meant by American industry, and is forable, as he always is, when remitted to broad generalization. This brought him to the consider- ation of prices. The study of them requires a knowl- edge of whatever influences them. When the war begun, our debt sixty-five million dollars ; our annual ex- penditures, on an average for eight years, ninety-five million dollars per annum ; one year of the war consuniLd 174 LIFE OF JAMES .A. GARFIELD. one billion, two hundred and ninety million dollars: at the end we owed three billion dollars. Prices advanced, and were highest in iS66. During the last four years (from 1S70) the ex-penditures averaged three hundred and sixty million dollars per annum. From 1S66 we have tended to the aiite belhim prices. The result — we have furnished a good market .or foreign goods, but have lost the foreign market for most of ours. Cotton and provisions only do well abroad, and exceed in value all our other exports. Before the war we exported manu- factures amounting to forty-two million dollars a year; during the war but thirty-three million dollars. He pur- sued this subject to our trade with Canada, the Sandwich islands, and, contrasting the years i860 and 1869, showed an exportation of seventeen million dollars for the first and five million dollars for the last. Our indus- tries need extended markets. "To do that, prices here must be so adjusted as to open to our trade more of the markets of the new world." They can now buy cheaper of foreigners. A further decline of our prices will finally bring that relief. Then the channels of trade will open. It will take many years. While we raise two hundred and fifty million dollars of taxes, prices can never fall to a standard of sixty million dollars of taxes. The leg- islation which does not notice this economic law will be mistaken. When prices descend to a rate where the laborer can still save on a smaller wage, relief will begin. The laborer cannot suffer by this; ultimately will gain. Congress has done much to reduce taxation, and thus reduce prices. In the Thirty-ninth congress, we reduced POLIT.CAL ECOXOMV. I 75 the internal re\enue one hundred milUon dollars; in the Fortieth, seventy million dollars more. We simplified the tax, removed it from industr}-, and imposed it on vice and luxury. The large internal revenue tax on our own manufact- ures was met by an increase of duty on the foreign com- peting articles. Since we have removed this internal tax: we may well reduce the protecting duty. The war tax has disappeared. It is reasonable that the war tariff go also. Custom duties should be so adjusted as to avoid duplicate taxation. This furnishes but an imperfect outline of the unfold- ing of the principles on which the bill was framed. He then proceeds to a discussion of details, answering ques- tions, and making explanations. It is rare that a man with such grasp and power over great subjects, in their broad relations, has also such a mastery of details. No one ever escapes him, and from a full development of the large scope and design of an important measure, he at once descends, in an easy, graceful way, to the minut- est detail, and never leaves a question unanswered, or a detail unexplained. The tariff, internal revenue, taxation, in all their com- plex relations to home and foreign policies, became as much a specialty with General Garfield as the currency and banking; and he was at an early day received as au- thority upon the subject. Some aspects of the complex subject received so much light from his great speech of January 22, 1872, on public expenditure, that we must here refer the reader 176 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. to the next chapter, and ask him to consider it in connec- tion with his views upon the tariff here briefly brought to notice. His speech of February, 1S79, on the sugar tariff bill is a copious discussion of the then interesting subject in connection with the broader and general one, and treated in his usual way. The reader should study it. After some introductory remarks he says: The pending bill, like all bills which relate to customs duties should be considered in its relation to four great interests: the revenues, home industries, foreign trade, and the interests of consumers. First, as a source of revenue for the support of the government, we are receiving about thirty-seven million dollars in coin per annum from duties on sugar in its various forms. That is about one-si.\th of all our revenues from all sources. The effect of any measure upon so large a part of the revenue is vital to our finances and to the fiscal credit of the government. Second, it affects two great producing industries of our people. The first of these is the growth of cane and the production of cane sugar, to foster which congress has for a long time levied a discriminating duty, though only a single State is pursuing the industry. Notwith- standing the fact that sugar is one of the necessities of the daily life of our people, they have consented to pay a tax which, under e.xisting laws, averages about sixty-two and one-half per cent, ad valorem upon all the sugar they consume. This burden is borne cheerfully for the purpose of protecting and promoting a great home industry in one of our southern States. A second important industry whicli has grown up in connection with ihe sugar trade and has developed to a great magnitude in recent years is the business of refining. It is one of the interesting evidences of the progress of civilization that people are using less and less of the raw sugars of commerce, and more and more of refined sugars. And this chano'e of habit is not merely a refinement of luxury but is demanded bv a better knowledge of the lavts of health. In a recent investigation made by the Analytical Sanitary Commission of England, appointed to examine the various kinds of food, Dr. Hassell, the chairman, reported among other things the following; POLITICAL ECOXOMV. I 77 "^^'e fee!, however reluctantly, that we have come to the conclusion that the sugars of commerce are in general in a state wholly unfit for consumption." That is the latest voice of science in England on the subject of unre- fined sugar. And if gentlemen will turn to the Popular Science Month- ly, of New York, for February, 1879, they will find a very interesting scientific discussion of the various insects that infest food, and on pages 508 and 509 occurs a passage relating to sugars, which I quote: " The sugar-mite, T. sacchari, (a magnified wood-cut of which ac- companies the passage), is most commonly found in brown sugar. It is large enough to be seen with the naked eye, and sometimes appears as white specks in the sugar. It may be discovered by dissolving two or three spoonfuls of sugar in warm water and allowing the solution to stand for an hour or so. At the end of the time the acari will be found floating on the surface, adhering to the sides of the glass, and lying mixed with the grit and dirt that always accumulate at the bottom. In ten grains of sugar as many as five hundred mites have been found, which is at the rate of three hundred and fifty thousand to the pound. Those who are engaged in handling raw sugars are subject to an erup- tion known as 'grocers' itch,' which is doubtless to be traced to the presence of these mites. They are almost invariably present in unre- fined sugars, and may be seen in all stages of growth and in e\'ery con- dition, alive and dead, entire or broken in fragments. Refined sugars are free from them. This is in part due, perhaps, to the crystals being so hard as to resist their jaws, but principally to the absence of albumen, for without nitrogenous matter they cannot live. ^ * "These degrading and disgusting forms are not proper food-stufFs, nor is their consumption unavoidable. Pure articles, in an undamaged condition, do not contain them, and their presence in numbers in any article of food is proof that it is unfit for human use and should be rejected. " This scientific testimony is corroborated by the experience of all per- sons who manipulate raw sugars, while no such effects result from the handling of refined sugars. For these reasons the consumption of raw sugars in this and in all other civilized countries has rapidly fallen off. And so, although in former years a large quantity of what is known as grocers' sugars went directly into consumption without going through lyS LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the process of refining, the amount of sugars of that class now used has been reduced to almost nothing. To exhibit something of the magnitude of this industry, I state a few facts: omitting maple, sorghum, and beet sugar, we consumed last year in round numbers one billion seven hundred million pounds of cane sugar. Of this amount we produced in our own country two hundred million pounds; the remaining one billion five hundred millions were imported. Reduce the whole to tons, the people of the United States consumed seven hundred and forty thousand tons of cane sugar last year, or an average of aboat forty-five pounds to each inhabitant. Of all this vast amount of sugar not two per cent, was consumed in the raw or unrefined state. Nearly all of it passed through some process of refining to fit it for the use of our people. From this it will be seen that in addition to the business of cane- planting and sugar-making there has grown up in this country a second industry of sugar refining, the importance of which may be shown by a few additional facts. There are twenty-five thousand laborers in the United States to-day employed in the business of refining sugar and fitting it for use, in addition to those employed by the sugar producers. In this work they employ coopers, blacksmiths, mechanics, machinists, and other classes of laborers. They consume thirty millions of pounds of bone-dust, eighteen thousand kegs of nails, thirty thousand car- loads of staves, and three hundred thousand tons of coal. In this statement I do not take into account the refining done by Louisiana planters in preparing their products for market, though a large majority of the sugar growers, have connected with their mills some form of refining. I have stated these facts to show the e.\ient of the two home industries, which we should keep in view in any legisla- tion on the subject. The third interest to be considered is our foreign commerce, of which only a word needs to be said. We are compelled to buy abroad about eighty-five per cent, of all our sugar. We buy it from tropical coun- tries with which, on every ground of public policy, we ought to main- tain healthy and active relations of trade. If we are able, by our supe- rior skill, to refine their low-grade sugars more cheaply than our neigh- bors and send them back with the added value of American labor, it will strengthen us industrially and commercially; and the fact that our refin POLITICAL ECONOMY. 179 ing interest has grown to such perfection tliat we haxe been able to sell in a single year to tropical countries about seventy million pounds of re- fined sugar, is a gratifying one on every account. Xo change should be made in the law which will injure our commercial prospects in this direc- tion. The fourth interest, one of vital importance, is that of the consumers of sugar. They are not a class; they are the whole population of the United States; and there must be reasons of controlling strength that will justify any considerable tax on an article of food of universal con- sumption and of Such prime necessity as sugar. That reason has been found partly in the necessity for revenue, but chiefly in the purpose of enabling our people to become self-supporting, and as far as possible to produce their own sugars, that they may not be dependent upon foreign countries for so important an article of food. In short, the chief reason for the tax is that American labor may find employment in producing and preparing food for American tables. The duty on sugar has been levied in various forms. Up to 1846 sugars were classified into raw and refined sugars, with a low rate on the raw and a higher rate on the refined. But as the processes of manufacture and refining have been improved, additional grades have been added to the law from time to time to meet the new conditions. It was found in 1870 that the lower grades embraced so wide a range of products that a uniform tax upon one whole class was neither equit- able nor just ; and hence the law was so amended as to increase the number of classes and make the tax ad valorem in principle but specific inform; that is, sugar in all its forms was graded into seven classes, arranged in the order of its value, and a specific duty was levied upon each class, the lowest rate being imposed upon sugars of lowest value and a higher rate upon each successive class. The tax thus adjusted has been an efficient means of raising revenue. I have already shown that it produces more than thirty-seven million dollars a year. That it has afforded sufficient protection to the producers and refiners of sugar will not be denied. The theory of protection may perhaps be thus summarized: on any imported article which comes in competition with an American product the rate of tax should be proportionate to the amount of human labor which has been expended upon it at the time of importation. That which represents the least labor should bear the l8o LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. least burden of tax; that which represents the most should bear the greatest. The principle has generally prevailed in all our tariff laws relating to sugar. As the law now stands, the duty is adjusted by classifying all sugars into seven grades. First, the lowest, crudest, and cheapest product, which comes in liquid form and is known as melada. On that we levy a specific duty equal to about forty per cent, ad valorem. The next grade of sugar is represented by the specimen I hold in my hand, and is known in the trade and to our law as Dutch standard number seven. Until a recent period all sugar was manufactured by the simple process of boiling down the cane-juice and clarifying the product by means of clay. By that process the purity and strength and hence the value of all crystallized sugar were exhibited by its color. Here, for example, [holding up a specimen], is a specimen of the lowest and crudest forms of crystallized sugar. Gentlemen will notice its dark color. It is known and graded as Dutch standard number seven, and forms the second class in our present law. Here ^holding up another specimen] is another specimen advanced higher, embodying more human labor, having less impurity in it, being advanced to a condition fit for use. It is known as Dutch standard number twenty. Then follows a discussion of the details, in which many gentlemen of the house participated, in the all- togethery way of that body. He is now an opposition member of the ways and means, giving the ruling major- ity the benefits of his thorough mastery of the subject, as faithfully given to the country now, as when he guided the policies of the ruling party. He contrasts the pres- ent law with the Robbins bill, which sought to consoli- date the grades of sugar, and he again touches the broad field, which he always illuminates. Hear him: Of the grades under Xo. lo, Dutch standard, there were received thirty-five million dollars out of thirty-seven million dollars ; and of the grades under No. 7 I think about fourteen million dollars or fifteen million dollars. But from No. 10 down we get thirty-five millions of POLITICAL ECONOMY. 151 the thirty-seven millions collected on sugar. What effect this change will have on the revenues it is difficult to say ; but I have no doubt it will wholly prevent the importation of the lowest grades, will increase the price of sugar ip the consumer and probably decrease the revenue. At all events it is a dangerous experiment to make in view of our pres- ent financial necessities. But I desire to show how it will operate as a protective measure. I have already shown that by our present law sugar pays a duty of forty percent., forty-five percent., forty-six percent., forty-nine percent., sixty-eight per cent., etc., increasing in rate from the lower to the higher grades. Now note the effect of consolidating the lower grades, as proposed in the Robbins bill, and fixing the single rate of two and forty-one hundredths cents per pound. Melada, which is the lowest grade and now pays about forty per cent., will then pay eighty per cent, ad valorem. The second grade, (that is, sugar not above No. 7,) which now pays forty-five per cent., will then pay sixty-eight and one- half percent, ad valorem. The next grade will pay sixty per cent., the next higher fifty-three per cent., the next higher forty-five per cent., and the next forty-two per cent, ad valorem. In short, the Robbins bill is an inverted cone ; the lowest grade of sugar must bear the highest rate of duty, and the highest grade will bear the lowest rate. In other words, the less labor there is in the im- ported product, the heavier the rate of tax upon it ; and the more labor, foreign labor remember, there is in it, the least burden of tax will be put upon it. The fundamental doctrine of protection is completely overturned and reversed by this bill. Yet it is by no means a free trade bill. It so happens that on the grades upon which the extreme high rate of duty is mnposed, our friends from Louisiana will recieve a very considerably larger protective duty than the present law gives them. Hence the favor with which this proposition is received by gentlemen from that portion of the country. Mr. Kelley. I desire to say that there is such a noise coming from the galleries that we sitting here by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] cannot hear what he is saying. The Speaker/rc; tempore. Unless silence is observed in the galleries they will be cleared. l82 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Mr. Garfield. Now, Mr. Speaker, I object to this bill, first, because it violates the fundamental principles of a just and equitable taxation; and I object to it in the second place because it puts a prohibitory duty upon the low-grade sugars that are refined by American skill, and become the cheap sugar in common use among our people. It injures one portion of our industrial interests and gives an unreasonable pro- tection to another. It violates the canons of free trade on the one hand, and of protection on the other. It destroys absolutely the business of refining the cheap low-grade sugars, and will increase the cost of sugars most in use. Let me illustrate still further. How is it that this day while I speak to you sugar is cheaper in the United States than it has ever been before ? Because we have built up in this country a great industry, by which we are eclipsing the world as refiners of sugar. When the French manufacturers were at Philadelphia at our centennial, they were amazed to see that our sugar products there rivaled the best products of the Old World. They did not understand how it had been done. But it was the result of the same skill that has enabled America to surpass so many other countries in the recent exposition at Paris, and to carry off more medals in proportion to their exhibitors than any other five countries of the globe. We were so successful in the refining of sugar that two years ago we were exporting seventy million pounds of our refined product. It was becoming and it will become, if we are allowed to carry on this in- dustry, a great element in our export trade. We are trading with Cuba and South America; we are compelled to depend largely upon the tropics for our raw material. Is it not wise for us to be able to send back the refined product in exchange? Or shall we so legislate as to give an undue protection to our Louisiana planters, and drive the refining business out of the United States, allowing Cuba, England, and other countries to do our refining for us ? Refined sugar we must have. The day is gone by when our people will eat the animals which abound in the raw unmanufactured sugars of the world. I say, there- fore, that this bill as drawn sins against the consumer and against the refining interest and unreasonably protects the producing interest of the country. Let me illustrate a little further. In the Phillipine islands there is a POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 83 diss of people who have not enough intelHgence and resources to take the first simple step toward clarifying sugar. They have no limestone on their islands; they cannot even furnish the lime to drop into the sugar vats and clarify the product just a little. But they take the juice of the cane and boil it down in the crudest, rudest, simplest way, by labor the cheapest and least skilful ; and when they have reduced it to a black, cheap form of crystallized sugar, the dirtiest yet known, they put it up in sacks of one hundred and fifty p)ounds each, so that a man can carry it on his back to the landing to be shipped away. Our people are buying largely of that low grade of sugar from the Phillipine islands. We are buying it also from other countries where the produc- tion is of a low grade. This sugar we bring here, and by our skill a!id labor make it into a cheap, clean sugar for table use. Shall we now by law impose a prohibitory duty on all that trade and industry, an eighty per cent, rate or a sixty-five per cent, rate, keeping it all out and bring- ing in only the sugar that has been advanced by the higher and more intelligent processes of our nearer neighbors, thus cutting off the whole business of refining these low-grade sugars? I hope not. I know there is some controversy among the refiners themselves. Some of them — indeed, quite a number of most estimable gentlemen — say, "Let this bill pass and we can do a better refining business than is done now; we can refine the high-grade sugars." Now, I am glad to have those gentlemen work the higher grades of sugar and make a success of them; but I see no reason why our refineries should not also take the lowest grades of sugar, that which has the least value, the least labor in it, and bring it up by our American labor to a cheap, useful, merchantable form; and, therefore, I am unwilling, for the sake of helping one class of refiners, to destroy another. I do not believe it is necessary to destroy either. I regret that the refiners do not unite on some common ground on Vhich all could have had a fair chance. But there seems to have been an internecine war among them; and with such a war I have no sympathy. There is so much information as well as discussion in this admirable performance, that one leaves it with much regret. 184 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. From his great speech in reply to Rand. Tucker, of the month of June, 1878, I can only quote this copious passage : Too much of our tariff discussion has been warped by narrow and sectional considerations. But when we base our action upon the con- ceded national importance of tb.e great industries I liave referred to, when we recognize the fact that artisans and their products are essen- tial 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 na- tional 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 cannot become great and self-sustaining. So important, in my view, is the ability of the Nation to manufact- ure 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. We are often surprised in an examination of the labors of congress, to find under what inexpressive heads lie hidden interesting, often most valuable, matter. Duty on sugar was not very suggestive. 'We have seen what it covered. Now we come upon hoop-iron, where I lin- ger only to say, that in Mr. Garfield's minority report of the ways and means, of May, 1880, may be found sev- eral large cubes of very considerable specific gravity, and of great value in the markets of wisdom. It is a com- pact presentation of one part of the mighty subject of iron — of "pig-iron'' also, in some of its important fea- tures. This is apparent when I quote from it the effect POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 85 which would result from the change in the duties, which it most vigorously opposes: I. It will destroy at least six millions of capital now invested in ma- chinery specially and exclusively applied to this particular branch of manufacture in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and other States. II. It will turn out of employment not less than five thousand artis- ans and laborers who are now engaged in this special manufacture, and about ten thousand more who are engaged in the production of the material of which hoop-iron is made. III. It will transfer the profits of these manufactures to the importers and to our rivals in foreign countries, and will not materially reduce the cost of the furnished products to American consumers. This is shown by the fact that since the importation of cut-hoops, under the treasury ruling of 1878, has been allowed at thirty-five per cent, the importers and foreign producers have fixed the prices at so small a fraction below the price at which the American manufacturer can produce them, that only a very small advantage has accrued to the consumer; and the home production has become impossible. IV. It is wholly out of harmony with the duties imposed by existing laws upon every other form of iron manufacture, as may be seen by e.xamining the Revised Statutes (Boutwell's edition), pp. 464, et se'^. It violates two principles whica have controlled nearly all our tariff legislation since the foundation of the government; First, that all im- ported articles which are alike in kind and in their relation to the wants and industries of the United States shall be treated alike in the customs laws. Second, that imported articles which come into competition with tlie industries of this country shall bear a rate of duty proportioned to the amount of skill and labor employed in their production. These extracts also show the steady, far-seeing devo tion of their author, to the vast and varied interests of the Republic, caring for each and all, with the same en- lightened solicitude and sagacity. Immediately connected with the tariff, and interwoven with every fibre of the system of production in all forms, lS6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. is the great subject of transit, the means of transporta- tion. It falls so naturally into this chapter, that I may here place Mr. Garfield's views on our system of railroads, in their relations to commerce, the country generally, as set forth in his speech in the house of June, 1874. The danger of mistranslating is so great, and the reader has such a preference for Mr. Garfield's e.xpression of his own thoughts that time and space must, as most men and things do, give place for him. The trouble is, there is such an exceeding much of him, that one is bewildered by his magnitude, which defies compression. He is not porous. In studying this speech, the place to begin is easily found, though I shall pass to a later paragraph. I cannot give it entire, nor can I find a place short of the end where I would stop, and one can't leave any of him out, at intermediate points. We pass matter of pith and moment, and break in upon him here: What have our people done for the locomotive, and what has it done for us? To the United States, with its vast territorial areas, the rail- road 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 rap- idly hardening. Sixty-seven thousand miles of iron track is a tolerable skeleton, even for a giant. When this new power appeared, our peo- ple 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 neutralize 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. POLITICAI, ECOXOMV. 1 87 The lands given by the States and by the National government to aid in the construction of railroads reach an aggregate of nearly two hun- dred 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 its immediate service. Such a power naturally attracts to its enterprises 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 con- struct, 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 re- duced, 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 centuries to come. "Abroad and at home," as Mr. Adams tersely declares, "it has equally nation- ahzed people and cosmopolized nations." It has played a most im- protant part in the recent movement for the unification and preserva- tion of nations. It enabled us to do what the old military science had pronounced im- possible, to conquer a revolted population of eleven millions, occupying a territory one-fifth as large as the continent of Europe. In an able «ssay 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 eighty thousand fighting men three hundred miles beyond his base of supplies. Another line, in the 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 puljlic expenditures, and a depreciated paper currency, in defiance of all past experience, we have been stead- ily conquering our difficulties, have escaped the predicted collapse, and are promptly meeting our engagements; because, through energetic l8S LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. r lilror.d development, the country has been producing real wealth, as no cov.ntry has produced it before. Finally he sums up the case by de- claring that the locomotive " has dragged the country through its diffi- culties in spite of itself." It is unnecessary to particularize further; for whether there be peace or war, society cannot e.xist in its present order without the railroad. I have noticed briefly what society has done for the locomotive, and what it has done for society. Let us now inquire what it is doing and is likely to do to society. The national constitution and the constitutions of most of the States were formed before the locomotive existed; and of course no special provisions were made for its control. .Are our institutions strong enough to stand the shock and strain of this new force? The editor of the \ation declares the simple truth when, in a recent issue, he says: "The locomotive is coming in contact with the frame-work of our institutions. In this country of simple government the most powerful centralizing force which civilization 1ms yet produced, must, within the ne.xt score of years, assume its relations to that political machinery which is to control and regulate it." The railway problem would have been much easier of solution if its difficulties had been understood in the beginning. But we have waited until the child has become a giant. We attempted to mount a colum- biad on a carriage whose strength was only sufficient to stand the recoil of a twelve-pHDund shot. The danger to be apprehended does not arise from the railroad, merely, but from its combination with a piece of legal machinery known as a private corpxaration. In discussing this theme we must not make an indiscriminate attack up>on corporations. The corporation limited in 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 — 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 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 159 resistance to the tyranny of Charles II., and the judicial savagery of Jeffreys. The spirit of the free town and t/.e chartered colony taught our o\sn fathers how to win their independence. The New England township was the political unit which formed the basis of most of our States. Since the dawn of history, the great thoroughfares have belonged to the people, have been known as the king's highways or the public high- ways, 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 en- joys similar immunities and e.\emptions. 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 corpora- tion 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 an organization is not a public corporation. In the famous Dartmouth college case of 1819 it was decided by the supreme court of the United States that the charter of Dartmouth col- lege is a contract between the State and the corporation, which the legislature cannot alter without the consent of the corporation ; and that any such alteration is void, being in conflict with that clause of the constitution of the United States which forbids a State to make any law impairing the obhgalion of contracts. ipo LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. This decision has stood for more than half a century as a monunient of judicial learning and the great safeguard of vested rights. But Chief Justice Marshall pronounced this opinion ten years before the steam railway was born; and it is clear he did not contemplate the class of corporations that have since come into being. But year by year the doctrine of that case has been e.xtended to the whole class of private corporations, including railroad and telegraph companies. But few of the States in their early charters to railroads reserved any effectual con trol of the operations of the corporations they created. In many instances, like that of the Illinois Central charter, the right to amend was not reserved. In most States each legislature has narrowed and abridged the powers of its successors, and enlarged the powers of the corporations; and these by the strong grip of the law, and in the name of private property and vested rights, hold fast all they have received. By these means not only the corporations but the vast railroad and telegraph systems have virtually passed from the control of the State. It is painfully evident from the experience of the last few years that the efforts of the States to regulate their railroads have amounted to but little more than feeble annoyances. In many cases the corporations have treated such efforts as impertinent intermeddling, and have brushed away legislative restrictions as easily as Gulliver broke the cords with which the Lilliputians attempted to bind him. I do not say that this ta.\ is e.xcessive ; perhaps it is not ; but its rate is determined, and the amount levied and collected, not by the author- ity of the State, but by private parties whose chief concern is to serve their own interests. We have seen that the transportation tax is the amount paid to the companies for their investment. How much they shall invest, where, and under what limitations it shall be invested, has been wholly left to the companies themselves ; but whether they have invested their capital wisely or unwisely, however much the business may be overdone, the investors must be paid for the use of their capital, and that payment is made by the community. In most of the States railroads may be built in unlimited numbers wherever five or ten men, who incorporate themselves under the general law, may choose to build them, This has probably been allowed in the belief that free competition in POLITICAL ECONOMY. I9I building and operating roads would produce economy in the manage- ment and cheapness in transportation. But this expectation has utterly failed. All railroad exiierience has verified the truth of George Stephenson's aphorism, that "when com- bination is possible, competition is impossible." Great Britain has gone much farther into the study of this question than we have, and the result of her latest study is thus expressed in the London Quarterly Review of April last : By the common consent of all practical men competition, the ordinary sefeguard of the public in matters of trade, has ceased to offer the slightest protection (except in a few unimportant cases of rival sea traffic) against railway monopolies. In spite of the efforts of parliament and parliamentary commissions, combinations and amalgamation have proceeded at the instance of the companies, without check and almost without regulation. L'nited systems now exist, constituting by their magnitude and by their exclu- sive possession of whole districts, monopolies to which the earlier authorities would have been strongly opposed. Xor is there any reason to suppose that the progress of combination has ceased, or that it will cease until Great Britain is divided between a small num- ber of great companies. The article concludes with this striking paragraph: "We have tried X.\\e laisscz /aire policy and it has filled; we have tried a meddlesome policy, and it has failed also. We ha\e now to meet the coming day, when all the railways, having- completed their several systems, may, and probably in their own interests will, combine together to take advantage of the public. In the face of this contin- gency we have simply to make our choice between two alternatives; either to let the State manage the railways, or let the railways manage the State. " And here we leave him as abruptly as we began. Were I compiling a hand-book for the campaign, I should include the paper-pulp speech. CHAPTER VII. GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. Appropriation. — Expenditure. — Budgets. — Study of the Subject. — Committee Laws of E.xpenditure. — Cost of War. — When they will disappear in Our Case. — Speech 1872.— Speech 1874. — Episode. — Flat- heads. The Forty -second congress is to be forever distinguished as that in which the vast and complex system of public expenditure was to be established on a basis of sound financial principles, with perspicuous rules of method and order, for the guidance of the labors of those to whom the great task of framing the appropriation bills for the national expenditures might be imposed. The services of James A. Garfield in this field are more un- known to his countrymen, and less appreciated than those of almost any statesman known to our history, the fruit of whose hidden work the people have un- consciously enjoyed. To them these pages will be a revelation. We have already seen him mastering and unfolding the subject of finance and taxation; immedi- ately connected with expenditure, always united in the hand of the English chancellor of exchequer; he is now to develop expenditure, and appear in the character of the first and greatest American chancellor of the excheq uer of our parliamentary history; he is himself to undergo GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 1 93 slight mental modification, exuberance of expression, the little expressions of fancy, happy efforts of memory in quotation, which waited on his earlier efforts on the floor, are exorcised, and at the end of the Forty-third congress he went forth, not a deeper, higher, or stronger man, but one, on the whole more compacted and indu- rated, holding himself more perfectly in his own hand. He was placed at the head of the committee on appro- priations, with Aaron A. Sargent, Oliver J. Dickey, Free- man Clark, Frank W. Palmer, Eugene Hale, Wm. E. Niblack, Samuel S. Marshal, and Thomas S. Swan, selected with the care which indicated the accurate knowledge of men of the speaker of the house. The duties of the committee were a part of the labors of the ways and means, until the Thirty-ninth congress, when the appropriation was created. The annual expenditure was provided for in twelve bills, and their consideration in the two congresses, under Garfield, occupied a third of the time of the house. It was a privileged com- mittee, might sit during the sessions of the house, and its business always in order, subject to the will of the house. The first labor of the chairman was personal qualifica- tion. Here he always began. His knowledge was al- ready large and accurate. He went to the great reservoir English history, usage and method. He read the budget speeches of the chancellors of the exchequer for twenty years; studied their various methods, their grasp of their subjects, arrangements, presentations and explanations ; studied their estimates, and what if any were their funda- 194 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. mental rules, and mastered the history of their expendi- ture during long periods of time. Then he took up our own which was scanty enough. He studied the appropriations themselves, with their re- lations to the extent of population and business of the people. He found that for a long time, it was the usage to appropriate a given sum in solido for the government at large, with no reference to the different departments ; that in time came a general division of a sum for each department; then subdivisions for the bureaus, and further, subdivisions for groups of items, and finally all were itemized, and a specific sum designated for each Of these were born the whole brood of deficiencies, against which no attained knowledge and skill have yet devised a safeguard. These divisions and sub- divisions, the further they were intelligently carried, be- came the safeguards niore and more effective, for the protection of the treasur>% against the wash of that great flood which had hitherto by its volume and current, swept away the unguarded moneys. Then he took up the bafiling matter of wastes and their causes, lapses, surpluses and deficiencies. All this was machinery ; mechanics, administration, surpluses and deficits involved principles. Below lay the great question of the laws of public expenditure. Upon what did they rest? What should govern expenditure? What had? In England there was an obvious relation between expenditure and population, engaged as the English were in their vastly diversified employments. In America the same relation was found to exist, modified by its wider GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 1 95 expansion, and the condition of the territory it occupied. From these he deduced the rate of expense in time of peace. He found that war was constantly breaking in, breaking up everything, devouring everything, and de- manding new and extraordinary revenues, disarrang- ing all the sources of income, and compelling a resort to new methods, often of credit or loan supply, the burdens of which would remain after their cause had ceased. What, then, does war do? What are its effects as a mat- ter of pure finance, upon expenditure and the sources of revenue? His labor was limited to expenditure. He made wide and several inductions, as history offered the means. This, to him, seemed the rule. Take a given public war, mark the average of expenditure before it began, note its continuance in time, double this time, and the sum would represent the probable period, at which the expenditure would be near what it was when the v/ar began, having reference to the rule of population, and in this country, its proportion to the country it covered. In this estimate, another thing came in for consideration. Upon the conclusion of the war, in determining at what period the ante bellum rate of expenditure will be reached, it became necessary to distinguish between what items of expense were due wholly to the war, and what were incident to peace only, and what partook of both. As time advances, under a wise administration, the for- mer would diminish, and more nearly approximate equal- ity with the sum required for peace, which in turn would constantly be on the i.icrease. The intersection of the 196 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. war descending line, with the rising peace margin would mark the point, below which their united volume would never descend. The rise of the peace expenditure, would compensate the decrease of that for war. The time for this cutting of the lines, he calculated, would, in our present case, be reached in 1876. Upon this theory of expenditure, he formed his first budget. The general soundness of it was confirmed by the experience of the two congresses, during which he presided over expenditure, and the system and methods thus introduced, have not been widely departed from since. Some further words will explain the basis of his per- sonal relations with the gentlemen of his committee, and the methods he employed to secure from each his best efforts in the common cause. Hitherto it was the rule of the senate, and in a modified form of the house also, that all the members of the committee were the practical subordinates of the head. He commanded a company of privates — was the one figure on the floor — the chief, absorbing all the credit and notoriety the place gave him. Garfield introduced a new practice, and with it new life and efficiency in his company. Here, too, he drew on his own experience and early observation. When first one of the Hiram corps of teachers, the chief had a way of absorbing and drawing to himself the credit due to his several lieutenants. The evil as well as in- justice of it, was seen and felt by the young professor of languages. When he succeeded to the headship, in in- terviews with each of the professors and teachers, he GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 1 97 commended them for such merit as they had, and urged them severally to go forward on their appointed ways, making and wearing their own fames. The institution sprang into new life and vigor. When exjx)stulated with, as diminishing his own reputation and importance, he answered, "See what it is doing for the college." It was effective service that he wanted. He knew men, and secured it, leaving to others to care for his reputation. He early unfolded his views of expenditure to his associates. He then explained his idea of their rela- tions to him, and to each other. Of the twelve great bills, one at least, was committed to each of the nine, to whom it was delivered by the chief, with all the infor- mation he had, and full suggestions as to the best method of dealing with it. A discriminating reduction of the estimates was the standing order, each man to go to all the departments, heads of bureaus, and down to the hid- den, unknown men, who did know, all this informa- tion to be gathered, noted, collated and filed. When the man's bill was perfected and passed upon, he re- ported it, had the charge of it on the floor, made the opening speech, and the closing argument, with his chief and associates present, a trained, intelligent, armed band, acting in concert, ready to aid when needed — until then remaining silent. The work and credit of it thus were the task and property of the given man. The commit- tee without reference to party lines, at once came to be a band of friends, standing closely about the chief whom they loved, never differing or jealous, always effective on the floor, and useful in committee. 198 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. For himself, Garfield took largely the care of the re- maining bills, while each member was prepared to aid him and all the others. On the introduction of his leading bill, the chairman took occasion to unfold his general views, which he did on the twenty-third of January, 1872. From this I quote nearly all which is an exposition of his views. Mr. Chairman; In opening the discussion of this bill, I realize the difficulties which at all times attend the work of making appropriations for carrying on this government. Elut there are more than ordinary difficulties attending the work of a chairman who succeeds to a position which has been so adorned as has the chairmanship of the committee on appropriations during the last two years.* The most I can now venture, is to express the hope that by the generous aid of my col- leagues on the committee, and the support of the house, I may be able to follow, at a humble distance, in the path my predecessor has traveled. I would not occupy any time this morning in the preliminary discus- sion of this bill, but for the fact that this general appropriation bill, more than any other of the eleven which will come before the house, embraces in its scope nearly the whole civil establishment of the gov- ernment. The approval of this bill is, in a certain sense, the ajsproval of the whole system to which the other appropriations will refer. If our general plan of appropriations ought to be attacked, this is the place to begin. If they have a sufficient reason for being in the main what they are, that sufficient reason can be given for the passage of this bill substantially as it stands in the print before us. I therefore beg the indulgence of the committe while I call attention to a few ques- tions which have arisen in my mind during the study I have given the subject. RELATION OF EXPENDITURES TO THE GOVERNMENT. And first of all, I will consider what part e.xpenditures play in the affairs of the government. It is difficult to discuss expenditures com- prehensively without discussing also the revenues ; but I shall on this * Mr. Dawes, now in the senate. A GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER 199 occasion allude to the revenues only on a single pxsint. Revenue and the expenditure of revenue form by far the most important element in the government of modern nations. Revenue is not, as someone has said, the friction of a government, but rather its motive power. With- out it the machinery of a government cannot move ; and by it all the movements of a government are regulated. The expenditure of rev- enue forms the grand level from which all heights and depths of legis- lative action are measured. The increase and the diminution of the burdens of taxation depend alike upon their relation to this level of ex- penditures. That level once given, all other policies must conform to it and be determined by it. The expenditure of revenue and its dis- tribution, 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 cor- ruption or public wrong that does not at last present itself at the cash- ier'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 publish- ing a balance sheet of the e.xpenditures 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 dol- lars in gold per annum. HOW SHALL EXPENDITURES BE GAUGED? 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 sug- ge.stitms in the direction of its solution. 200 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 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 milHon dollars a year, may be to say that we are penu- rious 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 reason- able or exorbitant. It has occurred to me that two tests can be applied. TEST OF POPULATION. The first and most important is the relation of expenditure to the population. In some ratio corresponding to the increase of popula- tion it may be reasonable to increase the expenditures of a government. Thi?is the test usually applied in Europe. In an official table I have before me the exp>enditures 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 aver- age expenditure per caprita for that period, was two pounds, seven shil- lings 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: In 1830 $1 03 In 1840 I 41 In 1850 I 60 In i860 I 94 In 1870 4 26 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 popu- lation tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, that is, at a per cent, compounded annually. If the normal increase of expenditures follows 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 jjeace to grov/ gradually less. GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 20I TEST OF TERRITORIAL SETTLEMENT AND EXPANSION. But in a country like ours there is another element besides popula- tion that helps to determine the movement of expenditures. That ele- ment 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 ad- dition of new States. To begin with the original thirteen States, and gauge expenditure till now by the increase of papulation alone, would be manifestly incorrect. But the fact that there have been added twenty-four States, and that we now have nine territories, not includ- ing Alaska, brings a new and important element into the calculation. It is impossible to estimate the effect of this element upon expendi- tures. 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 terri- tory 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 en- large the number of States within our borders; and when we have set- tled our unoccupied lands, when we have laid down the fixed and cer- tain 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 in- crease 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. EXPENDITURES OF ENGLAND. In England, for example, where the territory is fixed, and they are remitted to the single law of increase of population, the increase of ex- penditure during the last fifteen years of peace has been only about one and three-quarter per cent, compouiulcd aiiiuially. I believe nobody has made a very careful estimate uf tiie rate in our country; our growth has been too irregular to afford daLi for an accurate estimate. But a 202 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. gentleman who has given much attention to the subject expressed to me the behef 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 ac- tual test of experience can determine the movements of our expendi- tures; 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. EFFECTS OK WAK ON E.XPENDITL'RES. Thus far I have considered the expenditures that arise in times of peace. Any view of this subject would be incomplete that did not in- clude 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 carry- ing 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 disap- peared, nowhere does war show its destroying power so certainly and so rentlessly as in the columns which represent the taxes and expendi- tures 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, m 1815, the ex- penditures 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 seven 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 pres- GARFIELD AS A FINANXIER. 203 ent century. Then followed nearly forty years of pseace, 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 exfienditures 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. WAR EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES. As the second e.xample of the effect of war on the movement of national exjjenditures, 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 1825, inclusive, the annual average was eleven million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1825 to 1830 204 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. it was thirteen million dollars. From 1830 to 1835 it was seventeen mill- ion dollars. From 1835 to 1840, in which period occurred the Semi- nole war, it was thirty million five hundred thousand. 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 exp>ect to go in the descending scale before we reach the new level of [jeace. We have already seen that it took England twenty years after Waterloo before she reached such a level. Our o\\ n experience has been pecu- liar in this, that our people have been impatient of debt, and have always determinedly set about the work of reducing it. Here followed a valuable and carefully prepared table. DUK.VTION OF VV,\R EXPE.NDITUKI^S. 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 de- crease ; 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 de- crease has continued for a period almost exactly twice the length of the war itself. After the war of 1812-15, ^^^ 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 1S3S, the new level was not reached until 1844, six years after its close. .A.fter the Mexican war, which lasted two years, it took four years, until 1852, to reach the new level of peace. CxARFIELD AS A FINANCIER, 205 WHEN SHALL WE REACH OCR NEW LEVEL OF EXPENDITURES? 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 ex- travagant. 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 disburs- ing bureaus of the treasury department we may also . expect a further reduction of the force now employed in settling war claims. \\'e cannot 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 burden of interest will con- stantly 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 ordinarj' exp>enditures reduced to one hun- dred and twenty-five million dollars, and the interest on our public debt to ninety-five million dollars; making our total exp>enditures, ex- clusive 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 fig- ure. In making this estimate I have assumed that there will be a con- siderable reduction of the burdens of taxation, and a revenue not nearly so great in excess of the expenditures as we now collect. This is the presentation of general principles and shows the breadth and grasp of Garfield's mind. 2o6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. This rapid reduction of the principal and interest of our public debt tends also to strengthen the hope that for three or four years to come our expenditures may continue to decrease. It would be cheering, indeed, if we might also hope that when the Nation again begins the ascent it will be up the beautiful slope where no sign of war shall come for many long years. If so, the ascent will be gradual and gentle, and. will mark the course of that highway along which the Nation shall move upward and forever upward in its grand career of prosperity. But let it forever be borne in mind that the day which witnesses a new war increases more and more heavily than ever the calamities of the past. For the burdens ot the past are mainly the burdens of war, and there is a point to which a national debt may rise when its people lose heart and grow hopeless under the burden. NECESSITY OK REDUCING OUR PUBLIC DEBT. Conceding to England all her wealth, all her greatness, and all her glory, still one fact in her history is so full of gloomy portent that I have never been able to understand how her statesmen could look upon it without the profoundest alarm. It would seem that all hope of pay- ing off, or even of considerably reducing her public debt, is extin- guished in the minds of her people. The last attempt in that direction was made by the chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, in his speech on the budget of 1866. After affirming that nine leading nations of Europe had incurred a debt of no less than one billion five hundred million pounds sterling during the last twenty-five years, and that, too, in a time of very general peace, he said that America was the only great nation of the world that was now considerably reducing her debt. Then referring to the British debt, he said : "At the close of war against France in i8it;, the British debt was nine hundred and two million two hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds. On the fifth of January 1854, it was eight hundred million five hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. From 1815 to 1854 there were nearly forty years of the most profound tranquility ever known in this country.' " * ♦ "The rate of decrease during that period was two million six hundred and nine thousand pounds per annum." * * " I do not believe if we take the whole years of peace since 1815, that the average reduction would reach three million pounds. If GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 207 ever we should become involved in any great and protracted war, we must expect to see the debt increase at about ten times the annual rate by which we reduce it in time of peace." A steady though not extravagant reduction of our debt should be the fixed policy of the Nation. Here followed a luminous exposition of the treasury reports of receipts and expenditures, with illustrative tables. An examination of the present and of the next year's estimates which were compared with those of Great Britain, concludes thus: I may venture to say for the committee on appropriations, that while they have endeavored to follow the line of rigid and reasonable econ- omy, they have not forgotten the vastness and variety of the functions of government, whose operations should be maintained vigorously and generously. It would be a mistake to cut down expenditures in any de- partment, so as to cripple any work which must be accomplished, and which can better be done at once and ended, by a liberal appropriation than to let it drag on through a series of years by reason of insufficient appropriations. It is better to make a reduction of whole groups, when that can bedone, than merely to cut down individual items. But I hojje that members of the house will bear in mind that in many of our civil departments we have large forces of employes, which the settlement of war accounts made necessary, and which, when their work is done, it will require no little courage and effort to reduce to a peace basis. In doing so, it would be well for us to adopt the sentiment recently expressed by Mr. Gladstone, in the house of commons, that — ' ' The true way to save is not the cutting down of single items, but a more complete organization of our departments, and the determina- tion, that for whatever the country spends, it shall have full value in labor, talent, or materials." In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I thank the members of the house for the patience with which they have listened to these dry details, and for the kind attention with which they have honored me. I yield the floor for any remarks which other gentlemen may desire to make, and then I shall submit the bill to the judgment of the committee of the whole. 2o8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. As a general unfolding and discussion of elementary principles, also an exposition of that portion of a budget which deals with expenditure, this stands as the first and ablest in the house. It opened a new era. The legislative bill became, in Mr. Garfield's hands, the budget bill of the house. On its introduction at the first session of the Forty-third congress, he again made an elaborate presentation of his views generally. I repro- duce some of its leading propositions to be taken with the speech just quoted from : The bill now pending before the committee of the whole is the best gauge by which to measure the magnitude and cost of the National government. Its provisions extend to every leading function of the government in the three great departments — legislative, executive and judicial — and includes the civil functions of the military and naval es- tablishments. It appropriates for all the salaries and contingent ex- penses of all the officers and employes of the civil service. If its pro- visions could be thrown upon canvas, they would form an outline map exhibiting the character and the magnitude of the government of the United States. This is the proper standpoint from which to study the public expen- ditures, to examine the relation of expenditures to taxation, and of both to the prosperity and well-being of the Nation. ♦ * * The necessary expenditures of the government form the base line from which we measure the amount of our taxation required, and on which we base our system of finance. We have frequently heard it remarked, since the session began, that we should make our expendi- tures come within our revenues — that we should "cut our garment ac-_ cording to our cloth." This theory may be correct when applied to private affairs, but it is not applicable to the wants of nations. Our national expenditures should be measured by the real necessities and the proper needs of the go%emment. We should cut our garment so as to fit the person to be clothed. If he be a giant, we must provide cloth sufficient for a fitting garment. GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 209 The committee on appropriations are seeking earnestly to reduce the expenditures of the government ; but they reject the doctrine that they should at all hazards reduce the expenditures to the level of the rev- enues, however small those revenues may be. They have attempted rather to ascertain what are the real and vital necessities of the govern- ment ; to find what amount of money will suffice to meet all its honor- able obligations, to carry on all its necessary and essential functions, and to keep alive those public enterprises which the country desires its government to undertake and accomplish. When the amount of ex- penses necessary to meet these objects is ascertained, that amount should be appropriated ; and ways and means for procurmg that amount should be provided. There are some advantages in the British system of managing their finances. In the annual budget reported to the house of commons, ex- penditures and taxation are harnessed together. If appropriations are increased, taxes are correspondingly increased. If appropriations are reduced, a reduction of taxes accompanies the reduction. On some accounts, it is unfortunate that our work of appropriations is not connected directly with the work of taxation. If this were so, the necessity of ta.xation would be a constant check upon extravagance, and the practice of economy would promise, as its immediate result, the pleasure of reducing taxation. SURPLUS AND DEFICIT. Revenues and expenditures may be considered from two points of view ; in relation to the people and their industries, and in relation to the government and the effective working of its machinery. So far as the people are concerned, they willingly bear the burdens of taxation, when they see that their contributions are honestly and wisely ex- pended to maintain the government of their choice, and to accomplish those objects which they consider necessary for the general welfare. So far as the government is concerned, the soundness of its financial aifairs depends upon the annual surplus of the revenue over expendi- tures. A steady and constant revenue drawn from sources that repre- sent the prosperity of the Nation— a revenue that grows with the growth of national wealth, and is so adjusted to the expenditures that a constant and considerable surplus is annually left in the treasury above all the necessary current demands ; a surplus that keeps the 14 2IO LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. treasury strong, that holds it above the fear of a sudden panic ; that makes it impregnable against all private combmations ; that makes it a terror to all stock-jobbing and gold-gambling — this is financial health. This is the situation that wise statesmanship should endeavor to sup- port and maintain. Of course in this discussion I leave out the collateral though impor- tant subject of banking and currency. The surplus, then, is the key to our financial situation. Every act of legislation should be studied in view of its effects upon the surplus. Two sets of forces are constantly acting upon the surplus. It is increased by the growth of the revenue and by the decrease of expenditure. It is decreased by the repeal or reduction of taxation, and by the increase of expenditures. When both forces conspire agamst it, when taxes are diminished and expenditures are increased, the surplus disappears. With the disappearance of tlie surplus comes disaster — disaster to the treasury, disaster to the public credit, disaster to all the public in- terests. In times of peace, when no sudden emergency has made a great and imperious demand upon the treasury, a deficit cannot occur except as tlie result of unwise legislation or reckless and unwarranted administration. That legislation may consist in too great an increase of appropriations, or in too great a reduction of taxation, or in both combined. HISTORY AND CAUSE OK DEFICITS. Twice in the history of this Nation a deficit has occurred in time of peace. In both instances it has occurred because congress went too far in the reduction of taxation — so far as to cripple the revenues and de- plete the treasury. It may be worth our while to study those periods of our history in which deficits have thus occurred. I do not speak of periods of war, for then the surplus is always maintained by the aid of loans; but I speak of deficits occurring in times of peace. From the close of the last war with England, in 1815, our revenues maintained a healthy and steady growth, interrupted only by years of financial crisis. A constant surplus was maintained suffi- cient to keep the treasury steady and diminish the public debt, and finally complete its pa\ ment. But in 1833, the great financial discussion, which at one time threatened to dissolve the Union, was ended by the pr.ssage of the compromise tariff of 1833 — a law that provided for the 1 GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 211 scaling down of the rates of taxation on imports in each alternate year until 1842, when all should be reduced to the uniform rate of twenty per cent, lid valorem. By this measure the revenues were steadily decreased, and in 1840 the treasury was empty. During the nine preceding years the receipts into the treasury had averaged thirty-two millions a year; but in 1840 they had fallen to nineteen and a half millions, and in 1841 to less than seventeen millions. True, the expenditures had grown with the growth of the country; but no large or sudden expenditure appeared in any of those years. The deficit appeared, and it was unquestionably due to too great a reduction of taxation. This deficit brought political and financial disaster. To meet it a special session of congress was con- vened in June, 1841, and President Tyler sent in his message, in which he declared that by the end of the fiscal year of March 4, 1842, there would be a deficit of eleven million four hundred and six thousand one hundred and thirty-two dollars and ninety-eight cents, and a fur- ther deficit by September, 1842, of four million eight hundred and forty- five thousand dollars. In his message of December 7, 1841, he reported a still further de- ficit, and declared that these accumulated deficits were the results of the too great reduction of taxation by the legislation of 1833. These accumulated deficits amounted to more than all the receipts for that year. They were to that time what a deficit of three hundred millions would be to us to-day. I understood the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes^ to de- clare that congjress had never increased taxation in time of peace. Our history does not bear him out in this assertion. The congress of 1841-42 was called upon to repair the wasted reve- nues by an increase of ta.xation. The debates of that body show that the bill they passed was treated wholly as a necessity of the revenue. The bill itself was entitled "An act to provide revenue for the govern- ment." It became a law in 1842, and under its influence the revenues revived. In 1S43 tiie surplus reappseared, and again the revenues con- tinued to grow with the growth of the country. Excepting the period of the Mexican war, which, like all other mod- em wars, was supported by the aid of loans, the surplus continued down to and including the first year of Buchanan's administration. 212 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. During the four years of Pierce's administration, the revenues had ex- ceeded seventy millions a year; but in the first year of Buchanan's term, an act was passed so largely reducing the duties on imports that the revenues dropped to forty-six and a half millions in 1858, and a deficit appeared which continued and accumulated until the coming in of Lincoln's administration. Let us notice the growth of that deficit. On the first day of July, 1857, the public debt, less cash in the treasury, was eleven millions three hundred and fifty thousand two hundred and seventy dollars and si.xty- three cents; on the first day of July, i860, the accoimt stood, total debt, less cash in the treasury, sixty-one million one hundred and forty-seven thousand four hundred and ninety-seven dollars, showing a deficit ot fifty millions in the space of three years. When Mr. Lincoln was in- augurated, in 1861, the debt had increased to nearly ninety millions and there had accumulated a deficit of more than seventy millions, and those four years of Buchanan's administration were not years of extraordinary expenditures. Indeed, during those four years, the ex- penditures had not averaged so great as in the last year of the adminis- tration of Mr. Pierce. The deficit then did not arise from an increase of expenditure, but from a decrease of revenue. For four years the government had been paymg its ordinary expenses by the aid of loans at ruinous rates, and by forced loans in the form of treasury notes. Here, as in the former case, the final remedy for the deficit was taxa- tion. The first act of the last session of congress in Buchanan's term was an act to authorize the issue of treasury notes to meet the expenditures of the government; and almost the last act of that session was the act of March 2, 1861, to provide for the payment of outstanding treasury notes, and to meet the expenditures of the government by increasing the duties on imports. This act was passed by a Republican congress, and was reluctantly approved by a President whose policy and whose party had produced the deficit, and brought financial distress upon the country by cutting too deeply and too recklessly into the public reve- nues. RECENT CONDITION OF THE TREASURY. Mr. Chairman, when the house convened in December last, we were startled by the decl.aration that another deficit was aliout to appear. GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 213 W'e were informed that we might look for a deficit of forty-two millions by the end of the current fiscal year. This announcement was indeed the signal for alarm throughout the country; and it became the imper- ative duty of congress to inquire as to whether there would be a deficit, and if so, to ascertain its cause and provide the remedv. In this instance, to the ordinary causes that produce a deficit, there had been superadded the disastrous financial calamity that visited a portion of the business interests of this country in September last; a panic that fell with unparalleled weight and suddenness, and swept like a tornado, leaving destruction in its track. We have not yet suffi- ciently recovered from the shock to be able to measure with accuracy the magnitude of its effects. We cannot yet tell how soon and how completely the revenues of the country will recover from the shock. But we have sufficient data to ascertain, with some degree of accuracy, the part that the legislation of congress has played in producing the situation in which we now find ourselves. That we may more clearly trace the legislative steps by which we have reached our present position, I invite your attention to the condi- tion of our finances at the close of the war. Leaving out of view the fiscal year ending J une 30, 1865, in which there were paid over the counter of the treasury the enormous sum of one billion two hundred and ninety million dollars, the accumulated products of taxation and of loans, we begin our examination with the \ear that followed the close of the war, the fiscal year ending June 30, 1866. In that year, our aggregate revenues, from all sources, exclusive of loans, amounted to five hundred and fifty-eight million dollars, and our expenditures to nearly five hundred and twenty-one million dollars, leaving us a clear surplus of thirty-seven million dollars. These were the gigantic propor- tions of our income and our payments. From these as a base line we sketch the subsequent history of our finances. From these vast totals the work of triple reduction began — reduction of the revenue by there- peal of taxes, reduction of ordinary payments by the decrease of expendi- tures, reduction of the public debt by applying to it the annual surplus. Then follows a history of surplus and reduction of taxation, since the war, witli tables and results, after which he mildly solaces liimself and warns others, thus: 214 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Mr. Chairman, it is a grateful task to remove burdens from the in- dustries and the earnings of the American people. No more grateful work can an .\merican congress be called upon to perform. But while we are relieving the people from the burdens of taxation, it should al- ways be borne in mind that we are in danger of so crippling the rev- enues as to embarrass the government and endanger the public credit. It is a great thing to remove all burdensome taxes; but there is danger that while congress may imitate Tennyson's Godiva, who — Took away the tax, .^nd built herself an everlasting name, — yet in so doing, it may cause the public credit to go forth from a de- spoiled treasury, and, like the Lady Godiva, ride naked in the streets of the world. We have had abounding faith in the elasticity of our revenues. We have found that even reduction of rates freciuently brine's us increased revenues; that the buoyant and almost immortal life of our industries will make the tree of our revenues bloom again, how oftensoever we may pluck its flowers and its fruits. We think of it as the fabled tree which Virgil's hero found in tiie grove of Avemus. Whenever the bough of gold was plucked away, another sprang out in its place: Prime avuUo non deficit alter Aureus; et simili frondescit virga metallo. But, sir, we may pluck the golden lx)ugh once too often. We may pluck away with it the living forces of the tree itself. Thus refreshed, he continues the broad discussion of surplus and deficit, with apt reference to our own ex- perience. Then he takes up our recent expenditure, which called up Mr. Dawes, his predecessor. The whole is illustrated by carefully prepared tables and figures. This only brings us through the first third of this very statesman like performance. The conference report on the tariff bill being before the house on the twenty-third of the following June, which gave scope for the counterpart of his budget, he submitted to the house a clear and forcible presentation GARFIELD AS A FINANCIER. 215 of it, supplementing the effort just brought to our notice. The reader is now in possession of the means of form- ing an estimate of the views of Mr. Garfield upon the great subjects of money, the currency, taxation and ex- penditure, with so much of his reasoning as enables him to see the grounds on which they rest ; and it is not my purpose to return to either of them, though six years of congressional life remain to be glanced at. I turn back to refer to an episode. REMOVAL OF THE FLATHEADS. In the vacation of the summer of 1872, General Gar- field went on a mission to the Indian country, by ap- pointment of the executive. The Flat/ieads, occupying the valley of the Bitter Root, or Snake river, had long refused to comply with their engagement to remove to a new reservation, some hundred miles distant. With his characteristic thorough- ness, he began with Lewis and Clarke's expedition, and read up all the literature on the Indian question. He started in May, this threader of the intricacies of bud- gets, accompanied by the companion of his European tour, and sweet child, Mollie, whom he left at Leaven- worth, and himself staged the four hundred and fifty miles between Salt Lake City and the Snake. The Flatheads were all Catholics, and numbered five or six hundred— a superior order of the natives, with some rudiments of civilization. There were plenty of stories of Lewis and Clarke, who were there more than sixty years before. He saw an elderly, intelligent half-breed, the reputed son of Captain Clarke, whose fiame-red hair 2l6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. testified of the probability of the story. The general him- self visited the reservation and judged of its capacity and fitness for their residence. On his return he assembled the Indians and the agents, when after a two or three days' talk, two of the three chiefs assented to the terms he was authorized to offer, and he was thus able to ex- ecute his mission satisfactorily. On their way back, at Chicago, he purchased a paper and there read the first account of the Credit Mobilier embroglio. He hurried on to Washington, made his re- port to the President on the thirteenth or fourteenth of September, and at once secured the publication of the statement of the facts he always made, and calmly awaited what time might unfold. Through all of the not quite forty-one years of his eventful life, this was the first whisper derogatory of his name. In the next part of my labors, the reader will find an exhaustive expose of this, and the other two charges which came upon him at about the same time, one of which grew out of his con- scientious discharge of his duties as the head of the com- mittee on appropriations, and another was calumniously connected with it. Let no reader be deterred by the seeming length of what is offered him. He will there find all the original material from which he can form a satisfactory judgment of General Garfield's conduct, in all the cases referred to, and I have written thus far in vain, if I have not shown that the thus assailed man is fully entitled to have each of his countrymen examine and decide for himself, the merits of these charges. PRIVATE RESIDENCE AND OFFICE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD, MENTOR, O. PART THIRD, He is Calumniated, CHAPTER I. A CHAPTER ON SLANDERS. Credit Mobilier.— The Charge and How Met.— Union of Credit Mo- biher with the Union Pacific. — Its Purpose and Plans. — Oakes Ames, Trustee, Places His Stock, and How. — Suit and Exposure. — Gai-field's Prompt Action. — Blaine Demands an Investigation. — The Committee. — Its Report E.\onerates Garfield from Blame. — Leaves Him E.xposed to Charge of Perjury. — Case Considered. — All the Evi- dence Given. — Ames Impeaches Himself.— Contradicted by His Pa- pers and Writings. — No Case. — Garfield's Statement. — Its Support. — Wholly Innocent. Living and walking on a level above the heads of dealers in votes, caucus and convention managers, never having an acquaintance with the makers and workers ot rings; surrounded by an atmosphere too raeified and cold for subsidists and lobbyists, the jobbers in congres- sional legislation ; never having about him men of whom questions are asked and whose ways lie through the un- known, he was suddenly compelled to pass the ordeal of calumny, relentless as slander is, and come to appreciate the fugacious tenure of reputation, and be compelled to fall back, and in, upon himself. The three charges, "Venal Dealing in Stock," "The DeGolycr Contract," and "Salary Grab," like three assaulting hosts, came upon him by surprise. Allies they were, each giving might to the others, though j/.ob- ably had it not been insisted that he was vulnerable to 220 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the first, the other two would have been less fierce and persistent. CREDIT MOBILIER. The alleged stock transaction is supposed to have oc- curred late in 1867 or early in 1868. No assailant has been able to fix its date. As we have seen, it transpired to the public, and took form, in the summer or autumn of 1872. This seeming cover of time and silence gave it added weight and wings. The charge involved many, each of whom had been regarded as unapproachable by corruption. The number involved, their high personal characters, in the curious illogic of the public mind dealing with charges upon men, gave it force and weight instead of doubt and improbability. On the second day of the third session of the Forty- second congress, Mr. Blaine, whose name was on the list of the proscribed, acting by request of others, demanded an immediate investigation by the house, and a commit- tee of five was appointed, consisting of Luke P. Poland, Nathaniel P. Banks, George W. McCrary, William E. Niblack and William M. Merrick, all men ranking with the first of the body, and the two last among the ablest of the representative men of the Democracy. After a patient and exhaustive hearing, in which all known sources of information were used in all the known and un- known ways of congressional investigations, the commit- tee having perfect jurisdiction of the case, unanimously exonerated Mr. Garfield. No man of the house before believed him guilty. No member has ever since given it credit, or will repeat the charge. A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 221 On the eighth of May, 1873, Mr. Garfield him- self gave a masterly expose of the case to the public, which seemed to clarify the atmosphere of all the color- ing matter that the committee left suspended in it. There is no silencing malice, or answering the scruples of aspiring rivals. They did not immediately die out. The year following was their apparent opportunity, and he was assailed in his own district, on all the charges. On the nineteenth of September, 1874, he invited friends and enemies to a discussion of all the charges, now boldly made upon him. That was the vital issue in his pending re-election. There, in a calm, colorless manner, clear and forceful, he distinctly stated each charge, and exposed and disproved it, calling upon any and all to answer or deny his statements or conclusions, giving them ample time for that purpose. No one undertook the hopeless task. The issues thus made his people adjudged in his favor, and from that no appeal has ever been made. It was taken as conclusive in the State, and reaffirmed by his unanimous nomination and election by the Re- publicans of the Ohio legislature to the senate of the United States. His recent national nomination is an af- firmation of the judgment of congress and of his own people. During all the time of the congressional investigation, as during all the years since, men and women, the purest in the land, of lives the most elevated and blameless, men of the most exalted positions, of unquestioned integrity and purposes, sought and associated with him, cultivated his society, gave him their trust, their luve, 22 2 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. and applause. They hailed his nomination as an omen, a pledge for the elevation of our politics, and the purifi- cation of our highest public and national life. Against slander there is no plea of former accjuittal ; no statute of limitations is a bar ; no trust, no faith, no love however profound and universal are the least protection against it. Every man, wherever he stands, however surrounded, is within reach, exposed to its shafts. It may be said that the judgment of the house of rep- resentatives, of the State of Ohio, of a national conven- tion, do not bind the people of the Republic, and these questions of fraud and misconduct may be heard in the great forum. The charges are not now renewed because any intelligent man believes them, nor for the purpose of injuring the candidate as a man, but it is a means of war which may embarrass, possibly harm, political oppo- nents in a national contest for power. I will deal with this matter as a new question. It is alleged that in December, 1867, or January, 1868, Mr. Garfield in effect corruptly purchased and held for some time, ten shares of stock of a corporate body, known as the Credit Mobilier, and that he real- ized by the transaction three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. If there was fraud in this transaction it can be shown precisely where it resides, and the evidence can be pointed out that proves it. The stock itself must have been tainted, or there was fraud in the purchase, or the pur- pose of the acquisition was bad. Some things need to be stated for a clear apprecia- A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 223 tion of the case. The Union Pacific railroad company was chartered by congress. It received large subsidies of land to secure its construction. Congress promised a liberal loan of United States bonds, deliverable upon the completion of its sections. Should these prove inade- quate, the company was authorized to issue its own bonds, and to the extent of the insufficiency of the United States bonds, to pay for the construction; these con- struction bonds of the company were to be prior in security to the debt of the company to the United States for its bonds. The government of the United States ap- pointed two of the directors, and retained the right to annul the company's charter. These great advantages were secured to the company by act of congress of July, 1864. No further legislation was sought by the company. In 1859 Pennsylvania incorporated a company which afterward took the name Credit Mobilier from the French company of that name, with a capital of two million five hundred thousand dollars, which was afterward, by its own action, increased to three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Its declared purpose was to use its capital to aid the construction of great works of improvement the profits of the building of which would be dividends on its stock. Later, Thomas C. Durant, of New York, who was largely an owner and manager of the rail- road company and the Credit Mobiher, and Oakes Ames, of Massachusetts, who was also a stockholder in both com- panies, united their energies, genms, and means, for the construction of the road, the building up of the Credit Mobilier, and th-^? enriching of themselves and associates. 224 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. The means employed were by a contract, executed in August, 1867, between Oakes Ames and the Union Pa- cific, for the construction of six hundred and sixty-seven miles of railroad for the sum of forty-seven million nine hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. In October, 1867, another contract was made between Oakes Ames, the Credit Mobilier, and seven trustees, to whom Ames had assigned the contract for construction, by which the Credit Mobilier was to advance money to build the road at a rate of interest and commissions of nine and one-half per-cent. All the leading holders of Union Pacific stock were holders of Credit Mobilier stock. To ensure the perpetual control of the Union Pacific, it was desirable that the seven trustees should hold perpetual proxies of the Union Pacific stock, and thus secure the direction of the company. To ensure this, the profits of the Ames construction contract were to be divided only among the holders of the Credit Mo- bilier stock, who, as holders of the Union Pacific stock, should deliver their proxies to the seven. All this is shown in Willson's (2d Cred. Mob.), Rep. No. 78, 42d Cong., 3d Ses. It should be stated, that as in effect, the principal stockholders of the Union Pacific, thus contracted with themselves as the Credit Mobilier, to build the road, for which the bonds of the United States were to pay. It was at enormous profits, so great that the Credit Mobilier stock from below par in a few months was worth three or four times its par value, though none was ever in the market. This is apparent from both the Poland and A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 225 Wilson reports. The case I am considering assumes that the dividends of the one thousand dollars of stock, paid for itself in five months, with a balance over ' of three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. Also, it should be remembered, that by this device, under the provision of the act of July, i86^, which permitted the Union Pacific to issue its own bonds, and give them priority in security over its debt to the United States for its bonds, it managed to displace them, and thrust in its own in advance of them, as first mortgage bonds. The Poland committee justly holds this to be a fraud upon the United States. Obviously terms and devices so extraor- dinary would be kept within the counsel of the conspir- ators. That it did not transpire to the world, and was not disclosed by Oaks Ames to the implicated members of congress, is the concurrent testimony of all the wit- nesses, and the unanimous finding of the Poland com- mittee. In the autumn of 1867, there seem to have been six hundred and fifty shares of Credit Mobilier unsold, and some controversy arose between Durant, Ames and Henry S. McComb, a large stockholder, as to their dis- lX)sition. Each claimed that he needed them to fill pro- mises to applicants. Ames was finally permitted to re- ceive three hundred and forty-three shares at par and in- terest from the preceding July. Thus armed Oakes Ames a member of the house made his peaceful way to the capital, on his mission of placing this stock, in accord- ance with the rule of his life, as stated in his letters found further on. He selected his depositaries with care, m 226 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. every instance his political, and some of them, his personal friends, who had entire confidence in his business tact and honesty. Men of nice integrity who would never be suspected, whom he could have had no wish to involve in difficulty, and neither of whom — he nor any man — would dream of approaching with a corrupt proposition. To each he sold or offered to sell at par, with interest from July. To no one did he disclose the relations of the two corporations, nor yet the enormous value of the stock. To assure some, he guaranteed a profit of ten per cent. Some paid him. Some did not. He was in- different about that. To not more than one, was the stock transferred. It stood in his name, he received the dividends, converted the bonds received and paid over, in a careless, pleasant way, as a man would, who had a secret, which some of them might blunder on, if each trans- acted his own business for himself His transaction was with each separately. He told no one of his sales to either of the others, and each kept his own counsels. That there was no understanding between Ames and each of these men, nor between them as there would have been, had the purpose on their part been corrupt, is proved by the surprise and panic produced, when the real character of the arrangement was made known. Even then, there was no concert, save to demand a trial. Ames had a purpose. He did not desire further legisla- tion. The Union Pacific had not asked it. He was afraid that certain prominent men might ask impertinent questions in the house. He wanted silent, independent influence in different parts of the house. He did not J A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 227 intimate that he wanted it; did not disclose the real value of the commodity he was selling. That might lead to inquiries. Having planted his stocks, he wrote his letters of January 25th and 30th, and placidly pursued his peaceful way. About the time of this stock planting by Oakes, Mr. H. S. ^McComb planted a suit in the Pennsylvania courts against him, to recover these very shares, and time giving birth to other events, passed silently over both transac- tions. In the summer of 1872, the Pennsylvania case sprung into flower. McComb gave his deposition, and produced the following letters — reproduced before the Poland committee, where he testified: Washington, January 26, 1868. H. S. McCoMB, Esq.— Deur Sir: Yours of the twenty-third is at hand, in which you say Senators Bayard and Fowler have written to you in relation to their stock. I have spoken to Fowler, but not to Bayard. I have never been introduced to Bayard, but will see him soon. You say I must not put too much in one locality. I have as- signed, as far as I have given, to four from Massachusetts; one from New Hampshire; one, Delaware; one, Tennessee; one-half, Ohio; two, Pennsylvania; one, Indiana; one, Maine; and I have three to place, which I shall put where they will do most good to us. I am here on the spot, and can better judge where they should go. I think after this dividend is paid we should make our capital four million dol- lars, and 'distribute the new stock where it will protect us. Let them have the stock at par, and profits made in the future. The fifty per cent, increase on the old stock I want for distribution here, and soon. Alley is opposed to the division of the bonds, says he will need them, &.C., &c. I should think that we ought to be able to spare them with Alley and Cisco on the finance committee. We used to be able to borrow when we had no credit and debts pressing; we are now out of debt and in good credit. What say you about the bond dividend? .A part of the purchasers here are poor, and want their bonds to sell to 228 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. enable them to meet their payment on the stock in the C. ^L I hri\e told them what they would get as dividends, and they expect, I think — when the bonds the parties received as the eighty per cent, dividend, we better give them the bonds. It will not amout to anything with us. Some of the large owners will not care whether they have the bonds or certificates, or they will lend their bond to the company, as they have done before, or lend them money. (Juigley has been here, and we have got that one-tenth that was L'nderwood's. I have taken a half, Quigley a quarter, and you a quarter. Judge Carter wants a part of it. At some future day we are to sur- render a part to him. Yours truly, Oakes Ames. \V.\SHlNGTON, January 30, 1868. H. S. McCOMB. — Dear Sir: Yours of the 28th is at hand inclosing copy of letter from, or rather to, Mr. King. I don't fear any investiga- tion here. What some of Durant's friends may do in New York cant be counted on with any certainty. You do not understand by your letter what I have done and am to do with my sales of stock. You say more to New York. I have placed some with New York, or have agreed to. You must remember that it was nearly all placed as you saw on the list in New York, and there was but about 6 or 8 M for me to place. I could not give all they wanted or they might want out of that. You would not want me to offer less than one thousand (M) to any one. We allowed Durant to place $58,000 to some three or four of his friends or keep it himself. / have used this where it luill produce most good to us I thin/;. In view of King's letter and Washburn's move here, I go in for making one bond dividend in full. We can do it with perfect safety. I understand the opposition to it comes from Alley. He is on the Finance Committee, and can raise money easy if we come short, which I don't believe we shall; and if we do, we can loan our bonds to the Company, or loan them the money we get for the bonds. The contract calls for the division, and I say have it. When shall I see you in Washington? Yours truly, Oakes Ames. McConib sued Ames for this very stock, gave his de- position, and thus these letter? transpired to the public, A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 229 and produced wide-spread excitement. General Garfield was then in the Indian country, as will be remembered, and on his return first heard and saw them, on the thir- teenth or fourteenth of September. He immediately called upon his friend, Gen. H. V. Boynton, of the Cin- cinnati Gazette, and authorized the following, which appeared in that print, September 15th: " General Garfield, who has just arrived from the Indian country, has to-day had 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 cap- italists, and some members of congress, to the stock of the company. The'subscription was described as a popular one of one thousand dol- lars 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, and to this day he has not subscribed for or received any share of stock or bond of the companv." The sittings of the Poland committee, as will be re- membered, were attended by excited crowds, and among the statements of the daily press were repeated accounts of the dismay of the gentlemen whose names appeared m Mr. Ames' list. The paragraph from the Gazette shows that none of these statements applied to General Garfield. Mr. Train's- connection with the Credit Mo- bilier is apparent by other evidence. In his account of that company Mr. McComb says: "The Credit Mobilier corporation was the result. of a charter ob- tamed by a man named Duff Green, from the Pennsylvania legislature, called the 'Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency.' It was subsequently changed 230 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. by legislative enactment to the Credit Mobilier of America, and some little change made in its provisions. It was purchased by Thomas C. Durani, from a man in Pennsylvania named Hall, and George Francis Train. It was purchased especially with a view of building the Pacific railroad. The Pennsylvania legislature made an amendment in the charter allowmg a branch office to be in New York, and providing that it should be managed by what was cabled a railway bureau, all of whom need not be directors of the cox\\\-i'xn\ ." —Poland' s Report, page j. Thomas C. Durant said — Some parties were interested in this Pennsylvania fiscal agency when I first went into the Credit Mobilier. They had taken a few shares of stock before the brancli was established in New York, under the amend- ed charter. I sent Mr. Train to Philadelphia. W'e wanted it for a stock operation, but could not agree what was to tjc done with it. Mr. Train proposed to go on an expanded scale, but I abandoned it. 1 think Mr. Train got some subscriptions; what they were I do not know; they were never collected and returned to the company.— /(/. page ibg. The Poland committee was created by, and sat under, the following resolution: Whereas, accusations have been made in the public press, founded on alleged letters of Oakes Ames, a representative from Massachusetts, and upon the alleged affidavits of Henry S. McComb, a citizen of Wil- mington, in the State of Delaware, to the effect that members of this house were bribed by Oakes Ames to perform certain legislative acts for the benefit of the Union Pacific railroad company, by presents of stock in the Credit Mobilier of America, or by jjresents of a valuable character derived therefrom ; Therefore, Resolved, That a special committee of five be appointed by the speaker pro tempore, whose duty it shall be to investigate whether any member of this house was bribed by Oakfes Ames, or any other person or corporation, in any matter touching his legislative duty. Re-ol'oed further. That the committee have the right to employ a stenographer, and that they be empowered to send for persons and papers. — Poland Reports, page i. It began its labors December 12th, and sat many weeks, A CHAFFER OF SLAXDERS. 231 filling over five hundred pages with the sworn statements of many men, chief of whom was the unhappy Oakes Ames. On the eighteenth of February the committee made its final report, written by the chairman. The following is so much of this paper as deals with the charge against Mr. Garfield : The facts in regard to Mr. Garfield, as found b}' the committee, are identical with the case of Mr. Kelley to the point of reception of the check for three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. He agreed with Mr. Ames to take ten shares of Credit Mobilier stock, but did not pay for the same. Mr. Ames received the eighty per cent, dividend in bonds, and sold them for ninety-seven percent., and also received the sixty per cent, cash dividend, which together paid the price of the stock and interest, and left a balance of three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. This sum was paid over to Mr. Garfield by a check on the sergeant-at- arms, and Mr. Garfield then understood this sum was the balance of dividends after paying for the stock. Mr. Ames received all the subse- quent dividends, and the committee do not tind that, since the payment of the three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, there has been any com- mimication between Mr. Ames and Mr. Garfield on the subject until this investigation began. Some correspondence between Mr. Garfield and Mr. Ames, and some conversations between them during this in- %-estigation, will be found in the reported testimony. ^ - «- The committee do not find that Mr. Ames, in his negotiations with the persons above named, entered into any detail of the relations be- tween 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. * * In his negotiations with these members of congress, Mr. Ames made no suggestion that he desired to secure their favorable influence in con- gress in favor of the railroad company, and whenever the question was raised as to whether the ownership of this stock would in any way interfere with or embarrass them in their action as members of congress, he assured them it would not. The committee, therefore, do not find, as to the members of the 22,2 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 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. « * * * It ought also to be stated that no one of the present members of the house abovv> named appears to have had any knowledge of the dealings of Mr. Ames with other members. The committee do not find that either of the above named gentle- men, 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 becom- ing a purchaser of this stock. Had it appeared that these gentlemen were aware of the enormous dividends upon this stock, and how they were to be earned, we ould not thus acquit them. Mr. Poland is an able and learned man. There was within his easy reach ample material for a vigorous, dis- criminating, judicial disposition of the case, which would have saved us further labor. It lacks all those qualities. It is feeble, and pervaded with a good-natured indiffer- ence, or worse, an easy-going laziness, in grasp, statement and argument, cruel and hurtful, to a man whom he pro- foundly respected, and for whom he has expressed the greatest admiration. There is an unwritten history of statement and comment, by several members of the committee, bearing on this feature, cotemporaneous with the report, profitless to inscribe now. At the first opportuity after the report was made, Gen- eral Garfield addressed the House, as follows: I rise to a personal explanation. During the late investigation by the committee, of which the .o-entleman from Vermont (Mr. Poland) was the chairman, I pursued what seemed to be the plain path of duy, to keep silence, except when I 2i'as called upon to testify before the com- mittee. When testimony was given which appeared to be in conflict "Ames and James Brooks not included in the list referred to.. A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 233 with mine, / uaitcd, expecting to be called again if anything was needed Jrom me in reference to tliese discrepancies. I was not recalled; and when the committee submitted their report to the house, a consider- able portion of the testimony relating to me had not been printed. In the discussion which followed here, I was prepared to submit some additional facts and considerations, in case my own conduct came up for consideration in the house; but the whole subject was concluded without any direct reference to myself, and since then the whole time of the house has been occupied with the public business. I now desire to make a single remark on this subject in the hearing of the house. Though the committee acquitted me of all charges of corruption in action or intent, yet there is in the report a summing up of the facts in relation to me which I respectfully protest is not warranted by the tes- timony. I say this with the utmost respect for the committee, and without intending any reflection upon them. I cannot now enter upon the discussion; but I propose, before long, to make a statement to the public, setting forth more fully the grounds of my dissent from the summing up to which I ha\e refeiTed. 1 will only say now that the testimony which I gave before the committee is a stateir.ent of the facts in the case as I have understood them from th beginning. More than three years ago, on at least two occasions, I stated the case to two personal friends substantially as I stated it be- fore the committee, and I here add that nothing in my conduct or con- versation has at any time been in conflict with my testimonv. For the present I desire only to place on record this declaration and notice. The purpose thus publicly declared he executed, as we have .seen, in the following May. Obviously, if there was fraud in the alleged purchase of the Credit Mobilier stock, it must be in the point that it was purchased, or the alleged dividend was re- ceived, with the knowledge of the fraudulent arrange- ment between the Union Pacific Company and the Credit Mobilier, to which the purchaser, a member of the house, would thereby become a party. There is no pretense that 234 LIFE OF JAMES A. CtARFIELD. there is a shadow of evidence that Mr. Garfield had the sUghtest knowledge, or any hint to put him on his inquiry as to the transactions between the two companies ; Ames swore that he did not know of them. But the com- mittee did permit itself to say that he agreed to buy ten shares, but did not pay for them, that Ames held them for him, and out of the dividends he jxaid for the stock, and that the balance, three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, was paid to Garfield by Ames, /;/ a duck on the sargeant-at-arms of the house. Each of these statements General Garfield solemnly denied on his oath ; and it is now alleged that, though he was guiltless of corruption in the purchase itself, he was guilty of the gravest crime known to the law, in the denial of the innocent purchase itself Certainly this is the mest illogical of accusations. If General Garfield was innocent of wrong, why should he commit perjury to conceal it ? It is true, the committee appeared to disbelieve him ; what it did do was to disregard his case, slur it over, couple it with another man's, and disregard the evidence. Not only do they seem to have disbelieved him, but they disbelieved Oakes Ames also, who at first swore that Garfield was entirely innocent, and found facts without evidence. Not thus is this case to be dismissed. I am remitted to the dreary task of examining in detail the real and seeming proofs. The charge of perjury is to be proved by a weight of evidence eciual to that of two men. The evidence of one man is met and balanced by that of the accused, is the rule of law and logic. I do not place A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 235 this case solely on the basis of legal evidence, which is but the mass of human experience formulated into prac- tical rules for convenience and use. Let all sources of information be employed, which i)ractical intelligence uses in dealing with common grave affairs. There really are but two witnesses, and a few side lights, which attend the transaction. Oakes Ames is the sole source of inculpatory evi- dence. His connection with the whole transaction at once compromises him so entirely, that it is a rule alike of experience and law, that full credit cannot be given him. He has knowledge, but his integrity is impaired. He who would entrap the people's rei:)resentatives by half truths, and whole suppressions, is thereby gravely dis- credited. Is it said that Ciarfield occupies the same position — is compromised and therefore discredited? That is the fact to be proved. Until his guilt- is established his credit is unimpaired. He is a witness entitled to full credit. Oakes Ames, the thus impeached witness, and sole source of criminative evidence, is further, and more gravely, compromised. The man who makes different staternents of the same matter, though one statement, is not on his oath, so far discredits himself, that his state- ment ceases to be a source of full proof In his letter to McComb of January 25, 186S, he says he had sold to Garfield, of Ohio, twenty shares of stock at two thousand dollars. He swore before the committee, that there were but ten shares at one thousand dollars. The first statement was in writing, when the supposed 236 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. transaction was fresh, when he was under an obligation to be truthful and accurate; the second, four years later, on his oath. Both cannot be true. The man who made them, is not truthful. It is alike a rule of law and intelligence, that a man who deliberately swears that the fact to be proved does not exist, and then that the same fact does exist, thereby destroys himself as a source of information as to the existence of that fact. The facts to be established were, that this same witness sold to Garfield ten shares of Credit Mobilier stock, and paid him as a dividend on it, three hundred and twenty- nine dollars. On these points, I quote from the Poland Rep. at p. 28, under date of December 28th: Q. In reference to Mr. Garfield, you say that you agreed to get ten shares for him, and to hold them till he could pay for them, and that he never did pay for them nor receive them ? — A. Yes, sir. Q. He never paid any money on that stock nor received any money from it? — A. Not on account of it. Q. He received no dividends ? — A. No, sir; I think not. He says he did not. My own recollection is not very clear. Q. So that, as you understand, Mr. Garfield nex'er parted with any money, nor received any money, on that transaction? — A. No, sir; he had some money from me once, some three or four hundred dollars, and called it a loan. He says that that is all he ever received from me, and thaf he considered it a loan. He never took his stock, and never paid for it. Q. Did you understand it so? — .A. Yes ; I am willing to so under- .stand it. I do not recollect paying him any dividend, and have for- gotten that I paid him any money. The sum of this is, that he agreed to sell Garfield ten A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 237 shares, but did not. Garfield did not pay for them, and never received from him, Ames, any dividend. And so, later, on the same day, from p. 40, in answer to Mr. McCrary who recalled his attention to it. Q. I do not understand distinct!)- your answer to Mr. Merrick's question as to how many members of congress received these dividends upon that stock, and wliat members did not receive it, among those you have mentioned. — A. I think that all who paid for their stock re- ceived their dividends up to the time this suit was commenced; that is my impression. Q. Who received the dividends? — A. Mr. Patterson, Mr. Bing- ham, James F. Wilson did, and I think Mr. Colfax received a part of them. I do not know whether he received them all or not. I think Mr. Scofield received a part of them. Messrs. Kelley and Garfield never paid for their stock, and never received their di\'idends. Surely this is plain and direct. I here interject a passage from the evidence of Mr. Durant from page 173, and then resume Mr. Ames. .It will be remembered that these three hundred and forty- seven shares carried to Washington stood on the Credit Mobilier books in the name of Oakes Ames as trustee. As to these I quote from Mr. Durant, on the fourteenth of January, speaking of this same stock: A. The stock that stands in the name of Mr. Ames, as trustee, I claim belongs to the company yet, and I have a summons in a suit in my pocket waiting to catch him in New York, to serve the papers. Thus threatened with another suit, to recover fram him this very stock, all of which he had received back in his own right before this date, and was thus perfecting his title to it, through the pretense of a sale, as trustee, and a re-purchase in his individual right, on the twentv-second of January he went again upon the stand — this time for him- 238 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. self, SO far as Garfield is concerned, for it was only by a sale to him and a re-purchase that he could hold it. It io claimed that at this time he swore positively that he did sell Garfield the stock, and did pay him a dividend, in a check for three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. The payment of the dividend was the only proof of an actual sale. If he did so swear, in the face of his swearing above, with the exception of Judge Poland there is no human intelligence that will pretend to credit his state- ment, or call a fact proved because he swore to it. As a source of evidence he has ceased to exist. My reader now understands the character and quality of the sole witness by whom it is said General Garfield is proved to have ])urchased Credit Mobilier stock, re- ceived a dividend, and is convicted of perjury, in depos- ing that he did not. The whole of that evidence in the least criminative I now lay before him — premising that General Garfield appeared before the committee and gave his evidence on the fourteenth of January. (J. In regard to Mr. Garfield, state to the committee the details of the transactions between you and liim in reference to Credit Mobilier stock. — A. I got for Mr. Garfield ten shares of the Credit Mobilier stock, for which he paid par and interest. Q. When did you agree with him for that? — A. That agreement was in December, 1867, or January 1868; about that time; about the time I had these conversations with all of them. It was all about the same time. Q. State what grew out of it.— A. Mr. Garfield did not pay me anv money. I sold the bonds belonging to his one thousand dollars of stock at ninety-seven, making seven hundred and seventy-six dollars. In June I received a dividend in cash on his stock of si.x hundred dol- lars, which left a balance due him of three hundred and twenty-nine A CHAPTER OF SLANDHRS. 239 dollars, which I paid him. That is all the transaction between us. I did not deliver him any stock before or since. That is the only trans- action, and the only thing. Q. The three hundred and twenty-nine dollars which you paid him was the surplus of earnings on the stock above the amount to he paid for it, par value ?— A. Yes, sir; he never had either his Credit Mobilier stock or Union Pacific Railroad stock. The only thing he realized on the transaction was tiie three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. tj. I see in this statement of the account with General Garfield, there is a charge of forty-seven dollars ; that is interest from the July previous, is it ? — A. Yes, sir. Q. And the seven hundred and seventy-six dollars on'the credit side of the account is the eighty per cent, bond dividend sold at ninety- seven ? — A. Yes, sir. (^). And the six hundred dollars on the credit side is the money dividend ? — A. Yes, sir. Q. And after you had received these two sums, tliev in the aggre- gate overpaid the price of stock and interest three hundred and twenty- nine dollars, which you paid him ? — A. Yes, sir. Q. How was that paid ? — A. Paid in money, I belie\ e. CJ. Did you make a statement of this to Mr. Garfield? — A. I pre- sume so ; I think I did with all of them ; that is my impression. (J. When you paid him this three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, did you understand it was the balance of his dividend after paying for his stock ? — A. I supposed so ; I do not know what else he could suppose. (J. You did not deliver the certificate of stock to him ? — A. No, sir • he said nothing about that. (J. Why did he not receive his certificate ? — A. I do not know. CJ. Do you remember any conversation between you and him in the adjustment of these accounts? — A. 1 do not. Q. You understood that you were a holder of his ten sh ires ? A, Yes, sir. ij. Did he so understand it? — A. I presume so. It seems to have gone from his mind, however. IJ. Was this the only dealing you had with him in reference to anv slock? — A. I think so. 240 LIFE OF TAMES A. GARFIELD. (J. Was it the only transaction of any kind? — A. Tlie only trans- action. u. Has that three hundred and twenty-nine dollars ever been paid to you •* — A. I have no recollection of it. (,). Have you any belief that it ever has ? — .A. No, sir. tj. Did YOU ever loan General Garfield three hundred dollars ? — A Not to my knowledge ; except that he calls this a loan. (J. Vou do not call it a loan ? — .\. I did not at the time. I am willing it should go to suit him. (J. What we want to get at is the e.xact truth. — A. I have told the truth in my statement. (J. When you paid him three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, did he understand that he borrowed that money from you ? — A. I do not suppose so. Q. Have you any belief now that he supposed ? — A. N'o : only from what he said the other day. I do not dispute anybody. i). We want your ju'gment of the transaction. — .\. My judgment of the transaction is just as I told you. There was but one thing about it. Q. That amount has never been repaid to you? You did not sup- pose that you had any right to it, or any claim to it?— A. Xo, sir. Q. You regarded that as money belonging to him after the stock was paid for? — A. Yes, sir. Q. There were dividends of Union Pacific Railroad stock on these ten shares ? — A. Yes, sir. CJ. Did General Garfield ever receive these ? — A. Xo, sir ; never has received but three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. Q. And that he has received as his own money? — A. I suppose so; it did not belong to me. I should not have given it to him if it had not belonged to him. CJ, You did not understand it to belong to you as a loan ; you never called for it, and have never received it back ? — A. No, sir. Q. Has there been any conversation between you and him in refer- ence to the Pacific stock he was entitled to.' — A. No, sir. (J. Has he ever called for it ? — A. No, sir. ^ Q. Have you ever offered it to him ? — A. No, sir. Q. Has there been any conversation in relation to it ? — A. No, sir. A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 241 Q. Has there ever been anything said between you and him about rescinding the purchase of the ten shares of Credit Mobiher stock? Has there anything been said to you of its being thrown up, or aban- doned, or surrendered ? — A. No, sir ; not until recently. Q. How recently? — A. Since this matter came up. Q. Since this investigation commenced? — A. Ves, sir. Q. Did you consider at the commencement of this investigation that you held these other dividends, which you say you did not pay to him, in his behalf? Did you regard yourself as custodian of these dividends for him ? — A. Yes, sir ; he paid for his stock and is entitled to his dividends. Q. Will the di\idends come to him at any time on his demand? — A. Yes, sir, as soon as this suit is settled. Q. You say that three hundred and twenty-nine dollars was paid to him; how was it paid? — A. I presume by a check on the sergeant-at- arms. I find there are some checks filed without any letters or initials indicating who they were for. The following memorandum referred to by witness as a statement of his account with Mr. Garfield, was placed in evidence: J. A. G. [Garfield]. Dr. 1868. To ten shares stock Credit Mobilier of A $1,000 00 Interest 47 00 June 19. To cash 329 00 $1,376 00 Cr. 1868. By dividend bonds. Union Pacific railroad, $1,000, at eighty per cent, less three per cent $776 00 June 17. By dividend collected for your account 600 00 $1,376 00 Leaving these statements without further remark, save to note the corkscrew-y process of leading questions I quote Oakes Ames from page 353, under date of Janu- ary 29th. He had found a bunch of old checks in the office of the sergeant-at-arms, which Judge Poland is talking up with him in a luminous way: 16 242 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Q. Here is another check upon the sergeant-at-arms of the same date, June 22, 1868: "Pay O. A. or bearer three hundred and twenty- nine dollars, and charge to my account. Oakes Ames. " That seems to have been paid to somebody and taken up by the sergeant-at-arms. These initial are your own? — A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know who had the benefit of that cheek? — I cannot tell you. Q. Do you think you received the money on it yourself? — A. I have no idea. I may have drawn the money and handed it over to another person. It was paid on that transaction. It may have been paid to Mr. Garfield. There were several sums of that amount. Q. Have you any memory in reference to this check? — A. No, sir; I have no memory as to that particular check. I found these checks in the package which the sergeant-at-arms gave me, and I find them on the sergeant-at-arms' books. Q. You have some memory in regard to some of these men receiv- ing payment of their dividends? — A. They all received payments of their dividends. There is no question of that in my mind. There may be in the minds of others. Q. Is there any other gentleman here in congress who received three hundred and twenty-nine dollars dividend e.xcept those who have already been named by you? — A. I don't think of any other. Q. In regard to Mr. Garfield, do you know whether you gave him a check or paid him the money? — A. I think I did not pay him the money. He got it from the sergeant-at-arms upon a check. This is the check entire, placed by itself: "June 22, 1868. "PayO. A. or bearer three hundred and twenty-nine dollars, and charge to my account. Oakes Ames." From page 555 of this pitiful record, I quote this, and all there is on the dreary expenses bearing on this matter, still in the plastic hand of the amiable chairman. Q. You think the check in which you wrote nothing to indicate the payee must have been for Mr. Garfield?— A. Yes, sir, that is my judg- ment. A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 243 No ! he did not think so — had not said he thought so. In the pitiful helplessness of his position, groping in darkness, he timidly ventured the suggestion, "It may have been paid to Mr. Garfield." Then, when the chair- man insisted that he thought so^ he helplessly assents. The stupidity of the chairman was of that dense quality appalling to the gods. He assumes that Garfield must have been paid by a check, and this was it, — notwithstand- ing Ames swore (page 25) that he thought he paid with money, — because this check had no possible mark or sign to show by whom, or for what, it was issued; and Ames assented. Here, then, in this aimless, nameless slip of paper resides the evidence which convicts Gen- eral Garfield of a purchase of stock, and of perjury to conceal the purchase. A word disuses of it. Turn back to Ames' account with Garfield, on page 241, to this item. "To cash [paid], $3 2^9. Against this payment stands the date, June 19, 186S. This check is dated June 2 2d, three days afterward. How could a check not drawn till the twenty-second of June pay a debt on the nineteenth of June? Had the dates coincided, or this check been before payment, some seeming warrant for the chairman's assertion might exist. The after date of the check is fatal to his case, and to him. It is to be borne in mind that General Garfield, having made his statement before the court, was then bearing the burden of the Republic's great appropriations through the house. The statement that he had counsel before the committee is untrue. Judge Black, when there, was of counsel for McComb. 244 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. There was further so-called evidence from Oakes Ames. He several times early referred to a certain memorandum book, and finally produced extracts from it. He was at once required by the chairman to pro- duce it, which he did February nth. The ground on which the committee received it is not obvious. Bearing in mind that the Garfield account, page 241, dates the pay- ment of the three hundred and twenty-nine dollars June 19, 1868, what corroboration does Mr. Ames receive from his tardy book? This is taken from page 450 of the report: 1868. Saturday, January 2, 1869. H. L. Dawes 600 Scofield 600 Patterson ^ 1,800 Painter 1,800 Wilson 1, 200 Colfax 1,200 Bingham i, 200 Allison '600 Kelley 329 Wilson 329 Garfield 329 Q. You put down in this list what was to be paid to these men; it is not an entry of the payment you had actually made?. — A. It is a list of payments to be made, and which were made in different ways, some in one way and some in another. The entry is in a book for 1868. The list is dated January 2, 1869, and contains the names of the men to whom payments of dividends were to be made. Among them is that of Garfield, who, if ever paid, was paid months before. Here is another of the entries from p. 453 Id.: A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 245 Sunday, June 31. Checks on commerce, deposited with Sergeant-at-Arms $10,000 P'd S. Colfax 1,200 " James F. Wilson 329 " H. L. Dawes 600 " William B. Allison 60O " G. W. Scofield 600 " J. W. Patterson 1,800 " John A. Logan 329 " James A. Garfield 329 " William D. Kelley 329 " Henry Wilson 1,200 " John A. Bingham 1,200 Q. This entry, "PaidS. Colfax one thousand two hundred dollars," is the amount which you paid by this check on the sergeant-at-arms? — A. Yes, sir. Q. Was this entry upon this page of these various names intended to show the amount you were to pay or that you had paid; was that made at this date? — A. I do not know; it was made about that time. I would not have written it on Sunday; it is not very likely. It was made on a blank page. It is simply a list of names. Q. Were these names put down after you had made the payments or before, do you think ? — A. Before, I think. Q. You think you made this list before the parties referred to had actually received their checks, or received the money? — A. Yes, sir; that was to show whdm I had to pay, and who were entitled to receive the sixty per cent, dividend. It shows whom I had to pay here in Washington Q. It says '-paid." — A. Yes, sir; well, I did pay it. Q. What I want to know is, whether the list was made out before or after payment? — A. About the same time, I suppose; probably before. . These are marked paid, and dated June 31st, and is left for its own comment. Here follows another from p. 459 : Q. Now turn to any entries you may have in reference to Mr. Gar- field. — A. Mr. Garfield's payments were just the same as Mr. Kelley's. Q. I find Mr. Kelley's name on the list of June dividend payments 246 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. for three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. That I understand you to be the amount of the June dividend after paying the balance due on his stock? — A. Yes, sir; the general statement made up for Mr. Garfield is as follows : GARFIELD. 10 shares Credit M $1,000 7 nios. 10 days 43 3^ 1.043 36 80 per cl. bd. div., at 97 776 267 36 Int'st to June 20 3 ^4 271 00 1,000 C. M. 1,000 U. P. Q. You received six hundred dollars cash dividend on his ten shares? — A. Yes, sir. ♦ Q. And, as you say, paid him three hundred and twenty-nine dol- lars, as the balance of the dividend due him? — A. I think I did. Q. This general statement is not crossed off? — A. No, sir. Q. In this list of names for the June dividend, Mr. Garfield's name is down for three hundred and twenty-nine dollars. — A. That would be the balance due. Q. The cross opposite his name indicates that the money was paid to him? — A. Yes, sir. Mr. Clark remarked that Mr. Ames was not certain whether this amount was paid Mr. Garfield by check or in currency. The Witness. If I drew the check I may have paid him off in cur- rency, as I find no check with initials corresponding to his. Q. We find three checks for the amount of three hundred and twenty-nine dollars each; one is in blank; there are no initials written in. There are, however, the same number of checks for that amount as are called for by the names on this list for that amount. — A. I am not sure how I paid Mr. Garfield; I paid him in some form. Q. This statement of Mr. Garfield's account is not crossed off, which indicates, does it, that the matter has never been settled or ad- justed? — A. No, sir; it never hai. A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 247 Mr. Clark remarked that he supposed it was understood that no one of these gentlemen had ever seen the entries in this book. Q. Can you state whether you have any other entry in your book relating to Mr. Garfield? — .\. No, sir. From page 47 1 I quote the last of Mr. iVmes' state- ments as to the facts themselves, made as follows: Q. In testifying in Mr. Garfield's case you say you may have drawn the money on the check and paid him; Is not that answer equally ap- plicable to the case of Mr. Colfa.x? — A. No, sir. Q. Why not? — A. I put Mr. Colfax's initials in the check, while I put no initials into Mr. Garfield's check, and I may have drawn the money myself. Q. Do you say that if you put any initials before the words "or bearer" into a check, that is evidence that you gave him the check, and that he drew the money on it? — A. I am satisfied that I gave him (Colfax) the check any way, because it belonged to him. Q. Did not Mr. Garfield's check belong to him? — .-\. Mr. Garfield had not paid for his stock. He was entitled to three hundred and twenty-nine dollars balance; but Mr. Colfax had paid for his stock, and I had no ousiness with his one thousand, two hundred dollars. Q. Is your recollection in regard to this payment of Mr. Colfax any more clear than your recollections as to the payment to Mr. Garfield? — A. Yes, sir, I think it is. Do you doubt that I gave him (Colfax) the check ? Q. That is not a proper question for me to answer; if it were I should. As bearing on the unmarked check of June 22, 1868, the check of the report, Mr. Dillon, the cashier, said : Q. There is a check payable to O. A. or bearer; have you any recollection of that? — .\. That was paid to himself. Q. Have you any memory that it was, or do you judge of that by the form in which the check is drawn? — A. No; I have no distinct memory about it. I have no doubt myself that I paid that to Mr. Ames. — Poland Reports, page 4-jg. I observe of these statements — that so far from claim- ing that he had any, the least memory of the payment 248 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. of a dividend to Mr. Garfield, Mr. Ames several times says that he had none. His first testimony directly con- tradicts what he subsequently testified. He is sustained by no witness. He is not corrobor- ated by any writing of his own. His first account is marked paid June 19, 1S6S. The sole check by which it could have been paid bears a later date. In his list of June 31st, it is marked as paid. He declares that though marked paid, this was a list of men to be paid, though the claim is that Garfield was paid before. And the list of January 2, 1S69, was also that of men then unpaid, of whom Garfield was one, and, finally, that the account never was settled. Thus these papers, so far from sustaining the witness, contradict him, and impeach each other. The strangest feature of the case is yet to be named. Ames sold to Garfield ten shares of stock, and held it for him as trustee; made one payment in June, 1868, and, though he continued to hold it, and collect the di- vidends, of course, from that day of payment to his ap- pearance before the committee— a period of five years — he never again so much as mentioned the subject to Garfield. He swore he did not. And, stranger yet, here was this young man, owner of this money-coining stock, impecunious, running about for money and never going to Ames for it on this stock, never to the present time calling him to account, oblivious of ownership, declaring he did not own it, and all the time the sky was serene, and Ames was collecting dividends as owner of the stock, and without a pretense A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 249 that he had repurchased it. Owner cestui que trust and trustee never so conducted themselves toward the prop- erty. The parties never for an instant held this relation to this Credit Mobilier stock. To pretend they did is the feeblest of sham. It is remembered that Garfield authorized the state- ment in the Gazette of September 15th, and quietly awaited events. He was not called before the committee until the 14th of January. As preliminary, I quote a paragraph from his expose of May 8, 1873, page 8. After saying that Mr. Ames sought him, he continues: Soon after the investigation began, Mr. Ames asked me what I re- membered of our tal]< in 1867-8 in reference to the Credit Mobilier Company. I told him I could best answer his question by reading to him the statement I had already prepared to lay before the committee when I should be called. Accordingly, on the following day, I took my written statement to the capitol, and read it to him carefully, sen- tence by sentence, and asked him to point out anything which he might think incorrect. He made but two criticisms; one in regard to a date, and the other, that he thought it was the Credit Foncier, and not the Credit Mobilier, that Mr. Train asked me to subscribe to in 1866-7. When I read the paragraph in which I stated that I had once borrowed three hundred dollars of him, he remarked, "I believe I did let you have some money, but I liad forgotten it." He said nothing to indi- cate that he regarded me as having purchased the stock; and from that conversation I did not doubt that he regarded my statement sub- stantially correct. His first testimony, given a few days afterward, confirmed me in this opinion. I give his testimony entire. Poland's report, page 128: Washington, D. C, January 14, 1873. J. A. Garfield, a member of the United States house of represen- 250 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. tatives from the State of Ohio, having been duly sworn, made tne fol- lowing statement : The first I ever heard of the Credit Mobilier was some time in 1866 or 1867 — I cannot fix the date — when George Francis Train called on me and said he was organizing a company to be known as the Credit Mobilier of America; to be formed on the model of the Credit Mobilier of France; that the object of the company was to purchase lands and build houses along the line of the Pacific railroad at points where cities and villages were likely to spring up; that he had no doubt money thus invested would double or treble itself each year; that subscriptions were limited to one thousand dollars each, and he wished me to sub- scribe. He showed me a long list of subscribers, among them Mr. Oakes Ames, to whom he referred me for further information concern- ing the enterprise. I answered that I had not the money to spare, and if I had I would not subscribe without knowing more about the pro- posed organization. Mr. Train left me, saying he would hold a place open for me, and hoped I would yet conclude to subscribe. The same dav I asked Mr. Ames what he thought of the enterprise. He expressed the opinion that the investment would be safe and profitable. I heard nothing further on the subject for a year or more, and it was almost forgotten, when some time, I should say, during the long ses- sion of 1868, Mr. Ames spoke of it again; said the company had or- ganized, was doing well, and he thought would soon pay large divi- dends. He said that some of the stock had been left or was to be left in his hands to sell, and I could take the amount which Mr. Train had offered me, by paying the one thousand dollars and the accrued inter- est. He said if I was not able to pay for it then, he would hold it for me till I could pay, or until some of the dividends were payable. I told him 1 would consider the matter; but would not agree to take any stock until I knew, from an e.xamination of the charter and the condi- tions of the subscription, the extent to which I would become pecuni- arily liable. He said he was not sure, but thought a stockholder would be liable only for the par value of his stock; that he had not the stock and papers with him, but would have them after a while. From the case, as presented, I probably should have taken the stock if I had been satisfied in legard to the extent of pecuniary liability. Thus the matter rested for some time, I think until the following year. A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 25 1 During that inten-al I understood that there were dividends due amounting to nearly three times the par value of the stock. But in the meantime I had heard that the company was involved in some contro- versy with the Pacific railroad, and that Mr. Ames' right to sell the stock was denied. When I ne.xt saw Mr. Ames I told him I had con- cluded not to take the stock. There the matter ended so far as I was concerned, and I had no further knowledge of the company's opera- tions until the subject began to be discussed in the newspapers last fall. Nothing was ever said to me by Mr. Ames or Mr. Train to indicate or imply that the Credit Mobilier was or could be in any way connected with the legislation of congress for the Pacific railroad or for any other purpose. Mr. Ames never gave, nor offered to give, me any stock or other valuable thing as a gift. I once asked and obtained from him, and afterward repaid to him, a loan of three hundred dollars; that amount is the only valuable thing I ever received from or delivered to him. I never owned, received, or agreed to receive any stock of the Credit Mobilier or of the Union Pacific railroad, nor any dividend or profits arising from either of them. By the chairman : Question. Had this loan you speak of any connection in any way with your conversation in regard to the Credit Mobilier stock? — A. No connection in any way e.xcept in regard to the time of payment. Mr. Ames stated to me that if I concluded to subscribe for the Credit Mo- bilier stock, I could allow the loan to remain until the payment on that was adjusted. I never regarded it as connected in any other way with the stock enterprise. Q. Do you remember the time of that transaction? — A. I do not remember it precisely. I should think it was in the session of 1868. I had been to Europe the fall before, and was in debt, and borrowed several sums of money at different times and from different persons. This loan from Mr. Ames was not at his instance. I made the request myself. I think I had asked one or two persons before for the loan. Q. Have you any knowledge in reference to any dealing of Mr. Ames with any gentlemen in congress in reference to the stock of the Credit Mobilier?— A. No, sir; I have not. I had no knowledge that Mr. Ames had ever talked with anybody but myself. It was a subject I gave but little attention to; in fact, many of the details had almost 252 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. passed out of my mind until they were called up in the late campaign. By Mr. Black: Q. Did you say you refused to take the stock simply because there was a lawsuit about it? — A. No; not exactly that. I do not remember any other reason which I gave to Mr. Ames than that I did not wish to take stock in anything that would involve controversy. I think I gave him no other reason than that. Q. When you ascertained the relation this company had with the Union Pacific railroad company, and whence its profits were to be de- rived, would you have considered that a sufficient reason for declining it irrespective of other considerations? — A. It would have been as the case was afterward stated. Q. At the time you talked with Mr. Ames, before you rejected the proposition, you did not know whence the profits of the company were to be derived? — A. I did not. I do not know that Mr. Ames withheld, intentionally, from me any information. I had derived my original knowledge of the organization of the company from Mr. Train. He made quite an elaborate statement of its purposes, and I proceeded in subsequent conversations upon the supposition that the organization was unchanged. I ought to say for myself, as well as for Mr. Ames, that he never said any word to me that indicated the least desire to in- fluence my legislative action in any way. If he had any such purpose, he certainly never said anything to me which would indicate it. Q. You know now, and have known for a long time, that Mr. Ames was deeply interested in the legislation on this subject? — A. I supposed that he was largely interested in the Union Pacific railroad. I have heard various statements to that effect. I cannot say I had any such information of my own knowledge. Q. You mean that he did not electioneer with you or solicit your vote ? — A. Certainly not. None of the conversations I ever had with him had any reference to such legislation. By Mr. Merrick: Q. Have you any knowledge of any other member of congress being concerned in the Credit Mobilier stock? — A. No, sir; I have not. Q. Or any stock in the Union Pacific railroad? — A. I have not. I can say to the committee that I never saw, I believe, in my life a certifi- cate of stock of the Union Pacific railroad company, and I never saw A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 253 any certificate of stock of the Credit Mobilier, until Mr. Brooks exhib- ited one, a few days ago, in the house of representatives. Q. Were any dividends ever tendered to you on the stock of the Credit Mobilier upon the supposition that you were to be a subscriber? — .\. Xo, sir. Q. This loan of three hundred dollars you have repaid if I under- stood you correctly. — A. Yes, sir. By Mr. McCrary: Q. You never examined the charter of the Credit Mobilier to see what were its objects ?— A. Xo, sir; I never saw it. Q. If I understood you, you did not know that the Credit Mobilier had any connection with the Union Pacific railroad company? — A. I understood from the statement of Mr. Train that its objects were con- nected with the lands of the Union Pacific railroad company and the development of settlements along that road; but that it had any relation to the Union Pacific railroad, other than that, I did not know. I think I did hear also that the company was investing some of its earnings in the bonds of the road. Q. He stated it was for the purpose of purchasing land and build- ing houses?— A. That was the statement of Mr. Train. I think he said in that connection that he had already been doing something of that kind at Omaha, or was going to do it. Q. You did not know that the object was to build the Union Pacific railroad? — A. Xo, sir; I did not. This is the clear, distinct statement of a man giving a succinct account of a transaction in strict accord with all we have learned of the facts. jSlr. Ames' first testimony fully corroborates and sustains it in all details. Garfield received the first information of the real use made of the Credit Mobilier from Judge Black. On re- ceiving that he put an end to all negotiations with Ames. In corroboration of his evidence, and that this was al- ways his statement of the case, I produce Judge Black's statement bearing date before the report of the committee 2 54 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. was made. It covers the whole case and should silence even malice. Philadelphia, February 15, 1873. My Dear Sir. From the beginning ojf the investigation concerning Mr. Ames' use of the Credit Mobilier, I believed that General Garfield was free from all guilty connection with that business. This opinion was founded not merely on my confidence in his integrity, but on some special knowledge of his case. I may have told you all about it in con- versation, but I desire now to repeat it by way of reminder. I assert unhesitatingly that, whatever General Garfield may have done or forborne to do, he acted in profound ignorance of the nature and character of the thing which Mr. Ames was proposing to sell. He had not the slightest suspicion that he was to be taken into a ring organized for the purpose of defrauding the public ; nor did he know that the stock was in any manner connected with anything which came, or could come, within the legislative jurisdiction of congress. The case against him lacks the scienter which alone constitutes guilt. In the winter of 1869-70, 1 told General Garfield of the fact that his name was on Ames' list; that Ames charged him with being one of his distributees; explained to him the character, origin, and objects of the Credit Mobilier; pointed out the connection it had with congressional legislation, and showed him how impossible it was for a member of con- gress to hold stock in it without bringing his private interests in conflict with his public duty. That all this was to him a perfectly new revela- tion I am as sure as I can be of such a fact, or of any fact which is capa- ble of being proved only by moral circumstances. He told me, then, the whole story of Train's offer to him and Ames' subsequent solicita- tion, and his own action in the premises, much as he details it to the committee. I do not undertake to reproduce the conversation, but the effect of it all was to convince me thoroughly that when he listened to Ames he was perfectly unconscious of anything evil. I watched care- fully every word that fell from him on this point, and did not regard his narrative of the transaction in other respects with much interest, because in my view everything else was insignificant. I did not care whether he had made a bargain technically binding or not; his integrity def>ended upon tlie question whether he acted with his eyes open. If he had I A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 255 known the true character of the proposition made to him he would not have endured it, much less embraced it. Now, couple this with Mr. Ames' admission that he gave no expla- nation whatever of the matter to General Garfield; then reflect that not a particle of proof exists to show that he learned anything about it pre- vious to his conversation with me, and I think you will say that it is al- together unjust to put him on the list of those who knowingly and will- fully joined the fraudulent association in question. J. S. Black. Hon. J. G. Blaine, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Judge Black was not the attorney of Garfield, and not a political friend. He revealed to Garfield the facts of the relation of the Union Pacific company and the Credit Mobilier, when Garfield had no motive to conceal his own position. He also revealed to him the existence of Mr. Ames' list. On this information Garfiield acted. The question now under consideration is not whether Garfield is venal in the matter of the Credit Mobilier stock. We know he was not, but whether he was guilty of perjury in denying that charge. Did he state the facts as he understood, and stated them toothers at the time? These are important questions. On this point hear the following : Hiram, Ohio, February 18, 1S73. Dear Sir: It maybe relevant to the question at issue between your- self and Mr. Oakes Ames, in the Credit Mobilier investigation, for me to state that three or four years ago, in a private conversation, you made a statement to me involving the substance of your testimony be- fore the Poland committee, as published in the newspapers. The material points of your statement were. these: That you had been spoken to by George Francis Train, who offered you some shares of Credit Mobilier stock; that you told him that you had no money to invest in stocks; that subsequently you had a conver- 256 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. sation in relation to tlie matter with Mr. Ames ; that Mr. Ames offered to carry the stock for you until you could pay for it, if you cared to buy it ; and that you had told him in that case perhaps you would take it, but would not agree to do so until you had inquired more fully into the matter. Such an arrangement as this was made, Ames agreeing to carrry the stock until you should decide. In this way the matter stood, as I understood it, at the time of our conversation. My understanding was distinct that you had not accepted Mr. Ames' proposition, but that the shares were still held at your option. You stated, further, that the company was to operate in real prop- erty along the line of the Pacific road. Perhaps I should add that this conversation, which I have always remembered very distinctly, took place here in Hiram. I have remembered the conversation the more distinctly from the circumstances that gave rise to it. Having been intimately acquainted with you for twelve or fifteen years, and having had a considerable knowledge of your pecuniary affairs, I asked you how you were getting on, and especially whether you were managmg to reduce your debts. In reply you gave me a detailed statement of your affairs, and concluded by saying you had had some stock offered you, which, if you bought it, would probably make you some money. You then proceeded to state the case, as I have stated it above. I cannot fix the time of this conversation more definitely than to say that it was certainly three, and probably four, years ago. B. A. Hinsdale, Ho.N. J. A. Garfield, President of Hiram College. Washington, D. C. That he had not closed with the offer of Ames in the spring of 1868, is clear, from the following statement. He was then deliberating: Cleveland, Ohio, May, i 1873. Dear Gener.\l : I send you the facts concerning a conversation which I had with you, (I think in the spring of 1868,) when I was stop- ing in Washington for some days, as your guest, during the trial of the impeachment of President Johnson. While there, you told me that Mr. Ames had offered you a chance to invest a small amount in a company that was to operate in lands and buildings along the Pacific A CHAPTER OF SLANDERS. 257 railroad, which he (Ames) said would be a good thing. You asked me what I thought of it as a business proposition; that you had not deter- mined what you would do about it, and suggested to me to talk with Ames, and form my own judgment, and if I thought well enough of it, to advance the money and buy the stock on joint account with you, and let you pay me interest on the one-half, I could do so. But I did not think well of the proposition as a business enterprise, and did not talk with Ames on the subject. After this talk, having at first told you that I would give the subject thought, and perhaps talk with Ames, I told you one evening that I did not think well of the proposition, and had not spoken to Ames on the subject. Yours, truly, J. P. ROBISON. Hon. J. A. Garfield. Both of these gentlemen are widely known and es- teemed in their own State. This is all that belongs to the case. During the inves- tigation there was an interview between the parties, of which each gave an account. Neither throws any light on the case. Garfield expected to be called before the committee, to reply to the new and inexplicable statements of Mr. Ames. He was not. The conclusion must be that Gen- eral Garfield never purchased Credit Mobilier stock of Oakes Ames; that he never received money from him as dividends on stock; that all his own statements in the case are in strict accord with truth. ,^ CHAPTER II. SALARY GRAB. Involves only a Question of Judgment. — Resolution requiring Gar- field's Resignation. — Popular Phrenzy. — Garfield as Chairman of the Committee of Appropriations has Charge of the Bill. — Its Magnitude and Importance. — Scheme is an Amendment to it. — Votes Eighteen Times Against It. — His own Statement. — Meets all his Accusers. While our young man was taking his first practical les- son in the fragile tenure of human reputation, and the air was thick with the vapor and odors of the Credit Mobilier, a convention of his constituents adopted the following resolution : "Resolved, That James A. Garfield, in voting for the retroactive sal- ary bill, has forfeited the confidence of his constituents, and therefore we, the representatives of the Republican party of Trumbull county, in convention assembled, ask him to resign forthwith his office as our representative in congress." At this distance of time, during which so many events have occurred, it is difficult to recall the force and vol- ume of the indignation, the fierce phrenzy which at once seized upon the entire Republic upon the passage of the legislative appropriation bill of March 3, 1873, which carried the obnoxious three-line amendment, advancing the pay of the legislators. The fury of the tempest will be appreciated by the resolution above, of men who had known and trusted Garfield long. He had opposed the 258 SALARY GRAB. 259 project in all forms, everywhere, by vote, speech, and personal influence; had only voted for a bill of the greatest importance, whose folds sheltered it after a des- perate effort to dislodge it; when it became a law he would not be bound by it, never held in his palm the fruit of it for an instant, was the first to order it back to the unappropriated money in the treasury. The public mind was suffering from a brain plague. No sinister motive can be attributed in this case. At the most it was a grave misjudgment upon a matter of mixed good and evil. Hear him as to his position: I had special charge of the legislative appropriation bill, upon the preparation of which my committee had spent nearly two weeks of labor before the meeting of congress. It was the most important of the twelve annual bills. Its provisions reached every part of the machin- ery of the government in all the States and Territories of the Union. The amount appropriated by it was one-seventli of the total annual ex- penditures of the government, exclusive of the interest on the public debt. It contained all the appropriations required by law for the legis- lative department of the government; for the public printing and bind- ing; for the President and the officers and employes at the executive mansion; for the seven executive departments at Washington, and all their bureaus and subdivisions; for the sub-treasuries and public depos- itaries in fourteen cities of the Union; for all the officers and agents employed in the assessment and collection of the internal revenue; for the governments of the nine Territories and of the District of Columbia; for the mints and the assay offices; for the land offices and the surveys of public lands; and for all the courts, judges, district attorneys, and marshals of the United States. Besides this, during its progress through the two houses, many provisions had been added to the bill which were considered of vital importance to the public interests. A section had been added in the senate to force the Pacific railroad companies to pay the arrears of interest on the bonds loaned to 26o LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. them by the United States, and to commence refunding the principal. I also quote his statement of the means by which this feature was attached to the bill : Before it was finally adopted there were eighteen different votes taken in the house and the committee of the whole, on its merits and its management. On each and all of these 1 voted adversely to the amendment. Si.x years ago, when the salaries of congressmen were raised, and the pay was made to date back si.xteen months, I had voted against the increase ; and now, bearing more responsibility for the appropriations than ever before, I pursued the same course. No act of mine during this struggle, can be tortured into a willingness to allow this amendment to be fastened to the bill. But all opposition was overborne by majorities ranging from three to fifty-three, and the bill with this amendment added, was sent to the senate Saturday evening, the first of March. If the senate had struck out the amend- ment, they could have compelled the house to abandon it or take the responsibility of losing the bill. But the senate refused, by a vote of nearly two to one, to strike out the salary clause, or any part of it ; and many senators insisted that with the abolition of mileage and other allowances, si.x thousand five hundred dollars was no real in- crease, and that the rate should be greater. The bill then went to a conference committee, with si.xty-five unadjusted amendments pending between the two houses. On that committee he was the solitary member op- posed to this feature. These are his views of some of the evils of the bill: There were grave objections to the defeat of the appropriation bill. Everybody knew that its failure would render an extra session of the new congress inevitable. It is easy to say now that this would have been better than to allow the passage of the salary clause. Present evils always seem greater than those that never come. The opinion was almost universal that an extra session would be a serious evil in many ways, and especially to the treasury. Its cost directly and indi- rectlv, would far exceed the amount appropriated for retroactive sal- SALARY GRAB. 26 1 aries. An unusual amount of dangerous legislation was pressing upon congress for action. In his speech at Warren, 1874, already referred to, he thus refers to his final action. What can be more satis- factory ? But by a very large vote in tlie house, and a still larger vote in the senate, the salary clause was 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? Bum 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. The government has since submitted to graver wrongs than a dozen salary grabs, to avoid the evil and peril of an extra session of congress. This charge against Garfield has long ceased to have vitality. It never had any right to live, and I close this brief reference to it by one of the concluding passages of his admirable address referred to: If the delegates beUeve that the retroactive clause is so infamous that I ought to resign for voting for the appropriation bill to which it was attached, will they follow out their logic and insist that the Presi- dent ought to resign for signing it? My vote did not make it a law. His signature did. I do not consent to the logic that leads to such a conclusion. CHAPTER III. THE DE GOLYER CONTRACT. Case Stated. — Sketch of the District of Columbia Government.— Ca»- gress Never Appropriates for Street Improvements.— Case before the Joint Committee of Congress. — Glover and His Committee. — His Labors. — His Garbage Sealed with Seven Seals. — Case Re-opened by Chicago Times. — The Spry Nickerson. — Garfield Exposes Him. — Garfield's Statement on Oath. — Garfield's Chances for Thrift. — Still Poor. There has been a certain flavor following the name of DeGolyer, which much effort has attempted to connect with that of General Garfield. Perhaps its intangibility, its formlessness, has given it a certain lightness favorable to its life. If it could be fairly arrested and analyzed, if there was venality or corruption in the conduct of General Gar- field, that could be made to appear. Something may be done, however, to show that nothing sinister could have existed in his relations to the case. In February, 187 1, congress created a government for the District of Columbia, consisting of a legislature, gov- ernor, and the usual machinery of a State government. It also provided -for a board of public works, and cast upon it full power over the streets and avenues of the District. Full power was vested in the legislature, which alone could appropriate money for improvements, THE DE GOLYER CONTRACT. 263 with a limitation on the power to create a debt. The board of public works could make no contract until the legislature had made an appropriation to cover the out- lay. During the existence of this government, which continued until June 20, 1874, congress did not attempt to exercise the slightest control over the streets or ave- nues, or other objects of improvement, nor did it make an appropriation for streets or avenues, nor was it asked to ; nor during that time did it pay for any improvement, except as the United States was a property owner. Nor did or could any contract, or proposed contract, in any way depend upon an appropriation by congress, nor did anybody who knew anything of the subject suppose con- tracts did so depend. Who should so state was either ignorant of the subject or base in his purpose. The board entered on its duties in April, 187 1, and the first session of the legislature placed at its disposal four million five hundred thousand dollars by appropria- tion ; one-third of the cost of improvements was a servi- tude on property, and this sum was to pay the two- thirds, chargeable to the District treasury. The board at once, with wonderful vigor, entered upon hundreds of miles of streets, and commenced their improvement. Pennsylvania avenue was the only paved street in Wash- ington, at that time. Various plans for paving, and a vast variety of pavements, and paving companies, com- peted for preference. On consultation with the United States engineers and architects, the board adopted a rate of payment for pavements by the square yard, and a form, with well-devised stipulations, terms and condi- 264 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. tions, for its contracts. There may have been some ir- regularities in making these contracts, and possibly favoritism in awarding them. The trouble was in decid- ing among the many, which was the best pavement, and the best party to execute the work. In its eagerness to push the work, scores of contractors went to work, and had their contracts filled up and executed long afterward. The DeGolyer contract was awarded in June, 1872, when vast quantities of work were being undertaken. There was always a vigilant and relentless opposition, in the District, to the board of public works, and late in 1873, congress ordered an investigation into all its trans- actions. It was out of this inquiry, before the joint committee, that the famous safe -burglary case arose. All of the board's contracts were overhauled, and the details of their lettings and execution passed upon — among them, the DeGolyer. That made no figure there, nor was there any importance attached to it. General Garfield was not then assailed, nor did he appear before the com- mittee. Senator Thurman and Mr. Jewett, of Ohio, were both on the committee, both his personal friends, and either of them would have had him called, had there been the least thing reflecting upon him. Mr. Parsons, DeGolyer's lawyer, was called, and made an explicit statement of the whole matter ; so also one Benjamin R. Nickerson was called, who swore he knew nothing of the transaction, nor of the men or means employed to secure the contract. Garfield's connection with the transaction transpired to the public. It was seized upon in his district as we have seen. One of his constituents THE DE GOLYER CONTRACT. 265 called out the following letter from J. M. Wilson, of In- diana, chaiiman of the house part of the committee, and perhaps the most efficient man of the very able joint committee. CONNERSVILLE, INDIANA, AugUSt I, 1874. Hon. George W. Steele — Dear Sir: To the request for informa- tion as to whether or not the action of General Garfield, in connection with the affairs of the District of Columbia, was the subject of con- demnation by the committee that recently had those affairs under con- sideration, I answer that it was not; nor was there, in my opinion, any evidence that would have warranted any unfavorable criticism upon his conduct. The facts disclosed by the evidence, so far as he is concerned, are briefly these: The board of public works was considering the question as to the kind of pavements that should be laid. There was a contest as to the respective merits of various wooden pavements. Mr. Parsons repre- sented, as attorney, the DeGolyer & McClelland patent, and being called away from Washington about the time the hearing was to be had before the board of public works on this subject, procured General Garfield to appear before the board in his stead, and argue the merits of this patent. This he did, and this was the whole of his connection in the matter. It was not a question as to the kind of contract that should be made, but as to whether this particular kind of pavement should be laid. The criticism of the committee was not upon the pave- ment in favor of which General Garfield argued, but was upon the con- tract made with reference to it ; and there was no evidence which would warrant the conclusion that he had anything to do with the latter. • Very respectfully, etc., J. M. WiLSON. This was one of the charges which he met at Warren, already referred to. His course was discussed in the circles of the capital. No one spoke of corruption on his part. Everybody there knew that the appropriation referred to, as a condition of increasing the work, was an 266 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. appropriation which could only be made by the District legislature. The only question was, whether he, with his eminence, should have permitted himself to appear be- fore such a body as the board of public works. The matter passed to merited oblivion, until one of those popular mishaps, which discredit representative in- stitutions, threw from the depths one Glover (a name the world would let die— wiUingly) of Missouri, into the house of representatives. Emulous of the example of his Democratic peers, to inquire into the doings of their neighbors, while they were away, (he had a turn for that,) he managed to organize a small inquisitorial office of his own, nominally a committee to investigate the "Wash- ington Real Estate Pool," a very baffling body indeed. After an ineffective tussle with that mythical shadow, Glover turned his attention to miscellaneous scandal, sparing no body or thing, friends — if such he ever had — or enemies. Some of his mendacious assaults were upon the good men of his own party. He had a short- hand reporter, and all through the winter of 1876-7, he was raking among the scabs of the body politic and social. He had a pleasant way, when he fancied he had discovered a pustule, or pimple, of having his first im- pressions written vividly up and given to the press. In this way he contributed many lively tales to the current gossip of the capital. From a scandal himself he be- came a nuisance, and his political associates were com- pelled to abate him. He never was permitted to make any report, could never get his rakings printed. Finally, as was said, the committee upon printing gathered his THE DE GOLYER CONTRACT. 267 garbage, placed it all in a box, and sealed it with their "seven seals," each having one of the names of the committee written upon it. Among the things to which he was attracted, was the DeGolyer contract. He took it up as an original case. He called Governor Shepherd before him several times, without effect. Finally the versatile Nickerson came to his aid — Nickerson who had sworn before the joint com- mittee that he knew nothing of the transaction; that neither Brown, nor Chittenden, nor Parsons, nor any one else — the parties who were in some way connected with the DeGolyer contract — had ever told him anything about it. They avoided telling him. Now he declared that they severally told him all about it, and that he had a great deal of original knowledge of his own upon the case, which he detailed in a spry way to the refreshed Glover — all going by innuendo and indirection to point to Garfield as the great power to be secured in the case by the DeGolyer party — the man who held the national purse strings, and could secure large appropriations. At this point Garfield himself appeared, and read to the committee in the face of the undisturbed Nickerson, his former testimony, in flat contradiction of each point just deposed to by him. He went further, was sv;orn, and for the first time gave his account of his connection with the case, on oath, which was the end of it. Glover did not furnish the world with any account of his findings, and the world never knew that he was looking for any- thing in this gutter. It was sealed up to silence and ob- livion, until a correspondent of the Chicago Times dis- 268 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. turbed tne remains of Glover, violated the seals of the committee, and gave it, with comments of his own, to that sheet. Nickerson was recalled on the first of March, by Glo- ver, and General Garfield was present with the report of the joint committee. I quote fiom the Times version. He asked Nickerson — Are you the B. R. Nickerson who testified before the joint committee of which Senator Allison was chairman in 1874? — A. I am. Q. From page 1270 of the proceedings of that committee I read a portion of your e.xamination as follows: "Q. Did you know Mr. Brown was employed by Mr. Chittenden? — A. No, sir; Mr. Brown avoided every reference to anything of the kind; will say he avoided it. I mean to say he did not communicate anything" — was that statement tnie? — A. yes, sir. Q. That statement was subsequent to your knowledge at the time of the transaction? — -A. Yes, sir. Q. In your testimony here the other day were you asked, "Do you ^Know whether Chittenden employed Brown and paid him ten thousand dollars," and did you answer "I know that he did pay Mr. Brovni two thousand dollars; so Brown said and so he said?" — A. Yes, sir. Q. Which of those two statenients:is true? — A. They are both true. Mr. Garfield, resuming the joint committee report: Now I will proceed to another point. I read from his (Nickerson's) e.x- amination before the joint committee, volume three, page 1270, as fol- lows: "Q. And you had frequent talks with Mr. Chittenden on the subject? — A. Very frequently. Q. Did you see what he was doing? — A. Yes, sir. Q. Did he ever tell you? — A. He told me he thought they were getting along very fine, and that he was assured. I am now speaking up to the time of Mr. Huntington's death. I am speaking of the time that elapsed after the death of Mr. Huntington, subsequent to that time. He assured me every time the question was up that he had secured the proper arrangements for carrying out substantially what had been secured with Mr. Huntington. He stated that Mr. Hunting- THE DE GOLYER CONTRACT. 269 ton had secured a promise and the assurance that the contract should be awarded, and that Mr. Huntington had secured it, and would have obtained it in a few days subsequent to his death. His death cut it off, and he has secured the services of other parties. My idea was that in the same line, and the same men Mr. Huntington had been associated with, had been substantially continued, and the arrangements were ab- solutely to be carried out. Q. Who were these men? — A. Mr. Chit- tenden never informed me; whatever he knew definitely he cautiously concealed. Q. Had you any idea who these men were? — A. Well, he informed me — yes, sir; I had an idea who they were. My idea was that Governor Cooke was the main man that Mr. Chittenden assumed to me to be relying upon, and I will tell you the reason I say that." And SO Governor Cooke was the niighty, mysterious man, longed for, sighed for, in 1872, before Glover's time, not Garfield. Mr. Garfield resumes, commenting and reading from the report: There is a long cross-examination here to elicit from this witness the names of any other parties, and four pages further on the chairman says to him: " Now just give the names," to which the witness replied: " I told you two or three times that no names were given." A member of the committee then asked him this question: "You were asked by "Mr. Wilson what Mr. Page told you the names were; answer that ques- tion;" and he replied: "I stated distinctly that Mr. Page cautiously and purposely avoided telling me." Q. He did not tell you the names? A. "Xo, sir." Repeatedly — seven or eight times, Ishouldsay — the wit- ness here declared that Chittenden gave him no names after the death of Huntington, and that he did not know the names of the parties. Now, I ask him, were those statements true? A. Yes, sir. Q. Then what have you to say as to the truth of this statement made here the other day : " I know all about the matter in all its phases through Chittenden and Parsons at the time?" A. That is true, too. Here the witness goes back to Brown, who had avoid- ed him. By Mr. Garfield: Q. When did you learn those names? A. I learned them when Chittenden was called upon the stand, and I learned 270 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. them through Brown previously, and through DeGolyer and McClel- land. Q. When did you learn them from Brown? A. Directly after the contract was awarded. Q. Then you knew from Brown before you testified, the names that you now refer to? A. No, sir; I don't say that either. If you will understand what I do say you will get along better — you will get the truth and that is all you will get. Mr. Garfield — It is very difficult to get that in view of these conflict- ing statements. The Witness — There are no conflicting statements there. I don't want to be badgered. If you will ask me proper questions I will an- swer them distinctly if I can. Q. When did you learn from Brown the names oT these people? A. I never said I learned from Brown the names of the people. I learned from Brown that he was employed, and I learned from him, furthermore, that he had received a consideration, or was to receive a consideration. Q. When did you learn that from Brown? A. Directly thereafter. General Garfield pursued the agile witness, with many further contradictions. Here follows Mr. Garfield's testimony upon the mat- ter, taken from the same. Times, as follows: Now the whole story is plainly and briefly told. A day or two be- fore the adjournment of the congress which adjourned in the latter part of May or the first part of June, 1872, Richard C. Parsons, who was a practicing lawyer in Cleveland, but was then the marshal of the supreme court, and an old acquaintance of mine, came to my house and said that he w-as called away summarily by important business ; that he was retained in a case on which he had spent a great deal of time, and that there was but one thing to be done, to make brief of the relative merits of a large number of wooden pavements ; that the board of public works had agreed that they would put down a certain amount of wooden pavement in the city, a certain amount of concrete, and a certain amount of other kinds of pavement ; that they had fixed jhe price at which they would put down each of the different kinds, THE DE GOLVER CONTRACT. 27 I and that the only thing remaining was to determine which was the best pavement of each of these several kinds. He said he should lose his fee unless the brief on the merits of these pavements was made, and that he was suddenly and necessarily called away home ; and he asked me to prepare the brief. He brought his papers to my house and mod- els of the pavement. I told him I could not look at the case until the end of the session. When congress adjourned I sat down to the case, in the most open manner, as I would prepare a brief for the supreme court, and worked upon this matter. There were perhaps forty kinds of wood pavement, and several chemical analyses of the ingredients of the different pavements ; I went over the whole ground carefully and thoroughly, and prepared a brief on the relative claims of these pave- ments for the consideration of the board. That was all I did. I had nothing to do with the terms of the contract , I knew nothing of its conditions, and I never had a word to say about the price of the pave- ment. I knew nothing about it ; I simply made a brief upon the rela- tive merits of the various patent pavements ; and it no more occurred to me that the thing I was doing had relation to a ring, or to a body of men connected with any scheme, or in any way connected with congress, or related in any way to any of my duties in connection with the committee on appropriations, than it occurred to me that it was interfering with your personal rights as a citizen. I prepared a brief and went home. Mr. Parsons subsequently sent me a portion of his own fee. A year later, when the affairs of the District of Columbia came to be overhauled, congress became satisfied that the government of the Dis- trict had better be abolished, and this whole matter was verj' thoroughly investigated by a committee of the two houses. They went into the question of the merits of this pavement, some claiming that it was bad, and some claiming that the government had paid too much for it. Mr. Chittenden was called as a witness. I ought to say here that I never saw Mr. Chittenden until about the time I made the brief; I did not and do not know De Golyer and McClelland ; I would not know them on the street ; I am not aware that I ever saw Mr. Nicker- son before; and if anybody in this business had any scheme relating to me, it was never mentioned to me in the remotest way. It never was suggested to me that this matter could relate to my duties as a member 2y2 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD; of congress in any way whatever. All that I did was done openly. Everybody who called on me could have seen what I was doing, and if there was any intention or purpose on the part of anybody to connect me in any way with any ring or any dishonorable scheme, it was sedu- lously concealed from me. As I have said, three years ago a joint committee of the two houses investigated this matter thoroughly. Mr. Parsons was summoned, was examined, and cross-examined; Mr. Chit- tenden was examined; Mr. Nickerson was examined. When I heard that my name was being used in the matter, I went to the chairmen on both sides— for it was a joint committee. Senator Thurman, of my own State, was on the committee; Mr. Jewett, now president of the Erie railway, was on the committee. I said to the chairmen that, if there was anything in connection with the case which reflected upon me, and that they thought I ought to answer, I would be obliged to them if they would inform me. The chairman on the part of the house, Mr. Wilson, said that he had looked the matter all over, and that what I had done was perfectly proper; but, if anything should occur to make any explanation necessary, I should appear before the committee; he would send me word. He never did send for me. I want to say this, further, that if anybody in the world holds that my fee in connection with this pavement, even by suggestion or impli- cation, had any relation whatever to any appropriation by congress for anything connected with this District, or with anything else, it is due to me, it IS due to this committee, and it is due to congress, that that per- son be summoned. If there be a man on this earth who makes such a charge, that man is the most infamous perjurer that lives, and I shall be glad to confront him anywhere in this world. I am quite sure this committee will not allow hearsay and contradictory testimony to raise a presumption against me. Now, I will say very frankly to the commit- tee that, if I had known or imagined that there was an intent such as this witness insinuates, on the part of anybody, that my employment by a brother lawyer to prepare a brief on a perfectly legitimate question— a question of the relative merits of certain lawful patents — had any con- nection whatever, or any supposed connection in the mind of any man, with any public duties, I certainly would have taken no such engage- ment. I would have been a weak and very foolish man to have done so, and I trust that gentlemen who know me will believe that I would at THE DEGOLYER CONTRACT. 273 least have had too much respect for my own ambition to have done such a thing. By the Chairman: Q. What was the amount that Mr. Parsons did pay you of his fee? — A. Five thousand dollars. I do not think he men- tioned any sum at the time he asked me to make the argument. He said that he was to receive a large fee, and he would share it with me. I am not sure that he then mentioned the amount, or what he would pay me, but he said that the fee was a large one, and that there was a large amount involved. When I had made the argument I went home to Ohio, and some time in the month of July, I think, or perhaps a month afterward, Mr. Parsons deposited in bank to my credit five thousand dollars. By Mr. Culbertson: Q. Who paid those fees?— A. I do not know. I never knew anything about that at all. Mr. Parsons engaged me. No- body else spoke to me about it. The only relation I had to it at all was with him. Mr. Parsons' testimony on the subject is very full, and is true, as I remember it. .\ CONTINGENT FEE. By the Chairman: Q. Did Mr. Parsons say to you that his fee or yours would be contingent on the award of a contract for two hundred thousand square yards of pavement? — A. Oh, no, sir. I do not think he said that. He said: "I am in danger of losing an important fee unless I make this argument, and I cannot do it; I must go away, and I will pay you a share of what I get if you will make the brief. " I don't remember that he said whether it was contingent or absolute. I simply acted upon his request. Q. Your brief was made and filed? — A. Certainly. I labored over the case a good many days. I remember among other papers which I examined were some pamphlets giving an account of the working of this pavement in California, and I think, in Chicago. There were two or three chemical analyses of the materials used. I had to examine, I think, nearly forty of the different patents. ' The understanding was that the merits of the different competing pavements were to be laid before the board, in order that they might determine their relative merits. I do not think I knew anything about the price that was to be paid per square yard; certainly it was none of my affair; I had nothing to do with it or to say about it. 274 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. By Mr. Pratt: Q. It was not involved in the question submitted to you? — A. It was not involved in the question at all, because, as I un- derstood, the board of engineers had beforehand determined that for wood pavements they would pay so much, for concrete so much, and for other kinds so much. The property-holders on a street made a re- •quest for whichever pavement they preferred — concrete, Belgian, or wooden — and when the petitions of the property-holders were filed with the board they gave the different streets the kinds of pavement asked for by the people. By the Chairman: Q. Had you any knowledge at the time that the advisory board had passed a condemnatory judgment upon this very pavement upon which the award was made? — A. I had not, nor have I now. I only knew that there was a considerable amount of wooden pavement to be laid, because the citizens had asked for it. I had no knowledge of the matter e.xcept what I got from the papers before me. I recollect, among other things, that it was certified from the board of public works of Chicago that this pavement had stood there better than any other wooden pavement they had ever had, and I believe there was similar testimony from the city authorities of San Francisco. Q. Had you any previous knowledge as an expert in the qualities of different pavements? — A. I had had considerable experience in pat- ents and patent law generally. I had been engaged in the Goodyear rubber case, in the supreme court, and I was familiar with patent law. I have been practicing in the supreme court here since 1866; I do prac- tice constantly, as much as my public duties allow. Mr. Garfield refuted the idea that he was sought for any purpose connected with any possible appropriation by congress. The Chairman — I don't think, Mr. Garfield, that it has been testified here, directly, that any proposition in so many words, was made to you in relation to any appropriation made by congress, but there have been put in evidence here extracts from letters, which were written by Chit- tenden from this city to DeGolyer & McClelland, after interviews with you. Mr. Garfield — Of course, Mr. Chairman, you will see the utter impos- sibility of one man being made responsible for what another man writes THE DE GOLYER CONTRACT. 275 about him. I can not, of course, say what has been written about me. If I had it all before me, it would be a very mi.xed chapter, I have no doubt, as it would be in the case of any of us. The Chairman — There has been no direct testimony that any such proposition was ever made to you. Mr. Garfield — If there is any testimony of that sort it is false, and I shall be obliged if you will let me know. Though no one can care what Nickerson may have said, on any subject, I cut this further from him, after Mr. Garfield's statement. The very last paragraph of this singular record : Mr. Pratt — Didn't I understand you to say just now, Mr. Nickerson, that at the time Mr. Garfield was employed, and at the time he was giv- ing the board the result of his examination of the matter, you were aware of it, and were anxious for his success ? Mr. Nickerson — I say I was interested and anxious for the success of the matter, and spent a good deal of time and money in connection with it, but I did not know that Mr. Garfield was in at all, at that time. The only other witness, and the first called, was Gov. Shepherd whose evidence strongly contradicted that the contract was received by influence. As nobody before that committee, or elsewhere, has in any form contradicted Gen. Garfield's statement, it is to be taken as entirely true. The busy years had inter- vened between the events recited and their narration, he had not been permitted to forget them, and he gave the same account of them, as in his Warren speech of September 19, 1S74. The case is this : He had no knowledge of or confer- ence with the principals. He did not know that there were persons between them and Mr. Parsons. He was employed by Mr. Parsons, esteemed as a high-minded 276 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. and honorable man, to take his place in an important case, prepare and make a purely legal and scientific argument in it, before a regular official body, having jurisdiction of it. We know that the task was ably and conscientiously performed. There is not a shadow of proof that he was even unconsciously used, or sought to be used for any other purpose, however indirectly. Beyond his able presentation of the merits of the De Golyer pavement, he had nothing to do with procuring the contract, nor does it appear that that was fraudulent, unfair, or to the harm of the District. He had nothing to do with determining the sum to be paid Mr. Parsons, nor was there any stipulation between Parsons and himself, as to the amount to be received by him. Mr. Parsons, a just and generous man, decided what he ought to pay, and unasked, paid it. In this transaction what nice rule of official conduct, what strict law of personal integrity, what severe canon of propriety was violated or invaded by Mr, Garfield? No public money went for his fee. The District did not pay it. No possible action of congress was involved in it. Shall it be said that he ought to have suspected something? Who, or what ? What was there to put him on his guard? Was he a great man, and should he have known that something more than his mere argument was employed? That he should have known that the weight and presence of his influence as a public man were what were retained? So a lawyer, an advocate and a civilian shall see to it, lest he grows too large, and dwarfs the courts, and his very presence amounts to that undue in- THE DEGOLYER CONTRACT. 277 fluence which works a denial of justice, although in this instance, no one has claimed that it did. If still it is said that Garfield had no such position as a lawyer as would warrant the payment to him of five thousand dollars, even in a matter of this moment, and he ought to have known that himself, it is still to be re- membered that he did not bargam for or name the sum, nor was he consulted about it. If such are the reader's im- pressions of him he is respectfully referred to chapter first. Part Third of this work. It might be well to ask the reader to remember that while Garfield was chief of staff of the army of the Cum- berland with power to give passes, and do all that the general could do, nothing would have been easier in those unscrupulous times, than for a man with a turn for thrift to have realized unnumbered thousands in cotton and other speculations. So on the ways and means, and appropriation committees — what would not men have given to increase or reduce a tax, or import, or to secure an appropriation? One scorns a reference to the small savings of such a man to negative a charge of ve- nality; and yet that he has but scant resources after all these years of great and splendid services, and has met with no pecuniary losses is satisfactory evidence that his hand has never touched venal money. PART FOURTH. 1874,1880. Life at the Capital Resumed, CHAPTER I. THE END OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. Pen Sketches. — New Men. — The Record of a Day. — Washington Society. The last congress of Republican supremacy will re- ceive but scantiest mention. The presentation of the labors and opinions of General Garfield upon the great subjects of revenue, expenditure, and the currency, carried us through this congress. I am mindful that there are three more congresses to complete our survey of his public life, and with briefest reference to some of the able men who were his co-laborers in the two houses, not hitherto named, so that it may not seem to be by implication claimed that he thought and wrought in solitude, we will go on. Hannibal Hamlin, who has run a most notable ca- reer of silent, consistent persistency, returned to the senate in 1869, w^ere he still (1880) lingers. Freeling- huysen took his seat in the same body, at the extra session of March, 187 1. William G. Brownlow, al- way Parson of that name, sat there for Tennessee, from March, 1872, to 1877. Reuben Fenton became Mr. Conkling's colleague in 1869. Belonging to a different school of New York politics, he retired in 1875. Ken- tucky, on the w^hole, must be regarded as a fortunate 28o LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. State in her senatorial representation, and among her re- markable men who have continued that distinction, must be placed the name of Thomas C. McCreevy. Large, as becomes Kentucky, black-browed, and, for the most part, silent, when he did speak men wondered why he did not speak oftener. Even senators listened to him. The long, almost great, line of Bayard, was renewed in the senate in the person of Thomas Francis Bayard, who came in with the Fortieth congress, and tfirough him the name receives added lustre. Logan passed from the house to the senate in 187 1. Among the first men of the senate is to be ranked Matt. H. Carpenter, a lawyer and advocate rather than a politician. No man there slirpasses him in the mas- tery" and presentation of a great subject. He took his seat at the extra session of 1869. William B. AlUson and William Windom had both made their way to the upper house — though the way is absolutely level. So of Sargent it is to be said. Able, practical, quick, few men have been more useful. He is still a young man, but four years older than Garfield, and his valuable aid in the great labor of the Forty-second congress. John B. Gordon, of Georgia, born the same year with Garfield, entered the senate at this congress. He prob- ably did more than any other man to restore the tar- nished and finally lost name of the South, for ability, high character, and statesmanship in congress. He added to his distinction by retiring from the senate at the beginning of his second term, an act as rare in the lives of senators as in those of kings. THE END OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 251 Benjamin F. Wade (always Frank Wade until pro- moted to Ben.) retired with the Forty-second congress, and was succeeded by Allen G. Thurman, a very able lawyer, and one of the best advocates of the older bar of Ohio, and unquestionably one of her most enlight- ened judges. He succeeded Mr. Wade in this congress where he largely contributed to advance his State to her present position. Preponderance in the Republic began, and long remained, with A-'irginia, divided with Massachu- setts. For a time it hovered over New York, and in the later of days plays coquettishly about the maiden brow of Ohio. Few of her favored children have done more to advance her modest eminence in the councils and leading of the Nation, than Senator Thurman. She re- gretted to retire him, though to yield his seat to one the peer of the best man who ever sat in the senate. In the house William P. Frye, of J\Iaine, took his seat in this congress, and soon came to be ranked with nis colleague older in service, Eugene Hale, among the ablest men in the house. Maine has been one of the fortunate States in the National councils. Luke P. Poland, of Vermont, became a member of the Fortieth congress; a very able lawyer, and a genial man, who said many things in social life that found cur- rency. Save in his unfortunate dealing with the Credit Mobilier, of v.hich the reader has the means of forming an opinion, the country was a gainer by his service. George Hoar was sent to the house for the Forty-first congress, and his brother, E. Rockwood Hoar, quite his equal — attornej'-general in 1869, was one of his col- 282 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. leagues in this congress. Wm. A. Wheeler was now an old member. Clarkson Potter entered in the Forty-first ; Stewart L. Woodford and Lyman Tremain came in with the Forty- third. Pennsylvania sent Heister Clymer to this con- gress, and had Cesna Scofield, Harmer Packer, and many other rising men beside. From Virginia came Eppa Hunton, an able man, now first appearing. From Mississippi also appeared Lucius Q. C. Lamar, one of the ablest men of the south, ranking with her best of that old time, made ancient by the war. He had the doubtful gift of genius, and eloquence in rare meas- ure and high quality. Ohio sent Charles Foster to the Forty-second congress, about as good a thing as she could do, and Saylor and Banning to this, which was but so-so. Hugh J- Jewett, was one of her notable things, and Lauren D. Wood- worth a good thing, as was James Monroe, old colleague of Garfield in the Ohio senate. He was returned from the Forty-second. R. C. Parsons, former speaker of the Ohio house of representatives, long a conspicuous man, was returned to this house. Beck, of Kentucky, had been in the house from the Fortieth; and Maynard, re-entered from Tennessee. There were many other new men, many useful, a few advanced to distinction, conspicuous of whom was the form of B. H. Hill, of Georgia, of whom more hereafter. RECORD OF A DAY OUTSIDE. Ere I resume the further way of this history, I may aid the reader to a better appreciation of the outside THE END OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 283 field of a representative's labors, which stands thick with claims and annoyances, not to say perils, as something of the social demands upon his attention, amid which, with all their interruptions and perplexities, the labors and great reputation of Mr. Garfield were achieved. Whoever supposes that the duties and semi-duties of the average member of congress are limited to those of his representative character, pure and simple, needs light. These are mainly his share of work on the committee, the discussions in the room, the study, \\Titing of sub-reports of cases referred to him, and uniting and considering, final reports for the house; the presentation of memorials, at- tending in the house, answering official letters, seeing to the sending off of public documents, attending to the debates, and taking his share in the conduct of such bills as have been entrusted to his hands. Laborious and exacting as these are, they are the lighter and more grateful part of his work, as it is estimated, proper or otherwise. Suppose the man is the head of an impor- tant committee, one of the ten or twelve who know and do the Republic's real work, himself well and largely • known, genial and approachable. Take a single day of his mosaic yet monotonous life. He rises as soon as he can wake and identify himself in the morning, unrefresh- ed from scant sleep, dresses as he may, finds a strange, uncouth man in his little parlor, whom he has found there before, and whom he recognizes as the man from Nova, with the greatest discovery of the age — about the dozenth time of its discovery and exposure, whom, in a moment of forgetfulness, he promised to accompany to 284 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the patent office, He had forgotten that; but the grim, silent inventor of destiny has not ; this he now adds to the other hst for tlaat morning. In the corridor outside — he has heard his footfall — is an amateur detective. It is said that this species is on the increase. This man draws him to the remote corner and whispers, he has just be- gun to think he is almost on the track of one of the most gigantic frauds ever conspired against the bleeding treasury of an already ruined country. He brings letters of marque and reprisal from important political dead- beats, urging his immediate employment. He is ready to proceed to New York at once, all he requires is money and a letter of credit. "Go to the secretary.'; "The secretary is prejudiced; has been lied to about me." "Go to the treasury, secret service." "They are all in it. The solicitor is stupid." Finally, "Go to the d ," though he never swears; which would be going back, and he won't. He is escaped from. At the bot- tom of the stairs is that widow with three children, whom he had promised to help return to \Visconsin. Just be- yond her is the mother with her son, for whom he is to see Defrees, and get a place for him in the congressional printing office — he will be the ninth refusal which the kindly head of that besieged asylum of unfor- tunates has been obliged to give him, the present session. No matter, though he knows that the chances for a prac- tical, easy-going, self-propelling, double-reacting flying machine is a flattering probability in comparison; the hopeful mother does not. She "knows he can secure the place if he will." It is worth adding one more pang THE END OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 285 to the poor mother that he demonstrate the truth of what he says, and he will take her bright-eyed boy, whom he likes, with him as a witness. Now he escapes to his be- lated breakfast. The sorrows and griefs of cold coffee, with toast that has become crusty, are not peculiar to Washington. He finds on his plate a note marked private, and puts it unopened into an inside pocket, with- out the least idea of permitting the secret even a chance to escape. A card soon reaches him, and what is more serious the carder is not remote. The name, though, is all right, and the owner respects his breakfast, not having seen or tasted it. He finds his friend in the parlor and dismisses him with a pleasant word. There in a corner is a timid, shrinking form waiting for him. She had been there twice to see him. She was just dismissed from the bureau of engraving and printing, for lack of funds to pay employes. She has a mother and two brothers all out of employment — all mothers and broth- ers at the capital alway are. This is genuine. Inno- cent and timid, she came to him because they told her he had influence; they would do things for him. He looks at her; she is not seventeen — sweet as she would have been whom he buried so long ago, and whose face he wore. Then he looked at her and thought of what might happen should she be left to the world. He gave her tender words of assurance, and promised God and him- self to save her. Then he went out to find a meek, long- haired, white-necktied, sandy, seedy individual, who in- troduced himself as the Rev. Green Cheese from Arkan- sas, a pastor of the church in which the representative 286 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. some times finds rest. He was specially recommended to him as a zealous brother. He came on to Washing- ton to raise money to patch the roof and buy a lightning rod for his church. He received five dollars for his church and a flash for himself, and then the representa- tive broke away. The greatest discoverer since Newton shouldered up his changer of current history — a funny looking package, and attended by the boy for the printing office, they hur- ry down F street to the patent office — really the de- partment of the interior — where he deposits the great revolution, for whom he afterward secured a pass on the Baltimore & Philadelphia railroad. From there he went into the post-office department, across F, to have a stopper put on the pay of a mail contractor, until he should pay arrears due a sub-contractor in Kansas. Then he hur- tled off to the congressional printing office, half a mile further, realized his expectations from Mr. Defrees, took a car back to the treasury department, had an interview with the superintendent of the printing bureau; ran into the controller's room, and thence to the secretary of the treasury, who showed him an error (caused by the inac- curacy of a treasury clerk), in his report — forthcoming — to be that day submitted to the appropriation committee for final action, and where he waited till the chief of a bureau could be sent for, make an excuse and furnish the missing link. Then he took a car down Pennsylva- nia avenue, into which he was followed by a capital tramp. When he reached the capitol he entered by his new way, to avoid those awaiting his approach by the THE END OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 287 usual, and found that now ambushed. He finally- reached his committee, where, on mature consideration, it was decided that the report must be re-cast, the tables gone over with, changes made, the bill re-written, and the whole ready at ten o'clock the next forenoon. Then he escaped to the restaurant under the capitol, lunched, and up a private way into the lobby, in rear of the speaker's desk, and so reached his seat after the morning hour. The morning's mail encumbered his desk. He clapped his hands, a page came, tied it up with the traditional tow string of the house and constitution, with orders to send it to his boarding house. The debate on the legis- lative bill was pending. A gentleman on the speaker's right had the floor. Cards came to him; pages came with notes. He resisted, watched the debate which he was to close after the previous question was ordered. He had party consultations, finally had to obey a call from the ladies' gallery. There he learned he must go to a party that night. There was trouble in the home camp. Flabber Gaster was moody and discontented, had come on to Washington. The set had decided to give him a reception. "Flabber be — ." There was no help for it. He listened and tried to catch what the gentleman was saying below. Several other eyes, in pairs, bored him literally and figuratively, but he got back and sat it out, and then set out for home. The bores of the house called to him, put their arms in his. He was stopped on the way home, met at his own door, and found parties awaiting him. He got a good dinner at six, pushed the world, and the other two of that trin- 288 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. ity, out of view, rushed to his own dimly-hghted room, locked himself in — and another chap, not developed till he turned on the gas. He got rid of him, and before he was relieved of those whom the opening door confronted him with, it was time to dress for the reception. At half- past twelve he sat down to re-cast and finish his report, which his secretary had cut up and got ready. The committee would be called to-morrow on the floor, where he was also to reply to the speeches of to-day. How real, yet feeble, this is as a sketch of the daily life of a leading member of the house, will be attested by every such man who has served in it, within the twenty latest years. Let the dreaming young aspirant for congressional fame, inspired by the renown of Garfield to imitate his career, think of these things with the sturdy of budget speeches, the effect of expenditure on prices, the influence of the home market on commerce, the essential nature of money, the solution of the Protection-Freetrade problem, taxation, transportation, and the thousand other things which hover in their atmospheres. There is then the society side, and the moral aspects of the Ufe of a congressman, whether conspicuous or not, full of the subtle things which elude the grasp and defy transcription, so well and so misleadingly written of in the journals, by men who have never apprehended the spirit or mastered the philosophy of Washington life, which no one comprehends till he has passed the broad glare of the free, easy-going, elbowy, rag-tag official society, and been admitted to the smaller circles of the real inner social life of the capital. THE END OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 289 We may not follow the one figure of this volume to the sanctity of even his semi-public and official residence at the capital. We know that was and is a real home, where his heart and soul were kept fresh, pure and lofty; where his counsels were helpful, and some of his best thoughts were inspired as well as molded ; where his strength was renewed, where the promise of his youth became inspired prophecy, and ripened to its own great fulfilment. Happy, fortunate man; most happy, most blessed, in that which may be but approached in shadow, and its forms left to the magic hand of tender and sympathetic imagination. This much may be suggested that this residence came to be one of the real centers, where the best of evanes- cent official society and the choice of the fixed and real met and united in the charm of culture and refinement. CHAPTER II THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS, iSjs-'yj. Return of the Democracy to Power. — Sumner. — Look at the New Congress. — Causes of the Counter-Revolution. — Panic of Septem- ber, 1873. — Rebel Colors. — Democratic Majority Seventy. — The Sit- uation. — Garfield's Patriotic Course. — Amnesty Debate. — Blaine. — Hill. — Garfield's Great Reply. — Republicans Vindicated. Whoever had looked down from the galleries into the senate chamber on the opening of this congress, would have been struck with its incompleteness. A sense of great absence, which somehow reduced it from his old idea to the common-place. In running his eye over the assembly, he would at once have realized the cause. Sumner was no longer there. Since the departure of the old divinities with whom he formed a great group, he had stood alone, a gray idol, in the grandeur of his solitude. The glamour of his presence transformed the senate chamber to a temple. The mighty form was carried out and the temple shrunk to the common — became the bickering place of common men — who had pitifully measured the distance between themselves and him, by the petty teazing and annoyance, through which alone they approached him. He would also have seen the house of Cameron renewed by the son. He would have seen Bruce and Booth there. Many changes and additions might be noted in the 290 1 THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 29 1 rabble-y house. The curious reader will look these out for himself. He will find among the new and newer, the names of H. B. Payne, of Ohio, Blackburn, of Ken- tucky, Townsend, of New York, Tucker, of Virginia, and Watterson, of Kentucky. Mr. Blaine descended to the floor, and Michael C. Kerr assumed the gavel. The committees had a singular look. The ways and means, with Morrison at the heady and James A. Garfield as its antithesis, had something suggestive of a kangaroo; while the appropriations, with William A. Wheeler, Eu- gene Hale and Charles Foster as the base, and tapering abruptly to Holman at the top, indicates an apprecia- tion of the pyramidal in form. Almost anything with S. S. Cox on top, has about it something impish and mountebankish, spite of Samuel's versatility and real ability. The changes repeat themselves through the list. The tails had become the heads with results to have been an- ticipated. Nothing in our history is so illustrative of the really wonderful counter-revolution marked by the return of the Democrats to power. In 185 7 they continued their party ascendency, having control of every department of the government. Within four years of profound peace they deliberately and purposely wrecked it, covered the ruins with debt, plundered them of what they could make off with and fled, the only real service in their power to render the Republic. Fifteen years later the people in- vited them to their old places, to which they returned with an effrontery bordering the sublime. They came back the same men, with unchanged views and unim- 292 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. proved methods. They seem to have been without the pale of both of the maxims which ascribe luck to fools, and permits them to profit by experience. There is something in the mere habit, the use of gov- erning, by which common men become facile in adminis- tering authority. The Democrats certainly did not have this facility to govern under Mr. Buchanan. Fifteen years of opposition in all forms, from bloody revolution and war to the factious use of the forms of legislation, had not greatly enlightened them. From opposition, where men had won fame, they suddenly found themselves the af- firmative, when at once it was seen that in comparison with the now opposition the leaders were but second and third-rate men, and they made haste to place themselves in the guiding hands of the famous committee of thirteen. It may not have been their fault that they were unequal to the task of government. Their attempt certainly has been disastrous to the country. It certainly is desirable that they should acquire knowledge — experience in legis- lative skill. The Republic certainly should provide some Other school. For the Nation it is too expensive, while for them, like the instance mentioned by the younger Mr. Weller, it has proved a " pursuit of knowledge under dif- ficulties." General Garfield, from the organization of the first ses- sion to the present, remained with his Republican asso- ciates at the foot of the various committees to which the judgment of the speakers of the house assigned them; in this congress he was placed on the ways and means, a post he continued to hold to the end. He also served THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 293 on the committee of the Pacific railroad with Lamar. In the Forty-sixth he was placed on the select committee on rules, of which Speaker Randall was chairman, with Alexander H. Stephens, ex-vice-president of the confed- eracy, who found his way back to the' house at the Forty-third congress, where he had served in the Twenty- eighth, Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, Thirty-first, Thirty- second, Thirty-fourth and Thirty- fifth congresses. Jos- eph C. Blackburn and William Fry were also on this com- mittee. The committee made a thorough revision of the rules of the house. Having conducted Mr. Garfield across the chasm of the Credit Mobilier and the revolu- tion which placed him in opposition surrounded by the old and new men, I drop the slight thread of personal narrativa, and without further regard to chronology shall exhibit him in some of the more striking scenes, some of the great occasions where he led the forces of the Repub- licans in the memorable struggles which mark some of the succeeding years as parliamentary epochs in the his- tory- of congress, and American politics. THE BATTLE FOR AMNESTY. There had been a sudden, and for the time a hopeless breaking down of the Republican party. There was a majority of seventy against it in the house of the Forty- fourth congress. What led up to this requires a word. In September, 1S73, came the panic attributed to the Jay Cooke failure, due to the generally precarious condi- tion of financial affairs. Disaster was followed by dis- tress. The common mind attributes all general business disturbances to the dominant party in the government, as 294 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. in its same luminous logic, it, in a more silent way, gives it credit for the flush times of general prosperity, however little it could have influenced either. The candidacy of Mr. Greeley and its failure, left col- lectively, a mass of Republicans outside the party, to find their way back or elsewhere as might happen; as there were also numerous independent Greeley men, to be es- timated among the factors of possible new political com- binations. There was general discontent, and wide and deep distrust pervading the North. South, there was the breaking down and disappearance of Republican domina- tion in many of the States, and its rapid disappearance from that political hemisphere, was easily forecast. The panic pressure created the natural but absurd demand for more currency, of which, in the fragmentary condi- tion of politics, was born the Greenback party, which drew alike from both political organizations. In the flush and arrogance of their great success, the unconsolidated multitude called the Democratic party, threw off the light veil which had decorously lent the guise of seeming loyalty to the bodyless idea — the Na- tion. Rebellion was at the top, through the South, and the more disreputable old copperheadism of the war, was again aggressive at the North. This was the one animating bond of union among the incongruous ele- ments of the Democratic party, and unblushingly asserted itself at the capital. Now for the first time appears in the annual congressional directory, the ofificial positions — the entire record, of the offices, battles and services, rendered by each of the southern representatives, in sup- THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 295 port of the great rebellion, v/hich only failed to destroy the Republic which they came back to rule, superciliously flaunted in the face of the Union — the sole pretense of claim and fitness to guide and protect its life. Hitherto, Major Ben. Perley Poore's useful, little annuals were silent as to the w^ays and lives of the rebel leaders. They merely gave him the date and place of birth, with scant mention of education and profession, and for the rest, prudent silence. Now they came emulous for emi- nence won in the war of distinction. Of course, they had place. Carpet-baggery yielded to brigadiery. Of course, copperheadism submissively yielded to the legi- timate headship of the leaders of the rebellion, and in place of open, brave service, could only plead the hearty sympathy and cowardly aid they rendered the rebel- lion, in the guise and within the lines of the Union. That they made large showing, was abundantly plain by the old records of the house itself. While the re-constructed Democracy of un-re-con- structed rebels and copperheads, thus, with natural inde- cency, paraded their disloyalty as a civic merit, the Re- publicans took their diminished places in the house, humiliated and angry, not in a mood to make swift direct haste to obeisance, and apology for their conduct in the war and since, and yet they appeared with a manly determination to patriotically do their duty as represen- tatives. How natural for them to combine and resolve to oppose by open war and covert ambuscade, bush- whack, and shoot down — these trained veterans the undisciplined mass, most of them raw levies. Garfield, 296 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. with his heavy guns, his absolute mastery of all arms, able to hold the field alone in battle royal with the whole host; Blaine, "plumed knight" as he is, dashing, lance in rest, into their midst, carrying dismay and confusion ; Hale, Fry, Foster, Kasson, Conger, Townsend, Hoar, Wilson, and a host of lieutenants and followers, many fit to lead thousands. Garfield took his assigned place on the committee, and gave himself laboriously to his duties, certain that with time would come a return of the people to a cor- rect appreciation of the causes which produced the pres- ent depressed condition of the country. He knew that a reaction was certain to occur, sufficient in itself to restore a political equihbrium. It was not, however, in the nature of things, — such things as Democrats in their colors, and Republicans in their humiliation and anger, under the leadership of Blaine — to dwell long in harmony. The battle came, on Mr. Blaine's amendment to the general amnesty bill, under Mr. Randall's charge, Janu- ary II, 1876. The bill was a sponge removing the last disqualification of the last rebel from the national black- board. The amendment excepted some seven hundred and fifty specially obnoxious until they should signify their assent to it, by taking an oath of allegiance, and Jefferson Davis by name. With much skirmishing and fencing between Blaine and Randall, Mr. Blaine finally rushed in on his amendment; he certainly had not pre- pared his proofs. The first clause of his proposition was rapidly passed over in the terse and vigorous sentences of a perfect master of debate. When he reached the second, THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 297 a vigorous stroke reduced the great and revered leader of a great cause to the ridiculous position of being less dangerous to the Republic as the head of the Confed- eracy, and more useful to us as a disturber of rebel councils. He then arraigned him directly for complicity in the crimes of Libby and Andersonville, comparing him with the duke of Alva, to the advantage of the Spanish general, finishing the well wrought sentence of accusation, so as to permit emphasis with a burst of applause, swelled by the galleries. Robbins, of North Carolina, pronounced it a slander. The speaker threat- ened the galleries. Blaine went on, fortified by the report of the investigation of Andersonville, the horrors of which lost nothing by his vigorous handling. He read rebel or- der "number thirteen," to open with grape and canister on the thirty-five thousand shadows and skeletons of pris- oners at Andersonville, upon the approach of Sherman's army. He charged Mr. Davis with being party to this, as well as conceaUng the condition of the prisoners from the generous southern people. For the last he quoted from his messages. Then came in a contest over the mutual treatment of prisoners. For these reasons he urged that Mr. Davis should be excepted from amnesty. This masterly piece of accusatory invective, at a blow, burst the thin shell which had encased the undying fires of the war, and they flamed forth more fiercely and threateningly than ever before, on the floor. It was per- fectly proper that the northern Democrats should be first 298 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. heard in defense of their great ally, and supple and ready Mr. Cox — some time from Ohio, but now from New York, yet always Sam Cox — was the first to get the floor. Versatile, able, shrewd, witty, experienced, master of the smaller, of the more effective weapons of ridicule and wit, with malice enough to make them cutting, he replied at length, bringing Republicans to their feet, and quoting poetry and the psalms. Mr. Hill, of Georgia, got the floor, and the house ad- journed. The re-opening the old war, in its fierce reckless dis- regard of consequences, struck the capital aghast. The thing went flashing over the wires, filling the country with dismay. These were not the only emotions pro- duced. Hundreds of thousands of ardent, oppressed hearts responded with a battle-cry of joy. Most Repub- licans applauded, the few disapproved of, the course of Mr. Blaine. Those who were alarmed at possible con- sequences, admired, while they trembled. Night came down on the startled and anxious capi- tal. An immense throng, densely packed galleries, all the corridors, lobbies, and every available space throbbing with hearts too pressed by human forms to find beating room, the house opened the next morning. There was about and over it, and the whole immense pile of which it was a part, the nameless air of expectancy and dread. The flag as it ran up and floated out seemed to diff'use omen from its folds, as if conscious of what was being wrought below. While the preliminaries of the morning are being enacted let us see what THE FORTY -FOURTH CONGRESS. 299 account Mr. Hill gives of himself in Major Poore's hand-book of the Forty-fourth congress: "Born in 1823, Jasper county, Georgia; admitted to the bar in 1845; elected to Georgia legislature in 1851 and 1859; elected to the Confederate senate; elected to the Forty-fourth congress." He had never led a Confederate regi- ment, and that was always his reproach. It has cost him a great deal of bluster and mock heroics to supply that unpardonable vacancy. He was now to interpose his shield between his fallen chief and the lance of Blaine. The South has no abler man than this half-repudiated, half-snubbed Confederate-United-States senator, whom the Georgia people know and trust, when their leaders would not. He arose and made for the Republicans one of the most dangerous speeches given forth in congress, since they were put in the minority. AVith advantages of per- son and voice, it was very effective. In moving tones he sadly deprecated a re-opening of old wounds. The leader of the Republican party had done it, for an evil purpose. The South deplored it, asked for only peace and frater- nal amity, amnesty, oblivion, and love. He was com- pelled to vindicate the truth of history, which from his point he proceeded to do, in an able, skilful, adroit and damaging way. Moving effectively over the intervening ground, he grappled with the accusation against Davis, and exposed the weakness and inconclusiveness of the evidence on which it rested, which was shown to be very feeble. He ranged over the whole field of the rebel offers to exchange prisoners, with papers and dates. 300 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. When Blaine broke in upon him with his own resolution in the Confederate senate, to put to death all Union sol- diers found in the Confederate States after January i, 1863, Hill could not tell whether he was the author of it. It was a staggering blow. Blaine then read to him his resolution to put to death all Union officers command- ing negro troops, or who should entice away slaves, on capture. These were sad interruptions to the otherwise calm flow of the refreshing streams of charity and kind- ness, which, according to Mr. Hill, were running out to Union prisoners in rebel prisons. Nothing, perhaps, better showed the facile power and versatility of Mr. Hill, than his recovery from these assaults, which he was compelled to leave unanswered and uncontradicted. He had material and power enough to climb out on the other side of the gulf, re-form, and push his powerful attack upon the Republican camp, and concluded with a moving appeal for amnesty, peace, concord, fraternity, and sat down, with the galleries and floor shaken by responsive applause. It was a great, a complete answer to Blaine. It seemed a triumphant vindication of the South, which for sixteen years had not stood so erect and proud in the house as now. The Republicans were greatly depressed, and began to query whether there was a real South side to the subject involved in the dis- cussion. Ere the applause ceased, and while enthusias- tic congratulations were yet being pressed upon the hero of the South, now the greater man of its champions, Mr. Garfield calmly arose, and was awarded the floor, but yielded to a message from the senate, announcing its THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 3OI mortuary action upon the demise of the late Andrew Johnson, some time President of the United States, It was a fitting time for the responses of his late enemies, now mourning friends, to unite in proper tribute, and the Republicans retired and left them mingling tears, mourn- ing voices, and songs of triumph, over his name and memory. The startled feeling of alarm which rested upon the capital on the first night of the debate, had in a way shifted to one of great anxiety, if not of real apprehen- sion, on the part of the Republicans, under the effect of the masterly speech of Mr. Hill. While he had received great personal damage from the relentless hand of Blaine yet inasmuch as his propositions to murder Unionists captured in arms were rejected by the bodies to whom they were offered, the South had in no way suffered, but had rather gained. The only comfort was that Garfield had the floor for the next day, and was now the sole hope — unquestionably by position, native power, acqui- sition and training, the best man in congress for the labor which belonged to him, and which fell as naturally to his hand as does the ordinary work of life to the com- mon men of the world. And undoubtedly had the Re- publican leaders of both houses been consulted he would have been the man selected with unanimity for the task. It would be worth a visit to Washington from a remote part of the Republic to witness the capital itself and its masses of human beings, gathered on one of these great occasions. To hear the great vindication of the Repub- lican management of the war, from the assault of Hill, by 302 LIFE OF JAMES A, GARFIELD. Garfield and feel that we might still cherish the memory of the country's great leaders against the rebels in arms, and against their assaults in the house, was worth a pilgrimage. Amid a greater throng, under a larger ex- pectation, not free from anxiety on the part of the Re- publicans, he arose after a protracted morning hour, of January 1 2th, to answer the speech of the day before. It was one of the three or four great occasions where the champion of northern civilization and institutions has met the champion of southern civilization in the capitol in one of the inevitable contests which will arise from institutions so incongruous, until in new crystallizations and growths at the South the antagonisms shall disappear. Calmly he arose, as if to an ordinary question. A hush came over the vast throng, and he proceeded at once without exordium, to the work in hand. He did not stop to examine or reply to Mr. Cox. The real matter, he said, was not whether amnesty should be conferred upon the residue of the rebels. Nothing had been said of that. The real labor was the arraignment of the gov- ernment of the United States for the last fifteen years. He quoted a crisp paragraph of condensed accusation as the heart of Mr. Hill's speech, around which all its points gather in support. He then stated the rise of the debate. The house was asked for a sweeping amnesty, to embrace those alike who were ashamed to ask it, and those who preferred to remain marked out and conspicu- ous by not receiving it. It came from the friends, asso- ciates of the men. The Republicans, who had been lib- eral in extending amnesty, wished merely to examine and THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 303 criticise the scheme. They objected to but one man. He thus stated his own position on the general question, as also what the war had settled. 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 hu- man 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. Forthe 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 con- flict. Most of the Southern statesmen believed that their first obedi- ence 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 govern- ment 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. The committee that investigated Andersonville was called a humbug, an ex parte committee. He showed 304 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. that it was made up of Republicans and Democrats. It was a joint committee of both houses, called for by the secretary of war. He read criminatory passages from its report convicting the Confederate authorities of the gross- est offences toward Union prisoners. It had been before the country twelve years as a charge from the Nation, in its representative character, accusing these men in the face of the world, at the bar of public opinion, in the presence of histor}', which was being written, and the accused had not denied or explained the charges. Were the charges true? To this he addressed himself directly, showing that he held the proofs in a masterly grasp. Who was the agent employed and who worked the atrocities for which new names must be invented, and who appointed him? The man was Winder. Who was he? The personal friend of Davis, appointed by him to this duty, of whom when he left Richmond to establish and govern Ander- sonville, the Richmond Examiner said, fervently: "Thank God Richmond is at last rid of old Winder. God have mercy on those to whom he has been sent!" And this is the report of a rebel officer as to the man- ner in which Davis' friend and fellow-worker discharged the merciful and humane duty assigned to him. Anderson, January 5, 1864. Colonel: Having, in obedience to instructions of the twenty-fifth ultimo, carefully inspected the prison for Federal prisoners of war and post at this place, I respectfully submit the following report: The Federal prisoners of war are confined within a stockade fifteen feet high, of roughly hewn pine logs about eight inches in diameter, inserted five feet into the ground, inclosing, including the recent exten- THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 305 sion, an area of five hundred and forty by two hundred and sixty yards. A railing round the inside of the stockade, and about twenty feet from it, constitutes the "dead hne," beyond which the prisoners are not allowed to pass, and about three and one-fourth acres near the center of the enclosure are so marshy as to be at present unfit for occupation, reducing the available present area to about twenty-three and one-half acres, which gives something less than six square feet to each prisoner. Even this is being constantly reduced by the additions to their number. A small stream passing from west to .east through the inclosure, at about one hundred and fifty yards from its southern limit, furnishes the only water for washing accessible to the prisoners. Some regimen of the guard, the baker)', and the cook house being placed on the rising grounds bordering the stream before it enters the prison, render the water nearly unfit for use before it reaches the prisoners. * * D. T. Chandler, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General. Col. R. H. Chilton, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General. Mr. Hill had read the order for the establishment of the prison thus executed, and he thus speaks of it. Here is an official exhibit of the manner in which the officer detailed by Jeff. Davis chose the place for health, with "running water, and agreeable shade." He chose a piece of forest-ground that had a mias- matic marsh in the heart of it and a small stream running through it ; but the troops stationed outside of tlie stockade were allowed to defile its pure water before it could reach the stockade; and then, as if in the very refinement of cruelty, as if to make a mockery of the order quoted by the gentleman from Georgia, he detailed men to cut down every tree and shrub in the inclosure, leaving not a green leaf to show where the for- est had been. And subsequently, when the burning sun of July was pour- ing down its fiery heat upon the heads of these men, with but six square feet of ground to a man, a piteous petition was made by the prisoners to Winder to allow these poor men to be detailed to go outside, under guard, and cut pine from the forest to make arbors under which they could shelter themselves, and they were answered with all the loatlisome brutality of malignant hate, that they should have no bush to shelter 3o6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. them; and thus, under the fierce rays of the southern sun, they miser- ably perished. These last statements are made on the authority of Ambrose Spencer, a planter of Georgia, who resided within five miles of Andersonville. I quote from his testimony. This he did, fully sustaining his statement. Here is more from Colonel Chandler: Andersonville, August 5, 1864. Colonel ■. * * * My duty requires me respectfully to recommend a change in the offi- cer in the command of the post, Brigadier General J. H. Winder, and the substitution in his place of some one who unites both energy and good judgment with some feeling of humanity and consideration for the welfare and comfort (so far as is consistent with their safe keeping) of the vast number of unfortunates placed under his control ; some one who at least will not advocate deliberately and m cold blood, the propriety of leaving them in their present condition until their number has been sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrange- ment suffice for their accommodation ; who will not consider it a mat- ter of self-laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the stockade, a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe, and which is a disgrace to civilization, the condition of which he might, by the e.xercise of a little energy and judgment, even with the limited means at his command, have considerably improved. D. T. Chandler, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General. Colonel R H. Chilton, Assistant Adjutant and Inspector General C. S. A., ♦ Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Reagan, of Texas, late of Mr. Davis' cabinet, un- dertook to claim that this report never reached President Davis. This was thus met: The adjutant general is the clerk of tlie secretary of war, and the secretary of war is in turn the clerk of the President. But the gentle- man from Texas [Mr. Reagan] will soon see that he cannot defend THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 307 Davis by the indorsement of General Cooper. The report did not stop with the adjutant general. It was carried up higher and nearer to Davis. It was delivered to Assistant Secretary Campbell, who wrote the indorse- ment I have just read. The report was lodged with the department of war, whose chief was one of the confidential advisers of Mr. Davis — a member of his official family. What was done with it ? The record shows, Mr. Speaker, that a few days thereafter an order was made in reference to General Winder. To what effect ? Promoting him ! Add- ing to his power tn the field of his infamy! He was made commissary- general of all the prisons and prisoners tliroughout the confederacy. That was the answer that came as the result of this humane report of Colonel Chandler ; and that new appointment of Winder came from Mr. Seddons, the Confederate secretary of war. A Member. By order of the President. Mr. Garfield. Of course all appointments were made by the Presi- dent, for the gentleman from Georgia says they carried our constitution with them and hugged it to their bosoms. But that is not all. The testimony of the Wirz trial shows that at one time the secretary of war himself became shocked at the brutality of Winder, and, in a moment of indignation, relieved him from command. Again, Assistant Adjutant General Chilton, reporting August 18, 1864, said that the prison "is a reproach to us as a Nation," and this is endorsed by the assistant secre- tary of war; and so he went on, calmly, relentlessly, to fix this charge of complicity, in all the nameless horrors, on the rebel chief. Then he turned to vindicate the humanity of the treatment of rebel prisoners in our hands. He read the following from Hill's speech: When the gentleman from Maine addresses the house again let him add to it that the atrocities of Andersonville do not begin to compare with the atrocities of Elmira, of Fort Douglass, or of Fort Delawpxe; and of all the atrocities both at Andersonville and Elmira, the Confed- erate government stands acquitted from all responsibility and blame. He said he stood in its presence with amazement 3o8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. beyond expression. He demanded of the three Demo- crats on the floor, who represented the districts where these places were situated, whether the statements were true? He paused, and no answers came. At that mo- ment a telegram, received from Colonel Tracy, former commandant at Elmira, was placed, in his hand, denying the charge in the strongest terms, and alleging that the prisoners had the same fare as our own soldiers. Then Walker, the Democrat from the Elmira district, arose and declared that the statements of Colonel Tracy were true in every respect. Immediately a telegram from General Elwell was read, confirming it also. "The lightnings are our witness," said the general, amid vociferous applause. Mr. Hill. In response to what the gentleman has said, I desire to state as a fact what I personally know, that on the last occasion of decorating soldiers' graves in the South, our people, uniting with the northern soldiers there, decorated in harmonious accord the graves of the fallen Federals and the graves of the fallen Confederates. It is be- cause of this glorious feeling that is being awakened in the country that I protest against the revival of these horrors about any prison. Mr. Garfield. So do I. Who brought it here? [Cries from the Democratic side of the house, "Blaine! Blaine!"] We will see as to that. I wish this same fraternal feeling could come out of the graveyard and display itself toward the thirty or forty maimed Union soldiers who were on duty around this capitol, but who have been displaced by an equal number of soldiers on the other side. [Applause. ] The effect of the testimonies was very great. Run- ning on amid interruptions and applause, he made this authoritative statement, that we captured of the Confed- erates four hundred and seventy-nine thousand one hun- dred and sixty-nine prisoners, and they captured one THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 309 hundred and eighty-eight thousand one hundred and forty-five of the Union soldiers. The time expired, and Mr. Hill moved that it be extended. On the point made by Hill, that we refused an exchange of prisoners, Garfield went on to show that the trouble began in consequence of Hill's own resolution of Octo- ber, 1S62. ' ' Resolved, That every person pretending to be a soldier or officer of the United States who shall be captured on the soil of the Confederate States after the first of January, 1863, shall be presumed to have entered the territory of the Confederate States with intent to excite insurrection and to abet murder, and that unless satisfactory proof be adduced to the contrary before the military court before which his trial shall be had, he shall suffer death." That was the first step in the complication m regard to the exchange of prisoners of war. That resolution appears to have borne early fruits. On the twenty-second day of December, 1862, Jefferson Davis, the man for whom amnesty is now being asked, issued a proclamation, a copy of which I hold in my hand. I read two paragraphs: First. That all commissioned officers in the command of said Ben- jamin F. Butler be declared not entitled to be considered as soldiers engaged in honorable warfare, but as robbers and criminals deserving death; and that they, and each of them be, whenever captured, re- served for execution. Mr. Hill. A reason is stated for that. Mr. Garfield. The reason is in the preamble. I am not discussing the reasons for this extraordinary proclamation, but its effects upon the exchange of prisoners. Third. That all negro slaves captured in arms be at once delivered over to the executive authorities of the respective States to which they belong, to be dealt with according to the laws of said States. Fourth. That the like orders be executed in all cases with respect to all commissioned officers of the United States when found serving in 3IO LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. company with said slaves in insurrection against the authorities of the different States of this Confederacy. These men were serving, not Benjamin F. Butler, but the Union. They did not choose him 'as their general. They were assigned to him ; and by this proclamation that assignment consigning them to death at the hands of their captors. But the second question was still more important. It was an order that all men who had been slaves and had enlisted under the flag of the Union, should be denied all the rights of soldiers, and when captured should be dealt with as runaway slaves under the laws of the States where they formerly belonged, and that commissioned officers who commanded them should be denied the rights and privileges of prisoners of war. The decision of the Union people everywhere was that, great as was the suffering of our poor sol- diers at Andersonville and elsewhere, we would never make an exchange of prisoners until the manhood and rights of our colored soldiers were acknowledged by the belligerent power. And for long, weary months we stood upon that issue, and most of the suffering occurred while we waited for that act of justice to be done on the other side. To enforce this proclamation of Mr. Davis a law was passed on the first of May, 1863, by the Confederate congress, reported, doubtless, from the judiciary committee by the gentleman who spoke yesterday, and in that law the principles of the proclamation I have just read were embodied and expanded. Section four of the law reads as follows: Sec. 4. That every white person, being a commissioned officer or acting as such, who, during the present war, shall command negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate States, or who shall arm, train, organize, or prepare negroes or mulattoes for military service against the Confederate States, or who shall voluntarily aid negroes or mulattoes in any military enterprise, attack, or conflict in such service, shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection, and shall, if captured, be put to death or be otherwise punished, at the discretion of the court. Sec. 5. Every person, being a commissioned officer or acting as such in the service of the enemy, who shall, during the present war, e.x- cite, attempt to excite, or cause to be e.xcited, a servile insurrection, or who shall incite or cause to be incited a slave to rebel shall, if cap- tured, be put to death, or be otherwise punished, at the discretion of the court. THE FORTY- FOURTH CONGRESS. 3II Sec. 7. All negroes and mulattoes who shall be engaged in war, or be taken in arms against the Confederate States, or shall give aid or comfort to the enemies of the Confederate States, shall, when captured in the Confederate States, be delivered to the authorities of the State or States in which they shall be captured, to be dealt with according to the present or future laws of such State or States. Approved May i, 1863. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am here to say that this position taken by the head of the Confederacy, indorsed by his congress and carried into e.xecution by his officers, was the great primal trouble in all this busi- ness of the exchange of prisoners. There were minor troubles, such as claims by both sides that paroles had been violated. I think General Halleck reported that a whole division of four brigades, Stevenson's division, which had not been properly exchanged, fought us at Look- out iMountain; but that may have been a mistake. It was one of the points in controversy. But the central question was that of the govern- ment of the United States having committed itself to the doctrine that the negro was a man and not chattel, and that being a man he had a right to help us in fighting for the Union, and being a soldier we would perish rather than he should not be treated as a soldier. To show that I am not speaking at random I will read from a report which I hold in my hand; a report of the Secretary of War on tlie dif- ficulty of the exchange of prisoners. This paper is dated August 24, 1864. I think it is a misprint for 1863, from what surrounds it; but no matter as to that. It was in August General Meredith reported: To my demand " that all officers commanding negro troops, and negro troops themselves, should be exchanged as such," Mr. Ould de- clined acceding, remarking that they (the rebels) would " die in the last ditch" before giving up the right to send slaves back to slavery as property recaptured. He pursued the ungrateful subject of the exchange, with other evidence of a pointed nature, until he estab- lished that the failure to exchange was the fault of the rebels. He turned his guns again upon the ex-Confed- erate chief He touched tenderly upon the offence of 312 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. those who, having sworn to support the constitution, yet turned their backs on their oath of fideUty, but said : There were some passages in the speech of yesterday which make me less reluctant to speak of breaking oaths. He [Mr. Hill] said : • ' We charge all our wrongs to that ' higher law, ' fanaticism, which never kept a pledge or obeyed a law. We sought to leave the associa- tion of those who would not keep fidelity to covenant. We sought to go by ourselves ; but, so far from having lost our fidelity to the consti- tution, we hugged it to our bosoms and carried it with us. * * * But you, gentlemen, who persecuted us by your infidelities until you drove us out of the Union, you who then claimed to be the only friends of the Union, which you had before denounced as a 'league with hell and a covenant with death," you who follow up the war w-hen the sol- diers who fought it have made peace and gone to their homes, to you we have no concessions to make. Martyrs owe no apology to tyrants." There is a certain sublimity of assumption in this which challenges admiration. Why, the very men of whom we are talking, who broke their oaths of office to the Nation — when we are speaking of relieving them we are told that they w-ent out because we broke the constitution and would not be bound by oaths. Did we break the constitution? Did we drive them out? I invoke the testimony of Alexander H. Stephens, now a member of this house, who, standing up in the seces- sion convention of Georgia, declared that there was no just ground for Georgia's going out ; declared that the election of a -President ac- cording to the constitution, was no justifiable ground for secession, and declared that, if under the circumstances the South should go out, she would herself be committing a gigantic wrong, and would call down tipon herself the thunders and horrors of civil war. Thus spoke Alexander H. Stephens in i860. Over against anything that may be said to the contrary, I place his testimony that we did not force the South out ; that they went out against all the protests and the prayers and the humiliation that a great and proud Nation could make without absolute disgrace. *****«*■'' Mr. Garfield. If the gentleman has understood me he cannot fail to see that I have not used the word (perjury) in any offensive sense, but THE FORTV-FOURTH CONGRESS. 313 in its plain and ordinary acceptation, as used in law. We held that the United States was a Nation, bound together by a bond of perpet- ual union; a union which no State or any combination of States, which no man or any combination of men, had the right, under the constitu- tion, to break. The attempt of tlie South to overthrow the Union was crime against the government — the crime of rebeUion. It is so known to the laws of Nations. It is so described in the decisions of the supreme court. The gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Davis] calls the war on one side a raid. I will never consent to call our war for the Union "a raid," least of all a raid upon the rights of any human being. I admit there was a political theory of State rights — a theory held, no doubt, bygen- themen like the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] who spoke a mo- ment ago — believed in as sincerely as I believe in the opposite — which led them to think it was their duty to go when their State went. I ad- mit that that greatly mitigates all that the law speaks of as a violation of an oath. But I will never admit (for history gives the lie to the statement in every line) that the men of the Union were making a "raid" upon the rights of the South. Now that slavery, the guilty cause of the rebellion, is no more, and that, so far as I know nobody wants it restored — I do not believe these gentlemen from the South desire its restoration Mr. Hill. We would not have it. Mr. Garfield. They would not have it, the gentleman from Georgia says. Then let us thank God that in the fierce flames of war the insti- tution of slavery has been consumed ; and out of its ashes let us hope a better than the fabled Phceni.x of old will arise — a love of the Union high and deep, ' ' as broad and general as the casing air, " enveloping us all, and that it shall be counted no shame for any man who is not still under political disabilities to say with uplifted hand, "I will be true to it and take the proffered anmesty of the Nation." But let us not ten- der it to be spurned. If it is worth having it is worth asking for. 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 doonvav of our children, who 314 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. will remember the glory of their ancestors with pride. The high qual- ities displayed in that conflict now belong to the whole Nation. Let them be consecrated to 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 gentle- man yesterday from 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 dun smoke, and above its roar he 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. [Laughter.] General Scott said, in the early days of the war, "When this war is over, it will require all the moral and physical power of the government to restrain the rage and fury of the non-combatants." [Laughter.] 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 forgiv- en those Democrats of the North whose hearts were not warmed by the grand inspiration 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 united with those who uttered them. But to those most noble men, Democrats and Republicans, who to- gether 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 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, unshrived, unforgiven, undefended. [Great applause.] There is not in our history an instance of a more ef- fective reply than this; cahn, strong, clear, forcible, mov- THE FORTY-FOURTH CONGRESS, 315 ing with inexorable certainty and irresistible power, it cut and swept the field clean. On the following day Mr. Blaine made one of his forceful and vigorous speeches, and others took part in the debate. The great antagonists did not again appear in it nor was there even an attempt to reply to Garfield. The Democrats never recovered from the effects of his speech. Its demolition of their case was final. It seemed to fix ineffaceably on the brow of the fallen chief the charges made upon him. It doubtless added something to the fame of Mr. Garfield. Perhaps, more correctly speaking, it confirmed and sustained it. Hill took notes of his speech but the Democrats re- fused to permit him to attempt to reply. Quietly and by common consent the amnesty bill was permitted to drop and that was its end. The great journals de- clared that Garfield had drawn the lightning from the clouds and people might repose in safety. CHAPTER III. THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. Lamar's Speech. — Reply to Lamar. — Its Effect. — Leadership. The first session of the Forty-fourth congress under Democratic management ran past all reasonable bounds. May, always lovely on the Potomac, gave her roses and foliage to warm delicious June, and she handed them on to hot and glowing July, which ran in to fiery August. The locust was piping his note — fierce song of the in- tense heart of summer, and yet there congress remained as if fixed. The capitol's huge iron dome under the unmitigable heat swayed to and fro many feet each day. The porticos all along the eastern front were a burning waste of marble and wide Pennsylvania avenue a heated desert. The poor congressman, as he toiled sweating up the western approach to the house, lingered in the shade of what, under the severe taste of Fred Law Olmstead had ceased to be a forest, paused at the top of the turfy terrace to , gather breath and heart, to pass the expanse of burning stone ere he could gam the cool slumberous soli- tude of the now all but deserted capitol. Everybody else had gone ; the faltering blundering of the unruling ma- jority kept him. The convention in his district was near and he afar. It was 1876. The great conventions had 316 THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 317 come and gone. Yet he lingered. He passed the stone pool of crystal water, looked enviously at the lazy gold fish, and sweltered on. It was the centennial ; a hundred years had elapsed and he was still there, and likely to re- main. All the nations were at Philadelphia, all the re- mote regions ; Siam, Orange Free State, Australia and the far-off islands of lonely seas, and he was still at Wash- ington, and there he remained till the mortal fifteenth of August; solaced only by the fresh flocks of the peo- ple who,on their way to or from Philadelphia, visited the capital. The second of that latest of months became a day of memories in the wing of the huge pile nearest the Po- tomac. Long and arduous preparations had been made for it. It was there to be demonstrated by clear, lumin- ous, unanswerable showing that it was absolutely neces- sary for the well-being of the Republic that the young and tender power of the Democratic party should be extended, consolidated and made permanent by the election of Mr. Tilden and the re-election to the house of the present majority. Lucius Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, great- est of rhetorical magicians, was to work the wonder in the sympathizing admiring presence of the two houses, and the sweltering crowd the occasion would conjure to the capitol, even in August. A great deal more than a rhetorician is Mr. Lamar. He has one of the subtlest and most acute minds of the Nation with a skill for gathering shades of difference, gar- nering up nice distinctions, and nursing and cherishing them, till their sum magnified by his ingenuity may 3l8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. seem very great. He had a strong, vigorous grasp, rare power of presentation, and an eloquence passing that of ahnost every man of the houses. All his rare powers were to be put forth for the great task of persuad- ing the Republic that her only safety was in now giving herself unreservedly in to the arms of those w'ho for lack of strength had not strangled her when last won to their embrace. It was known that Mr. Lamar had long labored with this problem. It was even said that the speech had been written, read over and dver to the wise ones, changed, modified, polished and shaded off to nice perfection of argument and a beautiful seeming of truth. It was prudently deemed best to withhold it till the latest days of the delaying session — leaving only time to get it out for distribution ere the departure of the members, so as to insure no effective answer, should any dismayed Republican have the hardihood to attempt it. It was not to be a rhetorical or eloquent effort, but calm, clear, forceful, and strong by inherent might, so wrought and compacted as to defy successful assault. Then unanswered — unanswerable, it was to be launched upon the thoughtful, reading, reflecting North. After much study, I believe Mr. Lamar's greater re- viewer has more luminously stated the propositions of the speech than he did himself. He began with pathet- ically deploring the evils of party, and showed the Amer- ican people how sadly weary they were of them. That, superior to party, they have the great purpose to free the country from the corruptions and manifold errors and e\-ils of legislation and administration. These are: A THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 319 general corruption of administrative government; a de- plorable state of the civil service, sustained by one hun- dred thousand office-holders, and surrounded by one hundred thousand expectants of office. This was the major premise. The minor, but for his purpose, more important in the pending canvass, the Republican party was incapable of working out the great reforms the people desired. The conclusion, that the Democratic party, in this syl- logistic exigency, must be brought into full power at the approaching election. Apprehensive that the people might feel a natural hesitancy at again trusting the De- mocracy, he met that state of mind. He said there need be no fear that the South, lately in rebelHon, would again control the government. They were prostrated; their institutions overthrown, their industries broken down, in which condition they could not again be placed at the head. Finally, the South had not united with the Democracy from choice, but from necessity, for pro- tection. There need be no fear that the negroes will not be cared for; the South understands and appreciates them, and her people are on such terms of affection and friendship with them, and are in a much better condition to help them up and along than folk at a distance and ignorant of them can be. The South accepts the results of the war. These propositions he wrought out and worked up with almost infinite care and skill, patiently clearing the ground, placing his foundation and building up his structure, every stone of which was finished and pol- 320 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. ished, and the whole in modest, severe outUnes, and with absence of ornament. His language, chaste and simple ; the argument logical, where logic could serve ; always plausible and persuasive; a total absence of arro- gance; no taunt; no unpleasant remembrance of the past; no word which could create apprehension of the future, were breathed to annoy or disturb a sensitive ear. Calm, peaceful, serene, sweet, tender — and so he worked it out. When his first hour expired, Mr. Garfield arose and hoped he would be allowed the amplest time to complete his presentation of the whole subject, which, by the way, he forgot to reciprocate two days later. There was an immense concourse. Many of the senators were present. He did not speak for immediate . applause, but with rare skill, polishing and fitting each stone, and nicely adjusting it to its proper place, he finished the entire structure. His friends and party, lovers and countVymen could not repress the gratifi- cation and admiration they felt, and greeted him with applause. They gathered around with congratulations. The great impregnable work was done. Garfield and Hoar might assault it if they would, it was safe. A page brought a subscription paper, and they placed their names to it, for tens of thousands, for immediate circula- tion. These would be multiplied for the campaign to hundreds of thousands, and do its work. It was a very great performance, and very dangerous to the Republicans. They knew and felt the peril. No other Democrat in congress could have done the work so well. Gordon, nor Hill, nor Thurman, nor Bayard, THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 32 1 nor Voorhees, no one of them. Nor was there but one man who could answer it. When it began to unfold, and its quality seen and felt, Republicans from all parts of the house gathered around Garfield's desk, where he sat calmly taking notes, with his fair blond face, and clear, blue eyes, occasionally lifted to the rapt face of the magic conjurer of miracles. One would like to have watched the processes of impres- sion and thought, received and going on, in that vast brain, as the charm of speech proceeded. There was a lively movement in all parts, under the dome, little imps hurrying here and there, awakening all the memories, and there never was a better trained or more faithful band. All the perceptions, with their microscopes and magnifiers, all the comparers with their infinitude of tests and detections, the reflectors, the judgments, with the dialectics, would be marshalled later, and there was ample room and much need for them all. This was not the stormy field of the amnesty battle royal, fought on the lower earth, on the plain of common apprehension, but on the upper heights, where mists gathered, in the neighborhood of the clouds, which had to be blown away by the winds of mighty wings, or rarefied with sun heat and light. No man of the house thought of any one to do this, but Garfield and the Republicans gathered about him as men will, with all manner of wise and other suggestion, which he heard without heeding, as such men do, though he courteously received it all. They were wont to run to him, like the worsted side, to their one big boy — bigger 322 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. and braver and stronger than any other boy — than all the boys on the other side, whom he had always overthrown, and they went up to clap him on the shoulder, and say "Old fellow — I don't know — you'll have a d — 1 of a tus- sle! but I'll risk you." And this is his leadership — never clearly beyond the big, never overthrown boy, to be put forward by the boys on his side, all unconscious that he is the big boy, and should lead by right of born king- liness, and not by big-boyism, waiting to be pushed for- ward. There was not time to prepare and answer such work, and the Republicans went home anxious and foreboding. Garfield was ready the next morning. Something in the house prevented the calling up of the bill to transfer Indian affairs from the Interior to the War department, which was under consideration when this great struggle came off. On the next — the fourth of August — it was called up. The wires announced that Garfield would answer Lamar, and men came from the Exposition to hear him. He arose in a thronged house, with anxious crowds about him, to his task. Like the effort to which it re- sponded, it was calm, temperate and elevated, not abounding in brilliant, quotable passages. Its strength can only be estimated by a calm study after a thorough mastery of its predecessor. I feel that I cannot translate its full significance to my reader, nor fully my conception of its author. Regretting that Lamar's speech had not appeared in the Congressional Recora (it was withheld till after Gar- THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 323 field's reply), he proceeded to state its propositions, the substance of which are already given. He carries the statement further: He emphasizes the statement that the South cheerfully accepts the results of the war; and admits that much good has been achieved by the Republican party which ought to be preserved. I was gratified to hear the gentleman speak of Lincoln as "the illustrious author of the great act of emancipation." That admission will be welcomed ever}'- where by those who believe in the justice and wisdom of that great act. While speaking of the condition of the South and its wants.he deplores two evils which afflict that portion of our country: First, Federal supervision; and second, negro ascendancy in its political affairs. In that connection, it will be remembered, he quoted from John Stuart Mill and from Gibbon; the one to show that the most deplorable form of government is where the slave governs; and from the other to show the evils of a government which is in alien hands. The gentleman represented the South as suffering the composite evils depicted by both these great writers. Then comes this re-statement, a reference to himself, followed by a blow in the fourth paragraph : Now, I have stated — of course ver)' 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 and 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, by the election of Tilden and Hendricks. It has not been my habit, and is not my desire, to discuss mere party politics in this great legislative forum. And I shall do so now only 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 policy of his speech leads into that domain. From most of the premises of the gentleman^ as matters of fiict and history-, I dissent; some of them are undoubtedly correct. But, for 324 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the sake 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 cannot be secured by the ascendancy of the Democratic party at this time. Before entering upon tliat field, however, I must notice this remark- able 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 ascendancy, 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. In his rapid generalization he pauses for this : I share all that gentleman's aspirations for peace, for good govern- ment 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 to 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 de- feated on a tax bill or some routine measure of legislation. He pro- poses to turn over the custody and management of the government to a party which has persistently and with the greatest bitterness resisted all of the great changes within 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. He then resumes his survey of the situation, and asks these sphinx questions: THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 325 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 re- sults 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 e.xpect such unparalleled changes to be not only accepted, but, in so short a time, adopted by men of strong and inde- pendent 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 — ideas evolved out of two hundred years of slow and silent growth. When, one hundred years ago, our fathers an- nounced as self-evident truths the declaration that all men are created equal, and the only just power of governments is derived from the con- sent of the governed, they uttered a doctrine that no nation had ever adopted, that no 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." The theme of the second paragraph he pursues in an elevated strain, and returns to the present condition of things. The matter was too great for relief by a mere change of administration. Then he rapidly traces the origin of the civilization from the parent English stock, one planted on the James, the other at Plymouth, until their final great conflict; quoted the strong and bitter things said by the represent- atives of Mississippi, in the old debates, crowned with threats of the dissolution of the Union; finally, from Mr. Lamar himself in the house in 1858: "I was on the floor of the senate when your great leader, William H. Seward, announced that startling programme of anti-slavery senti- . ment and action. * * And, sir, in his e.xultation he exclaimed 326 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. —for I heard him myself— that he hoped to see the day when there would not be the foot-print of a single slave upon this continent. And when he uttered this atrocious sentiment, his form seemed to dilate, his pale, thin face, furrowed by the lines of thought and evil passions, kindled with malignant triumph, and his eye glowed and glared upon southern senators as though the fires of hell were burning in his heart." I have read this passage to mark the height to which the antagonism had risen in 1859. And this passage enables us to measure the prog- ress he has since rnade. I mark it here as one of the notable signs of the time, that the gulf which intervenes between the position then occupied by the gentleman from Mississippi and the position he occupies to-day, is so deep, so vast, that it indicates a progress worthy of all praise. I congratulated him and the country that in so short a time so great a change has been possible. Now, I ask the gentleman if he is quite sure, as a matter of fact, that the Democratic party, its southern as well as its northern wing, have followed his own illustrious and worthy example in the vast prog- ress he has made since 1859? He assures us that the transformation has been so complete that the Nation can safely trust all the most pre- cious fruits of the war in the hands of that party who stood with him in 1859. If that be true, I rejoice at it with all my heart; but the gen- tleman must pardon me if I ask him to assist my wavering faith by some evidence, some consoling proofs. When did the great transform- ation take place ? Certainly not within two years after the delivery of the speech I have quoted; for two years from that time, the contest had risen much higher. It had risen to the point of open, terrible and determined war. Did the change come during the war? O, no; lor in the four terrible years ending in 1865, every resource of courage and power that the Southern States could muster was employed, not only to save slavery, but to destroy the Union. So the transformation had not occurred in 1865. When did it occur? Aid our anxious inquiry, for the Nation ought to be sure that the great change has occurred before it can safely trust its destinies to the Democratic party. Did it occur in the first epoch of reconstruction— the two years immediately following the war? During that period the attempt was made to restore THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 327 governments in the South on the basis of the white vote. Military control was held generally; but the white population of the Southern States were invited to elect their own legislatures and establish provis- ional governments. In the laws, covering a period of two and a half years, 1865, 1866, and a portion of 1867, enacted by those legislatures, we ought to find proof of the transformation, if it had then occurred. What do we find? What we should naturally e.xpect: that a people, accustomed to the domination of slavery, re-enacted in almost all of the Southern States, and notably in the States of Mississippi and Louisiana, laws limiting and restricting the liberty of the colored man; vagrant laws and peonage laws, whereby negroes were sold at auction for the pay- ment of a paltry tax or fine, and held in a slavery as real as the slavery of other days. I believe that this was true of nearly all of the South- em States; so that the experiment of allowing the white population of the South to adjust that very question proved a frightful failure; and then it was that the national congress intervened. They proposed an act of reconstruction, an act which became a law on the 2d of March, 1867. And what was that act? Gentlemen of the South, you are too deeply schooled in philosophy to take any umbrage at what I shall now say, for I am dealing only with historj'. Vou must know, and certainly do know, that the great body of the Nation which had carried the war to triumph and success, knew that the eleven States that had opposed the Union had plunged their people into crime; acrimeset down in the law — a law signed by President Washington — at the very top of the catalogue of crimes; the crime of treason and all that follows it. You certainly know that, under that law, every man who voluntarily took up arms against the Union could have been tried, convicted and hanged, as a traitor to his country. But I call your attention to the fact that the conquering Nation said, in this great work of reconstruc- tion, "We will do nothing for revenge, everything for permanent peace;" and you know there never was a trial for treason in this coun- try during the whole of the struggle nor after it: no man was executed for treason; no man was tried. There was no expatriation, no exile, no confiscation after the war. The only revenge which the conquering Nation gratified was this: In saying to the South, "You may come 328 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD, back to your full place in the Union when you do these things: join with the other States in putting into the constitution a provision that the national debt shall never be repudiated; that your rebel war debt shall never be paid; and that all men, without regard to race or color, shall stand equal before the law; not in suffrage, but in civil rights; that these great guarantees of liberty and public faith shall be lifted above the reach of political parties, above the legislation of States, above the legislation of congress, and shall be set in the serene firma- ment of the constitution, to shine as lights forever and forever. And under that equal sky, under the light of that equal sun, all men, of whatever race or color, shall stand equal before the law." That was the plan of reconstruction offered to those who had been in rebellion, offered by a generous and brave Nation; and I challenge the world to show an act of equal generosity to a conquered people. What answer did it meet? By the advice of Andrew Johnson, a bad adviser, backed by the advice of the northern Democracy, a still worse adviser, ten of the eleven States lately in rebellion contemptuously rejected the plan of reconstruction embraced in the fourteenth amendment of the constitution. They would have none of it; they had been invited by their northern allies to stand out, and w-ere told that when the Democ- racy came into power they should be permitted to come back to their places without guarantees or conditions. This brings us to 1868. Had the transformation occurred then? For remember, gentlemen, I am searching for the date of the great transformation similar to that which has taken place in the gentleman from Mississippi. We do not find it in 1868. On the contrary, in that year we find Frank P. Blair, of Missouri, writing these words, which, a few days after they were written, gave him the nomination for the vice-presidency on the Democratic ticket: "There is but one way to restore government and the constitution; and that is for the President elect to declare all these acts — " and the constitutional amendment with them, "null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the South, and disperse the carpet-bag State governments and allow the white people to re-or- ganize their own governments and elect their senators and represen- tatives." Because lie wrote that letter he was nominated for vice-president by THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 329 the Democratic party. Therefore, as late as July, 1868, the transform- ation had not occurred. Had it occurred in 1872? In 1871 and 1872 all the amendments of the constitution had been adopted, against the stubborn resistance of the northern and southern Democracy. I call you to witness that, with the exception of three or four Democratic representatives who voted for the abolition of slavery, the three great amendments, the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, met the determined and united oppo- sition of the Democracy of this country. Each of the amendments now so praised by the gentleman, was adopted against the whole weight of your resistance. And two years after the adoption of the last amendment, in many of your State platforms they were declared to be null and void. In 1871 and 1872 occurred throughout the South those dreadful scenes enacted by the Ku-klux organization, of which I will say only this, that a man facile princeps among the Democrats of the slave- holding States, Reverdy Johnson, who was sent down to defend those who were indicted for their crimes, held up his hands in horror at the shocking barbarities that had been perpetrated by his clients upon ne- gro citizens. I refer to the evidence of that eminent man, as a suffi- cient proof of the character of that great conspiracy against the free- dom of the colored race. So the transformation had not come in the days of Ku-klux of 1871 and 1872. Had it come in 1873 ^"^^ ^'i^ beginning of 1874? Had it come in the State of Mississippi? Had it come in one quarter of the States lately in rebellion? Here is a report from an honorable committee of this house, signed by two gentlemen who are still members — Mr. Conger and Mr. Hurlbut — a report made as late as December, 1874, in which there is disclosed, by innumerable witnesses, the proof that the White- line organization, an armed military organization formed within the Democratic party, had leagued themselves together to prevent the en- joyment of suffrage and equal rights by the colored men of the South. Without detaining the house to read them now, I will quote two or three paragraphs from that report, dated December 14, 1874, and printed house document number two hundred and si.\ty-five. Here follow copious extracts showing the organization 330 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. of the \Miite-line. So the deformed had not been trans- formed in 1S74. He followed this course with frequent proofs, making extracts from date to date, to the very present, showing that if the wonderful regeneration had taken place, it had been concealed beyond the reach of discovery. 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 pjiilosophic 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. Is it 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 ? « » * * ♦ « * I am compelled to yield space to all of this : The gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] says there is no possi- bility that the South will again control national affairs, if the Democ- racy be placed again in power. How is this? We are told that the South will vote as a unit for Tilden and Hendricks. Suppose those gen- tlemen also carry New York and Indiana. Does the gentleman believe that a northern minority of the Democracy will control the administra- tion ? Impossible ! But if they did, would it better the case ? Let me put the question in another form. Suppose, gentlemen of the South, you had won the victory in the war; that you had captured Washington, and Gettysburg, and Philadelphia, and New York; and we of the North, defeated and conquered, had lain prostrate at your feet. Do you believe that by this time you would be ready and willing to intrust tous— our Garrisons, our Phillippses, and our Wades, and the great array of those who were the leaders of our thought — to intrust to us the fruits of your victory, the enforcement of your doctrines of State THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 33 1 sovereignty and the work of extending the domain of slavery? Do you think so? And if not, will you not pardon us when we tell you that we are not quite ready to trust the precious results of the Nation's victory in your hands? Let it be constantly borne in mind that I am not debating a question of equal rights and privileges within the Union, but whether those who so lately sought to destroy it ought to be chosen to control its destiny for the next four years. I hope my public life has given proof that I do not cherish a spirit of malice or bitterness toward the South. Perhaps they will say I have no right to advise them; but at the risk of being considered impertinent, I will express my conviction that the bane of southern people, for the last twenty-five years, has been that they have trusted the ad\ice of the Democratic party. The very remedy which the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] offers for the ills of his people, has been and still is their bane. The Democratic party has been the evil genius of the South in all these years. They yielded their own consciences to you on the slavery question, and led you to believe that the North would always yield. They made you believe that we would not fight to save the Union. They made you believe that if we ever dared to cross the Potomac or Ohio, to put down your rebellion, we could only do so across the dead bodies of many hundred thousands of northern Democrats. They made you believe that the war would begin in the streets of our northern cities; that we were a community of shop- keepers, of sordid money-getters, and would not stand against your fiery chivalry. You thought us cold, slow, lethargic; and in some re- spects we are. There are some differences between us that spring from origin and influences of climate— differences not unlike the descrip- tion of the poet, that — Bright and fierce and fickle is the South; And dark and true and tender is the North; differences that kept us from a good understanding. You thought that our coldness, our slowness, indicated a lack of spirit and patriotism, and you were encouraged in that belief by most of the northern Democracy; but not by all. They warned you at Charleston in i860. And when the great hour struck, there were many noble Democrats in the North, who lifted the flag of the Union far above the flag of party ; 332 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. but there was a residuum of Democracy, called in the slang of the time "copperheads," who were your evil genius from the beginning of the war till its close, and ever since. Some of them sat in these seats, and never rejoiced when we won a victory, and never grieved when we lost one. They were the men who sent their Vallandighams to give counsel and encouragement to your rebellion and to buoy you up with false hope, that at last you would conquer by the aid of their treachery. I honor you, gentlemen of the South, ten thousand times more than I honor such Democrats of the North. I said they were your evil genius. Why, in 1-864, when we were al- most at the culminating point of the war, their Vallandighams and Til- dens (and both of these men were on the committee of resolutions) ut- tered the declaration, as the voice of the Democracy, that the experi- ment of war to preserve the Union was a failure, and that hostilities should cease. They asked us to sound the recall on our bugles, to call our conquering armies back from the contest, and trust to their machina- tions to save their party at the e.xpense of a broken and ruined country. Brave soldiers of the lost cause, did you not, even in that hour of peril, in your hearts loathe them with supremest scorn ? But for their treachery at Chicago, the war might have ended and a hundred thou- sand precious lives been saved. But your evil genius pursued you, and the war went on. And later, when you would have accepted the con- stitutional amendment and restoration without universal suffrage, the same evil genius held you back. In 1868 it still deceived you. In 1872 it led you into A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiataand Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk. Let not the eloquence of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] lure you again to its brink. FITNESS OF THE DEMOCRACY TO RULE. Mr. Chairman. It is now time to inquire as to the fitness ot this Demo- cratic party to take control of our great Nation and its vast and impor- tant interests for the next four years. I put the question to the gentle- man 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, THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 333 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 Cassar. 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. [Applause.] 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 i860? The followers of Breckenridge said slavery had a right to go wherever the constitution goes. Do you be- lieve that to-day ? Is there a man on this continent that holds that doc- trine 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 anybody ho'd that doctrine to-day ? Dead, absolutely dead ! Come down to 1864. Your party, under the lead of Tilden and Val- landigham, 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 amendment revolutionary and void. Does any man on this floor say so to-day ? If so, let him rise and declare it. 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 campaign-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 lite; 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 i860. On the re- verse side: Sacred to the memory of Dred Scoit and the Breckenridge doctrine. Both dead at the hands of Abraham Lincoln! And here a 334 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. monument of brimstone: Sacred to the memory of the rebellion; the war against it is a failure; Tildc7i et Vallandigham feccrunt, 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, amid the blazing rafters of the Confederacy, except that the modern ^neas, fleeing out of the flames of that ruin, bears on his back another Anchises of State sover- eignty, 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 i860, in 1864, in 1868, and in 1872. If you have tears to shed over these losses, shed them in the grave-yard, 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 [Mr. Lamar] has clothed his joy with eloquence. Now, gentlemen, if you yourseh es are glad thatyou have suffered de- feat 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. Then he turned to the fitness of the Republican party to bear further rule. It was a noble vindication. He did not content himself with a glowing bit of declama- tion. He never declaims j he never denounces. He does not descend to sarcasm or indulge in invective. He is too full of thought — practical thought; of high, great thought, to waste time and breath on what, after all, was no thought, and when it has evaporated leaves a solid of nothing. Nor did he refer to the service of the great rescue, but he arrayed the less conspicuous work and service since, in a catalogue of measures and la- THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 335 bors, with date and circumstances. The rest of the speech is an arsenal, whence the campaigner may draw his weapons, and the thoughtful man may find the means of forming an estim^e of the character and capacity of the Republicans to rule, and judge of the propriety of continuing them in power. I cannot give it. There is too much of General Garfield for a book. Every part of him is too valuable to be left out, and the omitted matter would make the distinction of half-a-dozen con- spicuous men, and leave him unreduced to their class and size. No single work of any man in congress, in the later of years, was ever of such party service as this. It was more. Like the great answer to Hill, it went out to en- lighten, with a real, calm light, rising above that as its themes were more elevated; it illuminated the whole field of practical politics, with here and there a real going up of a calm, great mind, familiar with high thought, borne on by the inspiration and impulse of the purest and loftiest patriotism, finding its abode and strength in a calm, lofty, and great soul. Familiar — too familiar were the Republicans with Gar- field and his speeches, to appreciate him or it at their value, yet the effort advanced even him in their estimate of values. They crowded about him, subscribed for one hundred thousand of the speech, and one million were issued for the campaign, as there were of his and Blaine's amnesty speeches. Lamar congratulated him and went away pensive. His great speech was answered, overwhelmed, lost. It is 336 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. said that more of Garfield's speeches were used in Mississ- ippi than there were of his. He walked solitarily away to the senate, accompanied with his sense of failure — no, not of failure. He did not fail, but there was a greater, a stronger and higher. Miltiades sculptured pillars. Funny are the freaks of fortune which play pranks with politicians as with others. Boutwell was sent from the treasury department to the senate. Lot Morrell did not care to contest his seat in the senate with Blaine, at the approaching election in Maine. Mr. Richardson, Boutwell's successor, was transferred to the court of claims for life. Mr. Morrell vacated his seat in the senate just before his term would end, and Mr. Blaine, like Eve, "nothing loath,"' took his shin- ing way through the bronze portal of the senate, to- ward which all representative eyes are said longingly to turn. The speakership fell vacant by the death of INIr. Kerr, and at the election the Republicans, without formal caucus, cast their unanimous vote for Garfield for speaker, as they did at the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth congresses. NEW ORLEANS AND "THE VISITING STATESMEN." On his return to Washington to resume his seat in the house in 1866, President Grant requested that he should proceed to New Orleans — region of bottomless mud, bottomless politics and bottomless men. He did not like it, hesitated, and went. There he took no part in any consultations, managements or schemes, if such there were. He offered to take the entire mass of the depositions concerning West FeUciana, collate, verify, THE DEMOCRACY NOT TO BE TRUSTED. 337 and analyze them. This he did. The witnesses were at hand, and to each he re-read his or her deposition, and ascertained that it was voluntarily given as set down. His labors were of great service, and limited to this duty. His analysis was adopted by the commission. The sub- sequent Potter investigation charged no blame to his account. CHAPTER IV. ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. The Electoral Commission. — Extra Session. — Great Speech. — Later Speeches and Replies. — Star\'ing the Government to Death. — End of Congressional Record. The weakest place in the structure of our government was developed by the presidential election of 1876, and probably the defects thus exposed never will be repaired until parties cease to regard them as a sort of final reserve in the future battles for supremacy in the Re- public. It never will be known which of the two candi- dates had the larger number of votes, cast in accordance with law. The means for ascertainment probably never existed. The method by which the controversy was finally ended, was rather the creation of a new way for an election, by which the present incumbent was chosen. 33S LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. than a means of verifying and declaring the result of the popular suffrage. The returns actually received were the factors of the new canvass authorized by the exercise of an undefined power, used for determining results by the new college of suffragists. Constituted as the commission was, the result of its labors was never for a moment in doubt. The fairest mind of the most just man is nevertheless unconsciously deflected by the bias, which will control its judgment, of facts, where the scale vibrates so nearly balanced. So a lawyer will usually set- tle a new and doubtful question, as this bias inclines. In this case there was the greatest uncertainty as to the facts, below which was the painful question of the dubiety of the witnesses themselves. Each side began by thinking it self in the right; each looked for witnesses to prove its side, and came to the trial conscientiously believing it was right. Unfortunately there was no high, impartial tribu- nal; one was extemporized from the best men on each side respectively. For the guidance of the lawyers there were no precedents, or a priori rules or dicta. That the case was patiently and laboriously examined, with an individual determination on the part of the triers to reach the best attainable, just conclusion, there is no good reason to doubt. But one accustomed to observe the workings of the human mind under all conditions, could have had little doubt of the conclusion. There were eight Republicans to seven Democrats, and eight is prac- tically the larger number, and when the singular tact is remembered that there was not a Republican in the land who did not believe that Mr. Hayes was elected by the ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 339 popular vote, and not a Democrat was ever heard of who believed that he was; it is conclusive that the mental bias of all men resolved the doubts, alike of law as of fact, and so the case was disposed of — and rightfully, as it would have been the other way, had the division of the triers permitted it. On the twenty-fifth of January, 1877, the bill creating the commission was under consideration in the house, and Mr. Garfield made one of his masterly speeches against it. I cannot find space for it. He believed that the constitution already pointed out the method of ascer- taining and declaring the result of the popular vote. There are minds subtle, ingenious and able, which, caught by a new aspect or view of an old question, find it so al- luring that they search for reasons to establish it, and end by accepting it. His is not in the least of this cast. His interest may be excited, his curiosity piqued, but his mind is too broad, weighty and balanced to be taken by a spe- cious new thing. While his temperament is eager, the spirit radical, the intellect is catholic and conservative. There is no instance of his having for an instant mis- taken a meteor for a new planet. Nothwithstanding he spoke and voted against the measure, he was placed on the commission. The law provided for five members of the house in the new electoral college. By arrangement, the Democrats were to name three and the Republicans two. In the convention of the Republicans a gentleman observed that as to one of them no formal action could be had, as of course Mr. Garfield was the unanimous first choice, which 340 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. was assented to, and then the convention proceeded to ballot for the second, and George Hoar was chosen as his colleague. Of Mr. Garfield's labors in the body to which he was thus elected I shall not speak at length. He delivered two opinions in the course of the discussion. In one of these he presented with his usual perspicuity, his view of the rights and duties of the States in the election of a President. The power to make the election was placed in the hands of the States, nor was there anywhere lodged a power to review and revise their doings in the premises. i\ll that could be done was to ascertain their action in a given case and give it effect. They declared what they had done, by their own properly attested voices, and no power existed to go back of their declaration. This must be the law. In support he quoted the singular case of Vermont, when the legislature resolved itself into a joint convention, by virtue of the constitution alone, and pro- ceeded to the necessary action. Many notable speeches were delivered by General Gar- field during the Forty-fifth congress. Among them one on " The Policy of Pacification and the Prosecutions in Louisiana," February 19th, 1878; on the "Army and the Public Peace," May 21, 1878; his tariff speech in reply to Randolph Tucker on the fourth of June following, referred to with his opinions on the subject, and many of lesser note. The Forty-fifth congress expired by constitutional lim- itation, and the Forty-sixth assembled eighteen days later, by proclamation of the President. The army was ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 34 1 left unprovided for, and another large appropriation bill had failed. The bills appropriating forty-five million dollars had failed by the disagreeing votes of the houses. The senate had ceased to be Republican, and the house was Democratic by a greatly diminished majority. It will be remembered that there was a "rider" placed on the bill by the house, the effect of which was to prevent the use of the army to preserve the peace at the polls, on any Federal election, which the senate knocked off, and the disagreement was whether it should be re- mounted. I think that Mr. Garfield alway had a strong impression that this whole action was to produce an in- fluence upon Democratic views and prospects in refer- ence to the next Presidential election. Since 1876, the one animating, central idea of all that was said or thought on that matter by them, was the alleged fraud. If this continued, the inevitable consequence was the nomina- tion of Tilden. Something must be done to supplant this, by some other thing, leading in another direction, and this was the thing — a clamor against the enforcement of the election law of 1864. Its repeal was to be se- cured at any hazard, even to the refusal to provide for the army, which under it might be called upon by the United States marshals to preserve the peace at the elec- tions. It was a Kentucky scheme, patched up by Black- burn, Senators Beck, Thurman, and one or two Ohio men, and for its ultimate purpose the elevation of Thur- man to the post of candidate for the Democracy. When the army bill with its rider, was under discussion in the senate, both Thurman and Beck declared they never 342 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. would pass an appropriation for the army until the elec- tion law was repealed. At the extra session the old bill was reported, and in committee of the whole the old rider was moved. By the rules of the house this was not in order. Springer was in the chair, and the Republicans consumed two days in de- bating the question. Of course Springer overruled the objection, the rider was received and the question was open for debate. Garfield had taken no part in the pre- liminary skirmish, and had not expected a conclusion that day, and was taken by surprise. He was without notes or memoranda. He sent a page for Attorney General Cushing's opinion, that the army could be used to capture fleeing slaves, took the floor, and opened the most mem- orable debate in the house, of our time, not excepting the amnesty battle. He began the debate by the delivery of one of his most powerful speeches, entirely extempore. He thus states the position of the parties and the issues between them : Mr. Garfield said: Mr. Chairman: I have no hope of being abfe to convey to the mem- bers of this house my own conviction of the very great gravity and solemnity of the crisis which this decision of the chair and the com- mittee of the whole has brought upon this country. I wish I could be proved a false prophet in reference to the result of this action. I wish. I could be overwhelmed with the proof that I am utterly mistaken in my views. But no view I have ever taken has entered more deeply and more seriously into my conviction than this, that the house has to-day resolved to enter upon a revolution against the constitution and govern- ment of the United States. I do not know that this intention exists in the minds of half the representatives who occupy the other side of this hall. I hope it does not. I am ready to believe it does not exist to ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 343 any great extent. But I affirm that the consequence of the programme just adopted, if persisted in, will be nothing less than the total subver- sion of this government. THE QUESTION STATED. Let me in the outset state, as carefully as I may, the precise situation. At our last session, all our ordinary legislative work was done in accord- ance with the usages of the house and senate, except as to two bills. Two of the twelve great appropriation bills for the support of the gov- ernment were agreed to in both houses as to every matter of detail con- cerning the appropriations proper. We were assured by the commit- tees of conference in both bodies that there would be no difficulty in adjusting all differences in reference to the amount of money to be ap- propriated and the objects of its appropriation. But the house of representatives proposed three measures of distinctly independent leg- islation; one upon the army appropriation bill, and two upon the legis- lative 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 the election 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 ordi- nary proceeding, one which occurs frequently in all legislative bodies. The senate said to us through their conferrees, "We are ready to pass the appropriation bills; but we 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], on the report of the conference committe: "The Democratic conferrees on the part of the house seem determined that unless those rights were secured to the people " — al- ludinsr to the three points I have named — "in the bill sent to the sen- ate, they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to make appro- priations to carry on the government, if the dominant majority in the senate insisted on the maintenance of these laws and refused to con- sent to their repeal." 344 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. He then rapidly surveyed the course of events, and the exertions of the Repubhcans. He said he should limit himself to the army bill rider ; he disposed of some preliminaries, and then produced some broad and general, as well as new views of such importance, that they cannot be too widely disseminated. THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. I had occasion, at a late hour of the late 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 resenation 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 dele- gated 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 refer- ence to which 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 views of our fathers — the founders of our government — religion was too precious a right to intrust its interests by delegation to any government. Its maintenance was left to the voluntary action of the people themselves. Mr. Garfield continued by supposing the consequences if the people should fail to elect, or the two houses should refuse to work together, and continues : 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 Na- tion, the God-crowned and Heaven-annointed sovereign, in whom re- sides "the State's collected will," and to whom we all owe allegiance, is ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 345 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 great voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the government. Public opinion — that great ocean of thought from whose level all heights and all 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. Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the other side, that when a demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that runs the risk of stopping and destroying the government is the one that re- sists 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. FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR L.WVS. Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this country 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 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 co- erced, 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 dis- charge of his duty, shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, the congress will so use its vol- untary powers as to destroy the government. This is the proposition which we confront; and we denounce it as revolution. ****** I now turn aside, for a moment, from the line of my argument, to say 346 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. that it is not a little surprising that our friends on the other side should have gone into this great contest on so weak a cause as the one em- braced in the pending amendment to this bill. Victor 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 tlie 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 for a Kohinoor of purest water. [Applause.] * * * DEMOCR.A.TS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ELECTION LAW. Of Republican senators, thirteen voted against it ; only ten voted for it. The bill then came to the house of representatives and was put upon its passage here. How did the vote stand in this body? Every Demo- crat present at the time in the house of representatives of the Thirty- eighth congress voted for it. The total vote in its favor in the house was one hundred and thirteen; and of these, fifty-eight were Democrats. Those Republicans who voted against it did so on the ground that there was no cause for such legislation ; that it w'as a slander upon the government and the army to say that they were interfering with the proper freedom of elections. I was among that number Mr. Carlisle. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question? Mr. Garfield. Certainly. Mr. Carlisle. I ask if the Democrats in the senate and house of rep- resentatives did not vote for that proposition because it came in the form of a substitute for another proposition that was still more objec- tionable ? Mr. Garfield. The gentleman is quite mistaken. The original bill was introduced by a gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Powell; it was amended in its course through the Senate; but the votes to which I have referred were the final votes on its passage after all the amend- ments had been made; and, what was more, a Republican senator moved to reconsider it, hoping that he might thereby kill it. And after several days' delay and debate it was again passed, every Democrat again voting for it. In the house there was no debate, and therefore ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 347 no expression of the reasons why anybody voted for it. Each man voted according to his convictions, I suppose. THE NEW REBELLION. Let it be understood that I am not discussing the merits of this law. I have merely turned aside from the line of my argument to show the inconsistency of the other side in proposing to stop the government if they cannot force the repeal of a law which they themselves made. I am discussing a method of revolution against the constitution now proposed by this house, and to that issue I hold gentlemen in this de- bate, and challenge them to reply. * « * But I am compelled, by the conduct of the other side, to refer to a chapter of our recent histoi)'. The last act of Democratic domination ip 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 " ; but the people of this country, re- fusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. To-day, after eighteen years of defeat, the book of your domination is again opened, and your first act awakens every unhappy memory, and threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of pat- riotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized your re- turn 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 cannot 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.] * * * COERCION OF THE PRESIDENT. Now, by a method which the wildest secessionist scorned to adopt, it is proposed to make this new assault upon the life of the Republic. 348 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Gentlemen, we have calmly surveyed this ne* field of conflict; we have tried to count the cost of the struggle, as we did that of i85i be- fore we took up your gage of battle. Though no human foresight could forecast the awful loss of blood and treasure, yet in the name of liberty and union we accepted the issue and fought it out to the end. We made the appeal to our august sovereign, to the omnipotent public opinion of America, to dertermine whether the Union should perish at your hands. You know the result. And now lawfully, in the exercise of our rights as representatives, we take up the gage you have this day thrown down, and appeal again to our common sovereign to determine whether you shall be permitted to destroy the principle of free consent in legislation under the threat of starving the government to death. We are ready to pass these bills for the support of the government at any hour when you will offer them in the ordinary way, by the meth- ods prescribed by the constitution. If you offer those other proposi- tions of legislation as separate measures, we will meet you in the frater- nal spirit of fair debate and will discuss their merits. Some of your measures many of us will vote for in separate bills. But you shall not coerce any independent branch of this government, even by the threat of starvation, to consent to surrender its lawful powers until the ques- tion has been appealed to the sovereign and decided in your favor. On this ground we plant ourselves, and here we will stand to the end. Let it be remembered that the avowed object of this new revolution is to destroy all the defences which the Nation has placed around its ballot-box to guard the fountains of its own life. You say that the United States shall not employ even its civil power to keep peace at the polls. You say that the marshals shall have no power either to arrest rioters or criminals who seek to destroy the freedom and purity of the ballot-bo.x. I remind you that you have not always shown this great zeal in keep- ing the civil officers of the general government out of the States. Only six years before the war, your law authorized marshals of the United States to enter all our hamlets and households to hunt for fugitive slaves. Not only that, it empowered the marshals to summon the fosse comitatus, to command all by-standers to join in the chase and aid in remanding to eternal bondage the fleeing slave. And your Democratic attorney-general, in his opinion published in 1854, declared ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 349 that the marshal of the United States might summon to his aid the whole able-bodied force of his precinct, all bystanders, including not only the citizens generally, "but any and all organized armed forces, whether militia of the State, or officers, soldiers, sailors, and marines of the United States," to join in the chase and hunt down the fugitive. Now, gentlemen, if, for the purpose of making eternal slavery the lot of an American, you could send your marshals, summon your posse, and use the armed force of the United States, with what force or grace can you tell us that this government cannot lawfully employ the same mar- shals with tlieir armed posse of citizens, to maintain the purity of our own elections and keep the peace at our own polls. You have made the issue and we have accepted it. In the name of the constitution, and on behalf of good government and public justice, we make the appeal to our common sovereign. For the present, I refrain from discussing the merits of the election laws. I have sought only to state the first fundamental ground of our opposition to this revolutionary method of legislation by coercion. [Great applause. ] • Mr. Sparks. Before the gentleman from Ohio takes his seat, I hope he will give to the house the name of the attorney-general of the United States to whom he referred. Mr. Garfield. I . refer to Caleb Gushing, the Democratic attorney- general of President Pierce. Mr. Garfield was followed by Mr. McMahon in a pre- pared speech, in which there was wisely no attempt to answer him. Belford, Republican, and Muldrow and Chalmers, of Mississippi, Democrats, made speeches on April 2d, who did attempt to reply to Garfield, especially the last. Mr. Frye, of Maine, then came in. Frank Hurd made a set reply to Garfield, and was applauded; others came rattling in. April 4th Proctor Knott got in a set speech, as did Mr. Houk. Somewhere Robeson delivered some good licks. Blackburn, the Kentucky orator, made a decided sensation. He declared the 350 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Democracy would never cease effort till the last vestige of the war legislation was stricken from the statutes. He was followed by Gibson and Turner. An evening session was holden, and the debate ran on, and most elaborate speeches were delivered. Tucker, of Virginia, and others of the ablest Democrats, severally replied to Gar- field, without answering him. Then he rejoined as clos- ing the debate on the first army bill. He had ten min- utes, and the spirit of his reply, at least, will be seen from one or two telling paragraphs: Mr. Chairman; During the last four days, some fifteen or twenty gentlemen have paid their special attention to the argument I made last Saturday, and have announced its complete demolition. Now that the general debate has closed, I will notice the principal points of attack by which this work of destruction has been accomplished. In the first place, every man, save one, who has replied to me, has alleged that I held it was revolutionary to place this general legislation upon an appropriation bill. One gentleman went so far as to fill a page of the record with citations from the Congressional Globe and the Con- gressional Record to show that for many years riders had been placed upon appropriation bills. If gentlemen find any pleasure in setting up a man of straw and knocking it down again, they have enjoyed themselves. I never claimed that it was either revolutionary or unconstitutional for this house to put a rider on an appropriation bill. No man on this side of the house has claimed that. The most that has been said is that it is considered a bad parliamentary practice; and all parties in this country have said that repeatedly. He hit all who had made points of any pith. His an- swer to their efforts to show that they were not attempt- ing to coerce the President was most effective. His re- ply to Tucker was even better. Then he turned to Blackburn: ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 35 I If the party which, after eighteen years' banishment from power, has come back, as the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Blackburn] said yes- terday, to its "birthright of power," or "heritage," as it is recorded in the Record of this morning, is to signalize its return by striking down the gallant and faithful army of the United States, the people of this country will not be slow to understand that there are reminiscences of that army which these gentlemen would willingly forget, by burying both the army and the memories of its great service to the Union in one grave. [Applause.] The hammer was up and ere it fell he concluded thus: The gentleman from Maryland [Mr. McLane] said, the other day, there was nothing in the Constitution which empowered any offtcer of the United States to keep the peace in the States. A .single sentence, Mr. Chairman, before your hammer falls. I ask that gentleman to tell us whether the United States has no power to keep the peace in the great post-office in Baltimore City, so that the postmaster may attend to his duties; whether we have not the power to keep the peace along the line of every railroad that carries our mails, or where any post-rider of the "star service" carries the mail on his saddle; whether we have not the right, if need be, to line the post-road with troops, and to bring the guns of the navy to bear to protect any custom-house or light-house of the United States? And yet, if the gentleman's theory be correct, we cannot enforce a single civil process of this government by the aid of an armed fosse without making it a penitentiary offense on the part of the officer who does it. [Applause on the Republican side.] The effect of the leading speech was very great and long-continued. ]\Iany attempts to reply were made. It never was answered — was unanswerable. It greatly disturbed the pensive Lamar in the senate. He was melancholy over it, even dreamed of answering it in the senate. There was a fallacy in it, he knew. He called in the aid of great and subtle intellects, formulated re- joinders, but the senate chamber never resounded with his eloquence in an attempted review of it. 352 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. On the wordy torrent ran. I take one paragraph from Garfield's speech of April i6. What a blow, and as near a taunt as he ever went. Gentlemen,' I took upon myself a very grave responsibility in the opening of this debate, when I quoted the declarations of leading members on the other side, and said that the programme was revolu- tion, and, if not abandoned, would result in the destruction of this government. I declared that you had entered upon a scheme which if persisted in would starve the government to death. I say that I took a great risk when I made this charge against you as a party. I put myself in your power, gentlemen. If I had misconceived your purposes and misrepresented your motives, it was in your power to prove me a false accuser. It was in your power to ruin me in the esti- mation of fair-minded, patriotic men, by the utterance of one sentence. The humblest or the greatest of you could have overwhelmed me with shame and confusion in one short sentence. You could have said, ' ' We wish to pass our measures of legislation in reference to elec- tions, juries, and the use of the army; and we will if we can do so constitutionally ; but if we cannot get these measures in accordance with the constitution, we will pass the appropriation bills like loyal representatives ; and then go home and appeal to the people. " If any man, speaking for the majority, had made that declaration, uttered that sentence, he would have ruined me in the estimation of fair-minded men, and set me down as a false accuser and slanderer. Forty-five of you have spoken. Forty-five of you have deluged the ear of this country with debate ; but that sentence has not been spoken by any one of you. On the contrary, by your silence, as well as by your affirmation, you have made my accusation overwhelmingly true. I pass the speeches of June loth and nth as also several others. The debate ran to July ist. I give the opening paragraphs of that of June 27th, showing the state of the field at that time. As is his wont he uses the figures of his boy love — the sea. Mr. Chairman, "to this favor" it has come at last. The great fleet ATTEMPTED REVOLUTION. 353 that set out on the eighteenth of March, with all its freightage and arm- ament, 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 everything 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, excepting during the period immediately preceding the late war. At another time he hesitates to add to the forty-two speeches already spread on the congressional record. His collected speeches for the extra session make a pam- phlet of near sixty large pages. He, as a debater, was never so great, versatile and ready. He was the one grand figure growing larger and looming more ominously upon the majority of the house. The ignominious outcome of the Democracy, at the end of this memorable session, is a matter of history, which consecrates them to everlasting ridicule. Of the forty-five million dollars required, forty-four million four hundred thousand dollars were finally granted, and subse- quently the whole sum, save some six thousand dollars. Some other matter came up at this same extra session. The twenty-first of June, on a bill to provide for the survey of the Mississippi river, he was exceedingly happy in his advocacy of it. I quote the last paragraph of his speech, showing his broad catholic patriotism : 354 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Now, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the house, there is another reason why I am in favor of this measure. I rejoice in any occasion which enables representatives from the North and from the South to unite in an unpartisan effort to promote a great national interest. [Applause.] Such an occasion is good for us both. And when we can do it without the sacrifice of our convictions, and can benefit millions of our fellow-citizens, and thereby strenghten the bonds of the Union, we ought to do it with rejoicing; for, in so doing, we shall inspire our people with larger and more generous views, and help to confirm for them and for our posterity to our latest generations, the indissoluble Union and the permanent grandeur of this Republic. I shall vote for this bill. [.Applause on both sides of the house.] Mr. Garfield's last considerable speech was one of his ablest, in support of the sentiment: "Obedience to the law, the foremost duty of Congress." His very last, a day or two before he left the capital for Chicago, was to urge the perfection of the signal service. We cannot look into these. So, I resolutely refuse to glance at a mass of miscel- laneous speeches in the house, which of themselves would have made the reputation of a more ordinary man. I leave them to the hands of the future editor. There are his beautiful things on the reception of the John Winthrop and Samuel Adams statues; on the Carpenter painting of Lincoln's first cabinet; the relation' of the national government to science; even an exhaustive speech on the exhausted McGarrihan claim, and others, on many miscellaneous subjects, disconnected with his great fields of labor. Here we take leave of his congressional career, leaving it to the thought and study of his appreciative country- men. / PART FIVE. In Other Characters- Conclusion, CHAPTER I. THE LAWYER. Reasons for not Entering the Ministry. — Studies Law. — Admission. — The Milligan His First Case. — The Court, its Judges and Lawyers. — The Case. — No Law Authorizing Milligan's Prosecution. — Con- dition of the Country. — The Advocate. — His Opponent's argument. — Result. — Campbell Will Case. — Preparation. — Trial. — Leading Cases. — Gains the Cause. — Cases in the Supreme Court* and Else- where. — Earnings at the Bar. It will be remembered that coincident with his profes- sor days Mr. Garfield was a lay preacher among his peo- ple of the Disciple church, to which he remains at- tached. As time bore him forward he queried wuth him- self as to the regular ministry. The wishes and influence of his mother were strong, and these were greatly strength- ened by the universal desire of the churches. It w-as a perplexing matter, one which he must decide for himself. He was conscious that while his people had no written creed yet there were certain limitations of doctrine in their construction of the New Testament which he might find narrow. In a smaller way came in his want of means, and it was rather the theory of the Disciples that the ministry of the word was quite consistent with poverty. There was a winsome maiden whose eyes had awakened a wish for that dual life, which for her sake he resolved should not be lost in the narrow cheerlessness 358 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. of poverty, to which he was born, and which had walked with him some thing more than a phantom through Ufe. He would not be a minister. He would find an early occasion to announce his purpose to the Disciples and to the world. He even mentally sketched the outline of his address. He would study law, be a lawyer. Then came his election to the senate. If he then should announce his purpose he would be subject to the impu- tation of being allured from the high, serene path of the ministry, for the charm of politics, place-seeking and affairs. He would not make the announcement till he left the senate. Then came the war and swept him off in a whirlwind of fire, and he never did make it. Things — events took him as they always did and set him his task. With his instinctive idea of beginning with the root- lets of things, and his conscientious thoroughness, at his time of life, with his mental training, he was admirably prepared to master the law. He applied to a lawyer m a somewhat remote town, to whom he felt himself drawn, and in consultation marked out a course of study. He was then at the head of the college at Hiram, which numbered three or four hundred students, with many outside demands upon his time. He began with Black- stone, read a chapter, made from memory a rapid ab- stract of it, and later, re-read the chapter, and then re- vised his notes of it. This was his method. Among the books of his course was "Gould's Pleading," in many respects the most scientific and complete treatise of com- mon law-pleading ever written. The master of it is a good lawyer. Garfield mastered it. At the end of the THE LAWYER. 359 required two years he was attending his duties as a senator at Columbus, and applied for admission to the supreme court of the State, then sitting as a court of errors. His application was referred to Thomas Key and Richard Harrison, both members of the senate, the first a Democrat, and Mr. Harrison a Republican of de- cided conservative tendencies. Both were able lawyers, and with both he had interchanged blows in the senate. Neither had any idea of his real acquisitions, nor more than a courteous disposition to treat him fairly. They subjected Mr. Garfield to a thorough and searching exam- ination, but they did him ample justice. In their report they spoke of his mastery of the law as unusual, phe- nomenal, as of course it was. James Mason, esq., em- inent at the Ohio bar, which suffers nothing by compar- ison with any other, a relative of Mr. Garfield's young wife, was ready to form a partnership with him, but the inexorable war, which carried off the young preacher, bore away the young lawyer in the same fiery chariot. Not wholly to the bar was he lost, as we shall see. The Milligan case will be remembered. That was his first case. It was before the supreme court of the United States — the old court of Marsl all, chief justice by Wash- ington's appointment, where Jay and Ellsworth had pre- sided, and where another Washington, and Story, Thomp- son and Baldwin once sat. Where Emmet and DuPon- ceau, Webster and Pinckney, and Wirt, and Johnson, and Black, and Evarts, and half a hundred other great advocates had been heard, and had left the traditions of their fame. This was the court, sitting in the old senate 360 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. chamber of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Ewing, Seward, Chase and Sumner, in the capitol, fanned by the two flags over the two houses, in which he first appeared. It was a great case, a cmisa celebra. Misguided men, caught in the great whirlpool of the rebellion, which drew in a hemisphere, were in the grasp of relentless power, which had itself in a way become revolutionary, in its war to save from greater revolution. It had become unscrupulous, relentless, inexorable — had substituted its hasty, unlawful ordinances for the irrepealable law of the land, unmindful that if it stripped the awful form of Justice of the consecrating robes of the law, and sent it forth to take its penalties in men's forfeited lives, that in this guise its judgment was vengeance, and it became a murderer and not justice^ that this was a violation of the inner essence of law and justice, which alone authorized the very war which the Nation was then waging; that there was no more consti- tutional right to put Milligan to death, as he had been adjudged, or send him to the penitentiary for life, to which the President commuted his punishment, than there was for the revolt of the States. And this was the awful paradox the Nation was enacting. It was seeking to preserve its life by violating the principle which gave it a right to live. It was waging war on exactly the same absence of right and law, as that on which alone the re- bellion rested. Who was to come forward and make all this clear, and save the lives and liberties of Milligan and his band, and save the Nation from the suicide involved in their punishment? A man of courage as well as of THE LAWYER. 361 rare ability. For precisely the same spirit which had en- meshed Milligan in the fatal snair of lawless doom would concentrate its wrath on his advocate. It required more courage than to rally the fleeing soldiers from Chicka- mauga. A man who could scornfully confront an enraged convention; stand alone against the house of represent- atives and denounce it; a man who went and searched out the cause he knew not in the old capitol prison, and turned upon the great secretary of war, girt with his armies, and a more powerful and subservient public opinion ; and this blond - faced, blue-eyed saxon young man went for- ward to this duty. And this was the young lawyer's first case, paralleled in the history of our jurisprudence by the defense of the British soldiers for the Boston massacre, by John Adams, in the old revolutionary time. That the peril to himself was not imaginary, the young man soon felt, in the condemnation expressed of him in the jour- nals of his own State, and the momentary denunciation of his constituents. The case was tried in March, 1866, and deemed of the utmost importance to the National cause. Under the vague, shadowy war power, never defined even by those who exercised it, these men were seized in 1864, in the State of Indiana, then not invaded; they were not in the military service, and were charged with conspiracy against the United States, inciting insurrection, disloyal practices, violations of the laws of war, commit- ted in Indiana, tried by a military commission unknown to any law, and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was ai)proved by President Lincoln, who com- 362 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. muted death to imprisonment for life. The prisoners appUed for a /labeas corpus^ under the act of congress of March 3, 1S63. The United States circuit court were divided in opinion, and the case came before the supreme court to settle the questions thus raised. Others appeared with Mr. Garfield, but he from his position and surround- ings was mainly relied on. For the United States ap- peared Attorney-General Speed, Henry Stanberry, his successor, and General Butler. My quotation from Mr. Garfield's argument must be brief. After a happy state- ment of the case — that the question was, whether the commission had a legal existence, he said: As a first step toward reaching an answer to this question, I affirm that every citizen of the United States is under the diminion of law; that whether lie be a civihan, a soldier, or a sailor, the constitution pro- vides for him a tribunal before which he may be protected if innocent, and punished if guilty of crime. He then quoted the fifth amendment to the constitu- tion, and traced out the power for the creation of courts under that instrument. From that he diverged to the ^ military department, and stated with exactitude its limits of authority, and traced down the current of enactment and usage, and the jurisdiction of military courts. He then drew the line which divided the citizen from the soldier. One side of it he was a citizen, and amenable to the civil courts; the other he was a soldier, under the jurisdiction of miUtary courts. The line had been marked all the way. A man does not pass that line from citizen to soldier, till mustered into the military service, With his usual perspicuous care, he then clearly opened cut the cases on these points, showing that the supreme THE LAWYER. 363 court had jurisdiction to inquire into and review the case before it. The prisoners were not in the naval service, nor in the military, nor militia; and called into service, were mere civilians. He then examined the authority for military commis- sions. Thus he states the position of the attorney-general and his associates. The honorable attorney-general and his distinguished colleague (General Butler) declare that — I. A military commission derives its power and authority wholly from martial law; and by that law, and by military authority only are its proceedings to be judged or reviewed; that — II. "Martial law is the will of the commanding officer of an armed force, or of a geographical military department expressed in time of war, within the limits of his military jurisdiction, as necessity demands and prudence dictates, restrained or enlarged by the orders of his mili- tary chief or supreme executive ruler," and that "the officer executing martial law is at the same time supreme legislator, supreme judge, and supreme executive." To give any color of plausibility to this novel proposition, they were compelled not only to ignore the constitution, but to declare it sus- pended; its voice drowned in the thunders of war. Accordingly, with consistent boldness, they declare that the third, fourth and fifth articles of amendments "are all peace provisions of the constitution, and, like all other conventional and legislative laws and enactments are silent 'inter arma,' when 'salus populi supreina est lex.'" Applying these doctrines to this cause, they hold that from the fifth of October, 1864, to the ninth of May, 1865, martial law alone existed in Indiana; that it silenced not only the civil courts, but all the laws of the land, and even the constitution itself; and during that silence the executor of martial law could lay his hand upon every citizen, could not only suspend the writ of habeas corpus, but could create a court which should have the 364 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. exclusive jurisdiction over the citizen to try him, sentence him, and put him to death. We have already seen that the congress of the United States raises and supports armies, provides and maintains navies, and makes the rules and regulations for the government of both; but it would appear from the teachings of the learned counsel on the other side, that when congress has done all these things — when, in the name of the Republic, and in order to put down rebellion and restore the supremacy of law, it has created the grandest army that ever fought — the power thus created rises above its source and destroys both creator and law. They would have us believe that the government of the United States has evoked a spirit which it cannot lay — has called into being a po*ver which at once destroyed and superseded its author, and rode, in uncontrolled triumph, over citizen and court, congress and constitution. All this mockery is uttered before this august court, whose ever)' member is sworn to administer the law in accordance with the consti- tution ! Mark the strength of the last paragraphs. In a masterly argument of simple, compact force and vigorous strength, he proceeds for the next hour and a half to the utter extinction of every shadow of law, pre- cedent and reason, supporting the proposition contended for by the government. Authorities were never more logically compacted and effectually presented, and the case at bar clearly placed within their reach, than by him. Then he opened out, explained, and enforced the reasons for the war legislation of congress, showing that military commissions found no resting place or support in them. I quote his beautiful and impressive peroration : 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 symbohze the beauty and glory of Athens. That artist selected for his theme the tutelar diNinity of Athens, the Jove-born goddess, protectress of arts and arms, of industry' and law, who typified the THE LAWYER. 565 Greek conception of composed, majestic, unrelenting lorce. 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 sur- rounding 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 cannot restore the decayed emblems of ancient Greece, but it is in your power, O Judges, to erect in this citadel of our liberties, a monument more last- ing than brass; invisible indeed to the eye of flesh, but visible to the eye of the spirit as 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; dispens- ing 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. The argument was delivered in a crowded court room, and was justly esteemed by the cool -judging, wise old heads of the bar, as one of the ablest in that forum, consecrated to weight, logic and law, with a suspicion of dullness and a flavor of the somniferous. They congratulated him and the judges complimented him. The court adjudged as follows: First. That on the facts as stated in said petition and exhibits, a writ of habeas corpus ought to be issued according to the prayer of said petition. Second. That on the facts stated in the said petition and exhibits, the said Lambdin P. Milligan ought to be discharged from custody as in said petition is prayed, and according to the act of congress, passed third of March, 1863, entitled "An act relating to habeas corpus, and regulating judicial proceedings in certain cases." Third. That on the facts stated in said petition and exhibits, the 366 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. military commission mentioned therein had no jurisdiction legally to try and sentence said Lambdin P. Milligan in the manner and form as in said petition and exhibits are stated. And it is therefore now here ordered and adjudged by this court that it be so certified to the said circuit court. Judge Davies pronounced the opinion which was for a time withheld, and the wise logical world, as between him and General Garfield, adjudged him the guiltier. However much it blames an advocate for appearing on the unpopular side of a case, it always visits the per- suaded and convinced judge with greater punishment than it awards to the advocate who persuaded and con- vinced him. Mr. Garfield's argument placed him at once in the rank of the very able men who appear in the supreme court of the United States — would have conferred great distinction on almost any other man. Some way, as his gifts are so much more abundant, greater things seem to be exacted of him than of others, for the same meed. Had he the persistent, untiring push of some others — of which no flavor exists in him — he might have ruined the possibility of going to the first place ten years ago. We think of this and are silent, it was wise to be unconscious of great deserving. He could wait. THE ALEXANDER CAMPBELL WILL CASE. This remarkable man who exercised so great an influ- ence over the faiths, opinions and even the fortunes and lives of so many; who had mainly built up a new church on the restored, old foundations, as was claimed, founded THE LAWYER. 367 aioUege, defended revelation against infidelity, and Pro- testanism against Rome, whose opinions largely influenced the thought of his time, finally fell under the delusion that he had himself visited Jerusalem, and it was the solace of many hours, to give glowing descriptions of the fallen city. These were due as was supposed, to the vivid pictures of the desecrated home of the old and new faith, conveyed to him in the letters of an intellectual and favorite daughter. He was a man of much wealth, and was the father of two sets of children. Those of the first wife being daughters, to whom in his life time he had apportioned what he deemed their just shares of his property. By his will he devised the residue to the chil- dren of the second wife. The elder daughters were dead, leaving children and husbands. These husbands, one the president of his college of Bethany, Virginia, re- pudiated the claimed settlement with them, and brought their suit to set aside the will for alleged, non-sound mind of the testator, and thus be let in with the younger children to an equal share of the residue of the estate. They employed eminent counsel, among whom was the late Ben. F. Stanton, formerly of Ohio. The devisees under the will, retained Judge Jerry Black and General Garfield. The case by arrangement was left to the judges, and came on for trial in the spring of iS68, in the Vir- ginia court. The case had then been pending for a year or more. On his retainer, Garfield, overwhelmed as might be supposed, set himself about his prejoaration in his usual, thorough way. In the first place he broadly mas- 368 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. tered the whole body of testamentary law, without refer- ence to his case. He always covers the whole ground, that no possible thing can anywhere spring up, out of unknown territory, to surprise him. He went through the Roman civil law, and then began with the older Eng- lish books; Swinburn, and the cases referred to by him, and so down to Jarman, thence to our own text writers and cases. Then he turned to the questions involved — testamentary capacity, and mastered the cases. Espe- cially he studied the leading New York case of Lispinard, where rules were recognized certainly not severe in their limits as to capacity. Then came the Parrish case, later, in the same courts, appearing by the syllabus to overrule the former, and redefining testamentary capacity, requir- ing a higher and broader range of mind, and furnishing a new definition, in the opinion of Chief Justice Davies. This with the dissenting opinions of Gould and others, al- together cover three hundred pages or more. He made ample notes of his studies, and laid everything away. The case did not come on in 1867; he went to Europe, returned, and went through with the labor and distrac- tions of the long session, and when the senate was trying the President, accompanied by Judge Black, he went to try the will case in Virginia. The greatest interest was manifested in the trial, and the court house was crowded the ten days it occupied. Over forty witnesses were examined. On the third day Judge Black returned home, leaving Garfield to tread the wine-press alone, save the aid of a junior who had looked up the witnesses. The case against the will was strong. Stanton, book in THE LAWYER. 369 hand, read Judge Davies' rule to each of his witnesses, and from the most of them, received answers that Mr. Campbell did not meet its requirements. Garfield called his own witnesses and made a fair showing, putting in some interesting evidence. Stanton arose for the closing argument, a strong-fibered, logical, masterful mind, and a clear, forcible speaker. He cleared the ground, re-read Judge Davies' definition, and at the end of his six hours' speech left not a shred of a case for the will. The devisees were dismayed. Alex- ander, jr., was in despair. It was utterly useless to con- tend further. What occurred during the night following I have from one who was there at the time. Garfield had not seen his notes or books for a year. He packed them up and carried them to Virginia. On overhauling them he found that he had not his notes. For once his marvellous memory was in half-fault. He remembered that there was somewhere a charm which rendered the Parrish case and Judge Davies harmless to his case; that the Alice Lispinard case was the rule after all. The syllabus of the Parrish case stated that the Lispinard case was overruled, and so Judge Davies declared, and then, late at night, he sat down to read the case through. Toward morning his waiting, wakeful friend, saw him throw up his hands, breathe an exclamation of relief, close the book w-ith a resounding clap, and he went to bed. He met his clients with hopeful words in the morning, which were lost on them. The fame of the or- ator had long before reached Bethany. There was the utmost anxiety to hear him. The college had a holiday, 37° LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. and men from a distance were there. ISIr. Garfield be- gan what was justly regarded a very powerful speech, by re-stating in the clear forceful way for which he is famous, the proposition and case of Mr. Stanton, and asked that gentleman if he had stated them fairly. Mr. Stanton arose and declared that they were stated with surpassing force and clearness, and beyond his own power of stating them himself, and he sat down with a taunting commendation of it, to the teeth of his "con- gressional friend." Garfield, resuming, said to the court: "If at the end of fifteen minutes I do not convince the court that the plaintiff's case has no resting place in the law, I will retire from it." He then turned to the lead- ing dissenting opinion of the Parrish case, and read pas- sages showing that the dissenting judges, and the whole court united with Davies in the judgment, pronounced, not because the court adopted his new rule, but because the facts under the rule of the Lisjjinard case showed that Parrish was incompetent to make a will. This was a reafifirmance of the Lispinard case, a repudiation of Judge Davies' new rule, and the destruction of the legal ground on which Mr. Stanton had rested his case. He had not read the whole case, evidently, and the re- porter had not, but made up the syllabus from the opin- ion of the chief justice. The production of the ruling of the court thus brought out, was a shock from which Stanton and his friends did not recover. The court ex- amined the book, as did opposing counsel, when Mr. Garfield was directed to proceed with his argument. Of course he had now to show that, under the rule of the THE LAWYER. 371 Lispinard case, INIr. Campbell was competent to make a will. The instrument was in Mr. Campbell's own hand. It recited the alleged settlement with the elder children, which the husbands denied. Other curious testimony came in to sustain the will, all of which was used with ingenious effect. The speech placed the case beyond reply, which a Wheeling lawyer attempted. The court sustained the will, and the case was ended. ISIr. Garfield received nothing for his great work in the Milligan case; not even the thanks of the liberated men ever reached him. For the Campbell case he re- ceived a fee of three thousand five hundred dollars. The three cases of the New York Life Insurance com- pany with Taite and others, the same with Steatham and others, and the same with Dudley et al., all tried in the supreme court of the United States, in which Geiieral Garfield appeared for the company, were of the first im- portance, as they settled very grave principles. In the first case he was associated with Judge Curtiss, one of the most eminent men of the American bar, and by many ranked as the first lawyer. The insured were residents of the rebel States, war intervened, all com- munication was cut off, the annual premiums for re- newals were not paid. Suits were brought, after the war, and after the death of the parties, to enforce the policies against the company. What was the effect of the war on the contract of insurance? The question was new and difficult. Its discussion would find precedents and analogies going a good way, and then the advocate and court were remitted 372 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. to the reasonableness and rightfulness of the case under the circumstances. Other contracts and marine insur- ance were the helps and guides, but they stopped short. So the decisions of the supreme court, settling the pow- ers of agents, under appointments before the war, came in, also cotton cases decided in the same court. On the first trial of the first case, the court were equally divided. Before the second, and trial of the other cases. Judge Curtiss died, and other counsel were employed in the other cases, to aid Garfield. The prep- aration of the briefs was his entire work, and my reader now knows how he performed the labor. He also made the principal arguments. His examination of authorities was discriminating and accurate. No case escaped him. His argument upon general principles was cogent and convincing. Chief Justice Waite complimented him upon the principal one, and the court accepted and followed him in the decision, to the extent, that the contract of in- surance was inoperative from the date of the war. His grasp and handling of the cases and principles involved were able and lawyer-like, which is about the highest praise lawyers ever award each other. He was paid five thousand dollars for these trials. I have thus called attention to three or four cases of exceptional importance, to show something of Mr. Gar- field's ability and learning as a lawyer, and his method of dealing with great and important issues. The subject has little interest for the average reader. In running my eye over the calendar of the supreme court I observe that he tried the case of the United THE LAWYER. 373 States vs. Henderson in 1872 ; a Montana case in 1873 ; an important railroad case also the same year, and that the number of his cases have increased since. He has in that court tried more than twenty cases of greater or less importance, which under the circumstances of his immense labors in the house, in the great canvasses of which scarce a word has been said, and the fact that he had no connection with lawyers anywhere by which cases have been placed in his hands, and that through the country he is not known as a lawyer, is really a very remarkable practice. It may be said also that of the many lawyers distinguished at their home bars very few who become members of congress are ever admit- ted to the supreme court, and the appearance of any of them there is phenomenal. Edmunds is occa- sionally there, Carpenter very often; Freelinghuysen and Bayard, I have seen there ; Conkling, rarely. The nu- merous and important cases from New York are tried by the lawyers who managed them in the State courts. But- ler is there a good deal ; Hoar, rarely. Garfield at one time had seven cases on the calendar, among them the famous Goodyear patent case. I remember that he went to Mobile and tried an important case and was paid five thousand dollars for it. He has appeared in the supreme court of Pennsylvania and several times in the supreme court of the District of Columbia. He must have de- rived from his law practice in these later years over twenty-five thousand dollars. He would be a power be- fore juries. In most all lines of law he has been thor- oughly tested, in none has he fallen bulow the first class. 374 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. It never has required in this country, nor in England, the greatest intellect to make the greatest lawyer in either country. Very high mental excellence in certain direc- tions is requisite, with great and steady labor. Garfield's intellect, as I believe, fairly takes place with the rare few — the very best; certainly his is one of the largest and broadest minds that have appeared among us. Could it be diminished in some directions it would be phe-' nomenal. Cut away one half and he would be a genius. He could easily become a great lawyer with a supera- bundance for literature, philosophy and metaphysics, where he early excelled. CHAPTER II. MISCELLANEOUS WORK. Extent and Character. — American Review. — Atlantic— A Century in Congress. — General Thomas. — Almeda Booth. — Dr. Robison. — Eliza Mother. There remains a mass of other labors scattered through all these years, contributions to the press in various forms, essays, addresses on various occasions, strewn over my table, enough in themselves to have made a reputation, had they not been smothered and lost sight of in the grave and great labors of their author, in the National house of representatives. Some mention must be made of these — some bits to show their flavor. They fall into three groups, or two and a miscellany. There are those connected with his thought and service in the house. His is eminently a productive mind, constantly searching out the foundation, the essential philosophy of things, and while doing hard, practical work, there came to be large outside margins, and deep lower reservoirs of knowledge, lying all about, and under the product of his labor. From these resources he has drawn, as time or call permitted or required. Of this class is his paper in the Republic^ a political and party magazine, published at Washington, and edited by the late Judge Edmunds, a practical, sagacious mind. It appeared in July 1873, and is a concise re-presentation of the subject of public ex- 375 376 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. penditure, and the underlying reasons which should con- trol them — with a subject which the reader is supposed now to have some familiarity. Mr. Speaker Randall had engaged to furnish the North Americati Review a paper contrasting Republican extrav- agance and profligacy with Democratic economy and vir- tue, and Mr. Garfield was asked to furnish a Republican counterpart, after the polyglot style of the Revietv — to give all sides and decide nothing, in the spirit of the luminous Story in his law books. Garfield promised the paper. Mr. Randall withheld his — never furnished it, and later Garfield's appeared under the title of "Appropria- tion and Misappropriation," where the reader will find the amplest opportunity of comparing, and contrasting the merits of the great parties in this important field of ad- ministrative law and policy, as set forth by Mr. Garfield. So also in Mr. Blaine's symposium in the same journal, a concise paper upon negro suffrage, and his two remark- able papers on the army of the United States in the Re- vieiv in the spring of 1878. His study of the history of our National legislation, affecting our industries and resources, the currency, tariff, and revenues, with his eager, grasping mind, which caught the spirit and life of what produced and con- trolled the vast and variegated volume of enactment, made him familiar with the men who legislated and their methods. Living, as he had for so many years, in the house, and becoming possessed of its unwritten legends and traditions, there grew up in his mind the idea of presenting a summary of the origin of congress, as an MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 377 entity, and a rapid sketch of it as a thing apart, yet hving and continuing, with historic incidents, and mention of prominent men, whose hves illustrated it, with some ref- erence to its customs and habits. The result thus far was his paper, "A Century in Congress," in the Atlatific for July, 1S77. Something more than a translated flavor of this admirable performance is due to the reader. Here are a few paragraphs following the happy opening : THE AMERICAN CONGRESS. Indeed, the history of Hberty and union in this countrj-, as developed by the men of 1776 and maintained by their successors, is inseparably connected with- the history of the National legislature. Nor can they be separated in the future. The Union and the congress must share the same fate. They must rise or fall together. The germ of our political institutions, the primary cell from which they were evolved, was the New England town; and the vital force, the informing soul of the town was the town-meeting, which, for all local concerns, was king, lords, and commons in one. It was the training- school in which our fathers learned the science and the art of self-gov- ernment, the school which has made us the most parliament.ary people on the globe. The idea of a congress on this continent, sprang from the necessity of union among the colonies for mutual protection, and the desire for union logically expressed itself in an inter-colonial representative as- sembly. Every such assembly in America has been a more or less marked symbol of union." This seminal idea he rapidly traces to the origin and growth of the union as it takes form in action, in con- ventions. This action, as in most instances of human progress, seemed an accidental blind groping for present expediencies, rather than the result of sagacious forecast. There is a large outlook in the paper, showing wide read- ing and a complete mastery of the causes which led to 378 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. the convention of the first congress proper. There was the meeting of the governors at Albany, in 1748, fol- lowed by the congress at Albany, of 1754. This was made up of twenty-five commissioners, of whom Franklin was one. There, in some way, the great words union and congress found utterance. One would like to know who discovered them. The second convention which called itself a congress first, was held at New York, in June, 1765, to devise means of resistance to the stamp act, and we see the great names of the pre-revolutionary time. Here was the genesis of things. There for the first time James Otis saw John Dickinson; there Gads- den and Rutledge sat beside Livingston and Dyer; there the brightest minds of America joined in the discussion of their common danger and common rights. The session lasted eighteen days. Its deliberations were most solemn and momentous. Loyalty to the crown, and a shrinking dread of opposing established authority, were met by the fiery spirit which glowed in the breasts of the boldest thinkers. Amidst the doubt and hesitation of the hour, John Adams gave voice to the logic and spirit of the crisis when he said: "You have rights ante- cedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights deri\ed from the great Lawgiver of the universe." * « » « * THE CONTINENTAL CONGRES.S OF I774. Xine more years of supplication and neglect, of ministerial madness and stubborn colonial resistance; bring us to the early autumn of 1774, when the Continental congress was assembling at Philadelphia. This time the alarm had been sounded by New York, that a sister colony was being strangled by the heavy hand of a despotic ministry. The response was immediate and almost unanimous. From eleven colonies came the foremost spirits, to take counsel for the common weal. From the assaulted colony came Samuel and John Adams, Gushing and Paine. They set out from Boston in August, escorted by great num- bers as far as Watertown. Their journey was a solemn and trium- MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 379 phant march. The men of Hartford met them with pledges to abide by the resolution which congress might adopt. New Haven welcomed and Roger Sherman addressed them. Refreshed by a visit to the grave of Bidwell, one of the king-killers, they went on to their reception by the Sons of Liberty at New York. There came Jay> and Livingston, Sherman, Deane and Hopkins; from the far South, Washington, Henry, Lee, Gadsden, and Rutledge. In congress sat fifty-five men and eleven colo- nies — colonies, archaic word, about to become "Nameless here forevermore. " Then follows an account of congress of 1775; con. gress of revolt and independence with a resume of the congressional life of the old war, full of the old names and the mention of great events. The paper is very fascinating. Room for the sketch of the first congress under the constitution must be had. This brings us to the congress of the constitution, which began its first session at New York on the fourth of March, 1789. Fears were entertained that some of the States might neglect or refuse to elect senators and representatives. Three States had hitherto refused to adopt the constitution. More than a month passed before a quorum of the senate and house appeared in New York ; but on the sixth of April, 1789, a quorum of both houses met in joint session and witnessed the opening and counting of the votes for president and vice-president by John Langdon. Having dispatched the venerable Charles Thomson, late secretary of the old congress, to Mount Ver- non to inform Washington of his election, the new congress addressed itself to the great work required by the constitution. The three ses- sions of the first congress lasted in the aggregate five hundred and nineteen days, e.\ceeding by more than fifty days the sessions of any subsequent congress. It was the high duty of this body to interpret the powers conferred upon it by the constitution, and to put in motion 380 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. not only the machinen- of the senate and house, but the more com- plex machinery of the executive and judicial departments. It is worth while to obser\-e with what largeness of comprehension and minuteness of detail the members of that congress studied the problems before them. While Washington was making his way from Mount Vernon to New York, they were determining with what cere- monials he should be received, and with what formalities the intercourse between the President and the congress should be conducted. A j oint committee of both houses met him on the Jersey shore, in a richly fiUTiished barge, and, landing at the battery, escorted him to the resi- dence which congress had prepared and furnished for his reception. Then came the question of the title by which he should be addressed. The senate insisted that " a decent respect for the opinion and practice of civilized nations required a special title," and proposed that the President should be addressed as "his highness, the President of the United States of America, and protector of their liberties. " At the earnest remonstrance of the more republican house, the senate gave way, and finally agreed that he should be addressed simply as ' ' the president of the United States." It was determined that the President should, in person, deliver his "annual speech," as it was then called, to the two houses in joint ses- sion; and that each house should adopt an address in reply, to be de- livered to the President at his official residence. These formalities were manifestly borrowed from the practice of the British parliament, and were maintained until near the close of Jeffer- son's administration. Communications from the e.xecutive departments were also to be made to the two houses by the heads of those departments in person. This custom was unfortunately swept away by the Republican reaction which set in a few years later. Among questions of ceremony were also the rules by which the President should regulate his social relations to citizens. Washington addressed a long letter of inquiry to John Adams, and to several other leading statesmen of that time, asking their advice on this subject. The great historic theme is further pursued, under the suggestive sub-titles of "Congress and the E.xecutive,' MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 35 1 "Congress and the People," and the significant one of "Congressional Culture." One hopes ^h: Garfield will take this interesting sub- ject up in the later of time and give the world a book. With his sagacious perception and discrimination, his going ahvay to the foundation and building logically, his reverence for truth, his copious language and clear style, he certainly could write history, and of the highest order. There is also his masterly article on "The Currency Conflict," in the same magazine for February, 1876, of twenty compact pages, furnished at the request of the editor. So good a statement of the whole case, with his- torical references, and forceful argument, from his posi- tion, cannot be found in the copious literature of the subject, in space so narrow. All the utterances of the mind whose labors we have so slightly dealt with, upon any subject, are curious as well as valuable. One likes to see how things look to such an intellect. One wants to know how it deals with them and what are its estimates of them. One expects fresh, vigorous treatment, and looks for light. Here is an oration delivered at Ravenna, July 4, i860; "National Politics," at Warren, September, 1866; an address to the Geauga historical society; "Free Commerce between the States," in the house, in 1864, and might have been most profitably delivered anywhere. We cannot mention his addresses to literary societies. There is another class of productions. I hold in my hand two — "In Memoriam" addresses, and in view of my swollen copy, hesitate to open either. One is in- 382 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. scribed "George H. Thomas;" almost a book, of fifty-two noble pages, delivered before the society of the army of the Cumberland, November 25, 1870, Garfield talking to his comrades of their great old commander. Some things from this without comment. Here is his sketch of the old hero, among the opening paragraphs: 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 mo- ment, as we often saw 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 silver; his broad fore- head, full face, and features that would appear colossal, but for their per- fect 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. No human life can be measured by an absolute standard. In this world, all is relative. Character itself is the result of innumerable in- fluences, from without and from within, which act unceasingly through life. Who shall estimate the effect of those latent forces enfolded in the spirit of a new-born child — forces that may date back centuries and find their origin in the life, and thought, and deeds of remote ancestors — forces, the germs of which, enveloped in the awful mystery of life, have been transmitted silently from generation to generation, and never perish! All cherishing nature, provident and unforgetting, gathers up all these fragments, that nothing may be lost, but that all may ultimately reappear in new com- binations. Each new life is thus the "heir of all the ages," the possessor of qualities which only the events of life can unfold. The problems to be solved in the study of human life and character are, MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 383 therefore, these: Given the character of a man, and the conditions of life around him, what will be his career? Or, given his career and sur- roundings, what was his character? Or, given his character and career, of what kind were his surroundings? The relation of these three fac- tors to each other is severely logical. From them is deduced all gen- uine history. Character is the chief element, for it is both a result and a cause — a result of influences and a cause of results. On the twenty-sixth page is this extract, summing up a perfect thing: In the presence of such a career, let us consider the qualities which produced it, and the character which it developed. We are struck, at the outset, with the evenness and completeness of his life. There were no breaks in it, no chasms, no upheavals. His pathway was a plane of continued elevation. A little further on is this : In such a career, it is by no means the leact of a man's achievments, to take his own measure, to discover and understand the scope and range of his own capacity. Did Garfield ever apply this rule to himself? To him (Thomas) a battle was neither an earthquake, nor a volcano, nor a chaos of brave men and frantic horses, involved in vast explo- sions of gunpiowder. 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. I resolutely pass marked, great passages to the grand, simple close. 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. " O iron nerve to true occasion true! fallen at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!" " His work is done ; But while the races of mankind endure, 384 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Let his great example stand Colossal seen of every land, And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure, Till in all lands and through all human story, The path of duty be the way to glory." The other bears the name of Ahiieda Booth ! The reader may remember her ; a noble-souled, high-hearted, large-brained woman, with corresponding form, asso- ciated with Garfield's professor years. A great help of his in . many ways, worthy to associate with the largest and most generous nature on terms of equality. She was one of his first discoverers. She early penetrated that big-boyism that has ever surrounded him as with an atmosphere, making him seem the equal of common men only, or exceeding them mainly in mere quantity. Everybody ran to him, all wanted him, and he had what they wanted ; often thinking that they had only received their own back again, so generous and delicate was the alms bestowed. It was as the rendering back of an over- due debt, paid with excuses for the long delay. She early set her face against this waste, not of thought, mental property, but of himself, the fame and consideration his due, without which the common mind would never measure the immense distance between common men and him. "James I don't want everybody and anybody should feel, that they can have you, everywhere and any- where, not, that you will be exhausted or they will not be helped. You are to grow upwards up, and not spread yourself over a great surface." Wise, far-seeing woman that she was who would fence him about and protect his upward growth. MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 385 I am not to sketch Miss Booth, worthy as she is to be drawn in even a glancing history of Garfield, but I show his estimate of her for the purpose of helping out a more complete picture of him, and of his many-form work. The address was delivered at Hiram college, June 2 2d, 1876. The subject of it passed away December 15th, 1875. Sweet and tender are his first words. 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 sailor boy's figures of the sea! Then, with that elementary force of mind which al- ways finds or lays the foundations of things, he constructs the solid base of the beautiful structure of her life and character, which he builds. One all the time, as in the case 386 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. of Thomas, can't help seeing the builder notwithstanding his effort to disappear. How many beautiful compari- sons he draws between her and others, so that those to whom she, like him, had made herself so common, that the power of estimating her was lost, could see and feel her true proportions. His is the rare gift of seeing and reading the real about him, to which the eyes of common men had been blind. How striking the contrast he draws between the second Adams and Lincoln, and what a masterly comprehension of both. Mark this just appreciation of woman's nature : Woman's nature is of finer fibre; her spirit is attuned to higher harmonies. "All dipped in angel instincts, " she craves, more keenly than man, the celestial food — the highest culture which earth and heaven can give; and her loss is far greater than his, when she is de- prived of those means of culture so rarely found in pioneer life. Suc- cess in intellectual pursuits, under such conditions, is tlie strongest possible test of her character. Then comes the rapid sketch of the pioneer life; of Ezra Booth, the father, whose life deserved a care- ful stud}'. One sees the young girl grow in all her various lovely ways, under his hand, till the catastrophe of her younger life, thus told: In the family of her nearest neighbor, she had formed the intimate acquaintance of Martyn Harmon, a young man of rare and brilliant promise. Like herself, he was an enthusiastic student. Ambitious of culture, he had pushed his way through the studies of Meadville col- lege, and was graduated with honor. He had given Almeda his love, and received in return the rich gift of her great heart. The day of their wedding had been fi.xed. He was away in Kentucky, teaching; while she was in Mantua, preparing to adorn and bless the home of their love. On the si.xth of March, 1848, he died of some sudden ill- ness, and was buried near Frankfort, Kentucky. MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 387 Hers was an essentially great life, rounded in complete and just proportions, so far as it was permitted to reach, a life which required just such a man as he, whose hand sketched it, to justly appreciate and estimate it. There is a striking sketch of the work of Margaret Fuller, with which he contrasts that of Almeda Booth, with this con- clusion: Highly as 1 appreciate the character of Margaret Fuller, greatly as I admire her remarkable abilities, I do not hesitate to say that in no four years of her life did her achievements, brilliant as they were, equal the work accomplished by Miss Booth during the four years that fol- lowed her coming to Hiram. The judgment of a man endowed with a rare insight into the nature and character of men, and what is more unusual, of woman. Here is the living form of the woman. We shall never forget her sturdy, well-formed figure; her head that would have appeared colossal but for its symmetry of proportions; the strongly marked features of her plain, rugged face, not moulded according to the artist's lines of beauty, but so lighted up with intelli- gence and kindliness as to appear pqsitively beautiful to those who knew her well. The basis of her character, the controlling force which developed and formed it, was strength — extraordinary intellectual power. Here he acknowledges his indebtedness to her. On my own behalf, I take this occasion to say that for her powerful and generous aid so often and so efficiently rendered, for her quick and never-failing sympathy, and for her intelligent, unselfish and unswerv- ing friendship, I owe her a debt of gratitude and affection, for the pay- ment of which the longest term of life would have been too short. His close was fitting and tender. What a temptation to sketch in here, as a companion 388 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. piece, the rough, strong figure of Dr. Robison, whose commanding voice, filling "all space," coming from those great lungs and admirable digestion, moves things by its quantity, on his theory that as rocks are lifted easier in water — so he " inundates" a weighty matter. Not all lung and voice; there are the granite foundations of a man, topped out with a mind practical, accurate, strong and forceful. A famous preacher of the Disciples, to whom Alexander Campbell was more than a hero, almost more than a prophet. He, too, was one of the first, if not the very first, discoverer of Garfield. What a picture is this of the doctor silently leading the callow youth on commencement day, away from the college into a sheltering thicket, and there with the young man kneeling before him, grimly and phrenologically hand- ling that great head, and then in suppressed thunder, declaring it a Daniel Webster head — a greater than Daniel — and solemnly dedicating the weeping youth to a grand career. After which, kneeling himself, he breathed a fervent prayer for his guidance, and laid his hand again on that head, now in benediction. The far- seeing doctor, tender and generous, had before opened his heart to the boy, now his door was opened also. Other striking forms arise. That Uncle Boynton, of the men and women who early come around to love, cherish and encourage, never to leave him after. He has never lost a friend. Ponder that. And of the nearer and dearer circle where he sits a crowned king, ruling and being ruled by the divine right of love. She who bore him, with her thin bent form, high MISCELLANEOUS WORK. 389 brow and striking aquiline face, Eliza, great mother, wise as sweet, whose strength equals the sum of wisdom and sweetness, sitting ever at his right hand, as watchful and tender, as anxious now as m his boyhood. Silent she sits with pleased face when he utters a noble thought, reproving what to her is unworthy or un- seemly for him to say ; often enforcing her rebuke with her hand smartly on his cheek, as when a little boy; selecting choice and tender bits, or rare fruits, and transferring them to him, which he accepts with the pleased eager air of a boy receiving sugar plums. What a picture she would make with the delicate lines of character running and crossing, and which most men never see, well drawn — Eliza, rebuking the noisy plaudits of the unthinking crowd, and hiding in her heart the sincere words, the prophecies of ,,myboy," like Mary, silent and tender. These are not for my hand — never will be, nor yet the other — all the others who form this rare group of home and love. CHAPTER III. THE MAN. His Nature and Qualities. — Tlie Real Man. — The Man as he Appears. Scattered through my little volume are various esti- mates of some of the striking qualities, with references to the physical mould of James A. Garfield, where such mention seemed apt or asked to be noted down. My purpose mainly has been to translate to my countrymen my conception of the man as it exists in my own mind. Was there a great deal less of him, was he less symmet- rical, rounded and complete, less balanced, less perfect, one may say, so that some one of his great qualities stood out alone and strikingly, the labor would have been less, the result more certain. THE REAL MAN. In moulding him Nature had before her one or several of her grandest and noblest models. She did not stint him to a genius — she did not want a poet, a sculptor, a warrior, or merely a statesman, an engineer, or a discov- erer. For some purpose, or many, she wanted a man, as if to vindicate again to herself her own old, true concep- tion of a man, and she made him. She took no effete matter, worn by the long descent of a remarkable strain of men, but used new, fresh, abundant in quan- tity, of rare excellence of quality, all of equal fineness, THE MAN. 391 and each part carried out in symmetrical proportion, large, generous, superabundant, not coarse, not porous, no gilding, but strong, solid, sweet all through — a primitive man who sees and thinks at first hand. Taking to himself all the thoughts, all the seeings, all the struggles of all other men, and testing them anew by his own seeings and thinkings, with the power of seeing all the significances of the common things around him, not before seen of others, finding new meaning in common words, and the meanings of many things before thought superfluous and without meaning, and so rejected, natural, fresh, vigorous, strong, and so in just and pure relations with primitive forces and ideas. Himself a force, simple and sweet as a child, to whom God is and the Heavens are — one who will never largely depart from the great simples, the spirit, the life and significance of things. A man whose self is the large and generous self, which embraces other selves whom he cherishes and keeps as parts of him, and so unconsciously advances his own self, whose vision is broad and high, and not marred by the small defects on which small-eyed men fasten to convict God of un- wisdom, or which to them so large are, that they hide God, and so the seers are atheists; but large, seeing the whole, its beauty and symmetry, and so sees. God every- where. A man with instinctive reverence for duty, which don't seem duty, but the thing is attractive to him which he does, because he loves to do it ; so it becomes love's work and is easy. It is not as the work of other men, but it gives pleasure to an eager mind, and is as 392 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Other men's pastimes are— done freshly with laughing brow and happy, jocund words. The things that others can- not do or produce with sweatings and groanings he does easily. He finds things out of place, incongruous, and searches out their true foundations, and puts them back in their places,and goes his way laughing, and other men take the credit. He laughs and don't care. It did not seem much to him, nothing to have praise for — so easy and natural for him to do. Things which needed to be done sought him out, and placed themselves docilely in his hands, as that of a master for whom they waited, and so being done, stay forever accomplished, and curiously and naturally he never thought of himself, or of any come-out to or for himself. He remained on the common ground of common men, doing their works and jobs without thought of pay or reward. He went about finding discouraged groups here and there, tugging and toiling over their in- evitable tasks, and they instinctively made way for him, and he did it, asking nothing; or they would push him to some new obstruction in their way, too huge for them, and he would remove it, not leading or caring to, though knowing better than another the true way, and with vastly more strength than others to clear it, and secure easy and certain advance. Loving all, serving all, asking only love in return, which no one withholds, and so he lives on the earth. AS HE APPEARS To most men, finely formed, of the full, large height; large, unusually large and well-formed head, and carried well; finely moulded limbs; of the rounded THE MAN. 393 fullness of chest and limb, which fill the idea of just, not over bulk and proportion. Two defects: perhaps the neck lacks length; the feet seem too small for a man of his proportions. Hands good, manly, well-formed, strong, firm, forceful; shoulders broad; chest deep; face large — had to be for such a head; well-formed nose; splendid brows — turn back and study it; blue eyes; fine, light blond, diminishing hair ; soft, full lips ; well-formed chin, hidden by the curling blond whiskers; Saxon — Saxon or Norse without doubt. The best likeness ever made of him fronts my title page. So persistently does the common mind cling to the common of its own plane, cherish and cling to the common of Garfield's early life and surroundings, so insistent that he remain there amid the dwellers of the level, that men who would see and describe him to others, still see only that common in his person, manners and dress. He dresses as do other gentlemen. On his farm he is a farmer, frank and manly, as farmers are. His manners are the out-come, largely, of his hearty kindli- ness, and an inherent courtesy of heart and soul, that instinctively protects the feelings and sensibilities of others; courteous and dignified. The head is well borne; great natural majesty is its proper air, and the whole figure, when the man rises to his true proportions and position, is one of easy, simple dignity, unconsci- ous of what is its due. The man always gives more than he receives, in his common intercourse in life — giv- ing spontaneously, because he has it to give. The spirit, nature and essential man are fine-fibered, not coarse 394 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. never could have been; never could have been vul- gar. It was all there in the rude-looking, youthful form of the poor canal boy; as real as in him to whom the eyes of a Nation are now turned. They are the same person. The boy did not escape and get new outside impressions, helps and gildings; en- abled to take on new powers, and grow to new life, by accretion, carrying within the vulgar canal hand. All there ever was in him, he received from Eliza Ballou and Abram Garfield. That ever essential thing has never been changed or hidden. It carried him naturally and easily along all the way he ever trod, growing, develop- ing, broadening and deepening, rising higher, and be- coming luminous, till a Nation has caught its rays and turns to it, to light up the high broadway of its own march. In the nature of things, Garfield can not be proud of the everlastingly dwelt-on canal, its malarias and swamps, its coarse, soiled associations, its foul smells and noisome surroundings. We must deplore them; all men deplore them ; one weeps that in any tender boys' helplessness and unseeing, there should be no hand to guide him to the something — anything better than that. The instinct so careful of the slightest hurt to the feel- ing of another, cannot but be tenderly sensitive to these early hurts and bruises of soul and spirit, which the thoughtless world in its noisy adulation so constantly re- minds him of It is too bad — that in his unsought eleva- tion he should hear nothing else. Had the young prince worn it as a disguise, he did not know he was a prince. The first thing which strikes all men, women and chil- THE MAN. 395 dren alike, in the presence of General Garfield, is the frank, natural warmth and tenderness of his reception. Never was a man so approachable, nor a man so unre- served; nothing hidden, nothing kept back, nothing but self, which, as a thing to be cherished, has for him no existence. He has no secrets; nothing hidden, or to be hidden. It is impossible to betray him in this way. What he is he says; what he has, is any man's. His love and kindliness surround him with an atmosphere which every one feels who approaches him, magnetic, all-pervading; more constant than his shadow born of the sun without, this radiates from the never setting sun within. No other word expresses it but love, never- changing, all-embracing, and, like love, not seeing faults ; some times so strong as to overpower judgment, where he alone is concerned. Probably there is no better or more accurate judge of men than Garfield now living. Men do not impose on him; they never will. He sees their faults and likes them, maugre their failings. There is, however, another element of character and mind ever active, his just sense of responsibility, and accurate esti- mate of means to ends. He knows exactly what is needed for any certain purpose, and will never use that which does not fully meet all the requirements. His first qualification for an agent would be eminently that of moral fitness. No man of blemish would be trusted by him. The man himself he would love, could not help it, but the incongruity of using him with a known defect would ensure his rejection. There is something noticeable in these qualities of 396 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Garfield, not falling under any definition or general head —his sense of the fitness of things, his eye for proportion and symmetry, the artist element, which is very large, that which leads him to study and demand the congruous in all his own work, and in all the things about him. He once, in his inimitable way, told of meeting a young maiden of twelve, in the far-off Orange, pre-canal days, in some lonely way. She was draped in a badly worn and not less soiled "tow" frock, repaired in front with a large flannel patch. Barefoot she was, this maiden of twelve, and over her sun-burned face she wore a light silk veil. The bare feet kissed the earth harmoniously. The woolen and coarse linen were a matter of necessity, which he allowed for, and not unseemly, but the veil — that veil, with that dress, and the bare feet, struck him violently as incongruous. The unconscious child went her barefooted way. Her image dwelt not in the boy's heart, but brain, an idea, a form of incongruity, always ready to suggest comparisons. "This is a patch-frocked, bare- footed girl, with a veil." "This is my barefooted, tow-frodked girl's veil," became an oft mental observa- tion upon his own work. This sense of the congruous finally compelled him to have the top line of the fence in front of his Mentor home reduced to a right line, without reference to the modest swell of the ground on which it stood. There was also the important question of the color of a screening lattice, between the floor of the veranda and the ground. What should it be? Then followed an original disquisition upon colors, and the congruous. There was a law, which, when deduced, THE MAN. 397 would direct the waiting painter in the weighty matter of this lattice. It must not offend the eye by incongruity. It was a lattice near the ground. Its purpose and position must, allowing for one or two other things, control its color. Everybody would know what it was. It was not a foundation, nor a part of the build- ing ; nor yet a blind for a window, but a screen to hide an unseemly opening — a gap. It must do that and please the eye, with reference to all the surroundings. This sense of fitness and proportion is a habit of the mind, a quality of the man, referring to the moral and intellectual, as to the physical world, and is a governing law. It may be a real instinct, a necessity which com- pels him to find foundations for everything, and build with such infinite care. No faulty, imperfect material, stick, brick or stone, has the least chance for use any- where. Next to the magnitude of the intellect, so often men- tioned, is its many-sidedness. Roundness and complete- ness, without angles, better express it. We have seen that it is eminently original, from the aptitude with which it finds newness and freshness in common things, a better test of originality than any eccentric plunge into the unknown, in search of the uncertain. Yet, while thus original, it tests and corrects its thought, by all the lights, a comparison with all the methods and models known to history and human experience. These, alway used in subordination and as aids, test helps. The union of these mental qualities is rare. The great original mind, usually so strong and conscious of its creative power, 398 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. whose Structures, so near that thej' seem to dwarf and discountenance the remote edifices of others, even in the absence of egoism, and they seem of no account. Secure in itself, it seldom seeks aid. We found in the summing up of Part First, that Garfield lacks egoism, and hence always under-estimates himself, and his work. So he docilely and modestly looks for and accepts all help from all hands and lands, old and new. There is also the union of the povvers of a rare memory, with the productive faculties of creating, not often witnessed save among those who build of borrowed material, which he does not. His quotation from Tennyson, on the first anniversary of Lincoln's death, will be remembered. When called to pronounce the first commemorative oration at Arlington, he wrote with much care — a rare thing with him, the entire adr dress. Later he revised and cut it down, and thus im- proved it. Then he laid it by, intending to read it. He did not see it again until on his way to Arlington for its delivery, when he hastily ran it over. At Arlington were fifteen thousand living and fifteen thousand of the dead to confront him, with the three thousand or four thou- sand flags of all nations and people. The President, cabinet, and foreign ministers were there. He had never attempted to read but once or twice. He would not read to these. He arose, full ofv his theme, and launched himself boldly on outspread pinion of free, happy, and seemingly spontaneous speech. It was taken by the reporters. Friends afterward compared it with the two, the original and the amended written copies. It THE MAN. 399 was found identical with the last. It was, after all, an unconscious production of the wonderful memor}'. His is an intellect of great creative power, capable of quarrying a mountain and throwing up a temple in a single day. Every great monolith would be polished and inscribed with classic legend, the whole chastely garlanded by fancy, and bearing rare flowers of poetry. It is a wonderful mind, wonderful and masterful, whose masterfulness, in its unconsciousness, yet wins by its modesty and unostentatious riches. It is curious, with the warmth and ardor of temperament of the man, this mind is eminently conservative, as all great balanced in- tellects must be. In all his utterances, is there a suspi- cion of the visionary? Calm, self-sustained, lie never labors to a height whence, abandoning himself to impulse, he throws himself in soaring eccentric flight. He must always bear himself with himself, and then he is calm and self-sustained. One likes to know the methods of such a man. Strong and healthy, nourishing food and good measures of rest are necessary for him. He must have plenty of rich red blood. His power of work can be estimated by the hints and glances rather than a full survey we have taken of it. He seldom, almost never, writes a speech. He walks as he thinks, and thinks in words which he speaks aloud, accompanying the expressive parts with the swing of that left hand, the gift of Eliza Ballou. The heads of these extemporized speeches he notes, and when the whole subject is thus rolled into com- pass and well in hand, it is laid away for its hour of 400 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. use. Language — all words — comes when needed. The thought well mastered instinctively finds its own just foundation, and the word - structure springs spontane- ously into just and enduring structures. Would be greatly admired for their beauty and often majesty, did not men find them so solid, roomy and useful in prac- tical life. As a public speaker, an orator, he stands fully with the very first of his time. He never declaims. Happy, copious, strong, massive, finished, aUve and leap- ing with the throb and pulse of great thought, his speech flows full with human sympathy and tenderness. What- ever he says and does is full of the great-heartedness of the man. He is an actor born, with great facial power and a mimetic talent which enables him to reproduce the voice and manner of most living men. I am not aware that he has ever availed himself of this in public. Hints of it may have escaped him. One wants to see him at home, live with him, so as to be certain of his happiest times, at his own table, or wherever it comes. There, too, one should hear him, to have an accurate idea of his force and power as an orator. There where he mo- mentarily gives himself into the hands of a mighty emo- tion or some grotesque fancy, to be reproved perhaps by the admonitory hand of maternal Eliza. On one of these times he once uttered an eulogium of Grant in the wilderness. The great general was sitting on a log in the woods, smoking, with his staff around him, while his army was executing a great decisive movement. Suddenly there dashed up an officer from a remote com- THE MAN. 401 mander of a corps, staggering under the very weight of the message he bore, and announced that the whole rebel army was executing a simultaneous movement that would place it successfully in Grant's rear with the most awful consequences. All men were aghast. The Gen- eral removed his cigar, and calmly directed him to re-state his message, which he did. An instant's re- flection ! That wonderful brain which planned all, knew all, knew better what was happening than a skilful gen- 9ral who actually saw it. He quietly answered " I don't believe it." Let the movement go on." " That," said the general, who with wonderful power had pictured the whole thing, the messenger, the unmoved Grant, the fright and terror produced on others — " That was Godlike," and then as the idea of the wonderful pres- cience grew on him, so passing the boundaries of human knowledge, partaking of the quality of the Highest, with a face whose expression culminated, he brought his mighty arm down with a grand sweep — " That was God !" Never, as I believe, were three words of any language uttered with such prodigious effect. Never before did the whole man so deliver, so discharge his whole self Men and women's eyes were on the glow- ing face, saw the descending hand, but the boldness and grandeur of the climax could not be calculated. The emotions produced are incommunicable. Even pious Eliza was overwhelmed, and the awful, the almost pro- fane boldness of the figure, passed unreproved even by her. However great, and wherever great, he is greatest and best at home. 402 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. He puts himself well on paper. His purely literary labors are characterized by the limpid unconsciousness of his style, and the simple, compact vigor of his sen- * tences. He uses words on paper as any one who recalls the club of child critics, must know he would. In work of this sort so sure is he of himself, that he finishes each page as he goes, and when the last is written the article is done. And yet he sometimes finds himself halting on the threshold of a sentence that won't form itself, nor let him pass it, and there he stops until it yields. He never leaves anything in his rear. He who searched for the lowest beginning place in boyhood, never has to go back to finish up or rebuild. How deep and ineradicable was that first love for the sea, is shown by his constant return to the visions of a sailor-bo)', whence he draws more figures for his speeches than from all other sources. Here I linger a moment to recall the half-limned pic- ture of two years ago, in Part First of this little history. It seemed to me then, that the changes in his life were produced by extraneous causes, and were not due at all to any plan of his own. The instances in proof of this have multiplied. Things which wanted him have come and taken him. He was willing to receive the senator- ship — would not go to seek it. Having received that, he wanted, as many did for him, his six full years in the senate. This which threatens to intervene was fortuitous — came at the least prematurely. It came as other things have alway come to him, and whatever attends its com- ing, it was unsought and in a way unwelcome. THE MAN. 403 That Other thing, strongly marked in my study of him, was his remarkable growth upon the public. This is certainly to go on unchecked as it has gone. He is a primitive man, standing on the earth, with God and Heaven over him ; with mother, wife, and children about him; the first, oldest, the everlasting helps of mortal man. With these, whatever happens, he will go on de- veloping and growing, until Americans and the world recognize him in many ways the largest of his countrymen. Here these slight labors end. I cannot more prop- erly conclude them than with his speech at Painesville, July 3, iSSo, at the unveiling of the soldiers' statue. After the programme of addresses and reports was concluded by the very able oration of ex-Governor Cox, there came from ten thousand voices a com- pelling call for General Garfield, who sat among the invited guests. A moment's hesitation, with the old instinct of foundation and construction, and the ever- present spirit of the young teacher aroused, he arose, and with all his great advantages of person and voice, quite at their best, he said : Fellow citizens: I cannot fail to respond on such an occasion and in sight of such a monument, of such a cause, sustained by such men. While I have listened to what my friend, [General Cox], has said, two questions have been sweeping through my heart. One was, "WTiat does the monument mean?" and the other, "What will the monument teach?" Let me try to ask you for a moment to help me answer — "What does this monument mean?" Oh! the monument mean^ a world of memories, a world of deeds, a world of tears and a world of glory. You know, thousands know, what it is to offer up your life to the coun- try, and that is no small thing, as every soldier knows. Let me put a 404 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. question to you. Suppose your country in the embodied form of Ma- jestic Law should stand up before you and say, ' ' I want your life, come up on this platform and offer it," how many would walk up before that Majestic Presence and say, "Here am I; take this life and use it for your great needs." And yet almost two millions of men made that answer, and the monument stands yonder to commemorate their ans- wer. 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, and almost all. Let me test you this way; suppose that 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 hgpeless condition." To volunteer to do that calls for a higher reach of patriotism and self-sacrifice; thousands of our soldiers did that. That is what our 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, consent that your brain and intellect shall be broken down into hopeless idiocy,' for my sake." How many could be found to make that venture? and yet thousands did that with their eyes wide open to the horrible consequence. Let me tell you that one hundred and eighty thousand of our soldiers were prisoners of war, and many, when death was stalking, when famine was climbing up into their hearts, and when idiocy was threatening all that was left of their intellects, the gates of their prison stood open for them if they would just desert their flag and enlist under the flag of the enemy. Out of one hundred and eighty thousand, not two per cent, ever re- ceived a liberation from death, starvation, idiocy, or all that might come to them, but they took all these horrors and sufferings in prefer- ence to deserting the flag of their country and the glory of its truth. Was ever such measure of patriotism reached by man on this earth before? That is what your monument means. By the subtle chemistry that no man knows, all the blood that was shed by our brothers, all the lives that were devoted, all the grief that was felt, at last crystallized itself into granite and rendered immortal the great truths for which they died. It stands there to-day — and that is what your monument means. THE MAN. 405 Now, what will the monument teach? I remember a story of one of the old conquerors of Greece, who, when he traveled in his boyhood over the battle-fields, and saw trophies, the trophies set up by the con- queror, said: "These trophies of Miltiades will never let me sleep." Why? Something had taught him a lesson he could never forget; and, fellow-citizens, that silent sentinel that crowns your granite column will look down upon the boys that shall walk the streets generations to come, and will not let them sleep when their country calls. From his granite lips will sound out a call that the sons of Lake county will hear after the grave has covered us all and our immediate children. That is the teaching of your monument — that is the lesson. Its lesson is the endurance of what we believe — its lesson of sacrifice for what we love — the lesson of heroism for what we mean to sustain, and that lesson cannot be lost upon a people like this. It is not a lesson of revenge, it is not a lesson of wrath, it is a grand, sweet lesson of the immortality of truth, that we hope will soon cover like the Schekina of light and glory, all parts of this Republic from the lakes to the Gulf I once entered a house in old Massachusetts where over its door were two crossed swords — one was the sword carried by the grandsire of its owner on the field of Bunker Hill, the other was the sword carried by the English grandsire of the wife, on the same field and on the other side of the conflict. Under these crossed swords in restored harmony and domestic peace lived a happy, contented and free family in the light of our Republican liberties; and I trust the time is not far distant when under the crossed swords and the locked shields of America, North and South, our people will sleep in peace, rise in liberty, and live in harmonv under our flag of stars. Chester A, Arthur, OF NEW YORK. SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER. Chestei^ A^Ai^Hui^,- CHESTER ALLAN ARTHUR. CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE.— LEGAL CAREER. Place of Birth. — His Father a Learned Divine and Author. — His Rich Inheritance of Brains. — He Enters College and Graduates. — He Teaches School. — Studies Law and is Admitted to the Bar. — His Career as a Lawyer. — His Advocacy of Great Cases. — Appointed an Officer in the State Militia. — His Services During the Rebejllon. General Arthur's place of nativity is in the Green Mountain State. He was born in Fairfield, Franklin county, Vermont, October 5, 1830. He is the oldest of seven children, two sons and five daughters. Rev. Dr. William Arthur, a Baptist clergyman, g. distinguished scholar, and the author of several books of much liter- ary merit, was his father. The latter was a native of county Antrim, Ireland, and, having graduated at the college of Belfast, emigrated to America when but eighteen years of age. He died in Newtonville, near Albany, October 27, 1876? Dr. Arthur was a man of marked traits of character and endowed with a strong intellect, while his attain- ments were of the most scholarly kind. He rose to dis- tinction in the ministry, and, besides, acquired celebrity 409 4IO LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. in the domain of authorship. His book on "Family- Names," has taken rank the world over as a standard work on the subject of which it treats, and as a valuable contribution to English erudite literature. From 1855 to 1863 he was pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church of New York City, where he was accounted among the ablest clergymen of the metropolis. ■ Such, in brief, was the father of the subject of this biography. His mother, whose maiden name was Malvina Stone, being no less richly endowed. General Arthur inherited talents of the highest order. In his early boyhood he showed an unusual aptitude in the acquisition of knowl- edge, and being fitted for college mainly under his father's valuable instruction, he surpassed other boys of his age in his studies. With a short term of school at Greenwich, Washington county, New York, he entered Union college, graduating therefrom at the early age of eighteen, with high honors. Leaving college, he determined to earn his own living, and obtain for himself a start in the world. For two years he taught school in his native State, and saved from his earnings the handsome sum of five hundred dollars. It is said, on the authority of Dr. A. Harlow, of Detroit, one of the early preceptors of General Garfield, that at one time during this period Mr. Arthur was in charge of a business college in Pawlet, Vermont, in which young Garfield, then fresh from the preparatory schools he had attended in Ohio, was engaged as professor of business and ornamental penmanship. This, if true, affords a remarkably interesting instance — the early and close con- EARLY LIFE. LEGAL CAREER. 4II nection of men destined long after to intimate associa- tion in a much more distinguished career. Our hero had now a good start in the world. What better capital could a young man have than he — youth (for he was only twenty), health, brains, learning, a disposition to economize, an ambition to succeed, and five hundred dollars in his pocket ? He went to New York city, and entered the office of the Hon. E. D. Culver, a former member of Congress. In two years more, or in 1853, he was admitted to the bar, and made rapid advancement in his profession. He took great interest in public affairs from the first, and bore an active part in the Free-soil agitation. In 1853 he formed a part- nership with his intimate friend and college room-mate, Henry D. Gardiner. They concluded they would seek their fortunes in the west, and spent several months on a western tour in search for an eligible place at which to locate. Disappointed in this, apparently, the twain re- turned to the city, and still retaining their intention of union in business, boldly and together ventured upon the uncertain sea of professional life in the great metropolis. Their talents, industry and social accomplishments soon brought them clients in abundance, and they entered upon a business career of high reputation and success. The interest early taken by young Arthur in the anti- slavery cause, has already been noted. In Mr. Culver's office he was in a good place for the cultivation and stimulus of this feeling; for Mr. Culver, as a member of congress from Pennsylvania, and in more private sta- tions, had taken an active part in the resistance of the 412 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. time to the aggressions of slavery. The generous in- stincts of Mr. Arthur, too, forbade him from that man- ifestation of sympathy with the southern oligarchy and its arrogant demands, which was a prominent character- istic of nearly all the leading New York politicians of that day. He was thus adequately prepared for the treatment of his first really great case — that which has done him chief honor and mainly given him celebrity. About the time he began practice in the city, two slave- holders emigrating from Virginia to Texas, a married pair named Jonathan and Juliet Lemmon, went to New York to take steamer for their destination, bearing with them, as part of their property, eight negro slaves. It was a time when the public conscience throughout the North was peculiarly sensitive to the advent of human chattels upon the soil of a free State ; and they had not been long in the city before it was determined by some friends of freedom, that the question should be tested whether in the air of the Empire State a southern slave should breathe. Application was made to Judge Paine, of the superior court of New York City, for a writ of habeas corpus, to release the bodies of the Lemmon ne- groes from the custody of their reputed owners. Upon full hearing, in which the main question was whether the provisions of the Fugitive Slave law were of force and validity in the State of New York, Judge Paine decided that they were not, and that the so-called "slaves" should be released, with freedom to go whithersoever they would. The southern heart was fired by this decis- ion. All Virginia, especially, was in an uproar. The EARLY LIFE. LEGAL CAREER. 413 legislature of the Old Dominion promptly took action to vindicate "Southern rights," against "Northern fanati- cism," and making the private interests of the Lemmons a matter of State concern, authorized and instructed the attorney-general of the Commonwealth to assist in the appeal of the case to a higher court. The ardent and able young lawyer, now the Repub- lican candidate for the vice-presidency, appeared upon the scene as attorney for the people, with a distinguished associate in the person of the Hon. William M. Evarts, at present secretary of state of the United States. Arthur prepared all the papers in the case, and with such care and efficiency that together with the logic and eloquence at the command of himself and his,eminent associate, the case was again won for the poor blacks and the cause of freedom. The Lemmons and the slaveocracy were not yet satisfied, however, and kept the case in court a number of years, it going finally to the Federal supreme court — the court of last resort in this country. Counsel of National renown had been employed by the slave-drivers in the previous contest, Mr. Henry L. Clin- ton being one of them; but in this ultimate arena Messrs. Evarts and Arthur had no less a personage to confront than Charles O'Connor, the leader, and Nestor of the New York bar. Undauntedly, however, they pressed their case, and again with success. The decis- ions rendered in the courts below were affirmed; the rights of a common humanity, as guaranteed by the dec- laration of independence, and the genius of our free institutions, were upheld; and the growing spirit of uni- 414 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. versal freedom throughout the Repubhc received invalu- able encouragement. The thought of Emerson's immor- tal poem was embodied in the conclusions thus reached partly, if not mainly, through the arduous, well-directed labors of Chester A. Arthur: "United States! the ages plead, Present and past in under song, Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue. "For sea and land don't understand; Nor skies without a frown See rights for which the one hand fights, With the other stricken down. Another case of considerable note, in which the rights of the blacks were involved, was brought to a successful conclusion in their behalf, this time single-handed, by General Arthur. In 1856 a respectable colored woman by the name of Lizzie Jennings, was forcibly and with quite unnecessary violence ejected from a horse car on the Fourth Avenue line, in New York. She had paid her fare; but objection afterwards arising to her presence, simply on the ground that she was colored, the employes of the road seized upon and removed her to the street. Mr. Arthur's services were secured; he brought suit in her interest and the interest of a great principle; and after some litigation was successful in securing a verdict for her, and not alone for her,- but for a then despised and down-trodden race of humanity. The company was compelled by the court to pay Lizzie Jennings damages in the sum of five hundred dollars. This, be it remembered, was in 1856, the year of the EARLY LIFE. LEGAL CAREER. 415 first Presidential campaign of the Republican party, when the hatred of the opposition toward the negro, particularly in New York and certain other large cities, was greatly intensified. Under these circumstances the victory won by Arthur and his client was the more sig- nificant and triumphant. The moral victory was yet greater than the legal success. Previous to that decision all the horse-car lines in New York City had refused to admit colored persons to their conveyances, except the Sixth avenue line which had a few cars, run at long intervals specially for their accommodation, they being excluded, as on other routes, from the cars occupied by white people. But the very day after the Jennings case was decided, the Fourth avenue company, instead of prolonging the contest through the higher courts, sensi- bly concluded to anticipate the growth of a generous public sentiment and the ultimate law of the land in behalf of civil rights, and allow people of color the same privileges on their carriages as had been enjoyed by others. Orders were issued accordingly, and the other street railway companies of the city were not long delayed in following the good example. Since then these public conveniences have been practically as free in New York City to passengers of the one race as to those of any other. So important and so distinguished then were the services rendered by the young lawyer, long before he was thirty years of age, to the great cause of humanity. The tremendous struggle between slavery and free- dom was now drawing on. The war of the rebellion 41 6 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. was at hand. Upon the formation of the Republican party, Mr. Arthur, without hesitation or delay, had iden- tified himself with it. He was a delegate from Brook- lyn, the place of his residence, to the State convention held at Saratoga, at which, some hold, the Republican party was founded, and which was certainly the first Republican convention held in the State of New York. The value of his services to the party and the State soon came to be recognized, as well as his fitness, though without regular military education, to be useful in the organization of war ; and he was presently appointed to a post of honor as Judge Advocate of the Second bri- gade of the State militia. Upon the accession of his friend, the Hon. Edwin H. Morgan, to the gubernatorial chair, Mr. Arthur was as- signed the post of engineer-in-chief upon the governor's staff. These positions, however, were little better than honorary; but real work and responsibility were just ahead. Upon the outbreak of the Rebellion, he was advanced to the post of inspector-general, and soon again promoted, this time to the highly responsible and laborious office of quartermaster-general of the State militia. In both positions, but especially in the latter, he did eminently faithful, active, and useful service. As quartermaster-general, he had at his disposal vast sums of money, the awarding of immense contracts — the larg- est known to the military history of any land or age, the gift of an influence in securing innumerable offices of honor and emolument. His opportunities were well understood by those who had interests to be subserved. EARLY LIFE. LEGAL CAREER. 417 He was much courted, and efforts were made by costly gifts to secure his good offices in behalf of certain indi- viduals or business houses. In one case, it is said, a leading house of clothiers made him the offer of a superb uniform free of expense to him; in another, a beautiful saddle, and other horse equipments, were actuHly sent to him by a printing establishment which had "expecta- tions." It is a fact which will redound forever to the honor of this candidate for the vice-presidency, and that will not be forgotten by the voters of the country in con- sidering the claims of the various aspirants to the second place in the government, that, contrary to the practice of not a few men in similar positions at that time, all pres- ents were promptly returned, and all offers of more, in- dignantly rejected by Mr. Arthur. He went out of this office, his friends assert, with its grand opportunities of personal emolument, poorer than when he entered it. One of his associates bears honorable testimony to his official virtue in these terms: "So jealous was he of his integrity that I have known instances where he could have made thousands of dollars legitimately, and yet refused to do it on the ground that he meant to be like Cassar's wife, 'above suspicion.' His own words to me in regard to this matter amply illustrate his character, " If I had misappropriated five cents, and on walking down town saw two men talking on the corner together, I would imagine they were talking of my dishonesty, and the very thought would drive me mad. " His war accounts, although vastly larger than those of any other State, were in such good shape that they were the first to be examined, audited, and allowed by the general government; and they finally passed the treasury 4l8 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. without the abatement of an item, while other States suffered the deduction of one to ten million dollars from their claims upon the United States for the organization and equipment of their contingents in the war. These facts speak volumes in favor of the fitness and ability of the subjAt of this biography as a public administrator or executive officer. Such a man, however, with his pronounced record as a patriot, a Republican, and an officer of the military establishment, was not likely to be needed under the ad- ministration of Governor Seymour; and when that gen- tleman came into power at Albany, General Arthur re- tired, and returned to his law practice. He united him- self with Mr. Ransom, a prominent member of the New York bar. Mr. Phelps, the district attorney of the United States for New York City, was subsequently add- ed to the firm, and then Mr. Knevals, the name and style of the partnership now, and for some years past, being Arthur, Phelps, Knevals & Ransom. The part- ners early secured large and lucrative business, much of it in the form of claims upon the government for serv- ices and supplies, and in drafting bills and promoting important legislation at Washington and Albany. Gen- eral Arthur, as the leading and most influential member of the firm, consequently spent much of his time in these cities, and was almost uniformly successful, by his high reputation and the correctness of his methods and pur- poses, in obtaining the ends he sought. The confidence reposed in him personally, and in his ability and legal learning, was so great at home that he was appointed foj- EARLY AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 419 a time to the honors and emoluments of the place, as counsel to the board of tax commissioners of New York City, with ten thousand dollars per annum. He was not by it compelled to withdraw wholly from the business of his firm; and his position then, as a lawyer and man of business, was among the best in the city or the country. His ability to handle difficult and perplexing cases was universally acknowledged, and his counsel and aid in important litigation were in demand to the extent of his power to meet it. CHAPTER 11. OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. Appointed Collector of the Port of New York.— His Removal.— The High Testimonials He Received.— His Nomination at Chicago.— His Personnel. — His Domestic Life. General Arthur had not been able to keep him- self altogether out of politics. Notwithstanding his re- tirement from office and engrossment in the duties of his profession, he constantly found time and inclination to participate in the movements of local and State politics, and to promote the interests of the Republican party. It was principally due to his efforts that the Hon. Thomas Murphy, collector of the port of New York, 420 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. was elected to the State senate. This led to the resigna- tion of the former important office by Mr. Murphy, since he could not, under the law and practice governing the Federal offices, hold at the same time a place under the United States, and another under his own State. His resignation occurred November 20,' 187 1. General Arthur was not understood to be a candidate for the vacant place. Indeed, it is a notable characteristic of one who has reaped unusual and quite astonishing suc- cess in attaining and retaining high office, that Mr. Ar- thur has never been a professional office-seeker. With a spirit in partisan politics like that he displayed in the ser- vice of his country, he has not used his rare opportuni- ties for personal aggrandizement to secure place and power for himself Every office bestowed upon him, so far as is known to the public, from his first appointment to his nomination for the vice-presidency of the American Union, has come to him unsought. So in the case of the succession to Collector Murphy's place. President Grant, either from personal knowledge or from the advice of trusted friends who knew the worth and abilities of General Arthur, fixed his eyes upon him for the high place vacated by Mr. Murphy, and promptly appointed him to it. The general served through the four years of his appointment with his wonted masterly efficiency and close attention to the details of administration ; and at the close of his term had paid to him the added tribute of honor — one theretofore unprecedented in the checkered history of the New York custom house — of appointing him a second time to the charge of it. He was in each OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 42 1 case promptly confirmed by the senate, and entered upon the performance of his duty with every prestige of success. Nor were the officers of the government or his friends disappointed by the result. The port of New York has never had a better col- ■lector. So much integrity, business ability, legal at- tainments, and mental and moral power, have very rarely gone into that department of the public service. The statistics of the custom-house show the percentage of removals from office among his subordinates during his service of more than six years as collector of the port, averaged but two and three-fourths per cent, of the whole number per year, as against an average of about twenty-eight pei;cent. annually under the three collectors next preceding him, and an annual average of about twenty-four per cent, under all other collectors of the port except him from 1857 down. That is to say, to be more specific, of nine hundred and twenty-three officers of the custom-house in place before his appoint- ment as their chief, five hundred and thirty-one were still borne on the rolls of the service May i, 1877, nearly five years and a half after his original appoint- ment. This is a showing eminently gratifying to the friends of civil-service reform, since it gives hope that the era of sweeping changes in the perso?ind of public offices with every change of their several heads, or of the National administration, is passing away. Nor is this all that can be passed to the credit of General Arthur in the way of reform in the civil service, nowhere else more corrupt, at certain eras in our political historj' than in 422 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. the New York custom-house. In that great institution one hundred appointments command salaries of two thou- sand dollars or more. There is, of course, great pressure for these places ; and the temptation is almost impossi- ble to be resisted, for a partizan or official chief to forget measureably the interests of the public service in his desire to relieve himself of this pressure and to reward his personal or political friends. General Arthur yielded to neither temptation. In every case — except two in- stances for which there were special reasons — where changes were made in these more lucrative and honora- ble positions, the vacancies were filled by the promotion of officers from lower to higher grades, on the recom- mendation of the heads of bureajas. This plan, as thus carried into practice, is invaluable in a department of the civil service so difficult and important as that of col- lecting the customs duties, in stimulating subordinate officers to a degree of fidelity and exactness hardly ever attainable, where the prospect of promotion on the ground of merit is not steadily held before the humble servitors of the government. Failure to remove a large percentage of his subordi- nates, however, or even promotion under the advice of the heads of bureaus, would hardly argue the efficiency and integrity of the New York custom-house. All these might be, possibly, and yet its administration be lament- ably weak, inefficient, and corrupt. Such was by no means the case, however, under the collectorship of Gen- eral Arthur. He gave, as before hinted, personal atten- tion to the details of the service and the conduct of its OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 423 officials, introducing many reforms which affected rather the commercial and mercantile than the political inter- ests of the country. So strongly marked was his admin- istration of the customs service in New York, by the very qualities which should characterize it, that, when his removal was threatened in 1878, a remonstrance against it was signed by nearly every importing merchant in the collection district, as well as by all prominent members of the bar of the city, and by every judge of every one of its courts. Such a testimonial as this has, it is safe to say, never been granted to another man in public life, particularly to one in his difficult and delicate position. In addition to this, two special committees, appointed at Washington for the purpose, instituted close, searching investigation into the affairs of the cus- tom-house during his leadership, and each reported that nothing was to be found of a character that would war- rant the bringing of a single charge against him, much less his removal from office. Still more than this, ■when the entire forces of the Federal administration were brought to bear for the displacement of General Arthur from the custom house, President Hayes and Secretary Sherman themselves, in their official utterances upon the subject, gave unmistakable and unreserved testimony to the purity and integrity of his official acts. Cumulative evidence like this, brought together from so many sources, makes a case irresistible in its force, in favor of the personal and official character of the man whom it bolsters and defends, if need for defense there be. The story of the removal remains to be told, briefly. 424 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. The services of Mr. Arthur to the Republican party in New York City and State have already been outlined. It may readily be supposed that so much unselfish ability and strength in action would be ever in requisition by his fellow-partisans. Among the high places in the party councils he was called to fill, was that which he still holds, of chairman of the Republican State committee of New York. The character of his service in this distinguished position, and the political methods pursued by him, are not known to have been obnoxious to the President and the secretary of the treasury; but it was held that his service as such, while in place as a Federal official, was inconsistent with the Presidential notion of civil service reform, and in contrariety to Mr. Hayes' famous order concerning the participation of officers of the United States in partisan politics. He was, therefore, in the summer of 1878, requested by the President to retire either from his coUectorship or from the chairmanship of the State committee. His own views of the duty of the citizen in political affairs, however, forbade his compli- ance, and he, in conjunction with powerful friends, in- cluding Senator Conkling as their leader and voice, de- termined to make a test case of this before the senate of the United States. The nomination of General Merritt as his successor in the custom-house, together with that of a new incumbent to the naval office in New York City, was sent to the senate early in the ensuing session, and was hotly debated in the executive sessions of that body. No impeachment of his personal character was at- tempted; and we have seen that even the President and OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 425 secretary of the treasury, who were earnest and persistent in seeking his removal, had no imputation to cast upon that. The great petition for his retention, signed by a host of influential names, has also been referred to; but not the important and significant fact, which may well come in here, that General Arthur was so desirous that his case should be decided simply upon its merits that he took measures for the suppression of the petition — a fact probably not generally known to the country, and which is another item to the credit of the general's mod- esty and merit. The influence of the administration, however, and the feeling that it would not answer to an- tagonize it altogether in a matter of this kind, prevailed to secure the confirmation of the new nominations by a small majority. The efforts of Senator Conkling and others' in the same body were faithful and unremitting to prevent it; but different counsels were in the ascendant for the time being; and so the general gave place, with- out murmur or complaint, to another of equally high character, and stepped down from his lofty station to engage again in the quieter, more tranquil pursuits of civil life. Since his retirement from the custom-house General Arthur has resumed the practice of his profession, with- out anxiety for his political future or effort to secure pohtical advancement. Remaining constant to his dis- tinguished friend, ex-President Grant, who had twdce bestowed upon him unsolicited honors, he was an ardent advocate of the general's nomination to the Presidency, and in the late Chicago convention was one of the lead- 426 LIFE OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR. ers of the solid unbroken column that stood b}^ the ex- President to the end. When the end came, however, and another was the declared choice of the convention. General Arthur gracefully submitted with the rest, all unthinking that the second honor in the gift of the great body, the nomination to the second office in the gift of the people, was to fall upon himself. Again, unsolicited and unsought, high dignity was awarded to him. On Tues- day, June 8th, the last day of the convention, by unani- mous vote. General Chester Allan Arthur, of New York, the subject of this notice, was nominated, amid great en- thusiasm and endless congratulations, as the Republican candidate for vice-president in the pending campaign. During the remainder of that day, and in the evening that followed, scores of congratulatory telegrams were received by him, and one from St. Albans, Vermont, informed him that there, upon his native heath, the re- joicing people were firing fifty guns in honor of his nomination. Since then there has been general congrat- ulation among Republicans and the personal friends of General Arthur that, by a lucky stroke at the right mo- ment, he was secured for the second place on the ticket, and that by his nomination, together with the high ex- cellence of the nomination for the first place. New York, New Jersey, and probably other States heretofore re- garded as doubtful, are made safe for the Republican nominees in November. General i\.rthur is a man of superior physique and commanding presence. He is above six feet in height, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, athletic, and fine in face OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 427 as in figure. He retains much of the liigh culture and literary tastes received by him from a scholarly parentage and by education ; but is withal, like the present occup- ant of the vice-presidential chair, an ardent disciple of the gentle angler, Isaak Walton, and loves to spend his leisure hours beside the trout-brooks and the waters where the greater varieties of the finny tribe abide. His manners are genial and cordial, and his popularity among all classes of his acquaintance is very great. Among business circles in New York he is considered the most popular man in the metropolis. Shortly after his admission to the bar and beginning of practice in New York, General Arthur was married to a daughter of Lieutenant Herndon, a brave officer of the United States navy, who was lost with his vessel at sea, going down with it with the utmost coolness and courage, calmly smoking his cigar as he sank beneath the waves. Mrs. Herndon, his widow, and the mother-in-law of General Arthur, was voted a gold medal by congress, in recognition of the distinguished gallantry displayed by him on this occasion. Her daughter, Mrs. Arthur, died only a short time since, leaving two children to comfort their bereaved father. ERRATUM. The following should follow the letter of Oakes Ames bearing date January 30, 1868. On the back of this letter was the following list of names with the amount of stock sold to each, sworn by McComb to be Mr. Ames' list of the purchases : Blaine of Maine $3,000 Patterson of N. H 3,00c Wilson of Mass 2,000 Painter (Rep.) for Quigley.. 3,000 S. Colfax, speaker 2,000 Scofield and Kelley, Pa. each 2,000 Eliot, Massachusetts $3,000 Dawes, Massachusetts 2, 000 Fowler, Tennessee 2,000 Boutwell, Massachusetts. .. , 2,000 Bingham and Garfield, Ohio each 2,000 I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 785 766 2 •