PRESIDENT OF TH! 
 
 STATES 
 
 . A, GARFIELD 
 
 CAPTP I'. H. MA, 
 
University of California Berkeley 
 
 Gift of 
 ROBERT B. HONE YM AN, JR. 
 
 nt WITT ff. CUCI I tun 
 

LONDON: PRINTED iv 
 
 BAI/LANTYNE, HANSON ANT) CO., CIIANDOS STT1KKT 
 AND PATTI/9 WORK. EDINBURGH 
 
GENERAL JM A. GARFIELD. 
 
 PRESIDENT Of THE UNITED STATES. 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMES A. GARFIELD 
 
 TWENTIETH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 BY 
 
 CAPTAIN F. H. MASON 
 
 LATE OF THE FORTY-SECOND REGIMENT, U.S.A. 
 
 WITH A PREFA CE 
 
 BY 
 
 BRET HARTE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL 
 1881 
 
 [All rights reserved} 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 FEW words of mine can add anything to the 
 story of the present First Magistrate of the 
 United States as graphically told here. The 
 Author has given his reason for telling that 
 story in the fact that, until the first Tuesday in 
 November, 1880, the life and name of the man 
 who to-day takes his place among the poten- 
 tates of the world, was doubtless unknown to 
 the English public. But as it is equally true 
 that the Author of General Garfield's history 
 is still less known to an English audience than 
 his hero, it is my wish to say briefly that, 
 as friend, colleague, and compatriot of the 
 Author of this book, I have known him 
 as a gallant soldier, an earnest student, and 
 
 A 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 one of the first among American Western 
 Journalists. No one could probably be more 
 fitted for the work done here than the enthu- 
 siastic young student and staff officer of General 
 Garfield ; no one more qualified to tell the 
 story than he who has modestly left his own 
 personal record out of a struggle in which he 
 was in the field a hero, and in Libby Prison 
 
 a martyr. 
 
 BRET HARTE. 
 
 LONDON, tfh March, 1881. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. CHILDHOOD ; SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 
 
 LIFE 14 
 
 II. GENERAL GARFIELD AS A SOLDIER 46 
 
 III. GENERAL GARFIELD IN CONGRESS 73 
 
 FINANCE . .'.. . 83 
 THE TARIFF . . . . 89 
 SILVER MONEY . . . 95 
 SPEECHES OF OCCASION . . 106 
 AS A CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER I I 3 
 HOW AND WHY HE WAS NOMI- 
 NATED FOR PRESIDENT . 119 
 
 IV. PERSONALLY. . . .. . 125 
 
 A 2 
 
JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 WHEN, on the loth of June, 1880, it was known 
 in Europe that the Republican National Conven- 
 tion at Chicago, after a week of extraordinary 
 vicissitudes, had nominated as its candidate for 
 President one of its own delegates, General 
 James A. Garfield, of Ohio, there was apparent 
 in the comments of the British and Continental 
 press a tone of disappointment and surprise. 
 It was more than suspected on this side of the 
 Atlantic that the nomination had been a mere 
 expedient, a make-shift suddenly adopted at a 
 perilous moment to avert a rupture in the party ; 
 and that, as a result, it failed to fulfil the 
 promise of a great occasion. So strongly had 
 public opinion been impressed by the predominant 
 
IO LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 Individuality of ex-President Grant, by the 
 brilliant statesmanship and magnetic personal 
 qualities of Senator Elaine, and the wonderful 
 financial record of Secretary Sherman, that when 
 the great Convention turned aside from all these 
 deserving aspirants and chose for the standard- 
 bearer of the party a man who, until the day of 
 his nomination, had hardly been mentioned as a 
 Presidential candidate, it naturally appeared to 
 those at a distance a weak* and unfortunate com- 
 promise which might probably entail disaster. 
 But the Republican party throughout the United 
 States, that great political organization which 
 grew out of the instinctive loyalty of the people 
 to the cause of human freedom, and which has 
 never yet, in a crisis of grave responsibility, 
 made a false step, knew that the Convention 
 had made no mistake. It knew General Gar 
 field as the foremost statesman of his party in 
 Congress ; a man whose speeches and whose 
 labours in important Committees of the House of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I I 
 
 Representatives form a record of the most 
 advanced and judicious legislation which has 
 been accomplished at Washington during the 
 past sixteen years. It knew him as a man who, 
 born amidst the humblest surroundings, and 
 having risen by his own unaided efforts to the 
 Presidency of a College, a Major- Generalship in 
 the Army, a seat in Congress and the Senate of 
 the United States, as well as a leading position 
 among the scholars and orators of his time, was 
 an illustrious example of what energy and ability 
 may accomplish under the stimulating influences 
 of popular government and free institutions. 
 That such a man should have been called 
 to the Presidency of the Republic by the spon- 
 taneous and unsought votes of the people, was 
 no accident, but a logical fulfilment of that 
 intelligent principle which has- so long prevailed 
 in English politics- the crowning with highest 
 honours of a leader who has become a 
 dominant influence in his party. It was not only 
 
12 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 one of the most striking events in recent 
 political history, but it is the normal and legiti- 
 mate fruit of the civilization which has been 
 ripened by a century of republican government 
 in the New World. 
 
 It has been thought fitting, at the beginning 
 of President Garfield's administration, to place 
 before the European public and particularly 
 that of Great Britain, which is bound to the 
 people of the United States by the strong ties 
 of a common race and language some record 
 of the life of the New Executive, which may 
 serve to impart a clearer understanding of the 
 man who seems destined to be for some years 
 to come a central figure in American politics. 
 A man who, before the close of his fiftieth 
 year, has become the chosen ruler of fifty mil- 
 lions of enlightened citizens, claims, by inherent 
 right, the interest of intelligent people through- 
 out the world. 
 
 It is the purpose of the present sketch to 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 13 
 
 present, in brief compass, the simple story of 
 President Garfield's early struggles for educa- 
 tion, his record as an instructor, his services as a 
 soldier during the War of the Rebellion, and the 
 salient points of his political career. Inevitably, 
 such a narrative, however brief and imperfect, 
 must involve, in order to become intelligible, 
 some account of the political and military events 
 in which he bore a part. There are also included 
 in the text such short quotations from his 
 speeches and published writings as may serve 
 to illustrate his methods of thought and expres- 
 sion and define his attitude on leading ques- 
 tions of public policy. If to the impartial 
 reader this account may seem to have somewhat 
 the character of a eulogy, it is because the 
 -essential facts of President Garfield's life cannot 
 be otherwise truthfully recorded. 
 
14 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 r. 
 
 CHILDHOOD ; SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LIFE. 
 
 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD was born on the i9th 
 of November, 1831, in Orange Township, 
 Cuyahoga County, Ohio, about eighteen miles 
 from the present flourishing city of Cleve- 
 land. His father was of Massachusetts stock ; 
 his mother was a native of New Hamp- 
 shire. The earliest record of his father's 
 ancestry is that of Edward Garfield, who, in 
 J 635, was one of the proprietors of Watertown, 
 and was one of that select company of pure and 
 heroic men who came with Governor Winthrop 
 to find freedom of conscience amid the priva- 
 tions and hardships that beset the pioneers of 
 New England. It is believed that beyond 
 Edward' Garfield the family was of Saxon 
 origin, a theory which is strongly sustained by 
 the fair complexion and purely German tern- 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I 5 
 
 perament of President Garfield, who is not only 
 an enthusiastic lover of the language and the 
 literature of the Fatherland, but whose sturdy 
 thoroughness of method and .tireless industry, 
 embodies the distinctive qualities of the Ger- 
 man character. 
 
 However this may have been, his father and 
 mother, in January, 1830, settled in the Ohio 
 forest, where they purchased a tract of heavily 
 wooded land, built a small house of logs, and 
 began that struggle for life which, in a new 
 country, amid such surroundings, challenges and 
 develops in the pioneer the highest qualities of 
 
 fortitude and energy. Within three years 
 
 * 
 
 Abram Garfield had cleared the forest from a 
 portion of his land and begun the culture of the 
 soil. The woods adjacent to these new-made 
 fields were strewn with dry leaves and branches 
 which caught fire one summer day, and .the 
 conflagration threatened to destroy the ripening 
 corn. The farmer was a man of remarkable 
 
1 6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 energy ; by tremendous exertion he threw uj> 
 a dyke of fresh earth between his fields and the 
 advancing fire, and thus saved his crops. Weary 
 and overheated by this violent labour, he be- 
 came chilled while returning to the house, and 
 was seized with inflammation of the throat. 
 The medical treatment of that day was 
 uncertain, and too often accepted from the 
 hands of popular pretenders. The result 
 was a rapid development of the inflamma- 
 tion, and the intrepid pioneer, having walked 
 to the window and taken a last look at his 
 oxen, leaned against the head of his rude bed 
 and was choked to death, in the prime of his 
 life. . Before dying he consigned their four 
 children of whom James was the youngest 
 to the care of his wife, a woman who, 
 in all the qualities which combine to form an 
 intrepid, self-reliant Christian character, was fully 
 the equal of her husband. 
 
 The ensuing ten years were to the widow 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I/ 
 
 Garfield and her four children a period of extra- 
 ordinary struggles and privation. With a high, 
 noble sense of her duties as a mother, she 
 refused to send her older children out to work 
 among her neighbours, but toiled and laboured 
 to keep them together under her own eye and 
 care. In some way the fields were ploughed 
 and planted and the scanty harvests gathered. 
 She made her children's clothing with her own 
 hands, and performed a like service for the 
 family of a neighbouring shoemaker, in return 
 for which he made rude but substantial shoes 
 for the little Garfields. During the winters, 
 while the country was covered with snow, and 
 all farm work exce'pt cutting wood and oaring 
 for the cattle necessarily suspended, the chil- 
 dren, as soon as they were old enough, at- 
 tended the neighbouring district school, and 
 there, as well as from the teachings of his mother, 
 the future President received his first taste of 
 book-lore, which in later years was to inspire 
 
1 8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 him with the passionate ambition of scholarship. 
 From three years of age until ten the boy at- 
 t;ended the daily sessions of that primitive 
 school. Thenceforward, he was compelled 
 during part of each year to share somewhat in 
 the labour of the farm. His poor mother could 
 provide him with but few books, but those he 
 read with an avidity that can hardly be described. 
 At the age of twelve he could recite from 
 memory almost the entire text of the " English 
 Reader," a book which was filled with selections 
 of prose and verse, and gave the young student 
 his first introduction to the standard writers of 
 his own language. 
 
 The profuse material which the latter years 
 of General Garfield's life offer to the biographer 
 compel us to pass rapidly over the period of his 
 boyhood ; a period which contained much that 
 was pathetic and suggestive. He was from 
 childhood phenomenally precocious, both 
 physically and mentally. When four years of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 19 
 
 age he had received at the district school a 
 copy of the New Testament as a prize for the 
 best reader in the primary class. When eighj: 
 years of age he had read all the books that his 
 poor mother could provide, and began borrow- 
 ing from the scanty libraries of the neighbours. 
 <{ Robinson Crusoe," "Josephus," Goodrich's 
 " History of the United States," and Pollock's 
 " Course of Time," were successively read, and 
 read again, until he could recite whole chapters 
 of them from memory. He was particularly 
 absorbed by two classes of books, those which 
 related to wars and those which gave an account 
 of adventures at sea. Meanwhile he had 
 mastered arithmetic and English grammar ; had 
 learned, in fact, all that the district school could 
 teach him. He was robust and strong, and 
 when elder boys were disposed to bully him by 
 reason of his poverty, or the unprotected con- 
 dition in which he was placed by his mother's 
 widowhood, they met a prompt resentment and 
 
2O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 an ugly customer. His nautical re'adings gave 
 him a spirit of valorous adventure, and, to the 
 great distress of his Christian mother, he became 
 what was known in the phrase of the neigh- 
 bourhood as a " fighting boy." 
 
 At the age of sixteen he made a contract 
 with his cousin to cut one hundred cords of 
 wood for the sum of twenty-five dollars. The 
 task was performed in a tract of high woodland 
 which commanded a view of Lake Erie, upon 
 whose blue waters he could see the steamers 
 and sailing vessels entering and leaving the 
 port of Cleveland. The sight revived and 
 stimulated all his latent love of the sea, and he 
 resolved to become a sailor. 
 
 After his work was completed, he walked to 
 Cleveland, went on board a schooner lying at 
 the wharf, saw a drunken, boisterous crew and 
 a brutal captain, and was at once cured of his 
 delusions concerning the romance of the fore- 
 castle. An hour afterward he chanced to meet 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 21 
 
 another cousin who was proprietor of a canal boat 
 plying on the Ohio .and Pennsylvania Canal 
 between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. He asked 
 for employment, and was offered a situation as 
 driver. From reefing a topsail, of which he 
 had so often dreamed, to driving a tandem 
 mule team on a towing-path, was a rude and 
 sudden descent ; but the young Viking had 
 resolved to become a sailor, and he began as 
 a canal driver, not because he had any liking 
 for the business, but because it gave him 
 employment by which money could be earned 
 and something learned of navigation. He 
 would take his first degree, he thought, on the 
 canal, and then push for the blue sea and the 
 ships that sail to distant lands. 
 
 Like President Lincoln, General Garfield is a 
 man about whose early life people love to weave 
 romances. The canal episode has been made to 
 serve the same purpose in the recent Presidential 
 campaign that Mr. Lincoln's rail-splitting did 
 
 B 
 
22 LIFE. OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 in that of 1860, and it has thereby become 
 magnified greatly beyond its just proportions. 
 It has been hastily assumed from the fact that 
 James Garfield was once a canal driver, and 
 punished a hulking loafer who sought to abuse 
 him, that he was a boy of low tastes and quarrel- 
 some temperament. Nothing could be more 
 untrue than such a theory. His brief service 
 on the canal was purely accidental, the tem- 
 porary expedient of a boy who had to make 
 his own way in the world, who wanted to go to 
 sea, and caught at what seemed the obvious 
 means of fulfilling his purpose. He is neither 
 proud nor ashamed of it. 
 
 But Providence had other uses for the large- 
 brained, aggressive boy than the rude life of a 
 sailor. At the end of three months of canal 
 driving he was carried to his mother's home in 
 Orange, delirious with malarial fever. That ill- 
 ness gave his mother the opportunity for which 
 she had prayed, and, during the five months of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 23 
 
 slow convalescence through which she nursed him 
 back to health, she planted in his mind the seeds 
 of a new and higher ambition, which helped to 
 change the whole course of his life. When her 
 books had all been read to him and her words 
 of counsel exhausted, the schoolmaster was called 
 in to add his scholarly'advice. Thus persuaded, 
 young James, on his recovery, went to the 
 Geauga seminary, fourteen miles distant, and 
 with but seventeen dollars in his pocket enrolled 
 himself as a student, and began the study of 
 Latin, Greek, and mathematics. After the first 
 week he was easily the first pupil in every class 
 to which he belonged, and from that moment 
 there was no further danger to be feared from 
 canal or sea. The thirst for knowledge took 
 complete possession of him. He not only 
 mastered his studies but read the library of the 
 Academy almost entire, and resolved to attain 
 the fullest education that a course of classical 
 and scientific study could afford. This resolu- 
 
 B 2 
 
24 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 tion once fixed, every obstacle was overcome. 
 During vacations he taught school, or worked 
 upon farms during the season of harvest. 
 
 While at the Geauga seminary he had em- 
 braced religion, and joined a sect known as the 
 " Disciples of Christ," the same who have been 
 otherwise called " Campbellites," from the 
 fact that Alexander Campbell, the eloquent 
 Scotch preacher, had been a prominent leader in 
 developing and extending the influence of that 
 church in the United States. The creed of the 
 " Disciples" is simply a belief in the New Testa- 
 ment, the divinity of Christ and his atonement, 
 in baptism by immersion, and, for the rest, " a 
 protest against imposing as a condition of church 
 membership any human formula of divine truth." 
 
 The " Disciples" were about that time making 
 great progress in Northern Ohio, and an acade- 
 mical school was established in the small village 
 of Hiram, thirty miles from Cleveland, in which 
 the iuture clergymen and elders of the church 
 were to be trained and educated for their work. 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 25 
 
 Young Garfield was naturally drawn to the new 
 school, and came with his usual scant supply of 
 money, but with an ambition and energy that 
 overcame all difficulties. He was the first 
 scholar in all his classes, soon became tutor, and 
 finally a teacher, while still pursuing his studies 
 and enriching his mind with a wide and thorough 
 course of collateral reading. His proficiency in 
 the Greek and Latin languages was phenomenal, 
 and in a surprisingly short time he had reached 
 a point in academical study which enabled him to 
 enter the junior class of Williams College, one 
 of the oldest and most advanced institutions of 
 learning in New England. The President of 
 Williams College at that period was the vener- 
 able Mark Hopkins, one of the most accom- 
 plished teachers of his time ; a man of broad 
 attainments, generous impulses, and that name- 
 less, magnetic capacity which enables its posses- 
 sor to inspire young men and develop their 
 abilities without dwarfing their individuality. 
 President Hopkins measured the mental 
 
26 'LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 calibre of the young Western giant at a glance,, 
 and there sprang up between the teacher and 
 his student a friendship which, since that day, 
 has grown stronger and closer with the lapse of 
 time. On the I7th of July last, a month after 
 the nomination of General Garfield for Presi- 
 dent, the honoured ex- President of Williams, 
 who has long retired from active duties, wrote 
 to a friend a letter embodying the following 
 estimate of young Garfield's college life : " My 
 first remark is, then, that General Garfield was 
 not sent to college, he came. This often marks 
 
 a difference between college students A 
 
 second remark is that the studies of General 
 Garfield had breadth. And as General Gar- 
 field was broad in his scholarship, so was he 
 in his sympathies. No one thought of him as 
 a recluse, or. as bookish. Not given to athletic 
 sports, he was fond of them. There was a 
 large general capacity applicable to any subject, 
 and sound sense. As he was more mature than 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 2/ 
 
 most, he naturally had a readier and firmer 
 grasp of the higher -studies. Hence his ap- 
 pointment to the metaphysical oration, then one 
 of the high honours of the class. What he did 
 was done with facility, -and by honest and 
 avowed work. There was no pretence of 
 genius, or alternation of spasmodic effort and 
 of rest, but a satisfactory accomplishment in 
 all directions of what was undertaken. Hence 
 there was a steady, healthful, onward, and up- 
 ward progress, such as has characterized his 
 course since his graduation. If that course 
 should still be upward, it would add another 
 to the grand illustrations we have already of the 
 spirit of our free institutions. . , . ." 
 
 Professor Chadbourne, who knew Garfield in- 
 timately in the lecture hall and class room, and 
 who has since succeeded President Hopkins as 
 the head of the faculty of Williams College, 
 says of him : " General Garfield graduated from 
 Williams College in 1856. He evidently came 
 
28 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 to college for a purpose, and nothing turned 
 him from that purpose. He recognized the 
 fact that the professors were placed over 
 the college to instruct and govern the students. 
 He gained from them all the good he could, 
 and those now living remember him as a noble 
 man even as a student. He then gave pro- 
 mise of what he has since become that is, 
 a man equal to any emergency, a man of strong 
 convictions of duty and unflinching courage. 
 Few can have the opportunities for the kind of 
 success achieved by General Garfield, but had 
 no political honour ever have come to him he 
 would have been a power for good in the world." 
 During his two years of study at Williams, Mr. 
 Garfield achieved distinction, not only by the 
 brilliancy and thoroughness of his recitations, 
 but through his readiness and eloquence as a 
 debater and the breadth and ability of his 
 essays upon serious topics, which were published 
 in the Williams' Quarterly Review. A class- 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 29 
 
 mate says of him : " Garfield's greatness was to 
 our young eyes enigmatical, but it was real. 
 There was a good deal of him in body, soul, and 
 spirit." He graduated in 1856, winning the meta- 
 physical oration, one of the highest honours in 
 an exceptionally able class. He returned to 
 Hiram, and at the opening of the academic 
 year resumed his labours as Professor of Ancient 
 Languages and English Literature in that 
 rapidly rising school. As a teacher he was un- 
 rivalled. Mr. Burke A. Hinsdale, who is now 
 the able President of Hiram College, writes of 
 Professor Garfield at this period : "His method 
 of conducting a recitation was his own, com- 
 bining the question that required a text-book 
 answer, the topic to be handled, the call for the 
 pupil's own opinion, and the teacher's discussion 
 of the matter in hand. As a drill master, many 
 teachers surpassed him ; but as an educator in 
 the best sense, he stood with the first. His 
 class-room glowed with life. Probably no pupil 
 
3O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 remembers having spent in it a dull hour. While 
 placing its proper valuation upon learning and 
 information, his great aim was to awaken the 
 faculties of the student. There is a process 
 known to the laboratory as energizing a magnet. 
 By passing electrical currents around a bar of 
 common iron, the electrician gives the bar mag- 
 netic virtue. There is an analogous process 
 known to the educator ; the most important 
 work that he can render the student is to 
 energize him. Among the teachers whom I have 
 known, Garfield stood alone as an energizer of 
 young men and women. He revealed the world 
 to the student, and the student to himself. He 
 called out thought, set the faculties in full play, 
 awakened courage, widened the field of mental 
 vision, and poured in abundant measures of 
 inspiration." His methods as a teacher were 
 similar to those of the renowned Dr. Arnold of 
 Rugby, for whom he cherished a reverent ad- 
 miration, and " Tom Brown" was as much a 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 31 
 
 part of a student's course of reading at Hiram 
 College as " Thucydides" or the "^Eneid." 
 
 After one year of service as teacher he was 
 promoted to the Presidency of the Faculty. 
 He was then twenty-six years of age, and had 
 already become the controlling influence and 
 inspiration of the school. No one of the three 
 hundred students who formed the classes at that 
 time will forget the rich privilege which they 
 enjoyed in hearing the morning lectures of 
 President Garfield in the chapel. There was 
 first the assembly, then prayers and a chapter 
 read from the Bible, and for the remainder of 
 the morning-hour an extemporaneous address 
 by the Principal. Sometimes it was upon a 
 topic chosen from the lessons of the day ; 
 oftener it was upon some fresh event in politics, 
 science, or literature. One morning he read 
 the " Three Fishers" of Charles Kingsley, which 
 had just appeared in an English magazine ; anon 
 a new idyl by Tennyson would constitute an 
 
32 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 enchanting theme, and once the text was a 
 newspaper paragraph relating the tragic fate of 
 Hugh Miller, the lesson of whose noble life was 
 set forth in words of eloquent and impressive 
 eulogy. 
 
 Above all else, President Garfield developed 
 among his students a spirit of manliness and 
 self-reliance. He encouraged the boys in ath- 
 letic exercises, often superintending personally 
 their games of cricket and football, and natu- 
 rally drew them to himself with a strength of 
 personal devotion which amounted almost -to 
 idolatry. One of the ablest of them, who has 
 since achieved conspicuous success as an edu- 
 cator, writes of his devotion to his mentor : 
 " Then began to grow up in me an admiration 
 and love for Professor Garfield which has never 
 abated, and the like of which I have never 
 known. A bow of recognition, or a single word 
 from him, was to me an inspiration." 
 
 Besides his educational labours President 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 3^ 
 
 Garfield, during this period, attained eminence 
 as a preacher. He was not ordained, but de- 
 livered his powerful and convincing sermons 
 from the pulpit with the consent and encourage- 
 ment of the Church authorities. In the winter of 
 1859-60 he became involved in a public debate 
 with a Spiritualistic lecturer, named Denton, 
 who sought to overthrow the teachings of the 
 Bible with the revelations of geology. The 
 battle was fought over the development theory, 
 which Darwin subsequently formulated in 
 his doctrine of evolution. Garfield had but 
 three days in which to prepare for the contest 
 with an able opponent, who had his side of 
 the subject carefully digested, and his facts and 
 theories at his tongue's end. There was brief 
 time in which to consult authorities, or glean 
 through a library for scattered grains of proof, 
 so the College President hit upon a character- 
 istic expedient. Calling together half a dozen 
 of his most advanced students, he laid before 
 
34 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 them a skeleton of the argument that he pro- 
 posed to develop in the debate. He showed 
 them each point that he desired to establish, 
 then, assigning to each his task, he turned his 
 six young assistants into the College library to 
 seek out and copy, in condensed form, all proofs 
 and authorities bearing upon the vital points of 
 his argument. In twenty-four hours the work 
 was finished : a second meeting was held, in 
 which each of the auxiliaries brought forward 
 and added his contribution to the common fund. 
 Thus equipped, Garfield met and completely 
 overwhelmed his opponent, who, after that 
 defeat, abandoned his theory and gave up the 
 fight against the inspiration of the Bible. 
 
 It had now become evident that Hiram 
 College, flourishing and useful as it had become, 
 could not long absorb the energies of its 
 Principal. The quality and capacities of his 
 mind led him resistlessly to wider and higher 
 fields of activity. The Free Soil political party, 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 35 
 
 which had grown up out of the question whether 
 slavery should be established in the territories 
 of Kansas and Nebraska, had assumed national 
 proportions, and on the political horizon began 
 to be heard the first mutterings of the storm 
 which was finally to overwhelm the country with 
 the fury of civil war. It is said, by those who 
 knew Mr. Garfield as an undergraduate, that he 
 manifested, during that period, little or no 
 interest in politics. But in June, 1856, the Free 
 Soil party, voicing the instinctive protest of the 
 Northern States against the extension of slavery, 
 adopted a platform embodying that principle, 
 and nominated, as its candidate for president, 
 General John C Fremont, a man who had dis- 
 tinguished himself as an explorer of the moun- 
 tainous country along the Pacific Coast of the 
 United States. A month after the nomination 
 of Fremont Garfield graduated from college, 
 returned to Ohio, and, during the weeks that 
 intervened before the resumption of his duties at 
 
32 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 Hiram, he made a few campaign speeches in the 
 neighbouring townships and villages. He was, 
 of course, a novice in political methods, but he 
 was full of enthusiasm for the cause of freedom ; 
 and the mature logic of his reasoning, and the 
 vigour and .force of his language, foreshadowed 
 the greatness which he has since attained as a 
 political orator. But the Democratic party, in 
 1856, was strong and united, and James 
 Buchanan was elected over Fremont as Presi- 
 dent by a decisive majority. Buchanan was a 
 weak and nerveless President; he was completely 
 under control of the slave-holding Democrats of 
 the South, who, under his imbecile rule, sapped 
 the military and naval resources of the Govern- 
 ment, and boldly matured their scheme of 
 secession from the Federal Union. Meanwhile, 
 the spirit of resistance to this treasonable aggres- 
 sion was steadily growing stronger and more 
 earnest' throughout the free States of the North. 
 Out of the elements which constituted the Free 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 37 
 
 Soil party of 1856, there was organized the 
 National Republican party, which took the field 
 in the memorable Presidential contest of 1860. 
 
 It was during those four critical years, in 
 which the opposing forces which finally met on 
 the battle-fields of the Rebellion were silently 
 marshalling for the coming struggle, that Presi- 
 dent Garfield, of Hiram College, was drawn 
 gradually into political affairs. It was an ideal 
 period for a man of his theories and tempera- 
 ment to enter public life. The conscience of the 
 people was awakening to the enormities of the 
 slave system, and discerning men began to see and 
 admit that the ''irrepressible conflict" between 
 slavery and freedom could have but one termina- 
 tion, the complete subjugation of one by the other. 
 The Southern leaders, although supported by 
 a minority of voters, possessed greater skill and 
 audacity as politicians, and they were openly 
 determined to maintain their control of the 
 Government against the growing majority of the 
 
 c 
 
38 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 North, or, failing in that, to withdraw the slave- 
 holding States from the Union and set up a 
 Confederacy in which the sacredness of slavery 
 should be recognized and its permanence 
 established for ever. In the discussion that 
 attended this transition state of public feeling, 
 President Garfield took an important and con- 
 stantly growing part. In the campaigns pre- 
 ceding the local State elections of 1857 an d 
 1858, he made numerous speeches and attained 
 a recognized political influence in the north- 
 eastern part of Ohio. The Legislature of a 
 State consists, like the National Congress, of 
 a Senate and House of Representatives ; and 
 in 1859, the Senatorial district in which 
 Hiram was located elected him a State- 
 Senator. 
 
 The Legislature assembled during the first 
 week of January, 1860. Senator Garfield was 
 then twenty-eight years old, by far the youngest 
 member of the Senate. But he was already a 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. '39 
 
 polished and forcible speaker, he had clear and 
 well-defined opinions on all leading issues, and 
 he took, from the first, a high rank among his 
 colleagues. The Republican members were in 
 the majority in both branches of the Legislature, 
 but they disagreed on the whole series of ques- 
 tions growing out of the slavery dispute. The 
 Conservative Republicans advocated a policy 
 of compromise, and preferred to temporize with 
 an acknowledged and increasing menace rather 
 than risk an outbreak that might imperil the 
 Republic. The Radical Republicans, on the 
 other hand, insisted that the time for concession 
 and compromise was past, and that the con- 
 spiracies of slavery must be boldly met, and, if 
 possible, overthrown. At the head of the 
 Radical Republican wing of the Ohio Legisla- 
 ture during that momentous season were three 
 men, who became known as the " Radical 
 Triumvirate." They were Garfield, Senator 
 J. D. Cox (afterwards Governor of Ohio and 
 
 c 2 
 
4O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of Pre- 
 sident Grant), and Professor James Monroe, of 
 Oberlin College, who has for many years since 
 been a leading member of Congress from Ohio. 
 Although these three men were firm and un- 
 yielding in their opinions, they were neither 
 aggressive nor defiant. They dreaded and 
 deprecated the storm which they knew to be 
 rising, but not even the dread of war could 
 swerve them from fidelity to their convictions. 
 
 The Legislature adjourned in April, a few weeks 
 prior to the beginning of that fatal complica- 
 tion in national politics which precipitated the 
 war. The Republican Convention at Chicago 
 nominated, as its candidate for President, Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, of Illinois. The Democratic Con- 
 vention assembled at Charleston, South Carolina, 
 and, after a protracted and acrimonious struggle 
 between its Radical and Conservative elements,, 
 the Convention was split into two factions, each 
 t)f which adopted a separate platform and nomi- 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 4! 
 
 nated its own candidates for President and 
 Vice-President. Thus fatally divided by internal 
 dissensions growing out of slavery and the 
 question of State rights, the Democratic party 
 was defeated in detail ; Lincoln carried a 
 plurality of votes as against either of the 
 Democratic candidates, and the die was cast. 
 
 An American President is elected on the 
 first Tuesday of November, but he does not 
 assume the duties of his office until the 4th of 
 the following March. During these interven- 
 ing four months in 1 860-61 the second 
 session of the Ohio Legislature, of which 
 General Garfield was a member, took place. 
 That winter was an epoch in American history ; 
 and the Legislature, carried away by the 
 current of popular feeling, forgot all merely 
 local legislation and plunged into the arena of 
 national politics. The question of State rights 
 was the grand issue. Can a sovereign State 
 be coerced against its will by Federal autho- 
 
42 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 rity ? Can a State or Confederation of States 
 secede from the Union at will ? Is the National 
 Government superior to that of a sovereign 
 State, and in general what are the rights and 
 the obligations of a State to the Republic of 
 which it is a part ? These were among the 
 various forms and phases into which was con- 
 densed the perilous question which was rapidly 
 opening a chasm between the two sections of 
 the Union which it would cost four terrible years 
 of war to bridge. 
 
 The election of President Lincoln had been 
 accepted by the leaders of the Pro-Slavery party 
 as the signal for secession. They understood 
 the meaning of his election to be that a minority 
 of Southern senators and representatives was no 
 longer to control the Government. They 
 declared their purpose to withdraw the Southern 
 States from the Union, and defied the vacilating 
 administration of President Buchanan to pre- 
 vent or punish their treasonable purpose. To* 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 43 
 
 every loyal person who understood the true 
 meaning of the case, secession meant war ; 
 and the Legislature of Ohio, like those of 
 other loyal States, began to take measures to 
 meet the impending crisis. In January, 1861, 
 a Bill was discussed in the Ohio Senate to pro- 
 vide for raising and equipping 6,000 militia, and 
 in that debate Senator Garfield made a speech 
 which thrilled the State at the time, and de- 
 clared the position which he held until the close 
 of the succeeding struggle. A single extract 
 will reveal its character. 
 
 It was asserted by the opponents of the 
 measure that such an enactment would have the 
 character of coercion. Senator Garfield said : 
 "If by coercion it is meant that the Federal 
 Government shall declare and make war against 
 a State, then I have yet to see any man, Demo- 
 crat or Republican, who is a Coercionist. But 
 if by the term it is meant that the General 
 Government shall enforce the laws, by whom- 
 
44 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 soever violated, shall protect the property and 
 flag of the Union, shall punish traitors to the 
 Constitution, be they ten men or ten thousand, 
 then I am a Coercionist. Every member of the 
 Senate, by his vote on the eighth resolution, is a 
 Coercionist ; nine-tenths of the people of Ohio 
 are Coercionists. Every man is a Coercionist 
 or a traitor." 
 
 The world knows what occurred at Washing- 
 ton during the winter of 1860 6 1. On the 4th 
 of March President Lincoln was inaugurated. 
 The Southern senators and representatives left 
 their seats in Congress and went forth to frame 
 a Confederacy, which, in the words of Alex- 
 ander H. Stephens, its Vice-President, should 
 have the divinely-ordained institution of slavery 
 "as its chief corner-stone." The Southern 
 States, with the exception of Kentucky and 
 Missouri, passed ordinances of secession from 
 the Union. Batteries were erected on the 
 islands and shores of Charleston harbour, and 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 4$ 
 
 in April opened fire upon Fort Sumter. It was 
 found that Floyd, the Secretary of War in the 
 Cabinet of Buchanan, had adroitly scattered 
 the few regiments of regular troops which were 
 then in service at remote stations, most of the 
 arms and ammunition of the Government had 
 been removed to Southern arsenals, and the new 
 Administration was for the moment helpless. 
 But the roar of the rebel batteries at Charles- 
 ton roused the loyal heart of the nation and 
 the drum-beat called a patriot people to arms. 
 
4 6 
 
 II. 
 
 GENERAL GARFIELD AS A SOLDIER. 
 
 Hark ! I hear the tramp of thousands, 
 
 And of armed men the hum ; 
 Lo ! a nation's hosts have gathered 
 Round the quick alarming drum 
 Saying, ' Come, 
 Freemen, Come! 
 
 Ere your heritage be wasted,' said the quick 
 alarming drum. 
 
 Bret Hartc. 
 
 IT was inevitable that a man of Senator Gar- 
 field's courage and opinions should be found at 
 
 the front early in the great conflict. At first he 
 hoped, against his convictions, that Secretary 
 Seward's prediction might be fulfilled, and the 
 rebellion suppressed without a war to the death 
 but the disaster at Bull Run in July, 1861, ended 
 that momentary delusion, and the loyal States 
 began to gird themselves up for the supreme 
 struggle. Seven days after the battle of Bull Run, 
 Senator Garfield accepted an appointment as 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 47 
 
 Lieutenant- Colonel of a regiment then organiz- 
 ing at Camp Chase, a large camp of instruction 
 which had been opened near Columbus, the 
 capital of Ohio.. He reported promptly for duty> 
 and a few days later received a commission, as 
 Colonel, to organize and command a new regi- 
 ment, the Forty-second Ohio Infantry. Within a 
 week a hundred students from Hiram College had 
 enlisted as a company in the new regiment. Other 
 volunteers poured into Camp Chase, and before 
 the 2Oth of August the regiment was filled to its 
 maximum number. The men were uniformed, 
 partly armed, and set to drilling, marching, and 
 studying the details of infantry tactics night and 
 day. But the busiest, most exhaustive student 
 in the Forty-second Regiment was its Colonel. 
 With his usual comprehensive thoroughness, he 
 mastered all that books could teach him of the art 
 of war. Not merely the manual of arms and the 
 formation of companies, battalions, and regiments, 
 were the subjects of his study ; but every detail 
 
48 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 of equipment, camp discipline, military transpor- 
 tation, and the relative functions of Infantry, 
 Cavalry, and Artillery, were learned, in theory 
 at least, by the tireless Colonel. The com- 
 mandant of the camp and the experienced officers 
 attached to other commands were astonished to 
 find the Colonel of the Forty-second always 
 fully prepared for every new duty. He infused 
 his own enthusiastic spirit into his men, and by 
 protracting the hours of drill and exercise almost 
 throughout the entire day, he rapidly hardened 
 and trained them for the rough service of the 
 field. He established a school for the regi- 
 mental officers, over which he presided as in- 
 structor, and here again every minute detail of 
 camp and picket duty, company and battalion 
 tactics, even the cooking of rations in the field, 
 was taught to the captains and lieutenants. 
 At the end of three months of this work the 
 Forty-second regiment was ordered to the front. 
 Its men were as yet of course only recruits. 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 49 
 
 Not an officer or soldier in the regiment had ever 
 been under fire. They had the theory of infan- 
 try service well mastered, they had acquired a 
 fair proficiency in regimental tactics and the 
 manual of arms. Most of the men were, from pre- 
 vious experience, skilful marksmen; and, better 
 still, all were, as volunteers usually are, eager to 
 fight. The regiment was in all aspects up to 
 the best standard of the fifteen hundred thou- 
 sand soldiers who wore the blue of the Union 
 Army during those four years of war. Its men 
 were indeed above the average of education and 
 intelligence, even in that army 'of enlightened 
 volunteers ; but the regiment as a whole included 
 material sufficiently miscellaneous to make it 
 capable, when occasion required, of many varied 
 kinds of service. There were in the ranks under- 
 graduates of all grades, from freshman to senior; 
 there were lawyers, clergymen, teachers, car- 
 penters, blacksmiths, engineers, farmers, printers, 
 and machinists. They could build bridges, repair 
 
50 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 and run locomotives, build houses, operate a 
 telegraph, or navigate a steamboat. When they 
 received their arms long, heavy Belgian rifles, 
 which were loaded at the muzzle the gunsmiths 
 in the ranks altered and perfected the " sights" 
 of their comrades' weapons until the Forty- 
 second could become a regiment of sharp- 
 shooters. It need hardly be said that material 
 of this kind, well officered, develops rapidly 
 amid actual warfare into capable and effective 
 soldiers. 
 
 The field of operation in the South was of 
 enormous extent ; the army, during the first 
 two years of the war, was but imperfectly pro- 
 vided with many essential materials ; and the 
 Forty-second found, like other regiments, full 
 scope for all its varied capabilities. 
 
 The regiment left Columbus on the I4th of 
 December, and proceeded by rail to Cincinnati, 
 on the Ohio river. Beyond that stream lay the 
 State of Kentucky, not technically out of the 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 51 
 
 Union, but disloyal at heart, and invaded at 
 that moment on its eastern frontier by a Con- 
 federate force of 5,000 men under Humphrey 
 Marshall. Colonel Garfield was ordered in 
 person to Louisville, to report to General Buell, 
 the commanding officer of that department. 
 The historian of the Forty-second Regiment 
 says: " On the evening of the i6th, Colonel 
 Garfield reached Louisville, and sought General 
 Buell at his head-quarters. He found a cold, 
 silent, austere man, who asked a few direct 
 questions, revealed nothing, and eyed the new- 
 comer with a curious, searching expression, as 
 though trying to look into the untried colonel, 
 and divine whether he would succeed or fail. 
 Taking a map, General Buell pointed out the 
 position of Marshall's forces in Eastern Ken- 
 tucky, marked the locations at which the Union 
 troops in that district were posted, explained 
 the nature of the country and its supplies, and 
 then dismissed his visitor with the remark : 
 
52 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 * If you were in command of the sub-depart- 
 ment of Eastern Kentucky, what would you 
 do ? Come here to-morrow morning at nine 
 o'clock and tell me/ Colonel Garfield returned 
 to his hotel, procured a map of Kentucky, the 
 last Census Report, paper, pen, and ink, and sat 
 down to his task. He studied the roads, 
 resources, and population of every county in 
 Eastern Kentucky. At daylight he was still 
 at work, but at nine o'clock he was at General 
 Buell's head-quarters with a sketch of his 
 plans." 
 
 General Buell read the paper carefully, and 
 made it the basis of an immediate order organ- 
 izing a brigade of four regiments of infantry 
 and a battalion of cavalry, placing Colonel 
 Garfield in command, and ordering him to 
 Eastern Kentucky to expel Marshall's force 
 in his own way. 
 
 The campaign that followed must be related 
 in a paragraph. The force thus suddenly 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 53 
 
 placed under Colonel Garfield's command was 
 distributed over a large area of mountainous 
 and thinly-settled country ; the roads at that 
 season of the year were almost impassable, and 
 the enemy's troops were numerically superior to 
 his own. Nevertheless, he vigorously set about 
 his task, and on the icth of January confronted 
 Marshall's entire brigade in the valley of 
 Middle Creek, a small tributary of the Big 
 Sandy River, which flows into that stream 
 about eighty miles above its point of con- 
 fluence with the Ohio. Garfield's force had 
 reached the battle-field by forced marches 
 over mountain paths impracticable for waggons. 
 Marshall had abandoned some entrenchments 
 lower down the valley, and showed a disposition 
 to retreat : Garfield was therefore obliged to 
 strike him at the moment, without waiting for 
 the last of his troops to assemble. With only 
 1400 men he forded a swollen creek, scaled a 
 steep wooded hill, and attacked the enemy in a 
 
 o 
 
54 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 strong position. After a sharp fight of five 
 hours, the victory of the assailants was com- 
 plete ; the Confederates were driven over the 
 hill, and at nightfall retreated, leaving their 
 dead unburied, and recrossed the Cumberland 
 mountains into Virginia. It was the first sub- 
 stantial victory won by a Union force during 
 the war. Its only pertinence to the purposes 
 of this sketch is to illustrate, as such an event 
 only can, the character of the untried soldier 
 who planned and won the battle of Middle 
 Creek, his instantaneous, unerring grasp of a 
 new subject or situation, his innate fitness to 
 command. General Buell was a professional 
 soldier, he had the usual and natural contempt 
 of a trained officer for an amateur commander, 
 arid yet, within a few hours after meeting 
 Colonel Garfield, he gave, him command of a 
 brigade, and sent him to attack a superior 
 enemy in his own way. 
 
 For his victory at Middle Creek Colonel 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 55 
 
 'Garfield was made a Brigadier-General of Vo- 
 lunteers. He occupied, with his brigade, the 
 valley of the Big Sandy River during the 
 winter, and in the spring was ordered to report 
 to General Buell, who, in command of the 
 Army of the Ohio, Was then near Nashville, 
 Tennessee, hastening to unite with the army 
 under General Grant at Shiloh, before the latter 
 should be attacked by a superior Confederate 
 army under General Johnston. On reaching 
 the army under Buell,- General Garfield was 
 assigned to the command of the Twentieth 
 Brigade, which he commanded with conspicuous 
 ability .during the second day's battle at Shiloh, 
 where the timely arrival of General Bueirsarmy 
 enabled Grant to turn the tide of battle and 
 win an important victory. General Garfield, 
 still commanding his brigade, shared in the 
 military operations before Corinth, and rebuilt 
 the bridges and reopened the railway between 
 Corinth and Decatur. 
 
 D 2 
 
56 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 In November, 1862, he was ordered to Wash- 
 ington as a member of the Court-martial which 
 tried General Fitz-John Porter for alleged mis- 
 conduct in the field. General Hunter, who 
 commanded a military department on the South 
 Atlantic coast, was charmed with the qualities 
 evinced by General Garfield during the trial, 
 and applied to have him assigned to his com- 
 mand, but the application was refused, and 
 Garfield was ordered to the Army of the Cum- 
 berland, which was then in camp at Murfrees- 
 boro', Tennessee, under command of General 
 Rosecrans. It was customary in those days to 
 designate the different independent armies of 
 Federal troops operating against the Confe- 
 deracy by the names of principal rivers in the 
 region to which they were assigned. Thus, at 
 the beginning of 1863, the period now under 
 consideration, the Army of the Potomac was 
 operating against Richmond ; the Army of the 
 Tennessee, under General Grant, was preparing 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. $? 
 
 to invest Vicksburgh, in Mississippi ; and the 
 Army of the Cumberland, to which had been 
 joined the Army of the Ohio since the battle 
 of Shiloh, was encamped, as already stated, at 
 Murfreesboro', thirty miles south-east of Nash- 
 ville, the capital of Tennessee. The forces at 
 Murfreesboro' were at that time commanded by 
 General W. S. Rosecrans, and had recently 
 fought and won the "sanguinary battle of Stone 
 River, one of the most stubbornly-contested en- 
 gagements of the war. The Confederate army 
 opposed to Rosecrans in this battle was com- 
 manded by General Bragg. The combatants 
 were nearly equally matched, and after two 
 days of heroic fighting, the wreck of the Con- 
 federate army retreated a few miles southward 
 into Alabama, and the forces under Rosecrans 
 had suffered such losses of men and equipment 
 as to require thorough reorganization before 
 they could again assume the offensive. 
 
 It was during this period of rest and reorgani- 
 
58 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 zation that General Garfield, about the 2oth of 
 February, 1863, reached the head-quarters of 
 General Rosecrans at Murfreesboro'. Colonel 
 Garesche, Chief of Staff to Rosecrans, had been 
 killed in the battle of Stone River, and his place 
 had not yet been filled. " When Garfield 
 arrived," says General Rosecrans in a recent 
 letter, " I must confess I had a prejudice against 
 him, as I understood he was a preacher who had 
 gone into politics, and a man of that cast I was 
 naturally opposed to. I found him to be a 
 competent and efficient officer, an earnest and 
 devoted patriot, and a man of the highest 
 honour." Three days after his arrival General 
 Garfield was assigned to duty as Chief of Staff of 
 the Army of the Cumberland, and began the 
 last and most important chapter of his military 
 career. His first work was to organize a 
 " Bureau of Military Information," similar in 
 scope and purpose to that which has been 
 developed to such remarkable efficiency in the 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 59 
 
 German army since 1866. This Bureau of In- 
 formation was justly pronounced "the most 
 perfect machine of its kind organized during 
 the war." By a system of reports obtained 
 through scouts, spies, Confederate prisoners, 
 loyal negroes, and captured official documents, 
 he prepared a comprehensive and accurate 
 exhibit of the strength and condition of Bragg's 
 army; the nature and quantity of his arms, ammu- 
 nition, and supplies ; the sentiment prevailing 
 among his troops ; and the condition of the roads, 
 bridges, and railways throughout the enemy's 
 department. As the spring advanced, the 
 Government at Washington and popular opinion 
 began to demand that Rosecrans should advance. 
 But that officer, although in many respects an 
 admirable soldier, was absorbed with the details 
 of preparation, and had become involved in a 
 controversy with the Secretary of War. General 
 Garfield, who, in the course of two months, had 
 acquired an influence over his chief that was 
 
6O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 almost absolute, laboured to promote a recon- 
 ciliation, and to prepare the army for an advance. 
 This aggressive policy was not supported by 
 the other officers, and the army lingered at 
 Murfreesboro' until June. To every appeal 
 Rosecrans answered that he was not ready. 
 But Garfield, who knew, through his Bureau 
 of Information, the exact situation on both 
 sides, insisted that the time had come for a 
 decisive movement. Finally, General Rose- 
 crans submitted the matter in detail to 
 .seventeen of his principal officers. They 
 were commanders of corps, divisions, and 
 cavalry forces ; most of them were men of mili- 
 tary education and large experience ; and each 
 was requested to state in writing his opinion of 
 the proper policy to be pursued and his reasons 
 for that opinion. They all agreed with their 
 chief that the enemy was in superior force, in an 
 advantageous position, and that an attack by 
 the Union Army would be, under the circum- 
 stances, hazardous, and, in event of a repulse, 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 6 1 
 
 ruinous. General Garfield took the seventeen 
 written opinions and prepared a reply which 
 analyzed and answered every objection, and 
 gave nine distinct and conclusive reasons why 
 the army ought to immediately advance. This 
 masterly paper showed that Rosecrans had 
 65,137 muskets and sabres to bring against 
 41,680 of the enemy. It concluded as follows : 
 " You have, in my judgment, wisely delayed 
 a general movement hitherto, till your army 
 could be massed and your cavalry could be 
 mounted. Your mobile force can now be con- 
 centrated in twenty-four hours, and your cavalry, 
 if not equal in numerical strength to that of the 
 -enemy, is greatly superior in efficiency. For 
 these reasons I believe an immediate advance 
 of all our available forces is advisable, and, 
 under the providence of God, will be successful." 
 That report has been pronounced by an im- 
 partial historian,* "the ablest military docu- 
 ment submitted by a Chief of Staff to his superior 
 
 * Mr. Whitelaw Reid. 
 
62 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 during the war." Its logic was irresistible, and 
 the council of war before which it was read 
 decided that the army should move. Still, some 
 of the ablest officers distrusted the wisdom of 
 the movement, and one of them, General Crit- 
 tenden, who commanded an Army Corps, rode up 
 to General Garfield's tent on the morning of the 
 start, and said to him, " It is understood, sir, by 
 the general officers of the army, that this move- 
 ment is your work. I wish you to understand 
 that it is a rash and fatal movement, for which 
 you will be held responsible." Then followed 
 the Tullahoma campaign, which Mr. Whitelaw 
 Reid in his admirable history describes as 
 " perfect in its conception, excellent in its general 
 execution, and only hindered from resulting in 
 the complete destruction of the opposing army 
 by the delays which had too long postponed its 
 movement." 
 
 This result naturally gave General Garfield 
 great prestige in the army, and he became more 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 63 
 
 than ever the indispensable lieutenant and ad- 
 viser of his chief. It was a bitter thing for the 
 major-generals who had been educated at West 
 Point and spent their lives in the military ser- 
 vice, to admit that in a great act of war the 
 civilian brigadier from Hiram had a keener in- 
 telligence and a broader comprehension of grand 
 tactics than they; but the success of the campaign 
 silenced all controversy, and Garfield received 
 the credit of his work. 
 
 Then began the advance on Chattanooga, an 
 important railway centre on the Tennessee 
 river, a hundred miles eastward from Tullahoma. 
 Chattanooga was, in fact, the key to the whole 
 central part of the Confederacy, and General 
 Bragg, after his defeat in June, had retired 
 thither with his army, assembled all available 
 reinforcements, entrenched what was a naturally 
 strong position, and prepared to make a des- 
 perate resistance. Chattanooga lies on the 
 southern shore of the river, and in his advance 
 
64 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 General Rosecrans boldly crossed to that side 
 and marched round far to the rear, hoping to 
 cut off Bragg's line of retreat and communica- 
 tions and crush his army against the river. The 
 Confederate General dared not risk being caught 
 in this trap, so he abandoned his position and 
 marched southward to secure a position from 
 which retreat, in case of defeat, would still be 
 possible. The mistake of one of Rosecrans' 
 corps commanders, who lost his way and had 
 to countermarch his column, delayed the ad- 
 vance of the Union army two days, and the 
 golden moment was lost. Instead of entrapping 
 Bragg's army at Chattanooga, Rosecrans en- 
 countered it in the densely wooded and rugged 
 valley of Chickamauga Creek, where, on the 
 1 9th of September, 1863, was fought another of 
 those bloody battles which left widows and 
 orphans in thousands of homes. There was 
 little opportunity for tactical movements, and the 
 two armies closed together at short range in the 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 65 
 
 thick woods and slew each other with relentless 
 valour. During the morning the fight had gone 
 rather in favour of the Union troops, when an 
 unforeseen and well-nigh fatal accident occurred. 
 General Garfield, as Chief of Staff to the com- 
 manding General, had written every General 
 Order issued during the battle, except one. 
 That one order, given during his momentary 
 absence, obscurely worded, misunderstood, and 
 literally obeyed by the officer to whom it was 
 addressed, caused a sudden and serious disaster. 
 The Army Corps commanded by General 
 McCook formed the right wing of Rosecrans' 
 line of battle. McCook's left division was 
 under command of General Wood, to whom 
 the unfortunate order was sent, directing him, 
 as he interpreted it, to withdraw his division 
 from the fighting line and move it to the rear of 
 the division on his left. Wood saw that the 
 manoeuvre would be fatal, but it was ordered,, 
 as he thought, and he felt constrained to execute 
 
66 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 it. General Longstreet, who commanded the 
 opposing Confederate line at that point, saw 
 the blunder, hurled his powerful division into 
 the gap left by Wood's withdrawal, and in 
 twenty minutes the whole right wing of the 
 Union army was broken, confused and falling 
 back through the dense undergrowth towards 
 Chattanooga. General Rosecrans with his Staff 
 was borne back by the broken corps of McCook, 
 and, believing the battle lost, started at a gallop 
 for Chattanooga to rally his broken columns 
 and prepare for defence. They had gone, 
 perhaps, three miles, when the Chief of Staff 
 pulled up his horse and told his General 
 that the battle was not lost He could hear the 
 roar of heavy fighting where the Army of the 
 Cumberland, led by General George H. 
 Thomas, was holding the centre and left of the 
 Federal line against the whole of Bragg's now 
 confident legions. Garfield begged of Rose- 
 crans permission to return to the front, find 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 67 
 
 General Thomas, and fight the battle out. Jt 
 was his first taste of anything like defeat, and 
 he could not endure the thought of leaving 
 the field while a single regiment was capable of 
 resistance. Attended only by a captain and 
 two or three mounted orderlies, he set out on 
 his perilous ride through the dense thickets and 
 across ravines and hills. Often they encoun- 
 tered the enemy's skirmishers ; an orderly was 
 killed by Garfield's side, and his own horse 
 wounded by a bullet, but he pushed on, and 
 finally found the heroic Thomas, nearly sur- 
 rounded, but yielding never an inch. As 
 Garfield approached Thomas's position he saw 
 Longstreet's corps massed in column, thrusting 
 its front between the right of Thomas's line 
 and the ridge of rising ground behind it. It 
 was a perilous moment, but, warned and guided 
 by Garfield, Thomas withdrew his right, formed 
 a new line facing the advancing enemy, launched 
 a fresh division, which had just reached the field, 
 
68 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 against Longstreet's advance, and the Army of 
 the Cumberland was saved. The long, bloody day 
 closed at last, and as the sun went down the 
 Confederates, baffled and repulsed, withdrew 
 from the fight. Garfield, on foot and enveloped 
 in smoke, directed the pointing of a field bat- 
 tery, which, as the rebels retreated up the 
 valley, flashed after them in the gathering 
 darkness the last light that shone upon the red 
 field of Chickamauga. Notwithstanding the 
 disaster of the morning on the right, the battle 
 was substantially a drawn one, and Rosecrans> 
 retiring to Chattanooga, was secure from future 
 attack. 
 
 This brilliant day's work, in which the Chief 
 of Staff shared with General Thomas the first 
 honours of that memorable engagement, prac- 
 tically ended General Garfield's military service. 
 A few days after the battle he was sent by 
 Rosecrans to Washington to report to the 
 President and War Department in minute 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 69 
 
 detail the situation and necessities of the army 
 at Chattanooga. On arriving at the capital he 
 found that he had been promoted to the rank 
 of Major-General, " fdr gallant and meritorious 
 services at the battle of Chickamauga ;" his 
 commission dating from the igth of September. 
 He presented a full and satisfactory verbal 
 report to the President and Secretary Stanton 
 of the previous nine months' operations in Ten- 
 nessee, and made so favourable an impression, on 
 President Lincoln that the latter advised him 
 strongly to take what was, perhaps, the most 
 unwilling, but which proved one of the most 
 important, steps of his life. 
 
 The Republicans of the Nineteenth Con- 
 gressional district of Ohio had, in October of 
 the previous year, elected General Garfield to 
 a seat in the Thirty-Eighth Congress, which was 
 to assemble in December, 1863. It would be 
 fourteen months from the date of .his election 
 before he would be required to take his place in 
 Congress, and he had accepted the political 
 
7O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 promotion, fully expecting that the war would 
 be over before the new Congress would as- 
 semble. But the war was yet unfinished, and 
 General Garfield's situation, as December 
 approached, became embarrassing. All his 
 instincts prompted him to put aside the political 
 honour and remain in the army. As a soldier 
 he had not had many great opportunities, but 
 he had made the utmost use of them all. He 
 was one of the youngest major-generals in the 
 service, he had won his rank fairly under fire, 
 the country was applauding his conduct at 
 Chickamauga, and the brightest laurels of the 
 patriot soldier were just within Jiis reach. 
 Moreover, his gallant regiment, with battle- 
 thinned ranks, and its colours riddled with the 
 sharp hail of war, was still at the front, and he 
 felt that it would be unworthy in him to leave 
 the field while there was yet fighting to be 
 done. 
 
 General Thomas offered him the command of 
 a corps ctarmte in the Army of the Cumberland, 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 7 1 
 
 but President Lincoln was urgent in advising 
 him to resign his commission and take his 
 place in Congress. There was no want of 
 brave and capable generals in the field, but 
 there was, as the President strongly insisted, a 
 crying need of men in Congress who understood 
 the wants and requirements of the army, and 
 w r ere capable of dealing with the serious 
 governmental questions which were then 
 pending. 
 
 The war had now been in progress more 
 than two years. Vicksburgh, Gettysburgh, and 
 other great battles had been won, but the Con- 
 federate armies were still in the field and the 
 Confederacy was yet to be conquered. The 
 war had settled down to one of endurance, a 
 question of comparative resources and deter- 
 mination. It was clear that the Confederates 
 would fight to the bitter end ; the problem was 
 whether Congress, the Treasury, and the War 
 Department, could marshal the superior numbers 
 and resources of the North and throw their 
 
 E 2 
 
72 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 weight into the conflict. The first enthusiastic 
 zeal which had filled the Union ranks with 
 ardent volunteers had begun to cool as the long 
 lists of dead and wounded were printed, and it 
 was clear that the Congress of 1863-4 would 
 have to deal with the difficult problem of con- 
 scription. The troops at the front had often 
 been embarrassed by blunders and inexperience 
 at Washington, and even the fellow-officers of 
 General Garfield, much as they were attached 
 to him, joined the President in urging him to 
 resign and represent the. army in Congress. 
 Under these influences General Garfield gave 
 up his commission, and took his seat as Repre- 
 sentative on the 5th of December, 1863, a seat 
 which he held in continuous service until his 
 election as President in 1880, called him to a 
 higher place. We must now follow him to the 
 arena in which he has done the great permanent 
 work of his life, and for which his previous ex- 
 periences as a student, teacher, State Senator 
 and soldier, were, so to speak, preparatory. 
 
73 
 
 III. 
 
 GENERAL GARFIELD IN CONGRESS. 
 
 " IF you wish to know why an irredeemable paper currency is, 
 and always has been, a curse to all the economic interests of 
 this and all other countries, why confidence can be restored and 
 maintained, why business can obtain a healthy development, 
 why foreign commerce can be most profitably conducted only 
 with a money system of staple and intrinsic value, you will find 
 in the speeches of James A. Garfield upon this subject the most 
 convincing information. You will find there opinions, not sud- 
 denly made up to order to suit an opportunity and the neces- 
 sities of a candidate in an election, but the convictions of a life- 
 time carefully matured by conscientious research and large in- 
 quiry, and maintained with powerful reason, before they had 
 become generally popular. You find there a teacher, statesman, 
 and leader in a great movement, with principles so firmly 
 grounded in his mind as well as his conscience that he would 
 uphold them even were they not supported by a powerful party 
 at his back." Herr CARL SCHURZ. 
 
 THE State of Ohio is divided into twenty 
 Congressional districts, designated by consecu- 
 tive numbers. The Nineteenth District, which 
 has been represented by General Garfield since 
 
74 LIFE OF. JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 1863, is made up of four counties in the extreme 
 north-eastern corner of the State. The district 
 forms part of a tract of country lying along 
 the southern shore of Lake Erie, and known as 
 the " Western Reserve," from the fact that it 
 was ceded in early days to the " Connecticut 
 Land Company," and settled by a chosen com- 
 munity of pioneers from New England. The 
 conditions of settlement offered especial advan- 
 tages to officers and soldiers who had served 
 creditably in the patriot armies during the War 
 of the Revolution ; and thither, in the early 
 years of the present century, came the flower of 
 the energetic, educated, conscientious people of 
 the New England States. So distinctly have 
 the descendants of these pioneers retained the 
 characteristics of their ancestors, that the 
 " Western Reserve" is to-day more like a por- 
 tion of Massachusetts or Connecticut than any 
 other similar district west of the Hudson River. 
 It is a reading, thinking, praying community, 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 75 
 
 which is remarkably fastidious in its choice of 
 political representatives, keenly watchful of 
 their conduct, and loyal to them against all 
 opposition so long as they are faithful to their 
 trusts. Since the admission of Ohio to the 
 Union, the Nineteenth District had had but four 
 different representatives. For nearly a quarter 
 of a century Joshua R. Giddings, one of the 
 leading statesmen in American politics, had 
 stood for it. When, therefore, such a constitu- 
 ency placed the mantle of Mr. Giddings upon the 
 young Major-General, it was justly regarded 
 an extraordinary compliment. How well that 
 trust has been honoured and deserved only 
 those who are familiar with the work of 
 Congress during the past eighteen years can 
 adequately realize. In a sketch like this, the 
 writer is embarrassed by the impossibility of 
 giving in a limited space more than a faint out- 
 line of the great labours of General Garfield 
 during this period. His set speeches in impor- 
 
76 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 tant debates would fill volumes. As was 
 justly said by Mr. Carl Schurz : " Scarcely a 
 single great measure of legislation was passed 
 during that long period without the imprint of 
 his mind. No man in Congress has devoted 
 such thorough inquiry to a large number of 
 important subjects, and formed upon them 
 opinions more matured and valuable." 
 
 Not only his speeches, but his labours upon 
 leading Committees, have been extraordinary. 
 Upon his entry into the House, he was naturally 
 assigned to the Committee of military affairs, 
 which was then grappling with the problems of 
 the war, at a time when a single serious mistake 
 in Congress might have imperilled the success 
 of the loyal cause. General Garfield was fresh 
 from the front of battle, he knew all the needs 
 of the army, and he became, almost from the 
 first, the controlling influence of the Committee. 
 From the chairmanship of the Military Com- 
 mittee he was promoted in 1869 to the head of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 77 
 
 the Committee on Banking and Currency, which 
 was at that time charged with the important 
 duty of adjusting the national finances, after the 
 prolonged and serious strain which they had 
 undergone during the war period, to the con- 
 ditions of peace. At the same time he held a 
 leading place on the Committee of the Ninth 
 Census, which gave to the United States the 
 first comprehensive and well-digested census 
 that it had ever known. . 
 
 In 1872 General Garfield was again promoted 
 to the chairmanship of the Committee of 
 Appropriations, which is in many respects the 
 most important and influential committee of the 
 House. Its business is to superintend and con- 
 trol, subject to the approval of Congress, all 
 expenditures made by the Government, for 
 whatever purpose. Separate Appropriation Bills 
 for the Army, the Navy, the Postal service, for 
 the Improvement of Rivers and Harbours, for the 
 Consular and Diplomatic service, in all eleven 
 
78 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 distinct measures, in which each item of expendi- 
 ture is estimated and recorded, are required to be 
 prepared by the Committee of Appropriations at 
 each annual session. The country was at that 
 time clamouring for retrenchment in public 
 expenditures and consequent reduction of taxa- 
 tion, so that the labour imposed upon General 
 Garfield, during the four years in which he was 
 head of the Appropriations Committee, was 
 immense. So well was this work done by 
 General Garfield and his immediate predeces- 
 sors, that the expenses of the Government, 
 which in 1865 had been $1,297,555,224, were 
 reduced in 1875 to $287,133,874, which was 
 conceded to be at that time the lowest practi- 
 cable limit of judicious economy. 
 
 The country was during 1874-5 in the depth 
 of the financial depression and distress which 
 followed the collapse and panic of 1873. The 
 paper currency, which had floated the Treasury 
 through the war, had served the purpose for 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 79 
 
 which it had been created, but had inevitably 
 inaugurated a period of inflated and fictitious 
 values. Disregarding the solemn and eloquent 
 warnings of General Garfield and some of his 
 more discerning colleagues, Congress had re- 
 fused, immediately after the return of peace, to 
 contract the inflated currency and bring the 
 business of the country back to a basis of real 
 values. It was on the i6th of March, 1866, 
 less than a year after the surrender of the Con- 
 federate armies, that General Garfield had first 
 declared his views on the subject of the cur- 
 rency, in a speech which reached down to the 
 fundamental principles of wise and honest 
 finance. The Bill under consideration was a 
 measure conferring upon the Secretary of the 
 Treasury the same powers in funding the debt 
 which Secretary Sherman recently employed 
 with such admirable effect, and providing for 
 a gradual but early return to specie pay- 
 ments. General Garfield's speech in support of 
 
8o LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 .the measure was a masterpiece. His closing 
 sentences were prophetic : 
 
 " We leave it to the House to decide which 
 alternative it will choose. Choose the one, and 
 you float away into an unknown sea of paper 
 money that shall know no decrease until you 
 take just such a measure as is now proposed to 
 bring us back to solid values. Delay the 
 measure, and it will cost the country dear. 
 Adopt it now, and with a little depression in 
 business, and a little stringency in the money 
 market, the worst will be over, and we shall 
 have reached the solid earth. Sooner or later 
 such a measure must be adopted. Go on as 
 you are now going on, and a financial crisis 
 worse than that of 1837 will bring us to the 
 bottom. I for one am not willing that my name 
 shall be linked to the fate of a paper currency. 
 I believe that any. party which commits itself to 
 paper money will go down amid the general 
 disaster, covered with the curses of a ruined 
 people." 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 8 1 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, I remember that on the 
 monument of Queen Elizabeth, where her 
 glories were recited and her honours summed 
 up, among the last and the highest, recorded 
 as the climax of her honours, was this that 
 she had restored the money of her kingdom to 
 its just value. Arid when this House shall have 
 done its work, when it shall have brought back 
 values to their proper standard, it will deserve 
 a monument." 
 
 But Congress lacked the courage to follow 
 such sound advice. The country was in the 
 first ecstasies of intoxicating speculation and 
 expansion. Business was everywhere flourishing, 
 and fortunes were being rapidly accumulated 
 in depreciated paper. The orgie of speculation 
 reached its climax in 1872, and in September 
 of the year following the bubble burst. When 
 Congress was organized in 1874, the best ability 
 in the House was needed on the Committee of 
 Ways and Means. Expenditures had been re- 
 duced to their lowest practical limit, but business 
 
82 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 was prostrate ; all values were broken and un- 
 settled, and the problem of the hour was to 
 adjust the essential taxation to the depressed 
 condition of trade, and the straitened resources 
 of the people. Instinctively public opinion 
 turned to Garfield, and he was appointed Chair- 
 man of Ways and Means. A record of his 
 services in that position might fill a volume and 
 furnish ample and conclusive reasons why, in 
 the great party crisis at Chicago last June, the 
 people again turned to him as the man best 
 capable of leading them through a difficult situa- 
 tion to an important triumph. Enough has 
 perhaps been said of General Garfield's service 
 in committees to serve the purposes of this 
 sketch and show the rank that he attained as a 
 financier during a period which demanded and 
 developed the highest powers of economic state- 
 craft. It remains now within the limits of this 
 chapter to give from the great mass of his 
 speeches a few brief extracts which may serve 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 83 
 
 to illustrate his position upon leading questions 
 of legislation. 
 
 FINANCE. 
 
 In respect to the finances, he maintained, 
 throughout the long struggle which ended with 
 the resumption of specie payments in 1879, the 
 same clear consistent attitude that was fore- 
 shadowed in his speech of March i6th, 1866, 
 from which a passage has already been quoted. 
 For years he had been an exhaustive and dis- 
 criminating student of English finance. The 
 whole record of British legislation on commerce 
 and currency during the past two centuries had 
 been studied, until every important fact was 
 at his ready command. In May, 1868, when 
 the country was rapidly drifting into a hopeless 
 confusion of ideas on financial subjects, and 
 when several prominent statesmen had come 
 forward with specious plans for creating 
 " absolute money," by putting the Government 
 stamp upon bank notes, and for paying off with 
 
84 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 this false currency the bonds which the nation 
 had solemnly agreed to pay in gold, General 
 Garfield stood up, almost single-handed, and 
 faced the current with a speech which any 
 statesman of this century might be proud to 
 have written on his monument. It embraced 
 twenty-three distinct but concurrent topics, and 
 occupied in delivery an entire day's session of 
 the House. After recognizing candidly all the 
 discouraging facts of the situation, and admitting 
 that the United States had less experience with 
 such vast problems than any other civilized 
 nation, he went on to say : " The dollar is the 
 gauge that measures every blow of the axe, 
 every swing of the scythe, every stroke of the 
 hammer, every faggot that blazes on the poor 
 man's hearth, every fabric that clothes his 
 children, every mouthful that feeds their hunger. 
 The word dollar is a substantive word, the 
 fundamental condition of every contract, of 
 every sale, of every payment, whether from the 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 85 
 
 national treasury or from the stand of the apple- 
 woman in the street. Now, what is our situa- 
 tion ? There has been no day since the 25th 
 of February, 1862, when any man could tell 
 what would be the value of our legal currency 
 dollar the next month or the next day. Since 
 that day we have substituted for a dollar the 
 printed promise of the Government to pay a 
 dollar. That promise we have broken. We 
 have suspended payment ; and have, by law, 
 compelled the citizen to receive dishonoured 
 paper instead of money." 
 
 And in conclusion : " For my own part, my 
 course is taken. In view of all the facts of our 
 situation, of all the terrible experiences of the 
 past, both at home and abroad, and of the united 
 testimony of the wisest and bravest statesmen 
 who have lived and laboured during the past 
 century, it is my firm conviction that any con- 
 siderable increase of the volume of our incon- 
 vertible paper money will shatter public credit, 
 
86 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 will paralyze public industry, and oppress the 
 poor; and that the gradual restoration of our 
 ancient standard of value will lead us, by the 
 safest and surest paths, to national prosperity 
 and the steady pursuits of peace." 
 
 The measure which he opposed was defeated, 
 but in the following July the hydra- headed fal- 
 lacy reappeared in the form of a Bill authorizing 
 the taxation of United States bonds. Garfield 
 was again the man in the breach, with a prompt 
 and powerful protest, which concluded with these 
 words : 
 
 " Mr. Speaker, I desire to say, in con- 
 clusion, that in my opinion all these efforts to 
 pursue a doubtful and unusual, if not dishonour- 
 able policy in reference to our public debt, spring 
 from a lack of faith in the intelligence and con- 
 science of the American people. Hardly an 
 hour passes when we do not hear it whispered 
 that some such policy as this must be adopted, 
 or the people will by-and-by repudiate the debt. 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 8/ 
 
 For my own part, I do not share that distrust. 
 . The people of this country have shown, by the 
 highest proofs Nature can give, that wherever 
 the path of duty and honour may lead, however 
 steep and rugged it may be, they are ready to 
 walk it. They feel the burden of the public 
 debt, but they remember that it is the price of 
 blood the precious blood of half a million brave 
 men who died to save to us all that makes life 
 desirable or property secure. I believe they 
 will, after a full hearing, discard all methods of 
 paying their debts by sleight-of-hand, or by any 
 scheme which crooked wisdom may devise. If 
 public morality did not protest against any such 
 plan, enlightened public selfishness would refuse 
 its sanction. Let us be true to our trust a few 
 years longer, and the next generation will be 
 here with its seventy-five millions of population 
 and its sixty billions of wealth. To them the 
 debt that then remains will be a light burden. 
 They will pay the last bond according to the 
 
 F 2 
 
88 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 letter and spirit of the contract, with the same 
 sense of grateful duty with which they will pay 
 the pensions of the few surviving soldiers of the 
 great war for the Union." 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury at that time, 
 fearing that the heresies uttered by the inflation- 
 ists would seriously compromise the national credit 
 abroad, had the two speeches of General Garfield 
 published in pamphlet form and sent to leading 
 financiers and statesmen in Europe. A copy of 
 the pamphlet happened to fall into the hands of 
 Mr. John Bright, who showed it to Mr. Glad- 
 stone. Upon their motion, General Garfield 
 was elected an honorary member of the Reform 
 Club, a compliment which was, under the cir- 
 cumstances, peculiarly gratifying. 
 
 These brief extracts from speeches delivered 
 by General Garfield at a time when Congress 
 and an overwhelming majority of the people, 
 particularly in the Western States, were opposed 
 to him, will sufficiently illustrate the soundness 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 89 
 
 of his financial principles, and the unflinching 
 courage with which he stood by his guns during 
 the entire discussion. In reference to 
 
 THE TARIFF 
 
 his record is equally positive and clear. At 
 Williams' College he was as a student schooled 
 in political economy by Professor Perry, who 
 was then, as now, one of -the leading American 
 advocates of Free Trade. The text-book was 
 Wayland's " Political Economy," but young 
 Garfield was not a student who followed blindly 
 any teacher or text-book. He read all collateral 
 authorities which the college library could 
 supply, and did his own thinking. At the close 
 of the term, Professor Perry asked him what 
 had been his conclusions in respect to Protection, 
 and the reply was so definite and characteristic 
 that the instructor wrote it down in his memo- 
 randum-book. "As an abstract theory," said 
 Garfield, " the doctrine of Free Trade seems to be 
 
90 LIFE. OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 universally true ; but as a question of practica- 
 bility, in a country like ours, the protective 
 system seems to be indispensable." 
 
 It has cost General Garfield no little annoy- 
 ing criticism to be perfectly loyal, as he has 
 always been, to this exact line of his convictions 
 respecting the tariff. His constituents in Ohio 
 are heavily engaged in mining and various 
 forms of the iron manufacture, and naturally 
 have been clamorous for high duties. The 
 Republicans, as a party, have advocated a pro- 
 tective tariff, and about once in two years since 
 General Garfield entered Congress a new Tariff 
 Bill has been incubated and discussed. He 
 has always taken a leading part in these dis- 
 cussions, and always with characteristic clear- 
 ness and consistency. His creed was declared 
 in 1866 in these words : 
 
 " We have seen that one extreme school of 
 economists would place the price of all manu- 
 factured articles in. the hands of foreign, pro- 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. QI 
 
 ducers by rendering it impossible for our manu- 
 facturers to compete with them ; while the other 
 extreme school, by making it impossible for the 
 foreigner to sell his competing wares in our 
 market, would give the people no immediate 
 check upon the prices which our manufacturers 
 might fix for their products. I disagree with 
 both these extremes. I hold that a properly 
 adjusted competition between home and foreign 
 products is the best gauge by which to regulate 
 international trade. Duties should be so high 
 that our manufacturers can fairly compete with 
 the foreign product, but not so high as to 
 enable them to drive out the foreign article, 
 enjoy a monopoly of the 'trade, and regulate the 
 price as they please. This is my doctrine of 
 Protection. If Congress pursues this line of 
 policy steadily, we shall year by year approach 
 more nearly to the basis of Free Trade, because 
 we shall be more nearly able to compete with 
 other nations on equal terms. / am for a 
 
92 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 Protection which leads to ultimate Free Trade. 
 I am for that Free Trade which can only be 
 achieved through a reasonable Protection." 
 
 The subject recurred in a protracted and deter- 
 mined debate during the Session of 1878, when 
 General Garfield, developing the argument 
 which he had outlined first in 1866, said: 
 " The men who created this Constitution also 
 set it in operation, and developed their own 
 idea of its character. That idea was unlike any 
 other that then prevailed upon the earth. They 
 made the general welfare of the people the great 
 source and foundation of the common. defence. 
 In all the nations of the Old World the public 
 defence was provided for by the great standing 
 armies, navies, and fortified posts, so that the 
 nation might every moment be fully armed 
 against danger from without or turbulence within. 
 Our /athers said : ' Though we will use the 
 taxing power to maintain a small army and navy 
 sufficient to keep alive the knowledge of war, 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 93 
 
 yet the main reliance for our defence shall be 
 the intelligence, culture, and skill of our people ; 
 a development of our own intellectual and 
 material resources, which will enable us to 
 do everything that may be necessary to equip, 
 clothe, and feed ourselves in time of war, and 
 make ourselves intelligent, happy, and pros- 
 perous in peace." 
 
 * * * # * 
 
 " Too much of our Tariff discussion has been 
 warped by narrow and sectional considerations. 
 But when we base our action upon the conceded 
 national importance of the great industries I 
 have referred to, when we recognize the fact 
 that artisans and their products are essential to 
 the well-being of our country, it follows that 
 there is no dweller in the humblest cottage on 
 our remotest frontier who has not a deep 
 personal interest in the legislation that shall 
 promote these great national industries. Those 
 arts that enable our nation to rise in the scale of 
 
94 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 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." 
 
 Then, coming back to the impregnable doctrine 
 that national safety and 'independence under a 
 Republican Government are dependent upon 
 national development, he concluded : " So im- 
 portant, in my view, is the ability of the nation 
 to manufacture all these articles necessary to 
 arm, equip, and clothe our people, that if it could 
 not be secured in any other way I would vote 
 to pay money out of the Federal Treasury to 
 maintain Government iron and steel, woollen 
 and cotton mills, at whatever cost. Were we 
 to neglect these great interests and depend upon 
 other nations, in what a condition of helplessness 
 would we find ourselves when we should be 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 95 
 
 again involved in war with the very nations on 
 whom we were depending to furnish us these 
 supplies ? The system adopted by our Fathers 
 is wiser, for it so encourages the great national 
 industries as to make it possible at all times for 
 our people to equip themselves .for war, and at 
 the same time increase their intelligence and 
 skill so as to make them better fitted for all the 
 duties of citizenship both in war and in peace. 
 We provide for the common defence by a system 
 which promotes the general welfare'' 
 
 SILVER MONEY. 
 
 There was one other form of financial folly 
 against which Mr.Garfield made a gallant though 
 ineffectual resistance. During the existence of 
 the Forty-fifth Congress, from December, 1877, 
 until March, 1879, there sprang up a movement 
 in favour of the unlimited coinage of silver. 
 The lower branch of Congress was controlled 
 by a democratic majority which had revolted 
 
>q6 LIFE OF JAMES. A. GARFIELD. 
 
 against the established law providing for the re- 
 sumption of specie payments on January ist, 
 1879. A Bill had been passed repealing the 
 Resumption Law, but it had been promptly 
 vetoed by President Hayes, and the anti-re- 
 sumption party could not muster the requisite 
 two-thirds majority in both branches of Congress 
 to pass the Bill over the Presidential veto. 
 Failing in this, the reactionists sought to gratify 
 a supposed public demand for a " cheap currency" 
 by flooding the country with a silver coinage of 
 deficient weight and value. The scheme was 
 an act of demagogism, appealing to popular 
 duplicity and ignorance. 
 
 The silver fallacy was strongly supported by 
 the wealthy and influential association of men who 
 owned rich and productive mines on the Pacific 
 Coast, and who feared that by reason of the 
 demonetization of silver that was then going on 
 in Europe, the metal would become redundant 
 and depreciated in value. A Mr. Bland, of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A; GARFIELD. 97 
 
 Missouri, introduced into the Hcuse a Bill to 
 establish a standard silver dollar, having a weight 
 of 41 2\ grains, and to restore the legal tender 
 character of silver coin which had been abolished 
 several years before. The Bill also authorized 
 the unlimited coinage of these short-weight 
 dollars at Government expense. 
 
 General Garfield opposed the measure with 
 all his ability, not because he was opposed to 
 the use of silver as money, but because 412^ 
 grains of silver -were not worth a dollar, nor 
 likely, in the existing state of things, to ever 
 become so, and because he did not think it wise 
 at that time for the United States to undertake 
 single-handed and alone to rehabilitate silver as 
 a legal tender coinage and establish an arbitrary 
 ratio of value between that metal and gold. 
 His speeches during the debate were fearless 
 and masterly, and drew upon him the sharp 
 criticism of some of his colleagues, who have 
 long since acknowledged that he was right 
 
98 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 and they were wrong. On the i7th of May, 
 he made a leading speech against the Bill 
 of Mr. Bland, the tenor of which may be 
 inferred from the following passage: "And 
 yet," said he, " outside of this Capitol, I do not 
 this day know of a single great and recognized 
 advocate of bimetallic money who regards it 
 prudent or safe for any nation largely to increase 
 the coinage standard of silver coin at the pre- 
 sent time beyond the limits fixed by existing 
 laws. France and the States of the Latin 
 Union, that have long believed in bimetallism, 
 maintained.it against all comers, and have done 
 all in their power to advocate it throughout 
 the world, dare not coin a single silver coin, 
 and have not done so since 1874. The most 
 strenuous advocates- of bimetallism in those 
 countries say it would be ruinous to bimetal- 
 lism for France or the Latin Union to coin 
 any more silver. at present. The remaining 
 stock of German silver now for sale, amount- 
 ing to from forty to seventy-five millions of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 99 
 
 dollars, is a standing menace to the exchange 
 and silver coinage of Europe. One month 
 ago the leading financial journal of London 
 proposed that the Bank of England buy one 
 half of the German surplus and hold it five 
 years on condition that the German .Govern- 
 ment shall hold the other half off the market. 
 The time is ripe for some wise and prudent 
 arrangement among the nations to save silver 
 from, a disastrous break-down." . . . . " Yet 
 we, who during the past two years have coined 
 far more silver dollars than we ever before 
 coined since the foundation of the Government 
 ten times as many as we coined during half a 
 century of our national life are to-day ignoring 
 and defying the enlightened, universal opinion 
 of bimetallists, and saying that the United 
 States, single-handed and alone, can enter the 
 field and settle the mighty issue alone. We are 
 justifying the old proverb that * Fools rush in 
 where angels fear to tread.' ' 
 
 Subsequent events justfied his predictions. 
 
100 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 The House passed the Bland Bill, which then 
 went to the Senate for concurrence. The 
 Senate passed it with an amendment limiting- 
 the coinage of silver to four million dollars per 
 month. The House concurred in the Senate's 
 amendment, and the President vetoed the Bill. 
 Both branches of Congress then passed the Act 
 over the executive veto, and it became a law. 
 The result is that the vaults of the United 
 States Treasury are to-day gorged with silver 
 dollars, each of which contains about 89 cents 
 worth of silver and eleven cents worth of Con- 
 gressional alloy. The people will not have them 
 or use them in any quantity, and the Mints of the 
 Government, which are needed for the coinage 
 of gold, are compelled under the law, to. go on 
 coining the redundant and useless silver dollars 
 which are at this time the only serious disturb- 
 ing element in American finance. 
 
 Among the other invaluable services of 
 General Garfield during his career in Congress 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. IOI 
 
 have been his fearless and patriotic expositions 
 of Constitutional principles in crises of intense 
 partisan excitement. A notable example of this 
 occurred during the special Session of 1879. The 
 second and final Session of the Forty-fifth 
 Congress expired on the 4th of March of that 
 year. During the winter the democratic majority 
 which controlled the House had attempted to 
 pass three Acts of independent political 'legisla- 
 tion by attaching them to the Appropriation 
 Bills which provided money for the support of 
 the Government. These obnoxious measures 
 were, i, " The repeal of the jurors' test oath ; 
 2, a material modification of the existing law 
 defining the functions of the army ; and 3, an 
 Act repealing certain laws which govern the elec- 
 tion of members of Congress." In the quarrel 
 which ensued, the limit of the Session was 
 passed, and the President was compelled to 
 convene the forty-sixth or new Congress im- 
 mediately after the 4th of March, in order that 
 
102 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 the necessary appropriations might be made 
 before the 3Oth of June, the close of the fiscal 
 year. The same Bills were again presented, and 
 the democratic leaders announced their purpose 
 to compel the President to approve them, in- 
 cluding the amendment curtailing the constitu- 
 tional functions of the Federal Marshals, or, in 
 default of that approval, to destroy the power 
 of the Government, by withholding its supplies. 
 (To make the situation clear, it should be re- 
 membered that no American President or 
 Cabinet officer can use any money of the 
 Treasury for any purpose until it has been ex- 
 pressly appropriated for that purpose by 
 Congress.) 
 
 This attempt to coerce the Executive was 
 first challenged and exposed by General Gar- 
 field on the 29th of March, in a speech which 
 thrilled the country, and made its author not 
 only the head and front of his own party, but 
 the advocate of all men of either party who 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 103 
 
 held Constitutional government above partisan 
 advantage. Two paragraphs from the speech 
 will show the drift of its argument : 
 
 " Mr. CHAIRMAN : I have no hope of being 
 able to convey to the members of this House 
 my own conviction of the very great gravity 
 and solemnity of the. crisis which this decision of 
 the Chairman of the Committee 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 over- 
 whelmed with the proof that I am utterly mis- 
 taken in my views. But no view I have ever 
 taken has entered more deeply and more 
 seriously into my convictions than this : that 
 this 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 
 that 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 
 
 G 2 
 
104 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 believe it does not exist to any large extent. 
 But I mean to say the consequence of the pro- 
 gramme just adopted, if persisted in, is nothing 
 less than the total subversion of this Govern- 
 ment" 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 " Our theory of law is free consent. That is 
 the granite foundation of our whole superstruc- 
 ture. Nothing in the Republic can be law 
 without consent the free consent of the House; 
 the free consent of the Senate ; the free consent 
 of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the free 
 consent of two-thirds of these bodies. Will any 
 man deny that ? Will any man challenge a word 
 of the statement that free consent is the founda- 
 tion rock of all our institutions ? And yet the 
 programme announced two weeks ago was, that 
 if the Senate refused to consent to the demand 
 of the House, the Government should stop. 
 And the proposition was then, and the pro- 
 
 
 
 gramme is now, that, although there is not a 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 105 
 
 Senate to be coerced, there is still a third inde- 
 pendent branch in the legislative power of the 
 Government, whose consent is to be coerced at 
 the peril of the destruction of this Government ; 
 that is, if the President, in the discharge of his 
 duty, shall exercise his plain constitutional right 
 to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, 
 the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as 
 to destroy the Government. This is the pro- 
 position which we confront ; and we denounce 
 it as revolution." 
 
 " The proposition now is, that after fourteen 
 years have passed and not one petition from one 
 American citizen has come to us asking that 
 this law be repealed, while not one memorial has ' 
 found its way to our desks complaining of the 
 law, so far as I have heard, the Democratic 
 House of Representatives now hold that if they 
 are not permitted to force upon another House 
 and upon the Executive, against their consent, 
 the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this 
 
IO6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD, 
 
 refusal shall be considered a sufficient ground 
 for starving this Government to death." 
 
 SPEECHES OF OCCASION. 
 
 But the oratorical services of General Gar- 
 field during the years of his maturity have not 
 been limited to his work in Congress. On 
 many important occasions he has been the 
 chosen orator, and has uniformly acquitted him- 
 self with consummate credit. On the border of 
 Virginia, across the Potomac river from the City 
 of Washington, there stands on the crest of 
 Arlington Heights a stately mansion which was 
 formerly the home of General Robert E. Lee, 
 the Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate 
 Armies. During the war the estate was used 
 as a burial-ground for thousands of Union 
 soldiers killed in the battles in Virginia, or who 
 had died of wounds or disease in the hospitals 
 at Washington. The ancestral farm became 
 one vast burial-ground, and after the war it was 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 107 
 
 appropriated by the Government, handsomely 
 laid out with walks and drives, and solemnly 
 dedicated as a sacred and permanent resting- 
 place "of the dead. The dedication took place 
 on the 30th of May, 1868, the anniversary 
 designated by law as a memorial day on which 
 the graves of Union soldiers throughout the 
 United States, are wreathed and strewn with 
 flowers by a grateful people. At the dedication 
 of Arlington Cemetery, General Garfield spoke 
 in presence .of a vast audience, including the 
 President, the Cabinet, leading members of the 
 Diplomatic Corps, and eminent citizens from all 
 parts of the country. He said : 
 
 "If silence is ever golden, it must be here, 
 beside the graves of fifteen thousand men whose 
 lives were more significant than speech, and 
 whose death was a poem, the music of which 
 can never be sung. With words, we plight 
 faith, make promises, praise virtues. Promises 
 may not be kept ; plighted faith may be only 
 
108 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 the cunning mask of vice. We do not know 
 one promise these men made, one pledge they 
 gave, one word they spoke; but we do know 
 they summed up and perfected, 'by one supreme 
 act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. 
 For love of country they accepted death ; and 
 thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal 
 their patriotism and their virtue. 
 
 " For the noblest man that lives there still 
 remains a conflict. He must still withstand the 
 assaults of time and fortune ; must still be 
 assailed with temptations before which lofty 
 natures have fallen. But with these, the conflict 
 ended ; the victory was won when death stamped 
 on them the great seal of heroic character, and 
 closed a record which years can never blot." 
 
 " The view from this spot bears some re- 
 semblance to that which greets the eye at Rome. 
 In sight of the Capitoline Hill, up and across 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 1 09 
 
 
 
 the Tiber, and overlooking the city, is a hill, not 
 rugged or lofty, but known as the Vatican 
 Mount. At the beginning of the Christian era 
 an imperial circus stood on its summit. There, 
 gladiator slaves died for the sport of Rome, and 
 wild beasts fought with wilder men. In that 
 arena a Galilean fisherman gave up his life a 
 sacrifice for his faith. No human life was ever 
 so nobly avenged. On that spot was reared the 
 proudest Christian temple ever built by human 
 hands. For its adornment the rich offerings of 
 every clime and kingdom had been contributed. 
 And now, after eighteen centuries, the hearts of 
 two hundred million people turn toward it with 
 reverence when they worship God. As the 
 traveller descends the Apennines, he sees the 
 dome of St. Peter rising above the desolate 
 Campagna and the dead city, long before the 
 Seven Hills and ruined palaces appear to his 
 view. The fame of the dead fisherman has out- 
 lived the glory of the Eternal City. A noble 
 
110 LIFE OF -JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 life, crowned with heroic deeds, rises above and 
 outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the 
 mightiest empire of the earth." 
 
 There was another occasion which called out 
 General Garfield's powers as an obituary speaker, 
 and illustrated the strong feeling of comradeship 
 between himself and his colleagues with which 
 no merely partisan considerations have ever 
 been permitted to interfere. Among the De- 
 mocratic members of the House in 18789 was 
 the Hon. Gustave Schleicher from Texas. Mr. 
 Schleicher was a German who had emigrated 
 to Texas many years ago, and had become one 
 of the most influential men in that State. He 
 was a man of finished education, strong arid 
 enlightened principles, -and there had grown up 
 between him and General Garfield a mutual 
 affection like that of brothers. In February, 
 1879, Mr. Schleicher died, and, in accordance 
 with custom, the House passed resolutions of 
 respect to his memory. Pending the adoption 
 of the resolutions, General Garfield delivered 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. Ill 
 
 an eulogy, from which the following is an 
 extract : 
 
 " I stand with reverence in the presence of 
 such a life and such a career as that of Gustave 
 Schleicher. It illustrates more strikingly than 
 almost any life I know the mystery that 
 envelops that product which we call character, 
 and which is the result of two great forces : the 
 initial force which the Creator gave it when He 
 called the man into being ; and the force of all 
 the external influence and culture that mould 
 and modify the development of a life. 
 
 " In contemplating the first of these elements, 
 no power of analysis can exhibit all the latent 
 forces enfolded in the spirit of a new-born child, 
 which derive their origin from the thoughts and 
 deeds of remote ancestors, and, enveloped 
 in the awful mystery of life, have been trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation across 
 forgotten centuries. Each new life is thus ' the 
 heir of all the ages.' 
 
 " Applying these reflections to the character of 
 
112 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 Gustave Schleicher, it may be justly said that 
 we have known few men in whose lives were 
 concentrated so many of the deeply interesting 
 elements that made him what he was. We are 
 accustomed to say, and we have heard to-night, 
 that he was born on foreign soil. In one sense 
 that is true ; and yet in a very proper historic 
 sense he was born in our fatherland. One of 
 the ablest of recent historians begins his open- 
 ing volume with the declaration that England is 
 not the fatherland of the English-speaking 
 people, but the ancient home, the real fatherland 
 of our race, is the ancient forests of Germany. 
 The same thought was suggested by Montes- 
 quieu long ago, when he declared in his ' Spirit 
 of Law' that the British Constitution came out 
 of the woods of Germany. 
 
 " To this day the Teutonic races maintain the 
 same noble traits that Tacitus describes in his 
 admirable history of the manners and character 
 of the Germans. We may therefore say that 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I 1 3 
 
 the friend whose memory we honour to-night is 
 one of the elder brethren of our race. He came 
 to America direct from our fatherland, and not, 
 like our own fathers, by the way of England. 
 
 " His career as a member of this House has 
 exhibited the best results of all these influences 
 of nature and nurture. He has done justice- to 
 the scholarship which Germany gave him and 
 the large and comprehensive ideas with which 
 life in the New World inspired him." 
 
 AS A CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER. 
 
 General Garfield began the study of law 
 during the years of his service as teacher and 
 President of Hiram College. He carried his 
 law books to the field during the war, and 
 studied during his hours of leisure when his 
 comrades were asleep. He continued his 
 studies in Washington with such success that in 
 
114 LIF E OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 1868 he was retained in a case of national im- 
 portance before the Supreme Court. In 1864, 
 several men had been tried by a Military Com- 
 mission in the State of Indiana for treason in 
 preventing enlistments -and encouraging deser- 
 tions from the army. They were condemned 
 and sentenced to death. President Lincoln 
 commuted their sentence to imprisonment for life, 
 and after the war their case was revived and 
 brought before the Supreme Court of the United 
 States on the plea that a Military Commission 
 had no proper jurisdiction, even during a time 
 of war, in a State or district where the Civil 
 Courts were undisturbed and in full exercise of 
 their powers. The case was one which clearly 
 involved a fundamental principle of Constitu- 
 tional Government, and as the culprits had been 
 guilty of a heinous crime at a time when such 
 treachery as theirs might have imperilled the 
 Union cause,it required great courage on the part 
 of ,a young Republican Congressman to come 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 115 
 
 before the Court of Last Appeal and make an 
 argument which, if successful, would set them at 
 liberty. General Garfield's associate counsel 
 were all Democrats, the very head and front of 
 the legal profession in America. Nevertheless, 
 he saw the vital principle involved, went before 
 the Court, and made the first speech, which 
 covered the whole ground and contributed 
 powerfully towards influencing the final decision 
 in favour of his clients. After reviewing the 
 most noteworthy precedents in English law, 
 he said : " They enable us to trace from its far- 
 off source the progress and development of 
 Anglo-Saxon liberty ; its innumerable conflicts 
 with irresponsible power ; its victories, dearly 
 bought, but always won victories which have 
 crowned with immortal honours the institutions 
 of England, and left their indelible impress upon 
 the Anglo-Saxon mind. These principles our 
 fathers brought with them to the New World, 
 and guarded with sleepless vigilance and religious 
 
I 1 6 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 devotion. .In its last hour of trial, during the 
 last rebellion, the Republic did not forget them. 
 
 " The only ground upon which the learned 
 counsel attempt to establish the authority of 
 the Military Commission to try the petitioners 
 is that of the necessity of the case. I answer, 
 there was no such necessity. Neither the Con- 
 stitution nor Congress recognized it. I point 
 to the Constitution as an arsenal stored with 
 ample powers to meet every emergency of 
 national life. No higher test of its completeness 
 can be imagined than has been afforded by the 
 great rebellion, which dissolved the Municipal 
 Governments of Eleven States, and consolidated 
 them into a gigantic traitorous government de 
 facto, inspired with the desperate purpose of 
 destroying the Government of the United 
 States. From the beginning of the rebellion 
 to its close, Congress by its legislation kept 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I I / 
 
 pace with the necessities of the nation. In 
 sixteen carefully considered laws, the National 
 Legislature undertook to provide for every 
 contingency, and arm the Executive at every 
 point with the solemn sanction of law." 
 
 Finally, to the court : 
 
 " Your decision will mark an era in American 
 history. The just and final settlement of this 
 great question will take a high place among the 
 great achievements which have immortalized 
 this decade. It will establish forever this truth, 
 of inestimable value to us and to mankind, that 
 a republic can wield the vast enginery of war 
 without breaking down the safeguards of liberty; 
 can suppress insurrection and put down rebel- 
 lion, however formidable, without destroying 
 the bulwarks of law ; can, by the might of its 
 armed millions, preserve and defend both 
 nationality and liberty. Victories on the field 
 were of priceless value, for they plucked the 
 
 H 
 
Il8 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 life of the Republic out of the hands of its 
 enemies : but 
 
 " Peace hath her victories 
 No less renowned than war ;" 
 
 and if the protection of law shall, by your 
 decision, be extended over every acre of our 
 peaceful territory, you will have rendered the 
 great decision of the century." 
 
 With these disjointed and meagre quotations 
 from General Garfield's published speeches we 
 take leave of this portion of his record. We 
 omit, as of a partisan character, all extended 
 reference to his shining renown as a speaker 
 from the hustings in political campaigns. In 
 this field of service he has no superior, and but 
 few rivals, among the leaders of either political 
 party in America. He is a bulwark of strength 
 to the Republican cause in every closely con- 
 tested election, and his aid is always invoked in 
 critical contests. When, in the autumn of 1878, 
 the paper money inflationists in Massachusetts, 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. I 1 9 
 
 under the leadership of Benjamin F. Butler, 
 threatened to gain control of that State, General 
 Garfield was the man chosen by common con- 
 sent to go to the rescue. Before an immense 
 and turbulent audience at Fanueil Hall he made 
 a most convincing speech, answered with telling 
 effect the questions of the mob, and contributed 
 greatly toward the victory of sound principles 
 which followed the canvass. 
 
 HOW AND WHY HE WAS NOMINATED FOR 
 PRESIDENT. 
 
 It must be apparent from what has preceded 
 that the choice of a recognized party leader 
 like General Garfield as a nominee for Presi- 
 dent was, after all, a natural and creditable 
 result The National Convention at Chicago 
 included 756 delegates, of whom General 
 Garfield was one. Its sessions were held in a 
 vast building capable of seating fifteen thousand 
 persons. Every inch of available space outside 
 the area and rostrum reserved for the delegates, 
 
 H 2 
 
I2O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 was crowded, during the prolonged sessions of 
 the Convention, with an eager and attentive 
 audience, in which the best culture and 
 influence of the country were represented. 
 Ex-President Grant was supported for the 
 nomination by a strong constituency, led by 
 Senator Conkling, of New York; Senator Elaine, 
 from Maine, was advocated by a numerous and 
 devoted body of followers. A third division, 
 led by General Garfield, advocated the 
 nomination of Mr. Sherman, whose able 
 administration of the Treasury during the 
 trying period of resumption had given him 
 great popularity among the financial and busi- 
 ness classes. But neither of these three aspirants 
 could command a majority of the delegates. 
 For several days, during some of which the 
 sessions were prolonged far into the evening, the 
 battle hung in even scale. The proceedings of 
 each day were telegraphed over the country and 
 read the next morning with intense interest by 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 121 
 
 millions of people. General Garfield's speech 
 in presenting Mr. Sherman's name as a candi- 
 date had made a profound impression in the 
 Convention and throughout the country. Re- 
 peatedly, when the situation became dangerously 
 exciting, he mounted the platform, and by his 
 calm practical advice and strict justice between 
 opposing elements, soothed the disputants and 
 restored .harmony. The Convention recog- 
 nized in him a dominating personal influence, a 
 leader whom no selfish motive could swerve from 
 absolute fair dealing between the rival interests. 
 However great the excitement that prevailed, 
 when General Garfield rose in his seat or appeared 
 on the platform to speak the vast audience 
 became suddenly silent. There could be no 
 more direct proof of popular leadership than 
 this that he was almost the only man whom 
 that great Convention would always listen to 
 with attention. And so, when the evenly 
 balanced strength of the other candidates and the 
 
122 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 asperities between their supporters produced a 
 dead-lock, which kept the country in suspense 
 from day to day, the people recognized who had 
 become the real master of the Convention, and 
 sent letters and telegrams with the terse sugges- 
 tion "Take Garfield." The Convention obeyed : 
 the nomination was made, all conflicting factions 
 and interests were harmonized, and a trium- 
 phant election at the polls in November was 
 the natural result. 
 
 It may be naturally asked why General Gar- 
 field, possessing all these desirable qualities, was 
 not early put forward as an aspirant for the 
 nomination, like Grant and Sherman and Elaine. 
 There were obvious and sufficient reasons for 
 this. In the first place General Garfield is no 
 " manager." He has never asked for an office 
 nor permitted his friends to do so for him. For 
 eighteen years, as we have seen, he had been 
 elected as the representative of the most exacting 
 and critical constituency in the country. He had 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 123 
 
 served long and faithfully, and he looked forward 
 longingly to a period of comparative rest in the 
 scholarly, dignified atmosphere of the Senate. A 
 seat in the Senate had been easily within his 
 reach during the spring of 1877, but President 
 Hayes had just taken the Executive Chair with 
 a majority in the House opposed to him, and he 
 besought General Garfield to remain in that body, 
 to lead the Republican minority and develop 
 its utmost strength in support of the Adminis- 
 tration. With characteristic unselfishness 
 General Garfield had complied with this request, 
 and two years later the Legislature of Ohio had, 
 by a unanimous vote of all its Republican 
 members, elected him to the seat in the United 
 States Senate then occupied by Senator Thur- 
 man. With this rate of progress General Gar- 
 field and his friends were fully satisfied. To 
 have been chosen Senator by a unanimous vote 
 in a hotly contested political State like Ohio, was 
 an unprecedented compliment. Few of his 
 
124 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 friends doubted that if he should live he would 
 become President ; but he was still young, his 
 place in the Senate had been won, and for higher 
 honours he could well trust to the future. 
 
 There is another fact which bears directly 
 upon this point. A majority of the American 
 people, and General Garfield among them, have 
 come to regard the Presidency of the Republic 
 as too great a distinction to be aspired to and 
 won by the ordinary methods of political 
 management. They prefer to retain that su- 
 preme honour as a gift to be bestowed rather 
 than a prize to be sought. The unplanned and 
 spontaneous nomination of Abraham Lincoln in 
 1860 was the precedent which, more than any 
 other, turned the instinct of popular selection 
 towards General Garfield in 1880. Not because 
 they aspired to the Presidency, but because they 
 were deemed worthy of it these two men were 
 called by the people to that exalted station of 
 power and responsibility. 
 
125 
 
 IV. 
 PERSONALLY. 
 
 Physically, as well as mentally, General Gar- 
 field represents the full stature of manhood. He 
 is more than six feet in height, with broad 
 shoulders, a massive head, and a robust muscular 
 frame. He began life with a sound constitution, 
 which was well developed by his outdoor labour 
 during the growing years of boyhood. This 
 advantage he has retained by a temperate, well- 
 ordered life, in which the only form of dissipa- 
 tion has been overwork the long vigils which he 
 has held over his books when most other men 
 were seeking enjoyment or asleep. Reading is 
 with him a passion which absorbs most of the 
 leisure which can be gleaned from his busy life. 
 In times of greatest preoccupation he goes to 
 books for recreation and rest. The writer 
 
126 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 remembers once, near the close of a Congres- 
 sional Session, when General Garfield was 
 burthened with the responsibilities of the Chair- 
 manship of Appropriations, finding him alone in 
 his library, long after midnight, full of delight over 
 something new that he had found in a Greek 
 history or poem about Pericles and Aspasia. 
 He had been reading systematically, he said, for 
 a week or two past, about the renowned lovers 
 in history, and had been enchanted. Abelard 
 and Heloise, Pericles and Aspasia, Dante and 
 Beatrice, Chopin and Georges Sand, and a dozen 
 other historical couples, had been before his 
 literary telescope during the leisure moments of 
 the previous fortnight, and he was so full of the 
 subject that for the time he could talk of 
 nothing else. That incident illustrates his 
 method of reading. He reads systematically, 
 exhausts a subject and files the results away in 
 his unerring memory for future use or enjoy- 
 ment. He reads most of the really good novels 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 127 
 
 as they appear, and has certain standard favour- 
 ites, like " Pickwick" and " Pendennis," to which 
 he returns for refreshment as people go to the 
 mountains in summer for fresh air. Often as 
 he has read the first chapters of " Pickwick" he 
 has never finished it, because, as he says, its 
 author being dead, such another book cannot 
 be written, and he wants to keep some part of 
 it fresh and untouched for the future. His love 
 for classic poetry is supreme among his literary 
 tastes. During all his service in the army he 
 carried a volume of Horace in his pocket, and 
 among his recently published correspondence 
 are found long letters written to a class-mate 
 from the scene of great military events, dis- 
 cussing nice shades of construction in certain 
 passages of his favourite poet. He learned the 
 German language for the love of it and in 
 order to reach the treasures of its literature; 
 and he mastered the French tongue while in 
 Congress so that he might more thoroughly 
 
128 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 study the financial history of France during the 
 political mutations which have disturbed that 
 country. He is also a tireless student of the 
 English language, and finds the keenest enjoy- 
 ment in etymological research. He tracks a 
 complex word back through all its derivations to 
 the original root with the ardour of a sportsman 
 in the pursuit of game. 
 
 His nature is sympathetic and naturally con- 
 fiding. His weakest point as a politician is 
 that he sees some of his own sincerity reflected 
 in other men and believes them better and 
 truer than they sometimes are. His ardent 
 love of letters does not make him in any sense 
 bookish or pedantic ; he is, on the contrary, 
 eminently a social and companionable person, 
 and enjoys calling intimate friends by their first 
 names. 
 
 He has two homes one, a plain comfortable 
 brick dwelling, which he built some years ago in 
 Washington, the other a neat country-house of 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 1 29 
 
 Gothic architecture on his farm a few miles east 
 of Cleveland. To that farm he goes with his 
 family in May or June, after the close of the 
 Congressional Session, and gives himself up to 
 the relaxation of farming; no dainty, lily-handed 
 pretence, but actual labour in the field with his 
 men. Politicians and Congressional associates 
 who go to " Woodlawn" during the summer 
 months to talk over affairs of State, generally 
 make a journey over the farm and learn some- 
 thing about his cattle and crops before the day 
 is over. 
 
 He is not a " society man" in the conven- 
 tional sense, but he delights in the society of 
 refined and intellectual women. The meetings 
 of the Washington Literary Association, of 
 which he is the President, bring together fre- 
 quently under his roof the most gifted and 
 accomplished residents and visitors at the capital. 
 He likes a game of whist, tells and enjoys a 
 good joke or story, and when the tension of 
 
I3O LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 work or study is relaxed, he devotes himself to 
 recreation with the zest of a man still warmed 
 by the impulses of youth. 
 
 He has little or nothing of the instinct of 
 money -getting, and the two homes above alluded 
 to represent the aggregate savings of his busy 
 life. As a lawyer he could have amassed a 
 fortune in a few years ; had he been less than 
 the scrupulously honest man that he is, his 
 opportunities as the custodian of immense public 
 interests might have indirectly yielded him a 
 competence ; but as it is he is content, and, in 
 comparison with his other gifts, poor in purse. 
 His hospitality is proverbial. He is never so 
 happy as when his house and table are filled 
 with genial friends. A dinner or a family break- 
 fast with him is an opportunity never to be 
 missed, for the latest good book, the newest thing 
 in art, or politics, or literature are sure to come 
 up for an airing before the meal is over. He 
 not only talks well, but he has that even greater 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 13! 
 
 and rarer faculty of putting other people at their 
 best and helping them to tell what they know 
 better than they have ever said it before. None 
 of his successes in later life have made him for- 
 getful of the friends who were true to him in 
 his earlier years, and a class-mate, a veteran 
 soldier of the Forty-Second Regiment, or an old 
 neighbour who knew him when the " Widow 
 Garfield's boy" taught school or worked on the 
 neighbouring farms, is sure of as cordial a 
 greeting as a Cabinet Minister. 
 
 He is not an intense partisan, and some of 
 the thorniest places in his political path have 
 been where he has taken too broad and im- 
 partial a view of pending questions to suit the 
 views and purposes of other party leaders ; but 
 he is a republican of that consistent, symmetrical 
 type which recognizes in the people a great, 
 watchful, powerful sovereign, whose patriotism, 
 intelligence, and readiness to make any necessary 
 sacrifice for the common good may always be 
 
132 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 implicitly trusted. His religion is of that prac- 
 tical, every day quality which gives a tone of 
 purity and moral strength to his life ; he is a 
 Christian without cant, a worshipper without 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 It has been the good fortune of General 
 Garfield to enjoy a domestic life of unclouded 
 sunshine. At the Geauga Seminary, when 
 sixteen years of age, he met a quiet, studious, 
 intellectual girl, named Lucretia Rudolph, be- 
 tween whom and himself there was kindled an 
 attachment which years afterwards ripened into 
 a betrothal, and they were married at Hiram 
 shortly after his graduation at Williams'' College. 
 Four sons and one daughter have blessed that 
 felicitous marriage, and perhaps the saddest day 
 the family has known was when the two elder 
 boys were separated from the home-nest and 
 sent away to College. The honoured mother of 
 President Garfield still lives, a bright, cheerful, 
 venerable old lady, to share his home and see 
 
LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 133 
 
 the ripe fruition of the life for which she toiled 
 and prayed in the days of her early widowhood. 
 Neither she nor any of the -family have been, in 
 any sense, elated by the events of the past year, 
 which have made her son the first man in 
 American history who has been at the same 
 time Representative, Senator, and President- 
 Elect of the United States. 
 
 And thus, blest in his family surroundings, 
 honoured by his countrymen, trained by experi- 
 ence in State affairs as no previous President 
 has been prepared for the Executive office, 
 General Garfield goes from his farm-house at 
 Mentor to the Chair of State consecrated by 
 Washington. His administration begins at a 
 time when the country is prosperous, confident 
 of its future, and at peace with all the world. 
 The new Executive illustrates in his own at- 
 tainments and career the priceless value of that 
 freedom of opportunity, which is the heritage of 
 youth and manhood under " a government of the 
 
134 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 people by the people, for the people." The 
 whole record of his past life carries the assur- 
 ance that he will honour his great opportunity, 
 and leave behind him when he retires an ad- 
 ministration worthy of the best years of the 
 Republic. 
 
 BASLE, March, 1881, 
 
 END. 
 
 PAINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
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