Or I Z W i> 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 OF 
 
 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD 
 
 A MEMORIAL ADDRESS, 
 
 Delivered before the Congress of the United States, February 27 , 1882 . 
 
 BY JAMES G. BLAINE, 
 
 EX-SECRETARY OF STATE. 
 
 Introductory Note.— After the first sorrow for President Garfield’s death was somewhat 
 modified by time, what may be called the formal sorrow of the people began to seek a more 
 elaborate expression. It was felt to be fitting that the nation, as such, by her highest repre¬ 
 sentative body, should, by some suitable memorial services, commemorate the life and death 
 of the late honored Chief Magistrate. Very soon after the opening of Congress, in December 
 of 1881, various resolutions were introduced, looking to a formal observance in memory of 
 the dead. After considerable discussion, the 27th of February, 1882, was fixed upon as the 
 memorial day t and ex-Secretary Blaine was chosen as speaker to pronounce a suitable eulogy 
 on the life and character of Garfield. The occasion was one of the utmost state and solem¬ 
 nity. There were present, besides the two Houses of Congress, the President and his Cabinet, 
 the ministers resident of foreign powers, the generals of the army and commanders of the 
 navy, and hundreds of the most distinguished men and women in America. The orator and 
 the eulogy itself were in keeping with the occasion, and it has been deemed appropriate by 
 the publishers to append to the Life and Work of Garfield the full text of Mr. Blaine’s 
 oration, which here follows.—J. C. R. 
 
 Mr. President :—For the second time in this generation the great depart¬ 
 ments of the Government of the United States are assembled in the Hall of 
 Representatives to do hon<^|o the memory^jf a murdered President. Lin¬ 
 coln fell at the close of a mighty struggle, in which the passions of men had 
 been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of his great life added but 
 another to the lengthened succession of horrors which had marked so many 
 lintels with the blood of the first born. Garfield was slain in a day of peace, 
 when brother had been reconciled to brother, and when anger and hate had 
 been banished from the land. “ Whosoever shall hereafter draw the portrait 
 of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited where such example 
 was last to have been looked for, let him not give it the grim visage of 
 Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate. Let 
 
 Y 44923 
 
674 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GAEFIELD. 
 
 him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; not so much an 
 example of human nature in its depravity and in its paroxysms of crime, as 
 an infernal being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his 
 character.” 
 
 From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the uprising against 
 Charles I., about twenty thousand emigrants came from old England to'New- 
 England. As they came in pursuit of intellectual freedom and ecclesiastical 
 independence rather than for worldly honor and profit, the emigration nat¬ 
 urally ceased when the contest for religious liberty began in earnest at home. 
 The man who struck his most effective blow for freedom of conscience by 
 sailing for the colonies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to leave 
 after 1640. The opportunity had then come on the soil of England for that 
 great contest which established the authority of Parliament, gave religious 
 freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, and committed to the hands 
 of Oliver Cromwell the supreme executive authority of England. The En¬ 
 glish emigration was never renewed, and from these twenty thousand men, 
 with a small emigration from Scotland and from France, are descended the 
 vast numbers who have New England blood in their veins. 
 
 In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., scattered to 
 other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, who were among the 
 most intelligent and enterprising of French subjects—merchants of capital, 
 skilled manufacturers, and handicraftsmen, superior at the time to all others 
 in Europe. A considerable number of these Huguenot French came to Amer¬ 
 ica; a few landed in New England and became honorably prominent in its 
 history. Their names have, in large part, become Anglicized, or have disap¬ 
 peared, but their blood is traceable in many of the most reputable families, 
 and their fame is perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful insti¬ 
 tutions. 
 
 From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Huguenot, 
 came the late President; his father, Abraham Garfield, being descended from 
 the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other. 
 
 It was good stock on both sides—none better, none braver, none truer. 
 There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manliness, of imperishable love 
 of liberty, of undying adherence to principle. Garfield was proud of his 
 blood; and, with as much satisfaction as if he were a British nobleman read¬ 
 ing his stately ancestral record in Burke’s Peerage, he spoke of himself as 
 ninth in descent from those who would not endure the oppression of the Stu¬ 
 arts, and seventh in descent from the brave French Protestants who refused to 
 submit to tyranny even from the Grand Monarque. 
 
 General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits; and during his only visit 
 to England he busied himself in discovering every trace of his forefathers in 
 parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting with a friend, in the gal- 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 675 
 
 lery of the House of Commons, one night, after a long day’s labor in this field 
 of research, he said, with evident elation, that in every war in which, for three 
 centuries, patriots of English blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional 
 government and human liberty, his family had been represented. They were 
 at Marston Moor, at Naseby, and at Preston; they were at Bunker Hill, at 
 Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had battled for the same 
 great cause in the war which preserved the Union of the States. 
 
 Losing his father before he was two years old, the early life of Garfield was 
 one of privation, but its poverty has been made indelicately and unjustly 
 prominent. Thousands of readers have imagined him as the ragged, starving 
 child, whose reality too often greets the eye in the squalid sections of our 
 large cities. General Garfield’s infancy and youth had none of their destitu¬ 
 tion, none of their pitiful features appealing to the tender heart and to the 
 open hand of charity. He was a poor boy in the same sense in which Henry 
 Clay was a poor boy; in which Andrew Jackson was a poor boy ; in which 
 Daniel Webster was a poor boy; in the sense in which a large majority of the 
 eminent men of America, in all generations, have been poor boys. Before a 
 great multitude of men, in a public speech, Mr. Webster bore this testimony: 
 
 “ It did not happen to me to be born in a log-cabin, but my elder brothers 
 and sisters were born in a log-cabin raised amid the snow drifts of New 
 Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke rose first from its rude 
 chimney, and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a 
 white man’s habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. 
 Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to 
 it to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone 
 before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the 
 early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with 
 all I know of this primitive family abode.” 
 
 With the requisite change of scene the same words would aptly portray 
 the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where all are engaged 
 in a common struggle and where a common sympathy and hearty co-operation 
 lighten the burdens of each, is a very different poverty—different in kind, 
 different in influence and effect—from that conscious and humiliating indi¬ 
 gence which is every day forced to contrast itself with neighboring wealth 
 on which it feels a sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier 
 is indeed no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the bound¬ 
 less possibilities of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew 
 up in the agricultural regions of the West where a house-raising, or even a 
 corn-husking, is matter of common interest and helpfulness, with any other 
 feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independence. This honorable 
 independence marked the youth of Garfield as it marks the youth of millions 
 of the best blood and brain now training for the future citizenship and future 
 government of the republic. Garfield was born heir to land, to the title of 
 
676 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 freeholder which has been the patent and passport of self-respect with the 
 Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of Eng¬ 
 land. His adventure on the canal—an alternative between that and the 
 deck of a Lake Erie schooner—was a farmer boy’s device for earning money, 
 just as the New England lad begins a possibly great career by sailing before 
 the mast on a coasting-vessel or on a merchantman bound to the Farther India 
 or to the China Seas. 
 
 No manly man feels any thing of shame in looking back to early struggles 
 with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when he 
 has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one of noble mould 
 desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position* as having 
 been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered the evils of 
 poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity. General Garfield’s 
 youth presented no hardships which family love and family energy did not 
 overcome; subjected him to no privations which he did not cheerfully accept; 
 and left no memories save those which were recalled with delight and were 
 transmitted with profit and with pride. 
 
 Garfield’s early opportunities for securing an education were extremely 
 limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to learn. 
 He could read at three years of age, and each winter he had the advantage 
 of the district school. He read all the books to be found within the circle 
 of his acquaintance: some of them he got by heart. While yet in childhood 
 he was a constant student of the Bible, and became familiar with its litera¬ 
 ture. The dignity and earnestness of his speech in his maturer life gave evi¬ 
 dence of this early training. At eighteen years of age he was able to teach 
 school, and thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college education. To 
 this end he bent all his efforts, working in the harvest field, at the carpenter’s 
 bench, and, in the winter season, teaching the common schools of the neigh¬ 
 borhood. While thus laboriously occupied he found time to prosecute his 
 studies, and was so successful, that at twenty-two years of age he was able to 
 enter the junior class at Williams College, then under the Presidency of the 
 venerable and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullness of his powers, sur¬ 
 vives the eminent pupil to whom he was of inestimable service. 
 
 The history of Garfield’s life to this period presents no novel features. He 
 had undoubtedly shown perseverence, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and ambition 
 —qualities which, be it said for the honor :>f our country, are everywhere to 
 be found among the young men of America. But from his graduation at 
 Williams onward to the hour of his tragical death, Garfield’s career was emi¬ 
 nent and exceptional. Slowly working through his educational period, re¬ 
 ceiving his diploma when twenty-four years of age, he seemed at one bound 
 to spring into conspicuous and brilliant success. Within six years he was 
 successively President of a college, State Senator of Ohio, Major-General of 
 the Army of the United States, and Representative elect to the National 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 677 
 
 Congress. A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within a period so 
 brief, and to a man so young, is without precedent or parallel in the history 
 of the country. 
 
 Garfield’s army life was begun with no other military knowledge than such 
 as he had hastily gained from books in the few months preceding his march 
 to the field. Stepping from civil life to the head of a regiment, the first order 
 he received when ready to cross the Ohio was to assume command of a bri¬ 
 gade, and to operate as an independent force in Eastern Kentucky. His 
 immediate duty was to check the advance of Humphrey Marshall, who was 
 marching down the Big Sandy with the intention of occupying, in connection 
 with other Confederate forces, the entire territory of Kentucky, and of pre¬ 
 cipitating the State into secession. This was at the close of the year 1861. 
 Seldom, if ever, has a young college professor been thrown into a more em¬ 
 barrassing and discouraging position. He knew just enough of military 
 science, as he expressed it himself, to measure the extent of his ignorance, 
 and with a handful of men he was marching, in rough winter weather, into a 
 strange country, among a hostile population, to confront a largely superior 
 force, under the command of a distinguished graduate of West Point, who had 
 seen active and important service in two preceding wars. 
 
 The result of the campaign is matter of history. The skill, the endurance, 
 the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the courage he imparted to his 
 men, raw and untried as himself, the measures he adopted to increase his 
 force, and to create in the enemy’s mind exaggerated estimates of his num¬ 
 bers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of Marshall, the capture of his camp, 
 the dispersion of his force, and the emancipation of an important territory 
 from the control of the rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of dis¬ 
 asters to the Union army, Garfield’s victory had an unusual and extraneous 
 importance, and in the popular judgment elevated the young commander to 
 the rank of a military hero. With less than 2,000 men in his entire com¬ 
 mand, with a mobilized force of only 1,100, without cannon, he had met an 
 army of 5,000 and defeated them—driving Marshall’s forces successively from 
 two strongholds of their own selection, fortified with abundant artillery. 
 Major-General Buell, commanding the Department of the Ohio, an ex¬ 
 perienced and able soldier of the regular army, published an order of thanks 
 and congratulation on the brilliant result of the Big Sandy campaign, which 
 would have turned the head of a less cool and sensible man than Garfield. 
 Buell declared that his services had called into action the highest qualities of 
 a soldier; and President Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the 
 more substantial reward of a brigadier-general’s commission, to bear date 
 from the day of his decisive victory over Marshall. 
 
 The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its brilliant be- 
 ginning. With his new commission, he was assigned to the command of a 
 brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the second and decisive 
 
678 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 day’s fight in the great battle of Shiloh. The remainder of the year 1862 was 
 not especially eventful to Garfield, as it was not to the armies with which he 
 was serving. His practical sense was called into exercise in completing the 
 task, assigned him by General Buell, of reconstructing bridges and re-establish¬ 
 ing lines 6f railway communication for the army. His occupation in this 
 useful but not brilliant field was varied by service on court-martials of im¬ 
 portance, in which department of duty he won a valuable reputation, attracting 
 the notice and securing the approval of the able and eminent Judge Advocate- 
 General of the Army. That of itself was warrant to honorable fame; for 
 among the great men who in those trying days gave themselves, with entire 
 devotion, to the service of their country, one who brought to that service the 
 ripest learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied attainments, who 
 labored with modesty and shunned applause, who in the day of triumph sat 
 reserved and silent and grateful—as Francis Deak in the hour of Hungary’s 
 deliverance—was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, who in his honorable retirement 
 enjoys the respect and veneration of all who love the Union of the States. 
 
 Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the highly important and responsible 
 post of chief-of-staff to General Rosecrans, then at the head of the Army of 
 the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military campaign no subordinate officer 
 requires sounder judgment and quicker knowledge of men than the chief-of- 
 staff to the commanding general. An indiscreet man in such a position can 
 sow more discord, breed more jealousy, and disseminate more strife, than any 
 other officer in the entire organization. When General Garfield assumed his 
 new duties he found various troubles already well developed and seriously 
 affecting the value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumberland. The 
 energy, the impartiality, and the tact with which he sought to allay these dis¬ 
 sensions and to discharge the duties of his new and trying position vyill always 
 remain one of the most striking proofs of his great versatility. His military 
 duties closed on the memorable field of Chickamauga, a field which, however 
 disastrous to the Union arms, gave to him the occasion of winning imperish¬ 
 able laurels. The very rare distinction was accorded him of a great promotion 
 for his bravery on a field that was lost. President Lincoln appointed him a 
 major-general in the Army of the United States for gallant and meritorious 
 conduct in the battle of Chickamauga. 
 
 The Army of the Cumberland was reorganized, under the command of 
 General Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield one of its divisions. He was 
 extremely desirous to accept the position, but was embarrassed by the fact 
 that he had, a year before, been elected to Congress, and the time when he 
 must take his seat was drawing near. He preferred to remain in the military 
 service, and had within his own breast the largest confidence of success in the 
 wider field which his new rank opened to him. Balancing the arguments on 
 the one side and the other, anxious to determine what was for the best, de¬ 
 sirous above all things to do his patriotic duty, he was decisively influenced 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 679 
 
 by the advice of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, both of whom as¬ 
 sured him that he could, at that time, be of especial value in the House of 
 Representatives. He resigned liis commission of major-general on the 5th day 
 of December, 1863, and took his seat in the House of Representatives on the 
 7th. He had served two years and four months in the army, and had just 
 completed his thirty-second year. 
 
 The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-eminently entitled in history to the desig¬ 
 nation of the War Congress. It was elected while the war was flagrant, and 
 every member was chosen upon the issues involved in the continuance of the 
 struggle. The Thirty-seventh Congress had, indeed, legislated to a large extent 
 on war measures, but it was chosen before any one believed that secession of 
 the States would be actually attempted. The magnitude of' the work which 
 fell upon its successor was unprecedented, both in respect to the vast sums of 
 money raised for the support of the army and navy, and of the new and ex¬ 
 traordinary powers of legislation which it was forced to exercise. Only 
 twenty-four States were represented, and 182 members were upon its roll. 
 Among these were many distinguished party leaders on both sides, veterans in 
 the public service, with established reputations for ability, and with that skill 
 which comes only from parliamentary experience. Into this assemblage of 
 men Garfield entered without special preparation, and it might almost be said 
 unexpectedly. The question of taking command of a division of troops under 
 General Thomas, or taking his seat in Congress, was kept open till the last mo¬ 
 ment—so late, indeed, that the resignation of his military commission and his 
 appearance in the House were almost contemporaneous. He wore the uniform 
 of a major-general of the United States army on Saturday, and on Monday, 
 in civilian’s dress, he answered to the roll-call as a Representative in Congress 
 from the State of Ohio. X 
 
 He was especially fortunate in the constituency which elected him. Des¬ 
 cended almost entirely from New England stock, the men of the Ashtabula 
 district were intensely radical on all questions relating to human rights. Well 
 educated, thrifty, thoroughly intelligent in affairs, acutely discerning of 
 character, not quick to bestow confidence, and slow to withdraw it, they were 
 at once the most helpful and most exacting of supporters. Their tenacious 
 trust in men in whom they have once confided is illustrated by the unparal¬ 
 leled fact that Elisha Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings, and James A. Garfield 
 represented the district for fifty-four years. 
 
 There is no test of a man’s ability in any department of public life more 
 severe than service in the House of Representatives; there is no place where 
 so little deference is paid to reputation previously acquired, or to eminence 
 won outside; no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings 
 or the failures of beginners. What a man gains in the House he gains by 
 sheer force of his own character; and if he loses and falls back he must expect 
 no mercy, and will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival 
 
680 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 of the strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive and 
 no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is impartially- 
 weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed. 
 
 With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest member in 
 the House when he entered, and was but seven years from his college gradua¬ 
 tion. But he had not been in his seat sixty days before his ability was re¬ 
 cognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence 
 of one who belonged there. The House was crowded with strong men of both 
 parties; nineteen of them h$ve since been transferred to the Senate, and 
 many of them have served with distinction ill the gubernatorial chairs of 
 their respective States, and on foreign missions of great consequence; but 
 among them all none grew so rapidly, none so firmly as Garfield. As is said 
 by Trevelyan of his parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded “ because all the 
 world in concert could not have kept him in the background; and because, 
 when once in the front, he played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a 
 commanding ease that were but the outward symptoms of the immense re¬ 
 serves of energy, on which it was in his power to draw.” Indeed the appar¬ 
 ently reserved force which Garfield possessed was one of his great character¬ 
 istics. He never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done 
 better. He never expended so much strength but that he seemed to be hold¬ 
 ing additional power at call. This is one of the happiest and rarest distinc¬ 
 tions of an effective debater, and often counts for as much in persuading an 
 assembly as the eloquent and elaborate argument. 
 
 The great measure of Garfield’s fame was filled by his service in the House 
 of Representatives. His military life, illustrated by honorable performance, 
 and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, prematurely terminated, and 
 necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might have done in a field 
 where the great prizes are so few can not be profitable. It is sufficient to say 
 that, as a soldier, he did his duty bravely; he did it intelligently; he won an 
 enviable fame, and he retired from the service without blot or breath against 
 him. 
 
 As a lawyer, though admirably equipped for the profession, he can 
 scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts he made at 
 the bar were distinguished by the same high order of talent which he exhib¬ 
 ited on every field where he was put to the test; and if a man may be ac¬ 
 cepted as a competent judge of his own capacities and adaptations, the law 
 was the profession to which Garfield should have devoted himself. But fate 
 ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will rest largely upon his 
 service in the House of Representatives. That service was exceptionally long. 
 He was nine times consecutively chosen to the House, an honor enjoyed by 
 not more than six other Representatives of the more than 5,000 who have 
 been elected from the organization of the government to this hour. 
 
 As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined, where 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 681 
 
 the position has been chosen and the ground laid out, Garfield must be 
 assigned a very high rank. More, perhaps, than any man with whom he was 
 associated in public life, he gave careful and systematic study to public 
 questions, and he came to every discussion in which he took part with elabo¬ 
 rate and complete preparation. He was a steady and indefatigable worker. 
 Those who imagine that talent or genius can supply the place or achieve the 
 results of labor will find no encouragement in Garfield’s life. In preliminary 
 work he was apt, rapid, and skillful. He possessed, in a high degree, the 
 power of readily absorbing ideas and facts, and, like Dr. Johnson, had the art 
 of getting from a book ail that was of value in it by a reading apparantly so 
 quick and cursory that it seemed like a mere glance at the table of contents. 
 He was a pre-eminently fair and candid man in debate, took no petty advan¬ 
 tage, stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal allusions, rarely ap¬ 
 pealed to prejudice, did not seek to influence passion. He had a quicker eye 
 for the strong point of his adversary than for his weak point, and on his own 
 * side he so marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his hearers forget any 
 possible lack in the complete strength of his position. He had a habit of 
 stating his opponent’s side with such amplitude of fairness and such liberality 
 of concession that his followers often complained that he was giving his case 
 away. But never in his prolonged participation in the proceedings of the 
 House did he give his case away, or fail in the judgment of competent and 
 impartial listeners to gain the mastery. 
 
 These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great debater, did not, 
 however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A parliamentary leader, as 
 that term is understood wherever free representative government exists, is 
 necessarily and very strictly the organ of his party. An ardent American 
 defined the instinctive warmth of patriotism when he oftered the toast: “ Our 
 country always right; but right or wrong, our country.” The parliamentary 
 leader who has a body of followers that will do and dare and die for the cause, 
 is one who believes his party always right; but right or wrong, is for his party. 
 No more important or exacting duty devolves upon him than the selection 
 of the field and the time for contest. He must know not merely how to 
 strike, but where to strike, and when to strike. He often skillfully avoids the 
 strength of his opponent’s position and scatters confusion in his ranks, by at¬ 
 tacking an exposed point when really the righteousness of the cause and the 
 strength of logical intrenchment are against him. He conquers often both 
 against the right and the heavy battalions; as when young Charles Fox, in 
 the days of his Toryism, carried the House of Commons against justice, 
 against its immemoral rights, against his own convictions, and in the interest 
 of a corrupt administration, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, drove 
 Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex had chosen him and 
 installed Luttrell in defiance, not merely of law, but of public decency. For 
 an achievement of that kind Garfield was disqualified—disqualified by the 
 
682 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GAKFIELD. 
 
 texture of his mind, by the honesty of his heart, by his conscience, and by 
 every instinct and aspiration of his nature. 
 
 The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in 
 this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. Each 
 was a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, 
 differing widely, each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common 
 —the power to command. In the give and take of daily discussion, in the art 
 of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers; in the 
 skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and 
 courage the varying phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, 
 it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our Congressional 
 history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be im¬ 
 possible to find in the parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. 
 Clay in 1841, when at sixty-four years of age he took the control of the 
 Whig party from the President who had received their suffrages, against the 
 power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the 
 Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise 
 in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plenitude of power, 
 he hurled against John Tyler, with deepest scorn, the mass of that con¬ 
 quering column which had swept over the land in 1840 and drove his ad¬ 
 ministration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. Doug¬ 
 las achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, when, in 1854, against the se¬ 
 cret desires of a strong administration, against the wise counsel of the older 
 chiefs, against the conservative instinct, and even the moral sense of the 
 country, he forced a reluctant Congress into a repeal of the Missouri compro¬ 
 mise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, in his contests from 1865 to 1868, actually ad¬ 
 vanced his parliamentary leadership until Congress tied the hands of the Presi¬ 
 dent, and governed the country by its own will, leaving only perfunctory duties 
 to be discharged by the Executive. With $200,000,000 of patronage in his hands 
 at the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the Cabinet 
 and the moral power of Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson could not com¬ 
 mand the support of one-third in either House against the parliamentary upris¬ 
 ing of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned 
 leader. 
 
 From these three great men Garfield differed radically,—differed in the 
 quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of ambition. He 
 could not do what they did, but he could do what they could not, and in the 
 breadth of his Congressional work he left that which will longer exert a 
 potential influence among men, and which, measured by the severe test of 
 posthumous criticism, will secure a more enduring and more enviable fame. 
 
 Those unfamiliar with Garfield’s industry, and ignorant of the details of 
 his work, may, in some degree, measure them by the annals of Congress. No 
 one of the generation of public men to which he belonged has contributed so 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 683 
 
 much that will be valuable for future reference. His speeches are numerous, 
 many of them brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully phrased, and ex¬ 
 haustive of the subject under consideration. Collected from the scattered 
 pages of ninety royal octavo volumes of Congressional Record, they would 
 present an invaluable compendium of the political history of the most im¬ 
 portant era through which the national government has ever passed. When 
 the history of this period shall be impartially written, when war legislation, 
 measures of reconstruction, protection of human rights, amendments to the 
 Constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps toward specie resumption, 
 true theories of revenue maybe reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and dis¬ 
 connected from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their 
 true value, and will be found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and argu¬ 
 ment, of clear analysis, and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority 
 were accessible, his speeches in the House of Representatives, from December, 
 1863, to June, 1880, would give a well-connected history and complete defense 
 of the important legislation of the seventeen eventful years that constitute 
 his parliamentary life. Far beyond that, his speeches would be *found to 
 forecast many great measures yet to be completed—measures which he knew 
 were beyond the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently believed 
 would secure popular approval within the period of his own lifetime, and by 
 the aid of his own efforts. 
 
 Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary leaders, it is 
 not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the records of public life. He 
 perhaps more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in his supreme faith in the all- 
 conquering power of a principle. He had the love of learning and the patient 
 industry of investigation, to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence 
 and his Presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of mind 
 which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in all our public life 
 have left the great Massachusetts Senator without an intellectual peer. 
 
 In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the House 
 of Commons present points of essential difference from Garfield. But some 
 of his methods recall the best features in the strong, independent course of 
 Sir Robert Peel, and striking resemblances are discernible in that most prom¬ 
 ising of modern conservatives, who died too early for his country and his 
 fame, the Lord George Bentinck. He had all of Burke’s love for the sublime 
 and the beautiful, with, possibly, something of his superabundance; and in 
 his faith and his magnanimity, in his power of statement, in his subtle 
 analysis, in his faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and 
 world of illustration, one is reminded of that English statesman of to-day, 
 who confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the dauntless, re¬ 
 viled by those whom he would relieve as bitterly as by those whose supposed 
 rights he is forced to invade, still labors with serene courage for the ameliora¬ 
 tion of Ireland, and for the honor of the English name. 
 
684 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GABFIELD. 
 
 Garfield’s nomination to the Presidency, while not predicted or anticipated, 
 was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in Congress, his solid 
 qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his then recent election as 
 Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye as a man occupying the very 
 highest rank among those entitled to be called statesmen. It was not mere 
 chance that brought him this high honor. “We must,” says Mr. Emerson, 
 “ reckon success a constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust health and has 
 slept well, and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his de¬ 
 parture from Greenland, he will steer west, and his ships will reach New¬ 
 foundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man, and 
 the ships will sail 600, 1,000, 1,500 miles further and reach Labrador and New 
 England. There is no chance in results.” 
 
 As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was met with a 
 storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it continued with in¬ 
 creasing volume and momentum until the close of his victorious campaign : 
 
 No might nor greatness in mortality 
 Can censure ’scape; backwounding calumny 
 The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong 
 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ? 
 
 Under it all he was calm and strong, and confident; never lost his self- 
 possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill-considered word. Indeed, 
 nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more creditable than his bear¬ 
 ing through those five full months of vituperation—a prolonged agony of trial 
 to a sensitive man, a constant and cruel draft upon the powers of moral en¬ 
 durance. The great mass of these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and 
 with the general d&bris of'the campaign fell into oblivion. But in a few in¬ 
 stances the iron entered his soul, and he died with the injury unforgotten, if 
 not unforgiven. 
 
 One aspect of Garfield’s candidacy was unprecedented. Never before in 
 the history of partisan contests in this country had a successful Presidential 
 candidate spoken freely on passing events and current issues. To attempt any 
 thing of the kind seemed novel, rash, and even desperate. The older class 
 of voters recalled the unfortunate Alabama letter, in which Mr. Clay was sup¬ 
 posed to have signed his political death-warrant. They remembered also the 
 hot-tempered effusion by which General Scott lost a large share of his popu¬ 
 larity before his nomination, and the unfortunate speeches which rapidly con¬ 
 sumed the remainder. The younger voters had seen Mr. Greeley in a series 
 of vigorous and original addresses, preparing the pathway for his own defeat. 
 Unmindful of these warnings, unheeding the advice of friends, Garfield spoke 
 to large crowds as he journeyed to and from New York in August, to a great 
 multitude in that city, to delegations and deputations of every kind that 
 called at Mentor during the summer and autumn. With innumerable critics, 
 watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might be turned into odium or 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 685 
 
 ridicule, or a sentence that might be distorted to his own or his party’s injury, 
 Garfield did not trip or halt in any one of his seventy speeches. This seems 
 all the more remarkable when it is remembered that he did not write what he 
 said, and yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such ad¬ 
 mirable precision of phrase as to defy the accident of misreport and the 
 malignity of misrepresentation. 
 
 In the beginning of his Presidential life Garfield’s experience did not yield 
 him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so large a portion of 
 the President’s time were distasteful to him, and were unfavorably contrasted 
 with his legislative work. “ I have been dealing all these years with ideas,” 
 he impatiently exclaimed one day, “and here I am dealing only with persons. 
 I have been heretofore treating of. the fundamental principles of government, 
 and here I am considering all day whether A or B shall be appointed to this 
 or that office.” He was earnestly seeking some practicable way of correcting 
 the evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldly patronage— 
 evils always appreciated and often discussed by him, but whose magnitude 
 had been more deeply impressed upon his mind since his accession to the 
 Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive improvement in the mode of 
 appointment and in the tenure of office would have been proposed by him, 
 and, with the aid of Congress, no doubt perfected. 
 
 But while many of the executive duties were not grateful to him, he was 
 assiduous and conscientious in their discharge. From the very outset he ex¬ 
 hibited administrative talent of a high order. He grasped the helm of office 
 with the hand of a master. In this respect, indeed, he constantly surprised 
 many who were most intimately associated with him in the government, and 
 especially those who had feared that he might be lacking in the executive 
 faculty. His disposition of business was orderly and rapid. His power of 
 analysis, and his skill in classification, enabled him to dispatch a vast mass 
 of detail with singular promptness and ease. His cabinet meetings were ad¬ 
 mirably conducted. His clear presentation of official subjects, his well con¬ 
 sidered suggestion of topics on which discussion was invited, his quick decision 
 when all had been heard„combined to show a thoroughness of mental training 
 as rare as his natural ability and his facile adaptation to a new and enlarged 
 field of labor. 
 
 With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, with a cool 
 calculation of the obstacles in his way, impelled always by a generous en¬ 
 thusiasm, Garfield conceited that much might be done by his administration 
 toward restoring harmony between the different sections of the Union. He 
 was anxious to go South and speak to the people. As early as April he had 
 ineffectually endeavored to arrange for a trip to Nashville, whither he had 
 been cordially invited, and he was again disappointed a few weeks later to- 
 find that he could not go to South Carolina to attend the centennial celebra¬ 
 tion of the victory of the Cowpens. But for the autumn he definitely counted 
 
686 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 on being present at three memorable assemblies in the South—the celebration 
 at Yorktown, the opening of the Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, and the meet¬ 
 ing of the Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already turning 
 over in his mind his address for each occasion, and the three taken together, 
 he said to a friend, gave him the exact scope and verge which he needed. At 
 Yorktown he would have before him the associations of a hundred years that 
 bound the South and North in the sacred memory of a common danger and a 
 common victory. At Atlanta he would present the material interests and the 
 industrial development which appealed to the thrift and independence of 
 every household, and which should unite the two sections by the instinct 
 of self-interest and self-defense. At Chattanooga he would revive mem¬ 
 ories of the war only to show that after all its disaster and all its suffering, 
 the country was stronger and greater, the Union rendered indissoluble, and 
 the future, through the agony and blood of one generation, made brighter 
 and better for all. 
 
 Garfield’s ambition for the success of his administration was high. With 
 strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was in no danger of attempt¬ 
 ing rash experiments or of resorting to-the empiricism of statesmanship. But 
 he believed that renewed and closer attention should be given to questions 
 affecting the material interests and commercial prospects of 50,000,000 of peo¬ 
 ple. He believed that our continental relations, extensive and undeveloped 
 as they are, involved responsibility, and could be cultivated into profitable 
 friendship or be abandoned to harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He be¬ 
 lieved with equal confidence that an essential forerunner to a new era of na¬ 
 tional progress must be a feeling of contentment in every section of the 
 Union, and a generous belief that the benefits and burdens of government 
 would be common to all. Himself a conspicuous illustration of what ability 
 and ambition may do under republican institutions, he loved his country with 
 a passion of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given to her 
 advancement. He was an American in all his aspirations, and he looked to 
 the destiny and influence of the United States with the philosophic composure 
 of Jefferson and the demonstrative confidence of John Adams. 
 
 The political events which disturbed the President’s serenity for many 
 weeks before that fateful day in July form an important chapter in his career, 
 and, in his own judgment, involved questions of principle and of right 
 which are vitally essential to the constitutional administration of the Fed¬ 
 eral Government. It would be out of place here and now to speak the lan¬ 
 guage of controversy, but the events referred to, however they may continue 
 to be a source of contention with others, have become, so far as Garfield is 
 concerned, as much a matter of history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his 
 illustrious service in the House. Detail is not needful, and personal antago¬ 
 nism shall not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. The motives of 
 those opposing him are not to be here adversely interpreted, nor their course 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 687 
 
 harshly characterized. But of the dead President this is to be said, and said 
 because his own speech is forever silenced, and he can be no more heard ex¬ 
 cept through the fidelity and love of surviving friends: From the beginning 
 to' the end of the controversy he so much deplored, the President was never for 
 one. moment actuated by any motive of gain to himself or of loss to others. 
 Least of all men did he harbor revenge, rarely did he ever show resentment, 
 and malice was not in his nature. He was congenially employed only in the 
 exchange of good offices and the doing of kindly deeds. 
 
 There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble till the fatal shot 
 entered his body, when the President would not gladly, for the sake of restor¬ 
 ing harmony, have retraced any step he had taken if such retracing had 
 merely involved consequences personal to himself. The pride of consistency, 
 or any sense of supposed humiliation that might result from surrendering his 
 position, had not a feather’s weight with him. No man was ever less subject 
 to such influences from within or from without. But after most anxious de¬ 
 liberation, and the coolest survey of all the circumstances, he solemnly believed 
 that the true prerogatives of the Executive were involved in the issue which 
 had been raised, and that he would be unfaithful to his supreme obligation if 
 he failed to maintain in all their vigor the constitutional rights and dignities 
 of his great office. He believed this in all the convictions of conscience when 
 in sound and vigorous health, and he believed it in his suffering and prostra¬ 
 tion in the last conscious thought which his wearied mind bestowed on the 
 transitory struggles of life. 
 
 More than this need not be said. Less than this could not be said. Jus¬ 
 tice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the living, demands 
 the declaration that, in all the bearings of the subject, actual or possible, the 
 President was content in his mind, justified in his conscience, immovable in 
 his conclusions. 
 
 The religious element in Garfield’s character was deep and earnest. In 
 his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that great 
 Baptist communion which, in different ecclesiastical establishments, is 
 so numerous and so influential throughout all parts of the United States. 
 But the broadening tendency of his mind and his active spirit of inquiry were 
 early apparent, and carried him beyond the dogmas of sect and the restraints 
 of association. In selecting a college in which to continue his education, he 
 rejected Bethany, though presided over by Alexander Campbell, the greatest 
 preacher of his Church. His reasons were characteristic : first, that Bethany 
 leaned too heavily toward slavery; and, second, that being himself a Disciple, 
 and the son of Disciple parents, he had but little acquaintance with people of 
 other beliefs, and he thought it would make him more liberal, quoting his own 
 words, both in his religious and general views, to go into a new circle and be 
 under new influences. 
 
 The liberal tendency which he anticipated as the result of wider cult- 
 
688 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 ure was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere sectarian belief, 
 and with eager interest pushed his investigations in the direction of modern 
 progressive thought. He followed with quickening step in the paths of ex¬ 
 ploration and speculation so fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Huxley, by 
 Tyndall, and by other living scientists of the radical and advanced type. 
 His own Church, binding its disciples by no formulated creed, but accepting 
 the Old and New Testaments as the Word of God with unbiased liberality of 
 private interpretation, favored, if it did not stimulate, the spirit of investiga¬ 
 tion. Its members profess with sincerity, and profess only, to be of one mind 
 and one faith with those who immediately followed the Master, and who 
 were first called Christians at Antioch. 
 
 But however high Garfield reasoned of “fixed Me, free will, foreknowl¬ 
 edge absolute,” he was never separated from the Church of the Disciples in 
 his affections and in his associations. For him it held the ark of the cov¬ 
 enant. To him it was the gate of heaven. The world of religious belief is 
 full of solecisms and contradictions. A philosophic observer declares that 
 men by the thousand will die in defense of a creed whose doctrines they do 
 not comprehend, and whose tenets they habitually violate. It is equally 
 true that men, by the thousand, will cling to church organizations with in¬ 
 stinctive and undying fidelity when their belief, in maturer years, is radically 
 different from that which inspired them as neophytes. 
 
 But after this range of speculation, and this latitude of doubt, Garfield 
 came back always with freshness and delight to the simpler instincts of re¬ 
 ligious faith, which, earliest implanted, longest survive. Not many weeks 
 before his assassination, walking on the banks of the Potomac with a friend, 
 and conversing on those topics of personal religion, concerning which noble 
 natures have an unconquerable reserve, he said that he found the Lord’s 
 Prayer, and the simple petitions learned in infancy, infinitely restful to him, 
 not merely in their stated repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as 
 he went about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of Scripture had a very 
 strong hold on his memory and his heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh, 
 some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher who prefaced his sermon with 
 reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been 
 the subject of careful study with Garfield during all his religious life. He 
 was greatly impressed by the elocution of the preacher, and declared that it 
 had imparted a new and deeper meaning to the maj'estic utterances of St. 
 Paul. He referred often, in after years, to that memorable service, and dwelt 
 with exaltation of feeling upon the radiant promise and the assured hope with 
 which the great apostle of the Gentiles was “ persuaded that neither death, 
 nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
 things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
 separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 
 
 The crowning characteristics of General Garfield’s religious opinions, as, 
 
BLAINE’S EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 
 
 689 
 
 indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things he had charity. 
 Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the qualities which he 
 possessed himself—sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression. With 
 him the inquiry was not so much what a man believes, but does he believe it? 
 The lines of his friendship and his confidence encircled men of every creed, 
 and men of no creed; and to the end of his life, on his ever-lengthening list 
 of friends, were to be found the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an 
 honest-minded and generous-hearted freethinker 
 
 On the morning of Saturday, July 2, the President was a contented and 
 happy man—not in an ordinary degree, bu-t joyfully, almost boyishly happy. 
 On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious 
 enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and a 
 «keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory 
 vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in 
 its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor, and destined to grow stronger, 
 that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely 
 passed; that trouble lay behind him and not before him ; that he was soon to 
 meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but 
 lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his 
 Alma Mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, 
 and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed 
 every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his college 
 course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his country¬ 
 men. 
 
 Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this 
 world, on that quiet July morning, James A. Garfield may well have been a 
 happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition 
 of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. 
 One moment he stood erect, strong, confident, in the years stretching peace¬ 
 fully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed 
 to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. 
 
 Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the 
 very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he 
 was thrust from the full tide of this world’s interest, from its hopes, its aspi¬ 
 rations, its victories, into the visible presence of death—and he did not quail. 
 Not alone for fihe one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could 
 give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly 
 languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently 
 borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. 
 What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell!—What 
 brilliant broken plans! what baffled, high ambitions! what sundering of strong, 
 warm, manhood’s friendships! what bitter rending of sweet household ties! 
 Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a 
 
690 
 
 LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich' honors of her early toil 
 and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys 
 not yet emerged from childhood’s day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; 
 the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day 
 and every day rewarding a father’s love and care ; and in his heart the eager, 
 rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him desolation and great dark¬ 
 ness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with 
 instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weak¬ 
 ness, he became the center of a nation’s love, enshrined in the prayers of a 
 world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his 
 suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced 
 death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac 
 hiss of the assassin’s bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resigna¬ 
 tion he bowed to the divine decree. 
 
 As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately 
 mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he 
 begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from 
 its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great 
 people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to 
 die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of 
 its manifold voices, with wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, 
 he looked out wistfully upon the ocean’s changing wonders,—on its far sails, 
 whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to 
 break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arch¬ 
 ing low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let 
 us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt 
 and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the reced¬ 
 ing world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and felt 
 already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.