Law Studies.--Becomes Interested in Politics.--Delivers
Oration at the Williams Commencement.--Elected State
Senator.--His Courage and Eloquence.
Shortly after his marriage, Garfield entered his name in the law office
of Riddle and Williamson, attorneys in Cleveland, Ohio, as a student of
law. This formality was necessary in order to ensure admission to the
bar. It was not here, however, that he studied, and for a long time his
friends knew nothing of the step he had taken. After his hours of
teaching, at odd moments through the day, and often far into the night,
he pored over his law-books with the same intensity of purpose he had
shown in all his other undertakings.
It was his patriotic interest in the measures which were then before the
legislature of Ohio that first led him to take up a critical study of
law. He always wanted to go to the bottom of things, and his college
training under President Hopkins had developed a wonderful power of
synopsizing. In entering upon a course of law studies, it was not so
much with the thought of becoming a lawyer, as to make himself
conversant with the principles of law. When, however, he was admitted
to the bar, he was so thoroughly equipped for practice, that he could go
into courts of any grade and try the most intricate cases.
In later years a friend said of him:--
"Had Garfield gone to the bar for a living, his gift of oratory, his
strong analytical powers, and his ability to do hard work, would soon
have made him eminent. In the few law cases he took during vacation
seasons he held his own with some of the best lawyers of the country. In
one of them his ability to grasp successfully with an unexpected
situation was signally demonstrated. The case was tried in Mobile, and
involved the ownership of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Garfield had
prepared himself upon an important and difficult question of law
involved, and felt a comfortable sense of readiness for the trial; but
after he reached Mobile the court ordered the consolidation of three
suits concerning the road, and the question upon which he had prepared
himself passed wholly out of sight; and, as he wrote to a friend, 'the
whole entanglement of an insolvent railroad twenty-five years old, lying
across four states and costing $20,000,000, came upon us at once.' He
was assigned the duty of summing up the case for his side. During the
trial he did five days and five nights of the hardest work he ever did
in his life. Then he made his argument and won the case."
It will be remembered that when at college, Garfield always took an
active part in political discussions, although he did not cast a vote
until four years after his majority. At that time the new Republican
party was formed on the anti-slavery platform, with Fremont and Dayton
as their candidates. Garfield heartily sympathized with this party that
"drew its first inspiration from that fire of liberty which God has
lighted in every human heart," and from that time forward became its
earnest and ready champion. During the campaign of 1856 he was
constantly called upon for speeches and lectures. A pupil at Hiram at
that time says:--
"He would attend to his duties at the Institute through the day, jump
into a buggy at night, taking me or some other student to keep him
company, put his arm around me, talk all the way to the place where the
meeting was to be held, be it ten or twenty miles. It would not be
conversation on politics, but on history, general literature, or some
great principle. He was always welcomed upon the platform, and after
speaking would return, taking up the theme we had dropped, getting home
in the small hours in the morning.
"At nine o'clock the next day he would be in the school as fresh as
ever. When Sunday came he would have a sermon as fresh and vigorous as
if it had been the study of the week. All the while he was carrying on
the study of law and attending to the duties incumbent on him as the
president of the Institute, keeping up a course of general reading, and
his acquaintance with the classics."
In 1859, only three years after his graduation, the faculty of Williams
College honored Garfield with an invitation to deliver the master's
oration at Commencement. The able, brilliant speaker was constantly in
demand, and he won fresh laurels wherever he went.
Upon his return to Ohio, he found to his surprise that his name had been
proposed in Portage county for the state senatorship. The unanimous
support he received was very gratifying, yet his first thought was of
the Institute.
"You will be away but a few weeks at a time," said the trustees; "your
influence is greatly needed at the Capitol, and Hiram must be content to
wait."
So, after much persuasion, Garfield accepted the nomination, and the
Institute jealously kept his name, though deprived of his presence.
It was in January, 1860, that Garfield first took his seat in the state
senate. Secession and a civil war seemed imminent, but the North
continued strong and steadfast in its denunciations against slavery.
Garfield, scarcely thirty years of age at this time, was the youngest
member of the senate. Jacob D. Cox, another radical member, and
Professor Monroe of Oberlin College, were his intimate friends, and
zealous coadjutors. The 'radical triumvirate,' they were called by the
opposite party, and when the constitutional amendment which would give
the slave states the continuation of slavery, was submitted to the Ohio
legislature, Garfield led the brave minority with marked ability and
courage.
In less than ten years from the time he visited Columbus with his
mother, he had become one of the most prominent members of the state
senate!
The following extract from the Fourth of July oration he delivered that
year at Ravenna gives us a passing glimpse of his patriotic eloquence--
"The granite hills are not so changeless and abiding as the restless
sea. Quiet is no certain pledge of permanence and safety. Trees may
flourish and flowers may bloom upon the quiet mountain side, while
silently the trickling rain-drops are filling the deep cavern behind its
rocky barriers, which, by-and-by, in a single moment, shall hurl to wild
ruin its treacherous peace. It is true that in our land there is no such
outer quiet, no such deceitful repose. Here society is a restless and
surging sea. The roar of the billows, the dash of the wave, is forever
in our ears. Even the angry hoarseness of breakers is not unheard. But
there is an understratum of deep, calm sea, which the breath of the
wildest tempest can never reach. There is, deep down in the hearts of
the American people, a strong and abiding love of our country and its
liberty, which no surface-storms of passion can ever shake. That kind of
instability which arises from a free movement and interchange of
position among the members of society, which brings one drop up to
glisten for a time in the crest of the highest wave, and then gives
place to another while it goes down to mingle again with the millions
below, such instability is the surest pledge of permanence. On such
instability the eternal fixedness of the universe is based. Each planet,
in its circling orbit, returns to the god of its departure, and on the
balance of these wildly rolling spheres God has planted the base of His
mighty works. So the hope of our national perpetuity rests upon that
perfect individual freedom, which shall forever keep up the circuit of
perpetual change. God forbid that the waters of our national life should
ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the
stagnation of death--the ocean grave of individual liberty."
Garfield was elected to a second term in the senate, and among the
difficult questions he was obliged to discuss the following year that of
"State Rights" was one of the most perplexing.