CHAPTER VI.

IN THE ASCENDANT.

In the New World man climbs the rugged steep

And takes the forefront by the force of will

And daring purpose in him.

On the 5th of December, 1863, General Garfield took his seat in the

Thirty-Eighth Congress. The reader who has gone over the preceding

chapter will know in part what brought him there, and will be prepared

to judge what was expected of him. But in order clearly to understand

what actually was to be looked for from this Congressional neophyte, it

will be of advantage to consider _who_ sent Garfield to the House.

Congressmen generally represent their districts; and a people may not

unfairly be judged by their average representation in Congress.

What kind of a constituency, then, was that which, for nine times the

space that measures the term of a Congressman, and an equal number of

times the space that measures the political life of many a Congressman,

kept James A. Garfield in that place without a moment’s intermission? We

would probably make no mistake if we should describe them from our

knowledge of him. But let us take the mathematician’s method and verify

our conclusion by a reverse process.

Twelve counties in the north-eastern corner of the State of Ohio are

popularly grouped together and called the Western Reserve. They are the

very Canaan of that great commonwealth; or, at least, come so near it

that they can be described as a land flowing with wine and milk,—for

grape culture is one of their important industries, and their dairies

are famous. Of the nearly twenty-five million pounds of cheese annually

produced in Ohio, ninety-five per cent. is made in the Western Reserve.

The Greeks had a story that their god Jupiter, when an infant, was

tumbled down from the heavens to a secluded place on earth, where he was

carefully watched while he grew. It shall be our easy task to show that

the Western Reserve is a good place for a public man to grow in and make

preparation to rule in a higher sphere.

The Reserve is a place of great natural resources, and, under almost any

conditions, would have a well-to-do population. But it is not advantages

of this kind which make it an unusually good place for the growth of a

great man. If we should presume to say so, all the facts of history

would rise to protest its falsity. The arts and literature and eloquence

and political glory of Athens and her sister states clung close to

barren hillsides. Switzerland rose to be the first free state of Europe

among the wild fastnesses of her unfertile mountains. The American

Revolution was fought out and the Union established by the finest

generation of statesmen and warriors ever produced on the continent,

before the extent or the wealth of our broad, level empire was dreamed

of. New England and Virginia were not rich; but they were great, and

they were free, and so were their statesmen in those days.

The Western Reserve was largely settled by people of New England. And,

since it is not the character of the soil, but the composition of the

people, which chiefly influences the man who grows there, it will be

profitable to see of what sort these settlers and their descendants

were.

One of the first things the first settlers of the Western Reserve did

was to build a church. They brought the plan of their altars with them.

Religion was the corner-stone of their new civilization. Religion was

the solid rock on which they built a high morality and an earnest

intelligence. Somehow or other they rested calmly on a God who made the

forest his temple, and walked through it with them to the very end of

the earth. They have their religion with them to this day, and it seems

to round out their lives to a fuller completeness, and gives them

solidity of character, and with its divinely sanctioned maxims creates

such a standard of morality as a good man would aspire to to make his

rule of life. This kind of community is a good place in which to grow a

public man, if you want him to hold fast to principle unchangeably at

all times.

The very next thing after a church, when this district was settled, came

the common school. The race of which the settlers came was brainy. Their

families always had more than a thimbleful of sense apiece. Hence the

demand for education, and, therefore, a school-house and a

school-teacher. These schools have grown and multiplied. The Reserve has

not only common-schools, but colleges, which are already first-class,

and are destined to become famous seats of learning. The nation itself

has come to recognize in the people of the Reserve a higher average of

intelligence than exists anywhere in the Union, except in a very few

sections. Here is a very good place to seek for a public man who shall

have the kind of intellect to grapple with great questions of

statesmanship, and master them.

The Reserve was first peopled by a set of men who were not only

religious, moral, and intelligent; but who possessed in themselves two

requisites of a great people—courage and strength. Their own ancestors

had braved untold dangers in coming to the American shores, and had

endured hardships and privations innumerable to gain a footing on the

rocky coast. Upborne by the tradition of these experiences, the

pilgrimage and the work of founding a new State had been gone over by

them again. They were a race who sailed unknown seas, climbed unexplored

mountains to get into a new country, and cut down a primeval forest.

Their descendants would be neither pigmies nor poltroons. This would

certainly be a fine place for the production of a statesman who would

have the courage to stand by his convictions and the power to

successfully push his measures through.

The political institutions and political habits of this people deserve

consideration. They brought their ideas of how to construct and conduct

a State from New England, where the town is a political unit, and the

town-meeting a great event. So, from the very earliest time, the Reserve

has been a region where every body was personally interested in public

affairs. They put a man in office because they thought, on actual

investigation, that he was equal to its duties. And, more than that,

they held their appointees to strict account. The unfortunate man who

proved incapable or dishonest never got their support again, and never

heard the last of their censures. These causes have made their political

history good reading. Its chapters are pure and strong and healthy.

The Nineteenth Congressional District of Ohio, at the time of Garfield’s

election, included six counties—Portage, Ashtabula, Lake, Geauga,

Trumbull, and Mahoning. They are the eastern half of the Western

Reserve. Before Garfield’s first election this district had been

represented for many years by Joshua R. Giddings, one of the ablest

antislavery leaders of the period just before the war.

In 1858, Giddings was displaced. Overconfidence in his hold on the

people had made him a little reckless, and an ambitious politician took

advantage of the opportunity. A flaw, very slight indeed, was searched

out in Giddings’s record. It was proved that his mileage fees were in

excess of what the shortest route to Washington required. He had made

the people pay his expenses to New York. The convention having been

skillfully worked up on this peccadillo of its old favorite, a Mr.

Hutchins was sent to Congress in his stead.

A little time only was required to display the difference between Mr.

Hutchins and his predecessor. Mr. Giddings was requested at the next

election to return. But that old patriot had been rewarded by the

Government with a consulate at Montreal, and preferred to remain there;

which he did until his death in 1864. In this situation the people of

the Nineteenth District began to search for a man who could represent

them according to their desire. They felt that it was due to themselves

and to the Nation that they send to Congress a leader; some man with

ability and force sufficient to deal with the great questions of the

day, and solve the problems of the war.

At such a time as this, all eyes turned to the brilliant young General,

James A. Garfield. His legislative abilities had been tested in the Ohio

legislature just before the war, and his record there was an assurance

of his fitness. He was a scholarly man; a forcible speaker; and one

whose experience in the field was not only honorable to himself, but

gave him a knowledge of military affairs which would be exceedingly

useful in the condition of national affairs at that time. The election

occurred in 1862, more than a year before the man elected could take his

place. The war, they supposed, would be over by that time, so that

Garfield’s service in the field would not be left incomplete. He was

himself a perfect illustration of his own saying, “Be fit for more than

the thing you are now doing.” And thus it happened that, without the

least expression of such a desire, General Garfield was sent to Congress

by the general and hearty wishes of his constituents.

Now into what kind of an arena was it that these people sent their

champion to stand for them? What was its composition, and what had been

its character in past times? In answering these questions, we are helped

by an article written by Garfield for the _Atlantic Monthly_ of July,

1877, wherein he says:

“The limits of this article will not allow me to notice the changes

in manners and methods in Congress since the administration of the

elder Adams. Such a review would bring before us many striking

characters and many stirring scenes.

“In the long line of those who have occupied seats in Congress, we

should see, here and there, rising above the undistinguished mass,

the figures of those great men whose lives and labors have made

their country illustrious, and whose influence upon its destiny will

be felt for ages to come. We should see that group of great

statesmen whom the last war with England brought to public notice,

among whom were Ames and Randolph, Clay and Webster, Calhoun and

Benton, Wright and Prentiss, making their era famous by their

statesmanship, and creating and destroying political parties by

their fierce antagonisms. We should see the folly and barbarism of

the so-called code of honor, destroying noblemen in the fatal meadow

of Bladensburgh. We should see the spirit of liberty awaking the

conscience of the nation to the sin and danger of slavery, whose

advocates had inherited and kept alive the old anarchic spirit of

disunion. We should trace the progress of that great struggle from

the days when John Quincy Adams stood in the House of

Representatives, like a lion at bay, defending the sacred right of

petition; when, after his death, Joshua R. Giddings continued the

good fight, standing at this post for twenty years, his white locks,

like the plume of Henry of Navarre, always showing where the battle

for freedom raged most fiercely; when his small band in Congress,

reinforced by Hale and Sumner, Wade and Chase, Lovejoy and Stevens,

continued the struggle amid the most turbulent scenes; when daggers

were brandished and pistols were drawn in the halls of Congress;

and, later, when, one by one, the senators and representatives of

eleven States, breathing defiance and uttering maledictions upon the

Union, resigned their seats and left the Capitol to take up arms

against their country. We should see the Congress of a people long

unused to war, when confronted by a supreme danger, raising,

equipping, and supporting an army greater than all the armies of

Napoleon and Wellington combined: meeting the most difficult

questions of international and constitutional law; and, by new forms

of taxation, raising a revenue which, in one year of the war,

amounted to more than all the national taxes collected during the

first half century of the Government.”

All this we should see, and more. And it was to help complete the

gigantic tasks of Congress during this momentous time that Garfield was

sent there. The House of Representatives contained many able men, but

most of these belonged to a closing period. They had grown up in

opposition, not in administration. A new group of men was now about to

take the lead, and reconstruct the Union on a foundation whose

corner-stone should be Union and Liberty, instead of Slavery and State

Rights. The old generation of leaders were still there with their wisdom

and valuable experience; but the spirit of a new era now came in, which

should outlive Thaddeus Stevens and his compeers. About this time there

came into Congress, Blaine and Boutwell and Conkling and—Garfield,

destined to do more than any of them in restoring prosperity, peace,

public justice, and, above all, a harmonious Union, which this age shall

not again see broken.

The usefulness of a legislator has in all times been popularly ascribed

to his work in the open assembly. But this was never wholly true, and in

no existing legislature in the world is it even half true at this day.

Public business of this sort is so vast and so complicated that no

assembly can give it all a fair consideration. To remedy this trouble we

have the committee system, whereby special study by a few informs the

many who rely upon their reports and merely pass upon their

recommendations.

A member of Congress can not be judged by the figure he presents on the

floor of the House. He may say nothing there, and yet be author of

important measures the mere public advocacy of which is making some

other man a national reputation. James A. Garfield was, from the first

of his Congressional career, a leader in debate; but the story would be

only half told if mention were omitted of the wonderful industry

displayed by him on the various great committees where his abilities

gave him place.

When the Thirty-Eighth Congress opened, the war was not yet ended—a fact

which many an utterer of unfulfilled prophecy and many a broken heart

deplored. The most important committee of all was still the Military

Committee. It was composed as follows: Robert C. Schenck, of Ohio; John

F. Farnsworth, of Illinois; George H. Yeaman, of Kentucky; James A.

Garfield, of Ohio; Benjamin Loan, of Missouri; Moses F. Odell, of New

York; Henry C. Deming, of Connecticut; F. W. Kellogg, of Michigan;

Archibald McAllister, of Pennsylvania.

Although Garfield’s name comes fourth here, he really was intended as

second by the Chairman. Mr. Schenck had requested Speaker Colfax to put

him on, under a belief that he would be an invaluable help to himself.

We have been several times required to notice a happy faculty which

Garfield had of inspiring the faith in himself of those with whom he

came in contact, by some striking act which showed them that he was not

an ordinary man. This was not intentional, but simply the spontaneous

shining forth of light which was in the man. Almost the first session of

the Committee on Military Affairs brought out just such an incident:

It had then been only a short time since the science of anæsthetics had

grown into some importance by the use of chloroform and ether. In the

hospitals of the army it was very common. As is usual with inventions

and discoveries, there was a struggle going on for the profit and honor

of the discovery. Dr. Morton, a dentist, and others, were petitioning

Congress, each as the discoverer of chloroform, for some kind of

appropriation or arrangement by which they might be rewarded for the

services they had done for our soldiers in thus alleviating their

sufferings. The petitions were referred to this committee. The members

all, except Garfield, declined to investigate it, on the ground that

they knew nothing about such an obscure topic. Garfield only observed

that he thought the claim remarkable. Not knowing what else to do, the

Chairman referred it to him, expecting not to hear of it again.

At the next meeting he had a scientific and thoroughly written report

ready, exhausting the whole subject. On request, the matter was

explained. Garfield had a way of supplementing his regular line of

studies by having always some unusual and out-of-the-way topic on hand

to amuse his leisure hours. Not long before this he had accidentally

come across a book on anæsthesia, and his investigations had made him

ready for the unforeseen report in committee. All knowledge is useful.

After this the committee was not afraid of strange topics. They were

given over to the man who knew anæsthesia, and then they considered the

subject settled. As one man said,—“Good Lord! what would he not know?”

General Garfield’s time was now devoted to public business. Every

subject likely to come before his committee was investigated through all

the avenues of information. He set himself a wide course of reading on

finance, on constitutional law, and a great group of kindred subjects.

These were studied in the Garfield way, which was to read all the

literature he could find on a topic, or that could in any way affect the

discussion thereof. It was this prodigious labor, matching his capacity

for keeping the run of what would have overwhelmed most men with

confusion, that made him at the same time a remarkably ready and a

wonderfully reliable man, either in committee or as a speaker on the

floor of the House.

General Garfield had not been in Congress two weeks before his

occasional brief statements began to attract attention. Of course it was

not till after a considerable period that he became a recognized leader;

but his force began to be felt very soon, and grew every day until, by

steady development of his abilities and his influence, he finally

reached the summit of power, as leader of his party in the Lower House

of Congress.

We have seen that he was not a politician in the popular meaning of the

word. He had been sent to Congress rather against than with his

inclinations, and was above posturing and plotting for reëlection. Even

after he had reluctantly given up his commission as Major-General in the

army, he was ready to return on call. In fact, he did once almost

determine on going back. General Thomas, having succeeded Rosecrans in

his command, wrote a private letter asking Garfield to accept the

command of a corps in his army. The offer was tempting, and duty seemed

to point the way. Mr. Lincoln, however, was having trouble to get his

measures through Congress, and needed support. On his statement that

Garfield would confer a personal favor by remaining where he was, the

change was not made.

This was not the kind of man to stultify himself for the sake of public

favor; and therefore it is not surprising to find his first speech on

record opposed to the whole House. It was on the “Bounty Question.” At

this time in the war, volunteering had become so rare a thing that new

measures had to be devised to keep up the ever-dwindling ranks of the

army. Two methods were advocated. One was to draft men forcibly, and put

them into the service; the other was to induce men to volunteer by

payment of a bonus for enlistment. Out of these two principles a hybrid

policy had been formed, resulting in the Conscription Act, of March 3,

1863. This act provided for a draft, but allowed a commutation in money,

which was fixed at three hundred dollars. In addition, thirteen

exceptions were allowed by which the draft could be escaped. To

compensate for these losses, three hundred dollars bounty money was

given to every raw recruit, and four hundred dollars to every reënlisted

veteran. The result of all which was a rapidly decreasing army. The

Government urged stronger measures; and it was before these measures had

been perfected that an incident occurred in which General Garfield first

indicated his opinions on the subject.

According to a law passed, the bounties above mentioned could be paid

only up to January 5, 1864. On January 6th, the Military Committee

reported a joint resolution to continue this limit over till March 1st.

Mr. Garfield did not approve of the resolution, although every man in

the House seemed against him. His reasons are given in the

_Congressional Globe_, wherein the following is reported:

MR. GARFIELD.—“Mr. Speaker, I regret that I was not able to meet

with the Military Committee when this resolution was under

consideration. I did not reach the city until a few hours before the

House met this morning; but if I understand the matter correctly

from the public journals, the request of the President and the War

Department was to continue the payment of bounties until the 1st of

February next; but the resolution before the House proposes to

extend the payment until the 1st of March. And while the President

asks us to continue the payment of bounties to veteran volunteers

only, the resolution extends it to all volunteers, whether veterans

or raw recruits. If the resolution prevails, it seems to me we shall

swamp the finances of the Government before the 1st of March

arrives. I can not consent to a measure which authorizes the

expenditure of so vast a sum as will be expended under this

resolution, unless it be shown absolutely indispensable to the work

of filling up the army. I am anxious that veterans should volunteer,

and that liberal bounties should be paid to them. But if we extend

the payment to all classes of volunteers for two months to come, I

fear we shall swamp the Government.

“Before I vote for this resolution, I desire to know whether the

Government is determined to abandon the draft. If it be its policy

to raise an army solely by volunteering and paying bounties, we have

one line of policy to pursue. If the conscription law is to be any

thing but a dead letter on the statute book, our line of policy is a

very different one. I ask the gentleman from Illinois to inform me

what course is to be adopted. I am sorry to see in this resolution

the indication of a timid and vacillating course. It is unworthy the

dignity of our Government and our army to use the conscription act

as a scarecrow, and the bounty system as a bait, to alternately

scare and coax men into the army.

“Let us give liberal bounties to veteran soldiers who may reënlist,

and for raw recruits use the draft.”

After some further discussion the vote was taken, resulting in yeas 112,

nays 2. Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa, made the second negative, changing his

vote after Garfield had voted.

Soon afterwards a letter came to General Garfield, signed by twenty of

his constituents, censuring his action, and demanding his resignation.

They were only answered that he held their letter, and that within a

year they would all agree with what he had done. Before the year closed,

there was a cross opposite each man’s name, denoting the fulfillment of

the General’s prophecy.

This action also attracted the admiring attention of Salmon P. Chase,

who soon afterward congratulated him, but at the same time coupled his

praises with a good piece of advice. Mr. Chase liked to see a man

exhibit great firmness, but warned his young friend that such antagonism

to his party would better be indulged sparingly. It would seem that the

advice was unnecessary to Garfield, however, as he was not a factious

man. He simply had the courage of his convictions. On this point we find

that Garfield never fails to meet our expectations, no matter what the

opposition:

“But, like a rock unmoved, a rock that braves

The raging tempest and the rising waves,

Propp’d on himself, he stands.”

Legislation on the enrollment of soldiers was yet to come, which should

be more severe than any we had known. The system of bounties proved a

failure. We had attempted coercion on the States, and the only way to

succeed was by further coercion of our own citizens. It was a hard thing

to come to, and the people were unwilling. Congressmen were afraid of

the coming fall election of 1864. Finally, early in June, Mr. Lincoln

sought an interview with the Military Committee. He told them that the

army had in it only three-quarters of a million men; three hundred and

eighty thousand were within a few months of the end of their term of

service. These places _must_ be filled, and a law framed for the purpose

at once. The committee expressed its opinion of the political danger:

“Mr. Lincoln, such a law will defeat you for President.” Then a light

shone out from that great homely countenance, the tall form was drawn

grandly to its full height, as the answer was given. Mr. Lincoln said

that his business was to put down the Rebellion, no matter what the

danger. Grant and Sherman were on the verge of victory; their strength

must be kept up, and the struggle ended quickly.

Accordingly, a bill was prepared after the President’s own plan. Many of

the draft exemptions of the existing law were taken away by it;

commutation-money was no longer to be received, and every possible

facility was to be afforded for compelling men to enlist. But peace

Democrats, united with cowardly Congressmen of the Republican party,

together voted out the most effective clauses of the new bill.

This would never do. The friends of the bill reconstructed it, and

determined to put it through. On the 21st of June, the effort was made.

General Garfield was, perhaps, more intensely wrought up on the subject,

than any man except Lincoln; and he made a great speech, a speech

replete with learning, logic, and eloquence. This bill was the result of

conditions in national affairs which he had long foreseen; he had

prophesied, at the time of his vote against extending bounties, that the

end of such extension would be ruin to the Union cause. That ruin was

now impending, and all his energies were bent toward averting the evil.

Hear this closing appeal:

“I ask gentlemen who oppose this repeal, why they desire to make it

easy for citizens to escape from military duty? Is it a great

hardship to serve one’s country? Is it a disgraceful service? Will

you, by your action here, say to the soldiers in the field, ‘This is

a disreputable business; you have been deceived; you have been

caught in a trap, and we will make no law to put any body else in

it’? Do you thus treat your soldiers in the field? They are proud of

their voluntary service, and if there be one wish of the army

paramount to all others, one message more earnest than all the

others which they send back to you, it is that you will aid in

filling up their battle-thinned ranks by a draft which will compel

lukewarm citizens who prate against the war to go into the field.

They ask that you will not expend large bounties in paying men of

third-rate patriotism, while they went with no other bounty than

their love of country, to which they gave their young lives a free

offering, but that you will compel these eleventh-hour men to take

their chances in the field beside them. Let us grant their request,

and, by a steady and persistent effort, we shall, in the end, be it

near or remote, be it in one year or ten, crown the nation with

victory and enduring peace.”

In the sequel, this bill passed; a grand reinforcement of five hundred

thousand men soon secured the supremacy of the Union, and Father Abraham

was thus enabled to finish his immortal work.

Early in the first session of the Thirty-Eighth Congress, the subject of

confiscation was pretty thoroughly discussed. House Resolution No. 18

was offered, so amending a resolution of the preceding Congress that no

punishment or proceeding under it should be so construed as to make a

forfeiture of the estate of the offender, except during his life. Out of

this little motion there grew a great crop of controversy, and among

others, General Garfield took part. His main speech, the first lengthy

address he ever made in Congress, was delivered on January 28, 1864. Mr.

Finck, of Ohio, had just sat down at the close of a long set speech,

when Garfield arose and began in these words:

“Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to ask the attention of the House

or to occupy its time on this question of confiscation at all, but

some things have been said, touching its military aspects, which

make it proper for me to trespass upon the patience of the House.

Feeling that, in some small degree, I represent on this floor the

Army of the Republic, I am the more emboldened to speak to this

subject before us.

“I have been surprised that in so lengthy and able a discussion, so

little reference has been made to the merits of the resolution

itself. In the wide range of discussion, the various theories of the

legal and political status of the rebellious States have been

examined. It is, perhaps, necessary that we take ground upon that

question, as preliminary to the discussion of the resolution itself.

Two theories, widely differing from each other, have been proposed;

but I can not consider either of them as wholly correct. I can not

agree with the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.

Stevens,) who acknowledges that these States are out of the Union,

and now constitute a foreign people; nor can I, on the other hand,

agree with those who believe that the insurgent States are not only

in the Union, but have lost none of their rights under the

Constitution and laws of the Union.

“When the Government of the United States declared that we were in a

state of war, the rebel States came under the laws of war. By their

acts of rebellion and war, they had swept away every vestige of

their civil and political rights under the Constitution of the

United States. Their obligations still remained; but the reciprocal

rights, which usually accompany obligations, they had forfeited.

“The question then lies open before us: In a state of war, under the

laws of war, is this resolution legal and politic? I insist, Mr.

Speaker, that the question involved in the resolution before this

House, is whether this Government, in its exercise of its rights of

a belligerent under the laws of war, can not punish these rebels and

confiscate their estates, both personal and real, for life and

forever. That is the only question before us.

“I conclude by returning once more to the resolution before us. Let

no weak sentiments of misplaced sympathy deter us from inaugurating

a measure, which will cleanse our nation and make it the fit home of

freedom and glorious manhood. Let us not despise the severe wisdom

of our revolutionary fathers when they served their generation in a

similar way. Let the Republic drive from its soil the traitors that

have conspired against its life, as God and His angels drove Satan

and his host from heaven. He was not too merciful to be just, and to

hurl down in chains and everlasting darkness the ‘traitor angel’ who

rebelled against Him.”

In these clear words we may find already a development of that

independent, yet always moderate way of regarding things which no reader

of Garfield’s great speeches of later date can fail to notice. While

other men wasted time in reasoning on the words of the Constitution, and

their effect on the status of the Southern States, this incisive

intellect cut right through all extremes, and from a plain view of the

facts, he said that the South was not out of the Union; and although it

was in the Union, it _did not_ have “the reciprocal rights which usually

accompany obligations.” And this was statesmanship.

In March, 1864, the Committee on Military Affairs reported a bill “to

declare certain roads military roads, and post roads, and to regulate

commerce.” Its principal object, as far as the Government was concerned,

was to enlarge its facilities of communication between Washington,

Philadelphia, and New York. The only existing postal route between the

commercial Capital and the political Capital, was by the Camden and

Amboy Railroad. This bill was presented on petition of the Raritan and

Delaware Bay Railroad Company, asking that it be given similar rights to

those held by the Camden and Amboy; which latter road of course used all

its influence to defeat the measure. Both the power and the duty of

Congress to pass the bill were violently assailed and denied.

Mr. Garfield favored its passage, and made a speech on the subject which

ran through parts of two days, March 24 and 31. This address was very

powerful, and was called by some members “the speech of the session.”

The main question, as raised by the friends of that road themselves, was

whether Congress could rightfully interfere with a State railroad

monopoly which did not confine its operations within the limits of that

State. The Governor of New Jersey had issued a proclamation referring to

this matter, and speaking of his State as “sovereign.” These were but

the first mutterings of a great storm which was to follow. Their

significance was recognized.

It was to these points that Mr. Garfield addressed himself. The Camden

and Amboy Company he named as a sweeping and complete monopoly, made so

by the State of New Jersey. The State’s right to create corporations was

undoubted. But it could have no sovereignty sufficient to destroy the

power of the United States, and especially so outside of the State

limits. Equal rights with this monopoly should be given to the Raritan

and Delaware Bay Company at any time on petition, and certainly now when

the facilities for transportation were not equal to the needs of the

Government.

Surely the Government, at such a time as this, had paramount authority

to provide for its own necessities.

On the 8th of April, 1864, the House of Representatives resolved itself

into the Committee of the Whole upon the State of the Union, whereupon

Mr. Alexander Long, of Cincinnati, Ohio, took the floor, and, in a

speech of much bitterness, arraigned the administration, not for its

conduct of the war, but for carrying on the war at all. “_An

unconstitutional war can only be carried on in an unconstitutional

manner_,” said Mr. Long. His demand now was for peace. This was the

first sound of Democratic preparation for the Presidential election, the

key-note of their campaign.

Mr. Long said:

“Mr. Chairman, I speak to-day for the preservation of the

Government. In the independence of a representative of the people I

intend to proclaim the deliberate convictions of my judgment in this

fearful hour of the country’s peril.

“The brief period of three short years has produced a fearful change

in this free, happy, and prosperous government,—so pure in its

restrainments upon personal liberty, and so gentle in its demands

upon the resources of the people, that the celebrated Humboldt,

after traveling through the country, on his return to Europe said,

‘The American people have a government which you neither see nor

feel.’ So different is it now, and so great the change, that the

inquiry might well be made to-day, ‘Are we not in Constantinople, in

St. Petersburg, in Vienna, in Rome, or in Paris?’ Military governors

and their provost marshals override the laws, and the echo of the

armed heel rings forth as clearly now in America as in France or

Austria; and the President sits to-day guarded by armed soldiers at

every approach leading to the Executive Mansion. So far from

crushing the rebellion, three years have passed away, and from the

day on which the conflict began, up to the present hour, the

Confederate army has not been forced beyond the sound of their guns

from the dome of the Capitol in which we are assembled.”

The remainder of the speech continued in the same spirit. The war could

not be put down. Moreover, it was wrong and ought not to be put down:

“Can the Union he restored by war? I answer most unhesitatingly and

deliberately: No, never. _War is final and eternal separation._ My

first and highest ground against its further prosecution is, _that

it is wrong_. It is a violation of the Constitution and of the

fundamental principles on which this Union was founded. My second

objection is, that as a policy, it is not _reconstructive_, but

_destructive_, and will, if continued, result speedily in the

destruction of the Government and the loss of civil liberty, to both

the North and the South, and it ought therefore to immediately

cease....”

These were the sentiments of a Democratic politician in Congress; they

would be scattered broadcast over the whole land. Some of the arguments

were specious; they would be echoed from a thousand platforms during the

summer. It was incumbent on the opposition to furnish a speedy and

strong reply. When Mr. Long took his seat, Mr. Garfield arose and said:

“Mr. Chairman: I should be obliged to you if you would direct the

sergeant-at-arms to bring a white flag and plant it in the aisle

between myself and my colleague who has just addressed you.

“I recollect on one occasion when two great armies stood face to

face, that under a white flag just planted, I approached a company

of men dressed in the uniform of the rebel Confederacy, and reached

out my hand to one of the number, and told him I respected him as a

brave man. Though he wore the emblems of disloyalty and treason,

still, underneath his vestments I beheld a brave and honest soul.

“I would produce that scene here this afternoon. I say, _were_ there

such a flag of truce—but God forbid me if I should do it under any

other circumstances—I would reach out this right hand and ask that

gentleman to take it; because I honor his bravery and his honesty. I

believe what has just fallen from his lips are the honest sentiments

of his heart, and in uttering it he has made a new epoch in the

history of this war; he has done a new thing under the sun; he has

done a brave thing. It is braver than to face cannon and musketry,

and I honor him for his candor and frankness.

“But now, I ask you to take away the flag of truce; and I will go

back inside the Union lines and speak of what he has done. I am

reminded by it of a distinguished character in _Paradise Lost_. When

he had rebelled against the glory of God, and ‘led away a third part

of heaven’s sons, conjured against the Highest;’ when, after

terrible battles in which mountains and hills were hurled down ‘nine

times the space that measures day and night,’ and after the terrible

fall lay stretched prone on the burning lake,—Satan lifted up his

shattered bulk, crossed the abyss, looked down into Paradise, and,

soliloquizing, said:

‘Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell;’

it seems to me in that utterance he expressed the very sentiments to

which you have just listened; uttered by one not less brave, malign,

and fallen. This man gathers up the meaning of this great contest,

the philosophy of the moment, the prophecies of the hour, and, in

sight of the paradise of victory and peace, utters them all in this

wail of terrible despair, ‘Which way I fly is hell.’ He ought to

add, ‘Myself am hell.’

“For the first time in the history of this contest, it is proposed

in this hall to give up the struggle, to abandon the war, and let

treason run riot through the land! I will, if I can, dismiss feeling

from my heart and try to consider only what bears upon the logic of

the speech to which we have just listened.

“First of all, the gentleman tells us that the right of secession is

a constitutional right. I do not propose to enter into the argument.

I have hitherto expressed myself on State sovereignty and State

rights, of which this proposition of his is the legitimate child.

“But the gentleman takes higher ground—and in that I agree with him,

namely, that five million or eight million people possess the right

of revolution. Grant it; we agree there. If fifty-nine men can make

a revolution successful, they have the right of revolution. If one

State wishes to break its connection with the Federal Government,

and does it by force, maintaining itself, it is an independent

State. If the eleven Southern States are resolved and determined to

leave the Union, to secede, to revolutionize, and can maintain that

revolution by force, they have revolutionary right to do so. I stand

on that platform with the gentleman.

“And now the question comes, is it our constitutional duty to let

them do it? That is the question. And, in order to reach it, I beg

to call your attention, not to argument, but to the condition of

affairs that would result from such action—the mere statement of

which becomes the strongest possible argument. What does this

gentleman propose? Where will he draw the line of division? If the

rebels carry into secession what they desire to carry; if their

revolution envelops as many States as they intend it shall envelop;

if they draw the line where Isham G. Harris, the rebel governor of

Tennessee, in the rebel camp near our lines, told Mr. Vallandigham

they would draw it,—along the line of the Ohio and Potomac,—if they

make good their statement to him, that they will never consent to

any other line, then I ask, what is the thing the gentleman proposes

to do?

“He proposes to leave to the United States a territory reaching from

the Atlantic to the Pacific, and one hundred miles wide in the

center! From Wellsville on the Ohio to Cleveland on the lakes, is

one hundred miles. I ask you, Mr. Chairman, if there be a man here

so insane as to suppose that the American people will allow their

magnificent national proportions to be shorn to so deformed a shape

as this?

“Suppose the policy of the gentleman were adopted to-day. Let the

order go forth; sound the ‘recall’ on your bugles, and let it ring

from Texas to the far Atlantic, and tell the armies to come back.

Call the victorious legions back over the battle-field of blood

forever now disgraced. Call them back over the territory which they

have conquered. Call them back, and let the minions of secession

chase them with derision and jeers as they come. And then tell them

that the man across the aisle, from the free State of Ohio, gave

birth to the monstrous proposition.

“Mr. Chairman, if such a word should be sent forth through the

armies of the Union, the wave of terrible vengeance that would sweep

back over this land could never find a parallel in the records of

history. Almost in the moment of final victory, the ‘recall’ is

sounded by a craven people not desiring freedom. We ought, every

man, to be made a slave should we sanction such a sentiment.

“The gentleman has told us there is no such thing as coercion

justifiable under the Constitution. I ask him for one moment to

reflect, that no statute ever was enforced without coercion. It is

the basis of every law in the universe,—God’s law as well as man’s.

A law is no law without coercion behind it. When a man has murdered

his brother, coercion takes the murderer, tries him, and hangs him.

When you levy your taxes, coercion secures their collection; it

follows the shadow of the thief and brings him to justice; it

accompanies your diplomacy to foreign courts, and backs a

declaration of the nation’s right by a pledge of the nation’s power.

Again, he tells us that oaths taken under the amnesty proclamation

are good for nothing. The oath of Galileo was not binding upon him.

I am reminded of another oath that was taken; but perhaps it was an

oath on the lips alone to which the heart made no response.

“I remember to have stood in a line of nineteen men on that carpet

yonder on the first day of the session, and I remember that another

oath was passed round and each member signed it as provided by law,

utterly repudiating the rebellion and its pretenses. Does that

gentleman not blush to speak of Galileo’s oath? Was not his own its

counterpart?

“He says that the Union can never be restored because of the

terrible hatred engendered by the war. To prove it, he quotes what

some Southern man said a few years ago, that he knew no hatred

between people in the world like that between the North and the

South. And yet that North and South have been one nation for

eighty-eight years!

“Have we seen in this contest any thing more bitter than the wars of

the Scottish border? Have we seen any thing more bitter than those

terrible feuds in the days of Edward, when England and Scotland were

the deadliest foes on earth? And yet for centuries those countries

have been cemented in an indissoluble union that has made the

British nation one of the proudest of the earth!

“I said a little while ago that I accepted the proposition of the

gentleman that rebels had a right of revolution; and the decisive

issue between us and the rebellion is, whether they shall

revolutionize and destroy, or we shall subdue and preserve. We take

the latter ground. We take the common weapons of war to meet them;

and if these be not sufficient, I would take any element which will

overwhelm and destroy; I would sacrifice the dearest and best

beloved; I would take all the old sanctions of law and the

Constitution and fling them to the winds, if necessary, rather than

let the nation be broken in pieces and its people destroyed with

endless ruin.

“What is the Constitution that these gentlemen are perpetually

flinging in our faces whenever we desire to strike hard blows

against the rebellion? It is the production of the American people.

They made it; and the creator is mightier than the creature. The

power which made the Constitution can also make other instruments to

do its great work in the day of dire necessity.”

The Presidential campaign of 1864 involved, in its tremendous issues,

the fate of a Republic. All the forces which had ever antagonized the

war for the Union were arrayed on the one side; those which demanded

that the war be vigorously pursued until rebellion was forever put down,

withstood them on the other side. It was a hand-to-hand struggle.

Garfield took the stump and ably advocated the Republican cause. He

traveled nearly eight thousand miles, and made sixty-five speeches. Late

in the season his constituents met to nominate a Congressman. Garfield

was very popular in the district, which had been pleased with his

ability and the patriotic spirit of his conduct.

But, after the adjournment of Congress, an incident occurred which

caused trouble in the Republican ranks, and seemed likely to drive him

out of the field. The subject of the readmission of conquered Southern

States to the full enjoyment of their political rights, had occupied the

attention of the Thirty-Eighth Congress; and that body, on the day of

its adjournment, had passed and sent for the President’s approval, a

bill providing for the government of such States. Mr. Lincoln had let

the bill go over unsigned till after adjournment; and soon issued a

proclamation referring to the subject, which offended many of the

friends of the bill. Among these were Ben. Wade and Winter Davis, who

issued to the public a reply to Mr. Lincoln, censuring him in very

severe language. The President was therein charged with favoring a

policy subversive of human liberty, unjust to the friends of the

administration, and dangerous to the Republic. This Wade-Davis manifesto

caused a great furore of excitement. Wade and Davis were denounced; the

people would hear nothing against Mr. Lincoln.

When the convention met at Warren, Mr. Garfield was sent for. He had

been charged by some with the authorship of the Wade-Davis paper, and by

many with holding to its views. When he appeared before them, the

chairman stated to him the charge, with a strong intimation that if he

cared for a renomination he must declare war against all disagreement

with the President’s policy.

Then the young general and statesman arose, and stepped forward to face

the assembly. They listened to hear their former hero explain away the

terrible opinion attributed to him, and, like the fawning politician he

was not, trim his sails according to the popular pleasure.

Mr. Garfield said that he was not the author of the manifesto which the

chairman had mentioned. Only of late had he read that great protest.

But, having read, he approved; and only regretted that there had been

any necessity for such a thing. The facts alleged were truly asserted.

This was his belief. If they preferred a representative not of the same

mind as himself, they should by all means hasten to nominate their man.

Having somewhat haughtily spoken these brave words, Garfield took his

hat and strode out, with the intention of returning to his hotel. As he

reached the street, a great shout was heard. “That sound, no doubt,

means my defeat and another’s nomination,” he muttered. But, with

nothing to regret, he went his way.

Meanwhile, what did the convention actually do? They were dumb with

astonishment for a moment; a heroic deed had been done before them, and

admiration for the chief actor was the uppermost sentiment in every

heart. Then a young man from Ashtabula called out: “Mr. Chairman, I say

that the man who has courage enough to oppose a convention like that

ought not to be discarded. I move that James A. Garfield be nominated by

acclamation.” Without a dissenting voice it was done. When election day

came, his majority was nearly twelve thousand.

The session of Congress which met in December of 1864 was marked by the

great debates on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was

presented to the States for ratification on the first of February, 1865.

Perhaps the strongest opposition to that amendment was from George H.

Pendleton, of Ohio. He spoke against it on the 13th of January. The

chief argument was that purely State institutions could not properly be

interfered with by the Nation, without the consent of the State or

States concerned. That this right of a State was reserved in the spirit

of the Constitution, just as equal representation in the Senate was

secured, beyond recall, by the letter of that instrument.

To this speech Mr. Garfield made a reply. So much of this reply as

touched upon the constitutional power of making such an amendment may be

given further on; the remainder is such a denunciation of slavery, as an

institution, as has rarely been equaled by any of those eloquent men who

devoted their lives to its extermination.

On taking the floor, Mr. Garfield began:

“_Mr. Speaker_: We shall never know why slavery dies so hard in this

Republic and in this hall till we know why sin is long-lived and

Satan is immortal. With marvelous tenacity of existence, it has

outlived the expectations of its friends and the hopes of its

enemies. It has been declared here and elsewhere to be in the

several stages of mortality—wounded, moribund, dead. The question

was raised by my colleague [Mr. Cox] yesterday whether it was indeed

dead, or only in a troubled sleep. I know of no better illustration

of its condition than is found in Sallust’s admirable history of the

great conspirator, Catiline, who, when his final battle was fought

and lost, his army broken and scattered, was found, far in advance

of his own troops, lying among the dead enemies of Rome, yet

breathing a little, but exhibiting in his countenance all the

ferocity of spirit which had characterized his life. So, sir, this

body of slavery lies before us among the dead enemies of the

Republic, mortally wounded, impotent in its fiendish wickedness, but

with its old ferocity of look, bearing the unmistakable marks of its

infernal origin.

“Who does not remember that thirty years ago—a short period in the

life of a nation—but little could be said with impunity in these

halls on the subject of slavery? We can hardly realize that this is

the same people and these the same halls, where now scarcely a man

can be found who will venture to do more than falter out an apology

for slavery, protesting in the same breath that he has no love for

the dying tyrant. None, I believe, but that man of more than

supernal boldness, from the city of New York [Mr. Fernando Wood],

has ventured, this session, to raise his voice in favor of slavery

for its own sake. He still sees in its features the reflection of

beauty and divinity, and only he. ‘How art thou fallen from heaven,

O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground,

which didst weaken the nations!’ Many mighty men have been slain by

thee; many proud ones have humbled themselves at thy feet! All along

the coast of our political sea these victims of slavery lie like

stranded wrecks, broken on the headlands of freedom. How lately did

its advocates, with impious boldness, maintain it as God’s own, to

be venerated and cherished as divine? It was another and higher form

of civilization. It was the holy evangel of America, dispensing its

mercies to a benighted race, and destined to bear countless

blessings to the wilderness of the West. In its mad arrogance it

lifted its hand to strike down the fabric of the Union, and since

that fatal day it has been a ‘fugitive and a vagabond upon the

earth.’ Like the spirit that Jesus cast out, it has, since then,

‘been seeking rest and finding none.’

“It has sought in all the corners of the Republic to find some

hiding-place in which to shelter itself from the death it so richly

deserves.

“It sought an asylum in the untrodden territories of the west, but,

with a whip of scorpions, indignant freemen drove it thence. I do

not believe that a loyal man can now be found who would consent that

it should again enter them. It has no hope of harbor there. It found

no protection or favor in the hearts or consciences of the freemen

of the Republic, and has fled for its last hope of safety behind the

shield of the Constitution. We propose to follow it there, and drive

it thence, as Satan was exiled from heaven. But now, in the hour of

its mortal agony, in this hall, it has found a defender.

“My gallant colleague [Mr. Pendleton], for I recognize him as a

gallant and able man, plants himself at the door of his darling, and

bids defiance to all assailants. He has followed slavery in its

flight, until at last it has reached the great temple where liberty

is enshrined—the Constitution of the United States—and there, in

that last retreat, declares that no hand shall strike it. It reminds

me of that celebrated passage in the great Latin poet, in which the

serpents of the Ionian sea, when they had destroyed Laocoon and his

sons, fled to the heights of the Trojan citadel and coiled their

slimy lengths around the feet of the tutelar goddess, and were

covered by the orb of her shield. So, under the guidance of my

colleague [Mr. Pendleton], slavery, gorged with the blood of ten

thousand freemen, has climbed to the high citadel of American

nationality, and coiled itself securely, as he believes, around the

feet of the statue of Justice and under the shield of the

Constitution of the United States. We desire to follow it even

there, and kill it beside the very altar of liberty. Its blood can

never make atonement for the least of its crimes.

“But the gentleman has gone further. He is not content that the

snaky sorceress shall be merely under the protection of the

Constitution. In his view, by a strange metamorphosis, slavery

becomes an invisible essence, and takes up its abode in the very

grain and fiber of the Constitution, and when we would strike it he

says, ‘I can not point out any express clause that prohibits you

from destroying slavery; but I find a prohibition in the intent and

meaning of the Constitution. I go under the surface, out of sight,

into the very genius of it, and in that invisible domain slavery is

enshrined, and there is no power in the Republic to drive it

thence.’

“But he has gone even deeper than the spirit and intent of the

Constitution. He has announced a discovery, to which I am sure no

other statesman will lay claim. He has found a domain where slavery

can no more be reached by human law than the life of Satan by the

sword of Michael. He has marked the hither boundary of this newly

discovered continent, in his response to the question of the

gentleman from Iowa.

“Not finding any thing in the words and phrases of the Constitution

that forbids an amendment abolishing slavery, he goes behind all

human enactments, and far away among the eternal equities, he finds

a primal law which overshadows States, nations, and constitutions,

as space envelops the universe, and by its solemn sanctions one

human being can hold another in perpetual slavery. Surely, human

ingenuity has never gone farther to protect a malefactor, or defend

a crime. I shall make no argument with my colleague on this point,

for in that high court to which he appeals, eternal justice dwells

with freedom, and slavery has never entered.

“On the justice of the amendment itself no arguments are necessary.

The reasons crowd in on every side. To enumerate them would be a

work of superfluity. To me it is a matter of great surprise that

gentlemen on the other side should wish to delay the death of

slavery. I can only account for it on the ground of long continued

familiarity and friendship. I should be glad to hear them say of

slavery, their beloved, as did the jealous Moor:

“Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.”

“Has she not betrayed and slain men enough? Are they not strewn over

a thousand battle-fields? Is not this Moloch already gorged with the

bloody feast? Its best friends know that its final hour is fast

approaching. The avenging gods are on its track. Their feet are not

now, as of old, shod with wool, for slow and stately stepping, but

winged, like Mercury’s, to bear the swift message of vengeance. No

human power can avert the final catastrophe.”

Five days after this address, Mr. Garfield, together with Henry Winter

Davis, made a lively attack on the War Department. At this time the writ

of _habeas corpus_ was suspended, and the art of imprisoning men without

warrant or accusation was reaching a high state of perfection. The

Carroll and Old Capital prisons were full of victims who could not find

out why they were thus arbitrarily confined.

This tyrannical practice having been brought before the committee on

military affairs, some of them investigated the subject. As a result, a

resolution was offered calling for a public inquiry, which resolution

passed. The next day Thaddeus Stevens attempted to get it rescinded,

whereupon he was met by a fiery speech from Mr. Garfield, which saved

the resolution; and in a few days there was a general freeing of all

prisoners against whom no sufficient charges could be made.

In his speech, Mr. Garfield graphically told of the great injustice

which was being done, especially to men who had served the country in

the field. One of these was a colonel in the Union army, who had been

wounded and discharged from the service, but now, for some unknown

reason, perhaps maliciously, had been deprived of his liberty. Mr.

Garfield had been an admirer of Stanton, and recognized the great

Secretary’s ability and patriotism; but this could not save either him

or his subordinates from just censures.

This action was the occasion of much admiring notice from the public,

and even from Stanton himself. For such was the reputed roughness of

Stanton’s temper that few men ever had enough temerity to criticise him.

On the night of April 14, 1865, the war-heated blood of this nation was

frozen with sudden horror at a deed which then had no parallel in

American history—the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

That night General Garfield was in New York City.

In the early morning hours a colored servant came to the door of his

room at the hotel, and in a heart-broken voice announced that Mr.

Lincoln, the emancipator of his race from bondage, had been shot down by

a traitor to the country.

Morning came; but dark were the hours whose broken wings labored to

bring the light of day. Soon the streets were filled with people. Every

body seemed to have come out and left the houses empty. It was not a

holiday, and yet all seemed to be doing nothing. No business was

transacted, yet mirth and laughter were unheard. Such silence and such

multitudes never before were met together.

Garfield wandered out into the streets, and noted these ominous

appearances. The city was like Paris, just before its pavements are to

be torn up for a barricade battle in some revolutionary outbreak.

Great posters, fixed in prominent places, called for a nine o’clock

meeting of citizens at Wall Street Exchange Building. The newspaper

bulletins, black, brief recorders of fate as they are, were surrounded

with crushing crowds waiting for the latest word from Washington.

Arriving in the region of Wall Street, General Garfield made his way

through the mass of men who surrounded the Exchange Building, until he

reached the balcony. Here Benjamin F. Butler was making an address.

Fifty thousand people were crowding toward that central figure, from

whose left arm waved a yard of crape which told the terrible story to

multitudes who could not hear his words.

General Butler ceased speaking. What should be done with this great

crowd of desperate men? What would they do with themselves?

Lincoln was dead; word came that Seward, with his throat cut, was dying.

Men feared some dread conspiracy which would redden the North with

innocent blood, and hand over the Government to treason and traitors.

Two men in this crowd said that “Lincoln ought to have been shot long

ago.” A minute later one of them was dead; the other lay in the ditch,

bleeding and dying. Thousands of men clutched, in their pockets,

revolvers and knives, to be used on whoever said a word against the

martyred President.

Suddenly from the extreme right wing of the crowd rose a cry: “The

World!” “The office of the World!” “The World!”—and the mass began to

move as one man toward that office. Where would this end? Destruction of

property, loss of life, violence and anarchy, were in that movement, and

apparently no human power could now check its progress.

Then a man stepped to the front of the balcony and held his arm aloft.

His commanding attitude arrested universal attention. Perhaps he was

going to give them the latest news. They waited. But while they

listened, the voice—it was the voice of General Garfield—only said:

“Fellow-citizens: Clouds and darkness are around about Him! His

pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and

judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall

go before His face! Fellow-citizens: God reigns, and the Government

at Washington still lives!”

The tide of popular fury was stayed. The impossible had been

accomplished. “The World” was saved; but that was not much. The safety

of a great city was secured; and that was much.

Other meetings were held in New York City on that memorable day, and the

magnetic speaker of the morning was called out again. In the course of

an address that afternoon he uttered these words:

“By this last act of madness, it seems as though the Rebellion had

determined that the President of the soldiers should go with the

soldiers who have laid down their lives on the battle-field. They

slew the noblest and gentlest heart that ever put down a rebellion

upon this earth. In taking that life they have left the iron hand of

the people to fall upon them. Love is on the front of the throne of

God, but justice and judgment, with inexorable dread, follow behind;

and when law is slighted and mercy despised, when they have rejected

those who would be their best friends, then comes justice with her

hoodwinked eyes, and with the sword and scales. From every gaping

wound of your dead chief, let the voice go up from the people to see

to it that our house is swept and garnished. I hasten to say one

thing more, fellow-citizens. For mere vengeance I would do nothing.

This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But _for security

of the future_ I would do every thing.”

It is a remarkable fact that when the nation gave expression to its

sorrow over Lincoln’s death, Garfield should have been so notably _the

voice_ which spoke that sorrow.

A year passed on. In April of 1866, Congress, busy with the important

legislation of that period, neglected to remember the approaching

anniversary. On the morning of April 14, the newspapers announced that,

according to President Johnson’s order, the Government offices would be

closed that day out of respect to murdered Lincoln.

Congressmen at the breakfast table read this announcement, and hurried

to the Capitol, inquiring what corresponding action should be taken by

the two Houses of Congress.

General Garfield was in the committee room, hard at work on the

preparation of a bill, when, shortly before time for the House to come

to order, Speaker Colfax came hurriedly in, saying that Mr. Garfield

must be in the House directly and move an adjournment. At the same time

Garfield should make an address appropriate to such an anniversary. That

gentleman protested that the time was too short, but Colfax insisted,

and left the room.

Remaining there alone for a quarter of an hour, the General thought of

the tragic event, and what he should say. Is there not something weirdly

prophetic, to us who live under the reign of Arthur, in the picture of

that silent man of serious mien and thoughtful brow, sitting alone, and

thinking of our _first_ assassinated President?

Just as the clerk finished reading the previous day’s Journal of the

House, Mr. Garfield arose and said:

“_Mr. Speaker_: I desire to move that this House do now adjourn; and

before the vote upon that motion is taken, I desire to say a few

words.

“This day, Mr. Speaker, will be sadly memorable so long as this

nation shall endure, which, God grant, maybe ‘till the last syllable

of recorded time,’ when the volume of human history shall be sealed

up and delivered to the Omnipotent Judge.

“In all future time, on the recurrence of this day, I doubt not that

the citizens of this Republic will meet in solemn assembly to

reflect on the life and character of Abraham Lincoln, and the awful

tragic event of April 14, 1865,—an event unparalleled in the history

of nations, certainly unparalleled in our own. It is eminently

proper that this House should this day place upon its records a

memorial of that event.

“The last five years have been marked by wonderful developments of

human character. Thousands of our people before unknown to fame,

have taken their places in history, crowned with immortal honors. In

thousands of humble homes are dwelling heroes and patriots whose

names shall never die. But greatest among all these developments

were the character and fame of Abraham Lincoln, whose loss the

nation still deplores. His character is aptly described in the words

of England’s great laureate—written thirty years ago—in which he

traces the upward steps of some

“‘Divinely gifted man,

Whose life in low estate began,

And on a simple village green:

Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,

And grasps the skirts of happy chance,

And breasts the blows of circumstance,

And grapples with his evil star:

Who makes by force his merit known,

And lives to clutch the golden keys

To mold a mighty State’s decrees,

And shape the whisper of the throne:

And moving up from high to higher,

Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope,

The pillar of a people’s hope,

The center of a world’s desire.’

“Such a life and character will be treasured forever as the sacred

possession of the American people and of mankind. In the great drama

of the rebellion, there were two acts. The first was the war, with

its battles and sieges, victories and defeats, its sufferings and

tears. That act was closing one year ago to-night, and just as the

curtain was lifting on the second and final act, the restoration of

peace and liberty,—just as the curtain was rising upon new events

and new characters,—the evil spirit of the rebellion, in the fury of

despair, nerved and directed the hand of the assassin to strike down

the chief character in both.

“It was no one man who killed Abraham Lincoln; it was the embodied

spirit of treason and slavery, inspired with fearful and despairing

hate, that struck him down in the moment of the nation’s supremest

joy.

“Ah, sirs, there are times in the history of men and nations when

they stand so near the veil that separates mortals from immortals,

time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost

hear the beatings and feel the pulsations of the heart of the

Infinite! Through such a time has this nation passed. When two

hundred and fifty thousand brave spirits passed from the field of

honor through that thin veil to the presence of God, and when at

last its parting folds admitted the martyr President to the company

of the dead heroes of the Republic, the nation stood so near the

veil that the whispers of God were heard by the children of men.

“Awe-stricken by His voice, the American people knelt in tearful

reverence and made a solemn covenant with Him and with each other

that this nation should be saved from its enemies, that all its

glories should be restored, and on the ruins of treason and slavery

the temples of freedom and justice should be built, and should

survive forever. It remains for us, consecrated by that great event,

and under a covenant with God, to keep that faith, to go forward in

the great work until it shall be completed.

“Following the lead of that great man, and obeying the high behests

of God, let us remember that—

“‘He has sounded forth a trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat.

Be swift, my soul, to answer him, be jubilant at my feet;

For God is marching on.’

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

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

It is now necessary to hasten on to the Thirty-Ninth Congress, wherein

General Garfield, no longer under the disadvantages of a new member,

continued to develop rapidly as an able worker.

General Garfield was a thorough-going temperance man. On returning to

his house in Painesville, Ohio, in the summer of 1865, he found the good

people of that place in trouble on account of a brewery which had been

established in their midst. All efforts to have it removed had been

unavailing. Public meetings were held. Garfield attended one of these,

and while there announced that he would that day remove the brewery.

He just went over to the brewer and bought him out for $10,000. The

liquor on hand, and such brewing machinery as could not be used for any

thing else, he destroyed. When autumn came he used his new establishment

as a cider-mill. The cider was kept till it became good vinegar, and

then sold. The General thus did a good thing for the public, and, it is

said, made money out of the investment, until, after several years, he

sold the building.

When Congress met in December, 1865, it had to face a great task. The

rebellion had been put down, but at great cost; and they had an enormous

debt to provide for. Four years of war had disorganized every thing, and

great questions of finance, involving tariffs, and taxation, and a

thousand vexed themes of public policy, hung with leaden weight over the

heads of our national legislators.

Garfield was one of the few men who were both able and willing to face

the music and bury themselves in the bewildering world of figures which

loomed in the dusky foreground of coming events. The interest alone on

our liabilities amounted to $150,000,000.

When Speaker Colfax made up his committees, he asked Garfield what he

would like. Garfield replied that he would like to have a place which

called for the study of finance. Justin S. Morrill, Chairman of the

Committee on Ways and Means, also asked for him.

He was, accordingly, put upon that committee, and immediately began to

study the subjects which were connected with its prospective work.

Conceiving that our financial condition was in some respects parallel to

that of England at the close of the Napoleonic wars, he carefully

investigated the conditions, policy, and progress of that Government

from the time of Waterloo until the resumption of specie payments. The

most remarkable periods of our own financial history were also studied,

especially that wherein the great Alexander Hamilton appears the master

mind.

These pursuits, and a wide-reaching knowledge of the existing conditions

in our own country, were the foundations on which Garfield built the

structure of a set of opinions which were then received as good, and

which still withstand the test of time.

Garfield was a splendid lawyer. It is only because his course was pushed

aside into the great lines of war and of politics that his history is

not largely the story of great triumphs at the bar. When he was examined

for admission to the bar of Ohio, the lawyers who examined him

pronounced his legal knowledge phenomenal for a man to have acquired in

the short time he had been reading.

But he never practiced in any court until 1866. In this place there can

be mentioned only his first case, in which he argued before the United

States Supreme Court. Afterwards he had about thirty cases in that

court, and often appeared in State courts. At one time Judge Jeremiah S.

Black, a lawyer of National reputation, offered him a partnership.

Financially it would have been a good thing for Garfield, but

fortunately for his constituents and for the country, he refused. Yet,

in the language of Stanley Matthews, now of the U. S. Supreme Court, Mr.

Garfield actually ranked “as one of the very best lawyers at the bar of

the whole country.”

In 1864, L. P. Milligan, W. A. Bowles, and Stephen Horsey, three

citizens of Indiana, were arrested in that State on charges of treason.

There was no doubt that they were guilty of the crime. But,

unfortunately, they were not tried according to law. No government can

long hold such absolute powers as were given to our government during

the rebellion, without developing in some degree a carelessness of the

forms of law which is fatal to liberty. Indiana was not the scene of

war. Her courts, and the United States courts there were open for the

prosecution of criminals. Yet these men were arrested by the military

department, tried by a military commission, and condemned to be hanged.

Lincoln commuted their sentence to imprisonment for life, and they were

sent to the State penitentiary. At this juncture a petition was

presented to the U. S. Circuit Court for a writ of _habeas corpus_, to

test the legality of these arbitrary proceedings. The judges of that

court not agreeing, the points on which they disagreed were certified up

to the Supreme Court. These points were:

“1. On the facts stated in said petition and exhibits, ought a writ

of _habeas corpus_ to be issued according to the prayer of said

petition? 2. On the facts stated in said petition and exhibits,

ought the petitioners to be discharged from custody, as in said

petition prayed? 3. On the facts stated in said petition and

exhibits, had the military commission mentioned therein jurisdiction

legally to try and sentence said petitioners in manner and form as

in said petition and exhibits is stated?”

This was the case. On March 6, 1866, it was to be argued. The eminent

counsel engaged therein were: Hons. Joseph E. McDonald, Jere. S. Black,

James A. Garfield, and David D. Field, for petitioners; Hons. Benjamin

F. Butler, James Speed, and Henry Stanbery, for the Government.

Garfield had been invited to appear in this case by Mr. Black, who had

observed that, although a patriotic friend of the Administration,

Garfield had often sternly opposed its tendency to break all restraints

of law in the exercise of its powers. So he expected,—and found it

true,—that Garfield’s judgment would be with his side of the Milligan

case. Of course that was the unpopular side. For Mr. Garfield to defend

Milligan and his fellow-traitors would perhaps again endanger his

reëlection; but he was not the man to hesitate when he saw himself in

the right.

One of Garfield’s Democratic co-counsel in this case has called this act

the greatest and bravest of Garfield’s life. Like old John Adams,

defending British soldiers for the Boston massacre, storms of obloquy

and the sunshine of favor he alike disregarded for the sake of

principle.

After two days and nights of preparation, Mr. Garfield had decided upon

the points of his argument. Needless to say, it was a complete and

unanswerable presentation of those great English and American

constitutional principles which secure the free people of those

countries from star chambers and military despotisms. It showed forth

clearly the limits of military power, and demonstrated the utter want of

jurisdiction of a military court over civilian citizens.

When Garfield finished, he had established every essential point of his

case beyond a peradventure. His speech closed with these eloquent words,

in appeal to the court:

“Your decision will mark an era in American history. The just and

final settlement of this great question will take a high place among

the great achievements which have immortalized this decade. It will

establish forever this truth, of inestimable value to us and to

mankind, that a Republic can wield the vast enginery of war without

breaking down the safeguards of liberty; can suppress insurrection

and put down rebellion, however formidable, without destroying the

bulwarks of law; can, by the might of its armed millions, preserve

and defend both nationality and liberty. Victories on the field were

of priceless value, for they plucked the life of the Republic out of

the hands of its enemies; but

‘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.

“When Pericles had made Greece immortal in arts and arms, in liberty

and law, he invoked the genius of Phidias to devise a monument which

should symbolize the beauty and glory of Athens. That artist

selected for his theme the tutelar divinity of Athens, the Jove-born

Goddess, protectress of arts and arms, of industry and law, who

typified the Greek conception of composed, majestic, unrelenting

force. He erected on the heights of the Acropolis a colossal statue

of Minerva, armed with spear and helmet, which towered in awful

majesty above the surrounding temples of the gods. Sailors on

far-off ships beheld the crest and spear of the Goddess, and bowed

with reverent awe. To every Greek she was the symbol of power and

glory. But the Acropolis, with its temples and statues, is now a

heap of ruins. The visible gods have vanished in the clearer light

of modern civilization. We can not restore the decayed emblems of

ancient Greece, but it is in your power, O Judge, to erect in this

citadel of our liberties a monument more lasting than brass;

invisible, indeed, to the eye of flesh, but visible to the eye of

the spirit as the awful form and figure of Justice crowning and

adorning the Republic; rising above the storms of political strife,

above the din of battle, above the earthquake shock of rebellion;

seen from afar and hailed as protector by the oppressed of all

nations; dispensing equal blessings, and covering with the

protecting shield of law the weakest, the humblest, the meanest,

and, until declared by solemn law unworthy of protection, the

guiltiest of its citizens.”

Other and very able arguments were made on both sides of the case; but

the law was sustained and the prisoners set free.

For this act Garfield was denounced by many newspapers and many

individuals in his own State and elsewhere. But, as usual, he weathered

it all, and was reëlected to Congress in the fall; for the Reserve

people had come to the point of believing in Garfield, though he did not

follow their opinions. In from one to three years afterwards they

generally discovered that he had been right from the start.

On February 1, 1866, Garfield made that masterly address on the

Freedmen’s Bureau, in which he so clearly set forth his views on the

nature of the Union, and the States of which it is composed. This speech

will be more fully mentioned in another place. On March 16, 1866, he

made a remarkably able speech on “The Currency and Specie Payments,”

farther reference to which must, for the present, be deferred.

A man of Mr. Garfield’s intellect and scholarly acquirements, could not

fail to be interested in the cause of education, always and every-where.

He was himself a splendid result of the free-school system of Ohio, and

had been an enthusiastic teacher. What, then, more natural than that as

a public man he should try to interest Congress in the condition of

American schools?

At the request of the American Association of School Superintendents,

Mr. Garfield, in February, 1866, prepared a bill for the establishment

of a National Bureau of Education. The principal object of this bureau

was to collect statistics and other facts, and so to arrange and to

publish them as to enlighten the people as to our progress in the means

of education. The bill was opposed on account of the expense, as it

called for an appropriation of fifteen thousand dollars!

Speaking on this bill, June 8, 1866, Mr. Garfield called attention to

the subject of national expenditures for extra governmental purposes. We

had expended millions on a Coast Survey Bureau, on an Astronomical

Observatory, on a Light-House Board, on Exploring Expeditions, on the

Pacific Railroad Survey, on Agriculture, on the Patent Office,—why not a

few dollars on Education? “As man is greater than the soil, as the

immortal spirit is nobler than the clod it animates, so is the object of

this bill of more importance than any mere pecuniary interest.”

The National Bureau of Education was established, and the results of its

work have fully vindicated the opinions of its founders.

Garfield’s idea of what should be taught in our schools and colleges was

as broad and deep as the domain of knowledge; but, withal, very

practical. That he loved the classics, his own study of them

demonstrates; but he saw that something better adapted to the scientific

and practical character of our country was needed. In an address at

Hiram, on June 14, 1867, he gave emphatic expression to this idea.

“A finished education is supposed to consist mainly of literary

culture. The story of the forges of the Cyclops, where the

thunderbolts of Jove were fashioned, is supposed to adorn elegant

scholarship more gracefully that those sturdy truths which are

preaching to this generation in the wonders of the mine, in the fire

of the furnace, in the clang of the iron-mills, and the other

innumerable industries, which, more than all other human agencies,

have made our civilization what it is, and are destined to achieve

wonders yet undreamed of. This generation is beginning to understand

that education should not be forever divorced from industry; that

the highest results can be reached only when science guides the hand

of labor. With what eagerness and alacrity is industry seizing every

truth of science and putting it in harness!”

Moreover, Mr. Garfield believed strongly in a liberal political

education for the youth of the land. On this point, in the address above

mentioned, he said:

“It is well to know the history of these magnificent nations, whose

origin is lost in fable, and whose epitaphs were written a thousand

years ago; but, if we can not know both, it is far better to study

the history of our own nation, whose origin we can trace to the

freest and noblest aspirations of the human heart—a nation that was

formed from the hardiest, purest, and most enduring elements of

European civilization; a nation that by its faith and courage has

dared and accomplished more for the human race in a single century

than Europe accomplished in the first thousand years of the

Christian era. The New England township was the type after which our

Federal Government was modeled; yet it would be rare to find a

college student who can make a comprehensive and intelligible

statement of the municipal organization of the township in which he

was born, and tell you by what officers its legislative, judicial,

and executive functions are administered. One half of the time which

is now almost wholly wasted in district schools on English grammar,

attempted at too early an age, would be sufficient to teach our

children to love the Republic, and to become its loyal and life-long

supporters. After the bloody baptism from which the Nation has risen

to a higher and nobler life, if this shameful defect in our system

of education be not speedily remedied, we shall deserve the infinite

contempt of future generations. I insist that it should be made an

indispensable condition of graduation in every American college,

that the student must understand the history of this continent since

its discovery by Europeans, the origin and history of the United

States, its constitution of government, the struggles through which

it has passed, and the rights and duties of citizens who are to

determine its destiny and share its glory.

“Having thus gained the knowledge which is necessary to life,

health, industry, and citizenship, the student is prepared to enter

a wider and grander field of thought. If he desires that large and

liberal culture which will call into activity all his powers, and

make the most of the material God has given him, he must study

deeply and earnestly the intellectual, the moral, the religious, and

the æsthetic nature of man; his relations to nature, to civilization

past and present; and, above all, his relations to God. These should

occupy, nearly, if not fully, half the time of his college course.

In connection with the philosophy of the mind, he should study

logic, the pure mathematics, and the general laws of thought. In

connection with moral philosophy, he should study political and

social ethics—a science so little known either in colleges or

Congresses. Prominent among all the rest, should be his study of the

wonderful history of the human race, in its slow and toilsome march

across the centuries—now buried in ignorance, superstition, and

crime; now rising to the sublimity of heroism and catching a glimpse

of a better destiny; now turning remorselessly away from, and

leaving to perish, empires and civilizations in which it had

invested its faith and courage and boundless energy for a thousand

years, and, plunging into the forests of Germany, Gaul, and Britain,

to build for itself new empires better fitted for its new

aspirations; and, at last, crossing three thousand miles of unknown

sea, and building in the wilderness of a new hemisphere its latest

and proudest monuments.”

When the Fortieth Congress met, in December of 1867, Mr. Garfield was,

contrary to his wishes, taken off the Committee on Ways and Means and

made Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. In the line of this

work he pursued some very important investigations of both military and

political character.

Among his most important speeches, in this connection, were that on the

“Military Control of the Rebel States” made in February, 1867 (during

the Thirty-Ninth Congress), and that delivered January 17, 1868, on the

then all-absorbing theme, “Reconstruction.”

In the conflict between President Johnson and the majority in Congress,

about the government of the late rebel States, Mr. Garfield was, of

course, sternly opposed to that outrageous policy of the President,

whose main object seemed to be the undoing of all the beneficial results

of the war.

When the articles of impeachment against Johnson were passed, Garfield

was not in Washington; but on his return, February 29, 1868, he took

occasion to say that if he had been present he should have voted for

them. He had formerly opposed such action because he thought it would be

unsuccessful. Johnson’s later actions, however, especially his arbitrary

dismissal of Secretary Stanton, were such clear violations of the

Constitution that he supposed the President’s guilt could be judicially

established, and therefore he favored the attempt.

On the 15th of May of this same year, Mr. Garfield delivered another

address on the currency. His financial views were still in advance of

his party, and the unsound views advanced by various politicians gave

opportunity for many a well-directed shot from his well-stored armory of

facts, figures, and principles. His speeches on this topic alone would

fill a large volume.

In 1868 occurred one of the many attempts made by politicians to reduce

the public debt by extorting money from the Nation’s creditors. On July

15, 1868, Mr. Garfield discussed, at considerable length and with all

his usual clearness and ability, one of these measures, which, in this

case, was a bill for the taxation of bonds. He was too honest a man,

and, at the same time, too sound a financier, to be blind to the wrong

as well as the impolitic character of such a law. Two paragraphs will

suffice to exhibit these two points:

“Nobody expects that we can pay as fast as the debt matures, but we

shall be compelled to go into the market and negotiate new loans.

Let this system of taxation be pursued; let another Congress put the

tax at twenty per cent., another at forty per cent., and another at

fifty per cent., or one hundred per cent.; let the principle once be

adopted—the rate is only a question of discretion—and where will you

be able to negotiate a loan except at the most ruinous sacrifice?

Let such legislation prevail as the gentleman urges, and can we look

any man in the face and ask him to loan us money? If we do not keep

faith to-day, how can we expect to be trusted hereafter?

“There was a declaration made by an old English gentleman in the

days of Charles II. which does honor to human nature. He said he was

willing at any time to give his life for the good of his country;

but he would not do a mean thing to save his country from ruin. So,

sir, ought a citizen to feel in regard to our financial affairs. The

people of the United States can afford to make any sacrifice for

their country, and the history of the last war has proved their

willingness; but the humblest citizen can not afford to do a mean or

dishonorable thing to save even this glorious Republic.”

It was in 1867 that Garfield made his only trip to Europe. When the

summer of that year came, the hard year’s work, just finished, had made

considerable inroad on his health, and he thought a sea voyage would

bring back his strength. On July 13, Mr. and Mrs. Garfield sailed from

New York in the “City of London,” which carried them across the Atlantic

in thirteen days.

Remembering the ambitions of his boyhood to become a sailor, Garfield

enjoyed his voyage as few men do who cross the sea. They reached

Liverpool on the 26th, and as they steamed up the Mersey, General

Garfield significantly remarked, looking down into its muddy waters,

“The quality of Mersey is not strained.”

From Liverpool they went to London, stopping at two or three interesting

places by the way. At London he visited both Houses of Parliament, heard

debates on the great reform bill which passed at that time; saw

Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, and other great Englishmen, and after a

week of sight-seeing and studying here, visited other parts of England,

and then went to Scotland. Mr. Blaine and Mr. Morrill, were with them in

Scotland. There the General visited the home of Burns and re-read “Tam

O’Shanter.”

Leaving Scotland at Leith, they crossed the North Sea to Rotterdam, went

to Brussels and Cologne, and thence up the Rhine to Mayence.

Thence by various stages, reveling in old world glories, he reached

Italy—Florence and Rome. Here a year of life was crowded into a week,

while Garfield lived amid the wrecks of antiquity and the decayed

remnants of that dead empire whose splendid history can not be forgotten

till “the last syllable of recorded time.”

On October first they proceeded, by a circuitous route, to make their

way to Paris, where they met several American friends, among them the

artist, Miss Ransom. After a short stay there, and a few excursions to

other places, they finally started for home, and by November 6th they

were once more standing on American soil.

General Garfield’s health was by this means thoroughly restored, and he

had realized in some degree one of the sincerest wishes of his life,—a

more familiar acquaintance with some places across the sea than books

could give.

On May 30, 1868, occurred the first general observance of that beautiful

national custom, the annual decoration of the soldiers’ graves. On that

day, the President and his Cabinet, with a large number of Congressmen

and other distinguished persons, and about fifteen thousand people, met

on Arlington Heights to pay their respects to the Nation’s dead, and

listen to an address. The orator of the day was Garfield.

No more touching and sincere expression of patriotic sentiments was ever

uttered than he spoke there that day. Indeed, his reverence for the time

and place was deeper than his words could tell. To this he referred in

the beginning, saying:

“If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of

fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech,

and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung.

With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises

may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue

may be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise

these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do

know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest

virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted

death; and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their

patriotism and their virtue.

“For the noblest man that lives there still remains a conflict. He

must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune; must still be

assailed with temptations before which lofty natures have fallen.

But with _these_, the conflict ended, the victory was won, when

death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed

a record which years can never blot.”

This memorable address closed thus:

“And now, consider this silent assembly of the dead. What does it

represent? Nay, rather, what does it not represent? It is an epitome

of the war. Here are sheaves reaped, in the harvest of death, from

every battle-field of Virginia. If each grave had a voice to tell us

what its silent tenant last saw and heard on earth, we might stand,

with uncovered heads, and hear the whole story of the war. We should

hear that one perished when the first great drops of the crimson

shower began to fall, when the darkness of that first disaster at

Manassas fell like an eclipse on the Nation; that another died of

disease while wearily waiting for winter to end; that this one fell

on the field, in sight of the spires of Richmond, little dreaming

that the flag must be carried through three more years of blood

before it should be planted in that citadel of treason; and that one

fell when the tide of war had swept us back, till the roar of rebel

guns shook the dome of yonder Capitol, and re-echoed in the chambers

of the Executive Mansion. We should hear mingled voices from the

Rappahannock, the Rapidan, the Chickahominy, and the James; solemn

voices from the Wilderness, and triumphant shouts from the

Shenandoah, from Petersburg, and the Five Forks, mingled with the

wild acclaim of victory and the sweet chorus of returning peace. The

voices of these dead will forever fill the land, like holy

benedictions.

“What other spot so fitting for their last resting-place as this,

under the shadow of the capitol saved by their valor? Here, where

the grim edge of battle joined; here, where all the hope and fear

and agony of their country centered; here let them rest, asleep on

the Nation’s heart, entombed in the Nation’s love!

“The view from this spot bears some resemblance to that which greets

the eye at Rome. In sight of the Capitoline Hill, up and across the

Tiber, and overlooking the city, is a hill, not rugged or lofty, but

known as the Vatican Mount. At the beginning of the Christian Era,

an imperial circus stood on its summit. There, gladiator slaves died

for the sport of Rome, and wild beasts fought with wilder men. In

that arena, a Galilean fisherman gave up his life, a sacrifice for

his faith. No human life was ever so nobly avenged. On that spot was

reared the proudest Christian temple ever built by human hands. For

its adornment, the rich offerings of every clime and kingdom had

been contributed. And now, after eighteen centuries, the hearts of

two hundred million people turn toward it with reverence when they

worship God. As the traveler descends the Apennines, he sees the

dome of St. Peter rising above the desolate Campagna and the dead

city, long before the Seven Hills and ruined palaces appear to his

view. The fame of the dead fisherman has outlived the glory of the

Eternal City. A noble life, crowned with heroic death, rises above

and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of

the earth.

“Seen from the western slope of our Capitol, in direction, distance,

and appearance, this spot is not unlike the Vatican Mount, though

the river that flows at our feet is larger than a hundred Tibers.

Seven years ago this was the home of one who lifted his sword

against the life of his country, and who became the great imperator

of the rebellion. The soil beneath our feet was watered by the tears

of slaves, in whose hearts the sight of yonder proud Capitol

awakened no pride, and inspired no hope. The face of the goddess

that crowns it was turned toward the sea, and not toward them. But,

thanks be to God, this arena of rebellion and slavery is a scene of

violence and crime no longer! This will be forever the sacred

mountain of our capital. Here is our temple; its pavement is the

sepulcher of heroic hearts; its dome, the bending heaven; its altar

candles, the watching stars.

“Hither our children’s children shall come to pay their tribute of

grateful homage. For this are we met to-day. By the happy suggestion

of a great society, assemblies like this are gathering at this hour

in every State in the Union. Thousands of soldiers are to-day

turning aside in the march of life to visit the silent encampments

of dead comrades who once fought by their sides.

“From many thousand homes, whose light was put out when a soldier

fell, there go forth to-day, to join these solemn processions,

loving kindred and friends, from whose hearts the shadow of grief

will never be lifted till the light of the eternal world dawns upon

them.

“And here are children, little children, to whom the war left no

father but the Father above. By the most sacred right, theirs is the

chief place to-day. They come with garlands to crown their victor

fathers. I will delay the celebration no longer.”