JAMES G. BLAINE.

Few men are more prominently placed before the vision of a mighty nation

to-day than James G. Blaine. Born in obscurity, he possesses traits of

character which are peculiar to himself; they differ widely from that of

any statesman who ever spoke in the legislative halls at Washington.

Colleges, of themselves, make no man great. An 'educated idiot' will

never make a statesman, notwithstanding the too prevalent notion that

the possession of a diploma should entitle any one to a place in our

social aristocracy. The great, active, relentless, human world gives a

man a place of real influence, and crowns him as truly great for what he

really is; and will not care a fig for any college certificate. If the

young man is determined to succeed in the world then a college is a

help. The trouble is not in the college, but in the man. He should

regard the college as a means to attain a result, not the result of

itself. The question the great busy world asks the claimant is: What can

he do? If the claimant enter school determined to succeed, even if he

sleeps but four to six hours out of the twenty-four, he will be

benefited. However, study like that of Webster, by New Hampshire pine

knots; and like Garfield's, by a wood-pile; generally proves valuable.

Blaine's life is thus beautifully described by his biographer:--

"James Gillespie Blaine, the subject of this biography, was born January

31st, 1830. His father, Ephraim L. Blaine, and his mother, Maria

Gillespie, still lived in their two-story house on the banks of the

Monongahela. No portentious events, either in nature or public affairs,

marked his advent. A few neighbors with generous interest and sympathy

extended their aid and congratulations. The tops of the hills and the

distant Alleghanies were white with snow, but the valley was bare and

brown, and the swollen river swept the busy ferry-boat from shore to

shore with marked emphasis, as old acquaintances repeated the news of

the day, 'Blaine has another son.'"

Another soul clothed in humanity; another cry; increased care in one

little home. That was all. It seems so sad in this, the day of his fame

and power, that the mother who, with such pain and misgiving, prayer and

noble resolutions, saw his face for the first time should now be

sleeping in the church-yard. In the path that now leads by her grave,

she had often paused before entering the shadowy gates of the

weather-beaten Catholic church, and calmed her anxious fears that she

might devoutly worship God and secure the answer to her prayer for her

child.

It seems strange now, in the light of other experiences, that no

tradition or record of a mother's prophecy concerning the future

greatness of her son comes down to us from that birthday, or from his

earliest years. But the old European customs and prejudices of her Irish

and Scottish ancestry seem to have lingered with sufficient force to

still give the place of social honor and to found the parent's hopes on

the first-born. To all concerned it was a birth of no special

significance. Outside of the family it was a matter of no moment. Births

were frequent. The Brownsville people heard of it, and passed on to

forget, as a ripple in the Monongahela flashes on the careless sight for

a moment, then the river rolls on as before. Ephraim Blaine was proud of

another son; the little brother and the smaller sister hailed a new

brother. The mother, with a deep joy which escaped not in words, looked

onward and tried to read the future when the flood of years should have

carried her new treasure from her arms. That flood has swept over her

now, and all her highest hopes and ambition is filled, but she seems not

to hear the church bells that ring nor the cannon that bellow at the

sound of his name.

"All his early childhood years were spent about his home playing in the

well-kept yard gazing at the numerous boats that so frequently went

puffing by. For a short time the family moved to the old Gillespie House

further up the river, and some of the inhabitants say that at one time,

while some repairs were going on, they resided at the old homestead of

Neal Gillespie, back from the river, on Indian Hill."

At seventeen he graduated from school and, his father, losing what

little property he did have, young Blaine was thrown upon his own

resources. But it is often the best thing possible for a young man to be

thus tossed over-board, and be compelled to sink or swim. It develops a

self-reliant nature. He secured employment as a teacher, and into this

calling he threw his whole soul. Thus he became a success as an educator

at Blue Lick Springs. He next went to Philadelphia, and for two years

was the principal teacher of the boys in the Philadelphia Institution

for instruction of the blind. When he left that institution he left

behind him a universal regret at a serious loss incurred, but an

impression of his personal force upon the work of that institution which

it is stated, on good authority, is felt to this day. Mr. Chapin, the

principal, one day said, as he took from a desk in the corner of the

school-room a thick quarto manuscript book, bound in dark leather and

marked 'Journal:' "Now, I will show you something that illustrates how

thoroughly Mr. Blaine mastered anything he took hold of. This book Mr.

Blaine compiled with great labor from the minute-books of the Board of

Managers. It is a historical view of the institution from the time of

its foundation, up to the time of Mr. Blaine's departure. He did all the

work in his own room, telling no one of it till he left. Then he

presented it, through me, to the Board of Managers who were both

surprised and gratified. I believe they made him a present of $100 as a

thank-offering for an invaluable work." The book illustrates one great

feature in the success of Mr. Blaine. It is clear, and indicates his

mastery of facts in whatever he undertook, and his orderly presentation

of facts in detail. The fact that no one knew of it until the proper

time, when its effect would be greatest, shows that he naturally

possesses a quality that is almost indispensable to the highest

attainment of success.

He left Philadelphia for Augusta, Maine, where he became editor of the

_Kennebec Journal_. While editor and member of his State legislature,

he laid the foundation which prepared him to step at once to the front,

when in 1862 he was sent to the National Congress, when the country was

greatly agitated over the Five-twenty bonds, and how they should be

redeemed. Mr. Blaine spoke as follows:

"But, now, Mr. Speaker, suppose for the sake of argument, we admit that

the Government may fairly and legally pay the Five-twenty bonds in paper

currency, what then? I ask the gentleman from Massachusetts to tell us,

what then? It is easy, I know, to issue as many greenbacks as will pay

the maturing bonds, regardless of the effect upon the inflation of

prices, and the general derangement of business. Five hundred millions

of Five-twenties are now payable, and according to the easy mode

suggested, all we have to do is set the printing-presses in motion, and

'so long as rags and lampblack hold out' we need have no embarrassment

about paying our National Debt. But the ugly question recurs, what are

you going to do with the greenbacks thus put afloat? Five hundred

millions this year, and eleven hundred millions more on this theory of

payment by the year 1872; so that within the period of four or five

years we would have added to our paper money the thrilling inflation of

sixteen hundred millions of dollars. We should all have splendid times

doubtless! Wheat, under the new dispensation, ought to bring twenty

dollars a bushel, and boots would not be worth more than two hundred

dollars a pair, and the farmers of our country would be as well off as

Santa Anna's rabble of Mexican soldiers, who were allowed ten dollars a

day for their services and charged eleven for their rations and

clothing. The sixteen hundred millions of greenbacks added to the

amount already issued would give us some twenty-three hundred millions

of paper money, and I suppose the theory of the new doctrine would leave

this mass permanently in circulation, for it would hardly be consistent

to advocate the redemption of the greenbacks in gold after having

repudiated and foresworn our obligation on the bonds.

"But if it be intended to redeem the legal tenders in gold, what will

have been the net gain to the Government in the whole transaction? If

any gentleman will tell me, I shall be glad to learn how it will be

easier to pay sixteen hundred millions in gold in the redemption of

greenbacks, than to pay the same amount in the redemption of Five-twenty

bonds? The policy advocated, it seems to me, has only two

alternatives--the one to ruinously inflate the currency and leave it so,

reckless of results; the other to ruinously inflate the currency at the

outset, only to render redemption in gold far more burdensome in the

end.

"I know it may be claimed, that the means necessary to redeem the

Five-twenties in greenbacks may be realized by a new issue of currency

bonds to be placed on the market. Of results in the future every

gentleman has the right to his own opinion, and all may alike indulge in

speculation. But it does seem to me that the Government would be placed

in awkward attitude when it should enter the market to negotiate the

loan, the avails of which were to be devoted to breaking faith with

those who already held its most sacred obligations! What possible

security would the new class of creditors have, that when their debts

were matured some new form of evasion would be resorted to by which they

in turn would be deprived of their just and honest dues?

"_Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus_ would supply the ready form of

protest against trusting a Government with a new loan when it had just

ignored its plain obligation on an old one.

"Payment of the Five-twenty bonds in paper currency involves therefore a

limitless issue of greenbacks, with attendant evils of gigantic

magnitude and far-reaching consequence. And the worse evil of the whole

is the delusion which calls this a payment at all. It is no payment in

any proper sense, for it neither gives the creditor what he is entitled

to, nor does it release the debtor from subsequent responsibility. You

may get rid of the Five-twenty by issuing the greenback, but how will

you get rid of the greenback except by paying gold? The only escape from

ultimate payment of gold is to declare that as a nation we permanently

and finally renounce all idea of ever attaining a specie standard--that

we launch ourselves on an ocean of paper money without shore or

sounding, with no rudder to guide us and no compass to steer by. And

this is precisely what is involved if we adopt this mischievous

suggestion of 'a new way to pay old debts.' Our fate in attempting such

a course may be easily read in the history of similar follies both in

Europe and in our own country. Prostration of credit, financial

disaster, widespread distress among all classes of the community, would

form the closing scenes in our career of gratuitous folly and national

dishonor. And from such an abyss of sorrow and humiliation, it would be

a painful and toilsome effort to regain as sound a position in our

finances as we are asked voluntarily to abandon to-day.

"The remedy for our financial troubles, Mr. Speaker, will not be found

in a superabundance of depreciated paper currency. It lies in the

opposite direction--and the sooner the nation finds itself on a specie

basis, the sooner will the public treasury be freed from embarrassment,

and private business relieved from discouragement. Instead, therefore,

of entering upon a reckless and boundless issue of legal tenders, with

their consequent depression if not destruction of value, let us set

resolutely to work and make those already in circulation equal to so

many gold dollars. When that result shall be accomplished, we can

proceed to pay our Five-twenties either in coin or paper, for the one

would be equivalent to the other. But to proceed deliberately on a

scheme of depreciating our legal tenders and then forcing the holders of

Government bonds to accept them in payment, would resemble in point of

honor, the policy of a merchant who, with abundant resources and

prosperous business, should devise a plan for throwing discredit on his

own notes with the view of having them bought up at a discount, ruinous

to the holders and immensely profitable to his own knavish pocket. This

comparison may faintly illustrate the wrongfulness of the policy, but

not its consummate folly--for in the case of the Government, unlike the

merchant, the stern necessity would recur of making good in the end, by

the payment of hard coin, all the discount that might be gained by the

temporary substitution of paper.

"Discarding all such schemes as at once unworthy and unprofitable, let

us direct our policy steadily, but not rashly, toward the resumption of

specie payment. And when we have attained that end--easily attainable at

no distant day if the proper policy be pursued--we can all unite on some

honorable plan for the redemption of the Five-twenty bonds, and the

issuing instead thereof, a new series of bonds which can be more

favorably placed at a low rate of interest. When we shall have reached

the specie basis, the value of United States securities will be so high

in the money market of the world, that we can command our own terms. We

can then call in our Five-twenties according to the very letter and

spirit of the bond, and adjust a new loan that will be eagerly sought

for by capitalists, and will be free from those elements of discontent

that in some measure surround the existing Funded debt of the country.

"As to the particular measures of legislation requisite to hasten the

resumption of specie payment, gentlemen equally entitled to respect may

widely differ; but there is one line of policy conducive thereto on

which we all ought to agree; and that is on a serious reduction of the

government expenses and a consequent lightening of the burdens of

taxation. The interest-bearing debt of the United States, when

permanently funded, will not exceed twenty-one hundred millions of

dollars, imposing an annual interest of about one hundred and

twenty-five millions. Our other expenses, including War, Navy, the

Pension list, and the Civil list, ought not to exceed one hundred

millions; so that if we raise two hundred and fifty millions from

Customs and Internal Revenue combined, we should have twenty-five

millions annual surplus to apply to the reduction of the Public debt.

But to attain this end we must mend our ways, and practice an economy

far more consistent and severe than any we have attempted in the past.

Our Military peace establishment must be reduced one-half at least, and

our Naval appropriations correspondingly curtailed; and innumerable

leaks and gaps and loose ends, that have so long attended our government

expenditure, must be taken up and stopped. If such a policy be pursued

by Congress, neither the principal of the debt, nor the interest of the

debt, nor the annual expenses of government, will be burdensome to the

people. We can raise two hundred and fifty millions of revenue on the

gold basis, and at the same time have a vast reduction in our taxes. And

we can do this without repudiation in any form, either open or covert,

avowed or indirect, but with every obligation of the government

fulfilled and discharged in its exact letter and in its generous spirit.

"And this, Mr. Speaker, we shall do. Our national honor demands it; our

national interest equally demands it. We have vindicated our claim to

the highest heroism on a hundred bloody battle-fields, and have stopped

at no sacrifice of life needful to the maintenance of our national

integrity. I am sure that in the peace which our arms have conquered, we

shall not dishonor ourselves by withholding from any public creditor a

dollar that we promised to pay him, nor seek, by cunning construction

and clever afterthought, to evade or escape the full responsibility of

our national indebtedness. It will doubtless cost us a vast sum to pay

that indebtedness--but it would cost us incalculably more not to pay

it."

This speech, here referred to, occurring, as it did when the ablest

speakers were interested, was pronounced as a marvel. The great rows of

figures which he gave, but which space will not allow us to give,

illustrates the man, and his thorough mastery of all great public

questions. He never enters a debate unless fully prepared; if not

already prepared, he prepares himself. His reserve power is wonderful.

What a feature of success is reserve power.

In 1876 occurred one of the most remarkable contests ever known in

Congress. The debate began upon the proposition to grant a general

amnesty to all those who had engaged in the Southern war on the side of

the Confederacy; of course this would include Mr. Davis. Hon. Benjamin

H. Hill, of Georgia, one of the ablest Congressmen in the South, met Mr.

Blaine on the question. As space will not permit us to go into detail at

all as we would like to, we give simply an extract from one of Mr.

Blaine's replies:

"I am very frank to say that in regard to all these gentlemen, save one,

I do not know of any reason why amnesty should not be granted to them as

it has been to many others of the same class. I am not here to argue

against it. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Kasson) suggests 'on their

application.' I am coming to that. But as I have said, seeing in this

list, as I have examined it with some care, no gentleman to whom I think

there would be any objection, since amnesty has already become so

general--and I am not going back of that question to argue it--I am in

favor of granting it to them. But in the absence of this respectful form

of application which, since May 22d, 1872, has become a sort of common

law as preliminary to amnesty, I simply wish to put in that they shall

go before a United States Court, and in open court, with uplifted hand,

swear that they mean to conduct themselves as good citizens of the

United States. That is all.

"Now, gentlemen may say that this is a foolish exaction. Possibly it is.

But somehow or other I have a prejudice in favor of it. And there are

some petty points in it that appeal as well to prejudice as to

conviction. For one, I do not want to impose citizenship on any

gentlemen. If I am correctly informed, and I state it only on rumor,

there are some gentlemen in this list who have spoken contemptuously of

the idea of their taking citizenship, and have spoken still more

contemptuously of the idea of their applying for citizenship. I may

state it wrongly, and if I do, I am willing to be corrected, but I

understand that Mr. Robert Toombs has, on several occasions, at

watering-places, both in this country and in Europe, stated that he

would not ask the United States for citizenship.

"Very well; we can stand it about as well as Mr. Robert Toombs can. And

if Mr. Robert Toombs is not prepared to go into a court of the United

States and swear that he means to be a good citizen, let him stay out. I

do not think that the two Houses of Congress should convert themselves

into a joint convention for the purpose of embracing Mr. Robert Toombs,

and gushingly request him to favor us by coming back to accept of all

the honors of citizenship. That is the whole. All I ask is that each of

these gentlemen shall show his good faith by coming forward and taking

the oath which you on that side of the House, and we on this side of the

House, and all of us take, and gladly take. It is a very small exaction

to make as a preliminary to full restoration to all the rights of

citizenship.

"In my amendment, Mr. Speaker, I have excepted Jefferson Davis from its

operation. Now, I do not place it on the ground that Mr. Davis was, as

he has been commonly called, the head and front of the rebellion,

because, on that ground, I do not think the exception would be tenable.

Mr. Davis was just as guilty, no more so, no less so, than thousands of

others who have already received the benefit and grace of amnesty.

Probably he was far less efficient as an enemy of the United States:

probably he was far more useful as a disturber of the councils of the

Confederacy than many who have already received amnesty. It is not

because of any particular and special damage that he, above others, did

to the Union, or because he was personally or especially of consequence,

that I except him. But I except him on this ground; that he was the

author, knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and willfully, of the

gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville. * * * *

"Mr. Speaker, this is not a proposition to punish Jefferson Davis. There

is nobody attempting that. I will very frankly say that I myself thought

the indictment of Mr. Davis at Richmond, under the administration of Mr.

Johnson, was a weak attempt, for he was indicted only for that of which

he was guilty in common with all others who went into the Confederate

movement. Therefore, there was no particular reason for it. But I will

undertake to say this, and as it may be considered an extreme speech, I

want to say it with great deliberation, that there is not a government,

a civilized government, on the face of the globe--I am very sure there

is not a European government--that would not have arrested Mr. Davis,

and when they had him in their power would not have tried him for

maltreatment of the prisoners of war and shot him within thirty days.

France, Russia, England, Germany, Austria, any one of them would have

done it. The poor victim Wirz deserved his death for brutal treatment,

and murder of many victims, but I always thought it was a weak movement

on the part of our government to allow Jefferson Davis to go at large,

and hang Wirz. I confess I do. Wirz was nothing in the world but a mere

subordinate, a tool, and there was no special reason for singling him

out for death. I do not say he did not deserve it--he did, richly,

amply, fully. He deserved no mercy, but at the same time, as I have

often said, it seemed like skipping over the president, superintendent,

and board of directors in the case of a great railroad accident, and

hanging the brakeman of the rear car.

"There is no proposition here to punish Jefferson Davis. Nobody is

seeking to do it. That time has gone by. The statute of limitation,

common feelings of humanity, will supervene for his benefit. But what

you ask us to do is to declare by a vote of two-thirds of both branches

of Congress, that we consider Mr. Davis worthy to fill the highest

offices in the United States if he can get a constituency to indorse

him. He is a voter; he can buy and he can sell; he can go and he can

come. He is as free as any man in the United States. There is a large

list of subordinate offices to which he is eligible. This bill proposes,

in view of that record, that Mr. Davis, by a two-thirds vote of the

Senate and a two-thirds vote of the House, be declared eligible and

worthy to fill any office up to the Presidency of the United States. For

one, upon full deliberation, I will not do it."

These two speeches illustrates the scope of Blaine in debate. These

speeches also clearly show why he is so dearly beloved, or so bitterly

hated. But that Mr. Blaine is an orator of the first order cannot be

gainsaid. The preceding speeches represent the highest attainment of one

ideal of an orator, and in a role in which Mr. Blaine is almost without

parallel. In his Memorial address on Garfield, delivered in the hall of

the House of Representatives, he presents the lofty style which is the

beau ideal of oratory. He spoke something as follows:

"Mr. President: For the second time in this generation the great

departments of the government of the United States are assembled in the

Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a murdered

president. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle in which the

passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of his

great life added but another to the lengthened succession of horrors

which had marked so many lintels with the blood of the first-born.

Garfield was slain in a day of peace, when brother had been reconciled

to brother, and when anger and hate had been banished from the land.

'Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it

as it has been exhibited where such example was last to have been looked

for, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by

revenge, the face black with settled hate. Let him draw, rather, a

decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; not so much an example of human

nature in its depravity and in its paroxisms of crime, as an infernal

being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his

character." * * * *

"His father dying before he was two years old, Garfield's early life was

one of privation, but its poverty has been made indelicately and

unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers have imagined him as the

ragged, starving child, whose reality too often greets the eye in the

squalid sections of our large cities. General Garfield's infancy and

youth had none of this destitution, none of these pitiful features

appealing to the tender heart, and to the open hand of charity. He was a

poor boy in the same sense in which Henry Clay was a poor boy; in which

Andrew Jackson was a poor boy; in which Daniel Webster was a poor boy;

in the sense in which a large majority of the eminent men of America in

all generations have been poor boys. Before a great multitude, in a

public speech, Mr. Webster bore this testimony:

"'It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder

brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the

snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke

rose first from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills there

was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the

settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to

it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the

hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love

to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early

affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with

all I know of this primitive family abode.'

"With the requisite change of scene the same words would aptly portray

the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where all are

engaged in a common struggle, and where a common sympathy and hearty

co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a very different poverty,

different in kind, different in influence and effect, from that

conscious and humiliating indigence which is every day forced to

contrast itself with neighboring wealth on which it feels a sense of

grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty.

It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless possibilities

of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew up in the

agricultural regions of the West, where a house-raising, or even a

corn-husking, is matter of common interest and helpfulness, with any

other feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independence. This

honorable independence marked the youth of Garfield, as it marks the

youth of millions of the best blood and brain now training for the

future citizenship and future government of the Republic. Garfield was

born heir to land, to the title of free-holder, which has been the

patent and passport of self-respect with the Anglo-Saxon race ever since

Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of England. His adventure on the

canal--an alternative between that and the deck of a Lake Erie

schooner--was a farmer boy's device for earning money, just as the New

England lad begins a possibly great career by sailing before the mast on

a coasting vessel, or on a merchantman bound to the farther India or to

the China seas.

"No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back to early struggles

with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when

he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one of noble

mould desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position, as

having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered

the evils of poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity.

General Garfield's youth presented no hardships which family love and

family energy did not overcome, subjected him to no privations which he

did not cheerfully accept, and left no memories save those which were

recalled with delight, and transmitted with profit and with pride.

"Garfield's early opportunities for securing an education were extremely

limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to

learn. He could read at three years of age, and each winter he had the

advantage of the district school. He read all the books to be found

within the circle of his acquaintance; some of them he got by heart.

While yet in childhood he was a constant student of the Bible, and

became familiar with its literature. The dignity and earnestness of his

speech in his maturer life gave evidence of this early training. At

eighteen years of age he was able to teach school, and thenceforward his

ambition was to obtain a college education. To this end he bent all

efforts, working in the harvest field, at the carpenter's bench, and in

the winter season, teaching the common schools of the neighborhood.

While thus laboriously occupied he found time to prosecute his studies,

and was so successful that at twenty-two years of age he was able to

enter the junior class at Williams College, then under the presidency of

the venerable and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullness of his

powers, survives the eminent pupil to whom he was of inestimable

service.

"The history of Garfield's life to this period presents no novel

features. He had undoubtedly shown perseverance, self-reliance,

self-sacrifice, and ambition--qualities which, be it said for the honor

of our country, are everywhere to be found among the young men of

America. But from his graduation at Williams, onward to the hour of his

tragical death, Garfield's career was eminent and exceptional. Slowly

working through his educational period, receiving his diploma when

twenty-four years of age, he seemed at one bound to spring into

conspicuous and brilliant success. Within six years he was successively

President of a College, State Senator of Ohio, Major-General of the Army

of the United States and Representative-elect to the National Congress.

A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within a period so brief

and to a man so young, is without precedent or parallel in the history

of the country.

"Garfield's army life was begun with no other military knowledge than

such as he had hastily gained from books in the few months preceding his

march to the field. Stepping from civil life to the head of a regiment,

the first order he received when ready to cross the Ohio was to assume

command of a brigade, and to operate as an independent force in eastern

Kentucky. His immediate duty was to check the advance of Humphrey

Marshall, who was marching down the Big Sandy with the intention of

occupying, in connection with other Confederate forces, the entire

territory of Kentucky, and of precipitating the State into secession.

This was at the close of the year 1861. Seldom, if ever, has a young

college professor been thrown into a more embarrassing and discouraging

position. He knew just enough of military science, as he expressed it

himself, to measure the extent of his ignorance, and with a handful of

men he was marching, in rough winter weather, into a strange country,

among a hostile population, to confront a largely superior force under

the command of a distinguished graduate of West Point, who had seen

active and important service in two preceding wars.

"The result of the campaign is matter of history. The skill, the

endurance, the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the courage he

imparted to his men, raw and untried as himself, the measures he adopted

to increase his force, and to create in the enemy's mind exaggerated

estimates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of Marshall,

the capture of his camp, the dispersion of his force, and the

emancipation of an important territory from the control of the

rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of disasters to the

Union arms, Garfield's victory had an unusual and extraneous

importance, and in the popular judgment elevated the young commander to

the rank of a military hero. With less than two thousand men in his

entire command, with a mobilized force of only eleven hundred, without

cannon, he had met an army of five thousand and defeated them, driving

Marshall's forces successively from two strongholds of their own

selection, fortified with abundant artillery. Major-General Buell,

commanding the Department of the Ohio, an experienced and able soldier

of the Regular Army, published an order of thanks and congratulation on

the brilliant result of the Big Sandy Campaign, which would have turned

the head of a less cool and sensible man than Garfield. Buell declared

that his services had called into action the highest qualities of a

soldier, and President Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the

more substantial reward of a Brigadier-General's Commission, to bear

date from the day of his decisive victory over Marshall.

"The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its

brilliant beginning. With his new commission he was assigned to the

command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the

second and decisive day's fight on the bloody field of Shiloh. The

remainder of the year 1862 was not especially eventful to Garfield, as

it was not to the armies with which he was serving. His practical sense

was called into exercise in completing the task, assigned him by General

Buell, of reconstructing bridges and re-establishing lines of railway

communication for the army. His occupation in this useful but not

brilliant field was varied by service on courts-martial of importance,

in which department of duty he won a valuable reputation, attracting the

notice and securing the approval of the able and eminent Judge Advocate

General of the army. This of itself was warrant to honorable fame; for

among the great men who in those trying days gave themselves, with

entire devotion, to the service of their country, one who brought to

that service the ripest learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most

varied attainments, who labored with modesty and shunned applause, who,

in the day of triumph, sat reserved and silent and grateful--as Francis

Deak in the hour of Hungary's deliverance--was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky,

who, in his honorable retirement, enjoys the respect and veneration of

all who love the Union of the States.

"Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the highly important and

responsible post of Chief of Staff to General Rosecrans, then at the

head of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military campaign

no subordinate officer requires sounder judgment and quicker knowledge

of men than the Chief of Staff to the Commanding General. An indiscrete

man in such a position can sow more discord, breed more jealousy, and

disseminate more strife than any other officer in the entire

organization. When General Garfield assumed his new duties he found

various troubles already well developed and seriously affecting the

value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumberland. The energy, the

impartiality, and the tact with which he sought to allay these

dissensions, and to discharge the duties, of his new and trying

position, will always remain one of the most striking proofs of his

great versatility. His military duties closed on the memorable field of

Chickamauga, a field which, however disastrous to the Union arms, gave

to him the occasion of winning imperishable laurels. The very rare

distinction was accorded him of a great promotion for bravery on a

field that was lost. President Lincoln appointed him a Major-General in

the Army of the United States, for gallant and meritorious conduct in

the battle of Chickamauga.

"The Army of the Cumberland was reorganized under the command of General

Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield one of its divisions. He was

extremely desirous to accept the position, but was embarrassed by the

fact that he had, a year before, been elected to Congress, and the time

when he must take his seat was drawing near. He preferred to remain in

the military service, and had within his own breast the largest

confidence of success in the wider field which his new rank opened to

him. Balancing the arguments on the one side and the other, anxious to

determine what was for the best, desirous above all things to do his

patriotic duty, he was decisively influenced by the advice of President

Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, both of whom assured him that he could,

at that time, be of especial value in the House of Representatives. He

resigned his commission of major-general on the 5th day of December,

1863, and took his seat in the House of Representatives on the 7th. He

had served two years and four months in the army, and had just completed

his thirty-second year.

"The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-eminently entitled in history to the

designation of the War Congress. It was elected while the war was

flagrant, and every member was chosen upon the issues involved in the

continuance of the struggle. The Thirty-seventh Congress had, indeed,

legislated to a large extent on war measures, but it was chosen before

any one believed that secession of the States would be actually

attempted. The magnitude of the work which fell upon its successor was

unprecedented, both in respect to the vast sums of money raised for the

support of the army and navy, and of the new and extraordinary powers of

legislation which it was forced to exercise. Only twenty-four States

were represented, and one hundred and eighty-two members were upon its

roll. Among these were many distinguished party leaders on both sides,

veterans in the public service, with established reputations for

ability, and with that skill which comes only from parliamentary

experience. Into this assemblage of men Garfield entered without special

preparation, and, it might almost be said, unexpectedly. The question of

taking command of a division of troops under General Thomas, or taking

his seat in Congress, was kept open till the last moment, so late,

indeed, that the resignation of his military commission and his

appearance in the House were almost contemporaneous. He wore the uniform

of a major-general of the United States Army on Saturday, and on Monday,

in civilian's dress, he answered to roll-call as a Representative in

Congress from the State of Ohio.

"He was especially fortunate in the constituency which elected him.

Descended almost entirely from New England stock, the men of the

Ashtabula district were intensely radical on all questions relating to

human rights. Well educated, thrifty, thoroughly intelligent in affairs,

acutely discerning of character, not quick to bestow confidence, and

slow to withdraw it, they were at once the most helpful and most

exacting of supporters. Their tenacious trust in men in whom they have

once confided is illustrated by the unparalleled fact that Elisha

Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings, and James A. Garfield represented the

district for fifty-four years.

"There is no test of a man's ability in any department of public life

more severe than service in the House of Representatives; there is no

place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously

acquired, or to eminence won outside; no place where so little

consideration is shown for the feelings or the failures of beginners.

What a man gains in the House he gains by sheer force of his own

character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy, and

will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the

strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can deceive and

no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is

impartially weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed.

"With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest member in

the House when he entered, and was but seven years from his college

graduation. But he had not been in his seat sixty days before his

ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front

with the confidence of one who belonged there. The House was crowded

with strong men of both parties; nineteen of them have since been

transferred to the Senate, and many of them have served with distinction

in the gubernatorial chairs of their respective States, and on foreign

missions of great consequence; but among them all none grew so rapidly,

none so firmly, as Garfield. As is said by Trevelyan, of his

parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded 'because all the world in concert

could not have kept him in the back-ground, and because when once in the

front he played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease

that were but the outward symptoms of the immense reserves of energy on

which it was in his power to draw.' Indeed, the apparently reserved

force which Garfield possessed was one of his great characteristics. He

never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better.

He never expended so much strength but that he appeared to be holding

additional power at call. This is one of the happiest and rarest

distinctions of an effective debater, and often counts for as much, in

persuading an assembly, as the eloquent and elaborate argument.

"The great measure of Garfield's fame was filled by his service in the

House of Representatives. His military life, illustrated by honorable

performance, and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, prematurely

terminated, and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might

have done in a field where the great prizes are so few, cannot be

profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a soldier he did his duty

bravely; he did it intelligently; he won an enviable fame, and he

retired from the service without blot or breath against him. As a

lawyer, though admirably equipped for the profession, he can scarcely be

said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts he made at the bar

were distinguished by the same high order of talent which he exhibited

on every field where he was put to the test; and, if a man may be

accepted as a competent judge of his own capacities and adaptations, the

law was the profession to which Garfield should have devoted himself.

But fate ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will rest

largely upon his service in the House of Representatives. That service

was exceptionally long. He was nine times consecutively chosen to the

House, an honor enjoyed probably by not twenty other Representatives of

the more than five thousand who have been elected, from the organization

of the government, to this hour.

"As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined,

where the position had been chosen and the ground laid out, Garfield

must be assigned a very high rank. More, perhaps, than any man with whom

he was associated in public life, he gave careful and systematic study

to public questions, and he came to every discussion in which he took

part with elaborate and complete preparation. He was a steady and

indefatigable worker. Those who imagine that talent or genius can supply

the place or achieve the results of labor will find no encouragement in

Garfield's life. In preliminary work he was apt, rapid and skillful. He

possessed in a high degree the power of readily absorbing ideas and

facts, and, like Dr. Johnson, had the art of getting from a book all

that was of value in it by a reading apparently so quick and cursory

that it seemed like a mere glance at the table of contents. He was a

pre-eminently fair and candid man in debate, took no petty advantage,

stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal allusions, rarely

appealed to prejudice, did not seek to inflame passion. He had a quicker

eye for the strong point of his adversary than for his weak point, and

on his own side he so marshalled his weighty arguments as to make his

hearers forget any possible lack in the complete strength of his

position. He had a habit of stating his opponent's side with such

amplitude of fairness and such liberality of concession that his

followers often complained that he was giving his case away. But never

in his prolonged participation in the proceedings of the House did he

give his case away, or fail in the judgment of competent and impartial

listeners to gain the mastery.

"These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great debater, did

not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A parliamentary

leader, as that term is understood wherever free representative

government exists, is necessarily and very strictly the organ of his

party. An ardent American defined the instinctive warmth of patriotism

when he offered the toast, 'Our country, always right; but right or

wrong, our country.' The parliamentary leader who has a body of

followers that will do and dare and die for the cause, is one who

believes his party always right, but right or wrong, is for his party.

No more important or exacting duty devolves upon him than the selection

of the field and the time for contest. He must know not merely how to

strike, but where to strike and when to strike. He often skillfully

avoids the strength of his opponent's position, and scatters confusion

in his ranks by attacking an exposed point when really the righteousness

of the cause and the strength of logical intrenchment are against him.

He conquers often both against the right and the heavy battalions; as

when young Charles Fox, in the days of his Toryism, carried the House of

Commons against justice, against its immemorial rights, against his own

convictions, if, indeed, at that period Fox had convictions, and, in the

interest of a corrupt administration, in obedience to a tyrannical

sovereign, drove Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex

had chosen him, and installed Luttrell, in defiance not merely of law

but of public decency. For an achievement of that kind Garfield was

disqualified--disqualified by the texture of his mind, by the honesty of

his heart, by his conscience, and by every instinct and aspiration of

his nature.

"The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed

in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens.

They were all men of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of

intense personality, differing widely each from the others, and yet with

a signal trait in common--the power to command. In the give-and-take of

daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant

and refractory followers, in the skill to overcome all forms of

opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varying phases

of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult

to rank with these a fourth name in all our Congressional history. But

of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to

find in the parliamental annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay, in

1841, when at sixty-four years of age he took the control of the Whig

party from the President who had received their suffrages, against the

power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the

Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise

in the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plentitude of

power, he hurled against John Tyler, with deepest scorn the mass of that

conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his

administration to seek shelter behind the lines of its political foes.

Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, when in 1854,

against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise

counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts, and

even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Congress into

a repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Mr. Stevens, in his contests from

1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until

Congress tied the hands of the President and governed the country by its

own will, leaving only perfunctory duties to be discharged by the

Executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at the

opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the

Cabinet, and the moral power of Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson could

not command the support of one-third in either House against the

parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating

spirit and the unquestioned leader.

"From these three great men Garfield differed radically, differed in the

quality of his mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of ambition.

He could not do what they did, but he could do what they could not, and

in the breadth of his Congressional work he left that which will longer

exert a potential influence among men, and which, measured by the severe

test of posthumous criticism, will secure a more enduring and more

enviable fame.

"Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, and ignorant of the details

of his work may, in some degree, measure them by the annals of Congress.

No one of the generation of public men to which he belonged has

contributed so much that will prove valuable for future reference. His

speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied,

carefully phrazed, and exhaustive of the subject under consideration.

Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal octavo volumes of

Congressional record, they would present an invaluable compendium of the

political events of the most important era through which the National

government has ever passed. When the history of this period shall be

impartially written, when war legislation, measures of reconstruction,

protection of human rights, amendments to the Constitution, maintenance

of public credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories of

revenue, may be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and disconnected

from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their

true value, and will be found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and

argument, of clear analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other

authority were accessible, his speeches in the House of Representatives

from December, 1863, to June, 1880, would give a well-connected history

and complete defense of the important legislation of the seventeen

eventful years that constitute his parliamentary life. Far beyond that,

his speeches would be found to forecast many great measures yet to be

completed--measures which he knew were beyond the public opinion of the

hour, but which he confidently believed would secure popular approval

within the period of his own lifetime, and by the aid of his own

efforts.

"Differing as Garfield does, from the brilliant parliamentary leaders,

it is not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record of

American public life. He, perhaps, more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in

his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He had the

love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation, to which

John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his presidency. He had some of

those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and

which, indeed, in all our public life have left the great Massachusetts

Senator without an intellectual peer.

"In English parliamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the

House of Commons present points of essential difference from Garfield.

But some of his methods recall the best features in the strong,

independent course of Sir Robert Peel, to whom he had striking

resemblances in the type of his mind and in the habit of his speech. He

had all of Burke's love for the sublime and the beautiful with,

possibly, something of his superabundance. In his faith and his

magnanimity, in his power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his

faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and world of

illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of to-day,

who, confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the dauntless,

reviled by those whom he would relieve as bitterly as by those whose

supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with serene courage

for the amelioration of Ireland and for the honor of the English name.

"Garfield's nomination to the presidency, while not predicted or

anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in

Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his

then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye as

a man occupying the very highest rank among those entitled to be called

statesmen. It was not mere chance that brought him this high honor. 'We

must,' says Mr. Emerson, 'reckon success a constitutional trait. If Eric

is in robust health and has slept well and is at the top of his

condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland, he will

steer west and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric out and

put in a stronger and bolder man, and the ships will sail six hundred,

one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther and reach Labrador and New

England. There is no chance in results.'

"As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was met

with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it

continued with increasing volume and momentum until the close of his

victorious campaign:

No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure 'scape; backwounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

* * * * *

"Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this

world, on that quiet July morning, James A. Garfield may well have been

a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition

of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant.

One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching

peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless,

doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave.

"Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the

very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he

was thrust from the full tide of this world's interests, from its hopes,

its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death--and

he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned

and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment,

but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not

less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he

looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes,

whose lips may tell--what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high

ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what

bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud expectant

nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy

mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the

wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet

emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the

sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every

day, and every day rewarding a father's love and care; and in his heart

the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation

and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were

thrilled with instant, profound and universal sympathy. Masterful in his

mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in

the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not

share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With

unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took

leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard

the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree.

"As the end drew near, his early cravings for the sea returned. The

stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain,

and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive,

stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently,

silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the

longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will,

within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold

voices. With wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze,

he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its fair

sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling

shoreward, to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds

of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining

pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic

meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe

that in the silence of the receding world be heard the great waves

breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the

breath of the eternal morning."

We regret that we cannot give our readers the full speech here also, but

it is sufficient to say that it was a masterly production. We give these

three extracts from speeches to show, and enable the thinker to read and

study the characteristics which make Mr. Blaine the great and renowned

man that he really is to-day; an honor he has earned for himself.

We do not desire to be regarded as a personal admirer of Mr. Blaine. We

are not, but his ability we are in duty bound to delineate truthfully.

Our readers will observe the description Mr. Blaine gives in his address

on Garfield, of the qualifications necessary in a parliamentary leader.

We will say nothing as to our opinion of some enterprises in which Mr.

Blaine has engaged; and we will not ask him to explain, what he has

never satisfactorily explained, in relation to some transactions, nor

will we try to explain, in our short space, his skillfullness in

parliamentary practice. As before said, our readers have read his

description of a parliamentary leader, and we will further simply say

that Mr. Blaine is one of the most skillful parliamentary leaders in the

country. He is generally recognized as such by all parties. His canvass

for the presidency is well-known to the people. Had he been elected he

would, undoubtedly, have made a very satisfactory president, probably

one of whom we would long have been proud.