Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Portrait of James Garfield (missing from book)]
THE STORY OF GARFIELD
_FARM-BOY, SOLDIER, AND PRESIDENT_
By WILLIAM G. RUTHERFORD
_TWENTY-NINTH THOUSAND_
LONDON:
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION
57 AND 59 LUDGATE HILL, E.C.
1895
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. THE FAR WEST
II. THE PIONEERS
III. A FIRE IN THE FOREST
IV. THE FOUR SAPLINGS
V. A RESTLESS SCHOLAR
VI. MAN-MAKING
VII. THE TWO BROTHERS
VIII. HOUSE-BUILDING
IX. FAITHFUL WORK
X. THE ROPE THAT SAVED HIM
XI. STRIKING OUT A NEW LINE
XII. TEACHING AND LEARNING
XIII. FINDING FRIENDS
XIV. THE FIRST BLOW
XV. DARK DAYS FOR THE UNION
XVI. FOR FLAG AND COUNTRY
XVII. WINNING HIS SPURS
XVIII. FILLING THE GAP
XIX. THE HOUR AND THE MAN
XX. LOOKING BACK
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PORTRAIT OF JAMES GARFIELD (missing) . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
THE TREES FELL BEFORE HIS AXE
TOM BORROWED A HORSE
SHE DRIED HER TEARS AND ASKED GOD TO SUPPORT HER
AN AMERICAN FARMSTEAD
THE CARPENTER SET ABOUT HIS TASK
HE NEVER TIRED OF READING
ON BOARD THE CANAL BOAT
NEGROES STOLEN FROM THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA WERE
SOLD INTO SLAVERY
THE DEFENCE OF FORT SUMTER
GARFIELD AND HIS REGIMENT GOING INTO ACTION
MRS. JAMES GARFIELD
THE WHITE HOUSE
THE STORY OF GARFIELD.
CHAPTER I.
THE FAR WEST.
The United States Sixty Years ago--The "Queen City" of the West--The
Rush for New Lands--Marvellous Growth of American Cities.
Go to Liverpool or Glasgow, and embark on one of the great ocean
steamers, which are constantly crossing the Atlantic. Sail westwards
for about a week, and you will reach the eastern shores of the New
World.
If you land at New York, you will find yourself in one of the largest
cities on the face of the globe. You will also find the country
largely peopled by the same race as yourself, and everywhere you will
be addressed in your own language. You may travel for weeks from town
to town, and from city to city, until you are lost in wonder at the
vast and populous empire which English-speaking people have founded and
built up on the other side of the Atlantic.
Where is the New World of fancy and fiction so graphically described in
Indian stories and tales of backwoods life? And where are the vast
prairies and almost boundless forests of sober fact, where the bear,
the wolf, and the buffalo roamed at will--the famous hunting-grounds of
the Red Indians and the trappers of the Old World?
Where is the "Far West" of song and story? Where are the scenes of
Fenimore Cooper's charming descriptions, which have thrown a halo of
romance over the homes of the early settlers who first explored those
unknown regions?
For the most part they are gone for ever, as they appeared to the eyes
of the pioneers and pathfinders, who wandered for weeks through the
wilderness, without hearing the sound of any human voice but their own.
Now on forest and prairie land stand great cities, equal in population
and wealth to many famous places, which were grey with age before the
New World was discovered. The trading posts, once scattered over a
wide region, where Indians and white hunters met to barter the skins of
animals for fire-water and gunpowder, have disappeared before the
advances of civilisation, and the uninhabited wilderness of fifty years
ago has become the centre of busy industries of world-wide fame and
importance.
Sixty years ago, fifteen of the largest cities in the United States had
no existence. They were not born. Living men remember when they were
first staked out on the unbroken prairie, and the woodsman's axe was
busy clearing the ground for the log huts of the first settlers who
founded the cities of to-day.
At that period, Chicago, now a "Millionaire city," and the second in
America, consisted of a little fort and a few log huts. There was
scarcely a white woman in the settlement, and no roads had been
constructed. The ground on which the great city now stands could have
been bought for the sum now demanded for a few square feet in one of
its busy streets.
No wonder the American people are proud of "the Queen City of the
West." It stands far inland, a thousand miles from the ocean, and yet
it is an important port on the shores of Lake Michigan, and steamers
from London can land their cargoes at its quays. More than twenty
thousand vessels enter and leave the port in one year. It is the
greatest grain and provision market in the world.
It may with truth be said that in America cities rise up almost in a
night-time. The forest and the prairie are one day out of the reach of
civilisation, and the next they are one with the throbbing centres of
life and progress. The railway, the means of communication, changes
all as by a wizard's touch.
One day the news spread through a certain district, that two lines of
railway were to cross at a certain point in the wilderness. Settlers
at once crowded to the place, and next day the land was staked out in
town lots, with all the details of streets, squares, and market-place.
Soon afterwards, shanties were seen on the prairies, moving with all
speed, on rollers, towards the new town. On the second day a number of
houses were under construction, while the owners camped near by in
tents. In a few months hundreds of dwellings had been erected, and a
newspaper established to chronicle the doings of the inhabitants.
"The old nations of the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic
thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American
writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland
called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span
of a man's few days upon earth."
This marvellous growth and rapid change from wilderness to cultivation
must be known and understood by readers on this side of the Atlantic,
they can appreciate the story of a Lincoln or a Garfield who began life
in a log hut in a backwoods settlement in the Far West, and made their
way to the White House, the residence of the ruler of an empire as
large as the whole of Europe.