THE FIRST BLOW.
Garfield's Power as a Platform Speaker--A Candidate for the Senate--His
Election--Is Slavery right or wrong?--War inevitable--The Attack on
Fort Sumter--The Civil War begun.
Garfield was twenty-six when he left Williams' University. He entered
this college a raw student from a Western seminary; he left it a
distinguished scholar, a graduate with honours, and a popular lay
preacher and platform speaker.
In spite of many flattering offers, he had remained true to the Western
Institute at Hiram. Before his return he was appointed teacher of
ancient languages and literature there, and to this office he came full
of enthusiasm.
The salary was only one hundred and fifty pounds a year, less by
one-third than the sum offered him by the trustees of the high school
at Troy, but that made no difference to Garfield. He brought to the
duties of his profession a profound love for the school to which he
himself was so greatly indebted, and an ardent desire to help young
fellows as poor as himself. He found plenty of scope for his gifts,
and he taught with such success that in two years' time he was
appointed principal of the Institution.
This was the height of his ambition. Around him were some three
hundred young people, sons and daughters of the great West, whose
mental and spiritual training was in his hands. He regarded it as a
sacred trust, and he solemnly devoted his life to the service of these
Western students.
His ideal was a high one. The teacher, he felt, was a builder of the
nation, and he resolved that no work should leave his hands that was
ill planned or badly done.
The memory of his own early struggles made him especially mindful of
the poorer scholars, and his keen eye was always on the look-out for
young men of promise. Perfectly free in his intercourse with the
students, the young principal maintained his influence by the nobility
of his character and the steadiness of his aim. His only wish was to
help his pupils. And they believed in him with a faith that in the
years to come transformed his classes into battalions on the field of
battle.
The slavery question was still exercising the minds of all parties when
Garfield returned to Hiram. His power as a speaker made him an
important ally to the Abolitionist party in his country, and his fame
brought numberless demands for platform work. The Democratic party in
the States had unhappily identified itself with slavery. Its leaders
defended the system, its members voted in its favour; while the
Republicans led the way for its abolition.
Soon after Garfield's return to Hiram, a well-known Democrat named Hart
visited the town, to deliver an address on slavery. It was a clever
speech, and made some impression, and the principal of the Institute
was urged by the Republicans to reply. After some hesitation, Garfield
did so. The answer was said to have been calmly given, but its grim
facts of slavery horrors, its awful pictures of slavery evils, were so
overwhelming, that his opponent was completely crushed.
This triumph naturally raised the demand that a man of such abilities
should go into politics, and he was formally requested to become a
candidate for the State Legislature. For a long time he refused. The
interests of his school seemed so great, and his love for the work was
so strong, that for a while nothing could move him.
In the year 1859, however, the appeals of his fellow-townsmen had grown
so urgent, that he reluctantly became a candidate for the Senate of the
State of Ohio. He had held back until the trustees of the Institute
and his fellow-teachers joined their entreaties with the townsmen, and
offered during his absence to do double duty in the school to release
him for the public service. Greatly touched by these generous offers,
Garfield at length consented, and was at once nominated a candidate to
the parliament of his native State.
Though he had been slow to accept nomination, he did not hold back when
once the battle had begun, and some few who looked with doubt on his
youth and inexperience soon found that they had in their midst a bold
though prudent leader. He won the seat by a large majority, and
entered the Senate in the month of January 1860.
The United States of America consisted then of thirty-eight States and
ten Territories. Each State is governed by its own parliament, which
consists of a House of Senate and a House of Representatives. The
whole of these States and Territories are again united under a Federal
Government, at the head of which is the President of the United States.
Each State sends to the Federal Government two Senators and from one to
thirty Representatives, according to its population.
The State of Ohio, in whose Senate Garfield took his seat for the first
time, is considerably larger than Ireland, and contains a more numerous
population. It was organised into a State and admitted into the Union
in 1803. Its population then was less than fifty thousand. Twenty
years afterwards it had become ten times as great, and at the time of
Garfield's election to its Senate, numbered nearly two and a half
millions. Garfield had won his spurs as a politician in the discussion
of the slavery question, and very soon he was called to give practical
form to his opinions. For years there had been a conviction among many
of the people of the Northern States that slavery was wrong, that it
was a crime against man and a sin against God. The Southern States
where slavery existed defended the institution without shame and
without fear. They bitterly resented any discussion of the subject by
the North, and they took effectual means to suppress any adverse
opinions in the South.
In the very year of Garfield's election, nearly a thousand white
persons in the slave States were robbed, whipped, imprisoned, tarred
and feathered, or murdered, on suspicion of sympathy with the slaves.
New and bitter laws were passed in the Southern States against teaching
or helping the negroes; and in several States it was calmly proposed to
deprive the free blacks also of their liberty, to sell them back into
bondage in order to raise money for the support of the elementary
schools. In defiance of the laws of the Federal Government, the slave
trade also was reintroduced, and negroes stolen from the West Coast of
Africa were once more landed and sold into slavery.
[Illustration: Negroes stolen from the west coast of Africa were sold
into slavery.]
This open and insolent growth of the spirit of slavery in the South was
slowly rousing the rest of the great nation from its slumber.
Statesmen had been silent too long, politicians and preachers had
apologised for the evil, and the people as a whole had given no sign,
until provoked by those flagrant attempts to carry the vile system into
those newer parts of the country called Territories, vast districts of
only partly occupied land which had not yet been erected into States.
Then the controversy became sharp and bitter, and the men of the North
began to speak out. To the younger men especially was the system
hateful, and it was plain that in the free States a new generation had
risen up which was prepared to wash its hands of the curse of slavery.
Some of the Southern States, afterwards known as the Confederates,
formed themselves into an association, and threatened to withdraw from
the Federal Union; and civil war between the slave States and the free
was by the more thoughtful and far-seeing deemed inevitable.
The young Senator Garfield was one of the first to realise the true
position of affairs. During his first year in the State Senate he had
made his mark, in the next he became by the mere force of his character
and the intensity of his feelings its leader.
The President of the United States at the time was James Buchanan, a
Democrat and a friend of the slave-owners. He, with others in high
places, seemed bent on giving the South every opportunity to strengthen
itself against the North.
In many of the Northern States, it was hoped by the timid that war
could be averted by passing laws which would please the South. But
Garfield knew better. He saw that war must come, and he urged his
friends to be prepared. One night he said to a fellow-Senator, Cox,
who shared his lodgings, "Cox, war is inevitable."
"It is, as sure as you live," was the reply.
Then said Garfield, "If it comes, you and I must fight; let us then
pledge our lives to our country in her hour of peril." And standing
there, these two men, grand types of the Young America which was rising
above the shame of its dark past, pledged themselves to fight for the
old flag and for human right.
Abraham Lincoln succeeded Buchanan in the Presidency of the United
States, and the Confederates withdrew from the Union, and elected a
friend of the slave-owners, named Jefferson Davis, as their President.
Then the first blow was struck. At Charleston was a stronghold called
Fort Sumter, which commanded the bay and harbour. The fort was held by
Major Andersen for the Federal Government. The garrison was small,
consisting only of some seventy men, who were without provisions.
[Illustration: The defense of Fort Sumter.]
The Confederates demanded possession of the fort. Anderson held out
for a day or two, until the walls were beaten down about his ears, and
then surrendered the fortress to the rebels. This was the beginning of
war.
The news of the victory was flashed through the land, and the nation
stood aghast, to find that the Great Rebellion had begun.