CHAPTER VI.
IN THE ASCENDANT.
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:
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:
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: