Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania. I move to take up the resolution submitted by me in relation to internal-revenue taxes.
The motion was agreed to; and the Senate proceeded to consider the following resolution submitted by Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania, December 6, 1881:
Resolved, That in the opinion of the Senate it is expedient to reduce the revenue of the Government by abolishing all existing internal revenue taxes except those imposed upon high wines and distilled spirits.
Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania. Mr. President, the surplus revenue of this Government applicable to the payment of the public debt for the year ending June 30, 1881, was $100,069,404.98.
The inference from these figures must be that if such surplus receipts are applied to the reduction of the debt it will be paid within ten or twelve years. The question then is: Should the people continue to be taxed as heavily as they now are to pay it off within so short a period? Is it wise or prudent?
No one will deny the wisdom of the legislators who inaugurated the system of reducing the debt, or the patriotism of the people who have endured a heavy load of taxation to pay the interest and reduce the principal of such indebtedness. Both have been causes of wonder to the world, and have shown the strength, honesty, and prudence attainable under a republican form of government in matters where it was thought to be weak. It is acknowledged that the course thus pursued by Congress, and supported by the people, has had several good results. The exercise of the power of the Government and the cheerful submission to the enacting nature of the laws by the people has had an undoubted tendency to elevate and strengthen the moral tone of the nation, giving the people more confidence in each other, and compelling the approval of the world. It has reduced the principal sum of our national indebtedness until it is entirely within the ready control of the financial ability of the people either to pay off or to pay the interest thereon. It has established the credit of the country, and brought it up from a position where the 6 per cent. gold bonds of the United States before the war would not command par to a present premium of 17 per cent, on a 4 per cent. bond, and to the ready exchange of called 6 per cent. bonds into new ones bearing 3½ per cent. interest. It has demonstrated the ability of the country not only to carry on a most expensive internal war, but to pay off its cost in a time unknown to any other people; and further, that the ability of the country to furnish men and material of war and to meet increased financial demands is cumulative. The burden carried by this country from 1861 to the present day has been much greater than it would be if laid upon this nation and people from 1881 to 1900.
The burden, therefore, of the present debt would fall but lightly on the country if the payment thereof should be for a time delayed, or the rate at which it has been paid be decreased. It thus becomes a question of prudence with the Government whether they will continue the burden upon the people, or relieve them of part of it.
The burdens of general taxation borne by the people are very onerous. They have not only the General Government to sustain, on which devolves the expenses of legislation, of the Federal judiciary, of the representatives of our country in all the principal governments and cities of the world, of the management of such of our internal affairs and conveniences as belong to Congress, the keeping up of our Army and Navy, the erection of public buildings, the improvement of the rivers and harbors, and many other items that require large annual expenditures. With the increase of population and the filling up of our unoccupied lands almost all these annual outlays and expenses will tend to increase in place of decreasing, and all such expenditures must be in some way met by the people of the country. They have also to sustain their State governments with the expenses and outlays incident to them, their legislatures, judiciaries, penitentiaries, places of reform, hospitals, and all means of aiding the afflicted, to sustain the common schools, to pay the cost of such improvements of rivers, of canals, of railways, or of roads as the States may undertake. They have also the heavy cost to meet of city governments, of county, town and borough governments; they must pay the inferior Legislatures, erect buildings, provide water, police, jails, poor-houses, and build roads and take care of them.
On the liberality of the people the country depends for the building of charitable institutions, universities, colleges, private schools of high grade, and every variety of relief to the poor and the afflicted. In addition to these burdens almost all the States, most of the large cities, and many of the counties and towns in the States still labor under the burdens of indebtedness incurred during the war to sustain the General Government, which indebtedness, incurred on the then value of paper currency, has now to be paid in gold. They have not had the means at command to pay off much of such indebtedness like the General Government, nor to refund it at a lower rate of interest. The superior credit of the General Government has been made partially at the expense of the local governments. I have stated these facts that Senators might keep in mind that the question should not be considered as merely one of our ability to reduce our indebtedness by paying off annually one hundred millions of dollars and by continuing our present laws for raising revenues, as if it were but a small matter for the people to do, but it should be considered in connection with the total burden of taxation imposed by the revenue laws of the General Government, as well as by those of the State and the subordinate governments within their bounds.
There is, therefore, a strong argument to be found in these facts of the other burdens of taxation borne by the people in favor of reducing the amount of revenue applicable to the payment of the public debt when it can be done without injury to the credit of the Government and without risking in the least the ability of the Government either to pay such indebtedness as it matures or to interfere with the ability of the Government to fully provide for the wants of the country as they may be developed. A complete statement of the percentage of taxation borne by each male citizen of the United States over twenty-one years of age in the various ways stated would astound the Senate and the country. There is probably no country in the world where the taxation direct and indirect is so heavy, and only a people situated and circumstanced as the American people are could prosper under such a burden. If no other reason could be advanced in favor of a reduction of the amount of moneys derived from our internal-revenue laws than this one of reducing the burdens of the people, it would be amply sufficient, in my judgment, to warrant the proposed reduction. Yet I will say frankly that I have another object in wishing to have the internal revenue reduced, and I hope before long that every vestige of that system will cease to exist. That object is to prevent any material change being made in the tariff upon imports as it now exists, for upon its existence depends the prosperity, the happiness, the improvement, the education of the laboring people of the country, although I do not object to a careful revision of it by a competent commission.
I want to say a word here about the arrears of pension act. This act never should be repealed, and in my judgment it never will or can be. It has lately been held up to contempt by that class of people who twenty years ago were engaged in exhorting these same pensioners to go to the front, and who now object to rewarding them; but their opinion is not shared by the people at large; in fact, no more essentially just law was ever placed upon the statute book. Its effect is simply and solely to prevent the Government from pleading the statute of limitation against its former defenders. It did not increase the rate of pensions in any way whatever, but merely said that a man entitled to a pension for physical injury received in Government service should not be debarred from receiving it because he was late in making his application. To the payment of these pensions every sentiment of honesty and gratitude should hold us firmly committed.
My friend the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] is very honest, is generally very astute, and has great capacity as a leader. My personal friendship makes me desire his success, and as an individual I want him to be the recipient of all the honors his party can bestow upon him, but I am very sure that he is now opposing a measure that is intended to promote the welfare of and is in accord with the wishes of the people of the country. He is leading his party astray, he is holding it back, he is tying it to the carcass of free trade.
Politically I am glad that he is; on his own account I regret it. He is opposing the principle of protection, and, in my judgment, no man can do that and retain the support of the people. No party can to-day proclaim the doctrine of “a tariff for revenue only” and survive. Opposition to an earnest prosecution of the war for the suppression of the rebellion failed to destroy the Democratic party because of the recruits it received from the South, but opposition to the doctrine of protection to American productions, hostility to the elevation of American labor, no party in this enlightened day can advocate and live. I am astonished that the Democratic party does not learn by experience. The “tariff-for-a-revenue-only” plank in the Cincinnati platform lost it Indiana, lost it New York, and in 1884 it will lose it one-half of the Southern States.
The President pro tempore. The morning hour has expired. Is it the pleasure of the Senate that unanimous consent be given to the Senator from Pennsylvania to proceed with his remarks?
Mr. Beck. I move that unanimous consent be granted.
The President pro tempore. The Chair hears no objection, and the morning hour will be continued until the Senator from Pennsylvania closes his remarks.
Mr. Cameron, of Pennsylvania. The great question of protection to American labor will be the question which will obliterate old dissensions and unite the States in one common brotherhood. The Democratic party has made its last great fight. It will struggle hard, and in its death throes will, with the aid of a few unsuccessful and disappointed Republicans, possibly have temporary local successes, but death has marked it for its victim, die it will, and on its tomb will be inscribed, “Died because of opposition to the education, the elevation, the advancement of the people.”
The historic policy of this country has been to raise its revenues mainly from duties on imports and from the sale of the public lands. There are many reasons in favor of this policy. It is more just and equal in its burdens on the States and on the people; it is less inquisitorial, less expensive, less liable to corruption; it is free from many vexed questions which our experience of twenty years in collecting internal revenue has developed. The internal revenue brings the General Government in contact with the people in almost every thing they eat, wear, or use. The collection of revenue by duties on imports is so indirect as to remove much of the harshness felt when the citizen comes in direct contact with the iron grip of the law compelling him to affix a stamp to what he makes or uses. No one will question the fact that the collection of internal duties unfavorably affected the general morals of the nation.
The internal revenue laws were adopted by the Government as a war measure, as an extraordinary and unusual means of raising money for an emergency, and it is proper and in accordance with public opinion that with the end of the emergency such policy should cease. I cannot but think that every Senator will agree with me that the end of the emergency has been reached. The emergency embraced not only the time of the expenditures, but their continuation until the debt incurred during the emergency was so reduced as to be readily managed, if not exclusively by the ordinary revenues of the Government, yet with a greatly reduced system of internal revenues and for a limited time. But in determining wherein such reduction shall be made, two great interests of the country are to be considered:
First, the system of duties on foreign goods, wares, &c.
Second, our national banking system.
It has been proposed to meet this question of reduction by lowering the rates of duty, and thus to continue in this country indefinitely the use of direct and indirect taxation, supposing that such reduction would require the prolonged continuation of internal taxation.
The first effect of this would be to increase the revenues, as lower duties would lead for awhile to increased importations; but ultimately these increased importations would destroy our manufactures and impoverish the people to the point of inability to buy largely abroad, and when that point would be reached, we should have no other source of revenue than internal taxes upon an impoverished people. At first we should have more revenue than we need, but in the end much less.
This statement of the effect of lower duties may at first seem anomalous and questionable, but that such would be the result is proven by the effect on the revenues of the country of the reduction in duties in the tariff of 1846 below that of 1842. This will be evident from the Treasury statistics of the years 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, &c., which will show for the latter years a large increase of revenues. A reduction of duties which would affect the ability of our manufacturers to compete with foreign makers would cause a large importation of goods, with two objects: first, to find a market, the effect of which would be to keep the mills of England and other countries fully employed; and, second, a repetition of the custom of English manufacturers to put goods on our markets at low and losing prices for the purpose of crippling and breaking down our operators. And the increase of out national revenues would continue until our fires were stopped, our mills and mines closed, our laborers starved, and our capital and skill, the work of many years, lost. This time would be marked, by a renewal of our vassalage to England. Then the tables would be turned, our revenues would fall off with our inability to purchase, our taxation would continue and become very onerous, and in place of a strong, reliant, and self-supporting people, exercising a healthful influence over the nations of the world, we would be owned and be the servants of Europe, tilling the ground for the benefit of its people; our laborers would be brought down to a level with the pauper labor of Europe.
Our form of government will not permit the employment of ignorant pauper labor. It is a government of the people, and to have it continue to grow and prosper the people must be paid such wages as will enable them to be educated sufficiently to realize and appreciate the benefits of its free institutions; and knowing these benefits, they will maintain them. If, on the other hand, it is desirable that the revenues from duties should be decreased, and thereby retain both kinds of taxation, the direct and the indirect, the best possible way to do this would be to largely increase the duties on imported goods, which would for a time decrease the imports, thereby decreasing the amount of duties received. This tendency would last until, through this policy, the wealth and purchasing power of the country would so largely increase that the revenues would again increase, both by reason of decreased cost in foreign countries and because of the purchase by us of articles of special beauty, skill, and luxury. It may be said (and however paradoxical it may appear, the assertion is proven by the history of the tariff) that while the immediate tendency with free-trade duties is to increase imports and revenues, the ultimate result of such low duties is to decrease the imports and revenues, due to the decreasing ability of the country to purchase. The immediate tendency of protective tariffs is to decrease imports and revenues, but the final result is to increase the imports and duties, arising from the greater ability of the country to purchase. But my intention is not to discuss at this time the question of a tariff, but to show the effect of a change in the duties on imports upon the revenues of the country.
I clearly recognize that while the public mind is decidedly in favor of encouraging home manufacturers by levying what are called protective duties, yet the people are opposed to placing those duties so high that they become prohibitory and making thereby an exclusive market for our manufacturers at home. It seems very clear to my mind, in view of these statements as to the result of decreasing or increasing the duties on our imports, that no reduction of revenue is practicable by changes in our tariff.
The second great interest of the people, which will very shortly be directly affected by the large and increasing surplus revenues of the country, is the system of national banks, and this through the decrease of the public indebtedness by the application of the annual surplus to its payment. The large annual reduction of the public debt will very shortly begin to affect the confidence of the public in the continuation of the system. It will increase public anxieties and excite their fears as to a substitution of any other system for this that has proven so acceptable and so valuable to the country. If the national banking system is to be worked out of existence, it will inevitably cause serious financial trouble.
Financial difficulties among a people like those of this country, however ill-based or slight, are always attended by disastrous consequences, because in times of prosperity the energies and hopefulness of the people are stretched to the utmost limits, and the shock of financial trouble has the effect of an almost total paralysis on the business of the country. It is certainly the part of statesmanship to avoid such a calamity whenever it is possible.
I unhesitatingly declare and believe that the value of our system of national banks is so great in the benefits the country derives therefrom and the dangers and losses its continuance will avoid that it were better to continue in existence an indebtedness equal to the wants of the banks which the country may from time to time require until some equally conservative plan may be offered that will enable us to dispense with the system.
It is also important in this connection for Senators to bear in mind that the increasing business of the country will annually require increased banking facilities, and consequently increased bonds as the basis on which they can be organized; and it should not be overlooked that a possible determination by Congress to pay off by retiring or by funding the greenbacks will create a great hiatus in the circulating medium of the country, which can only be replaced by additional national-bank notes based upon an equivalent amount of public indebtedness.
In view of the statements I have made, I cannot but conclude that the wisest and most prudent course for Congress is to leave the question of changes in the tariff laws to be adjusted as they may from time to time require, and to make whatever reduction of the income of the Government that may be found desirable by reducing the changes in the internal-revenue laws.
The national revenue laws as they now are may be greatly and profitably changed. They are very burdensome to a heavily-taxed people, and such burdens should be relieved wherever it is possible. This can now be done with safety by providing that so much of the public debt may be paid off from time to time as may not be required to sustain the system of national banks.
I move that the resolution be referred to the Committee on Finance.
The motion was agreed to.
On Proposed Amendments of the Constitution in relation to the election of President and Vice-President, Delivered in the U. S. Senate Chamber, A. D. 1824.
He said:—The evil of a want of uniformity in the choice of Presidential electors, is not limited to its disfiguring effect upon the face of our government, but goes to endanger the rights of the people, by permitting sudden alterations on the eve of an election, and to annihilate the rights of the small States, by enabling the large ones to combine, and to throw all their votes into the scale of a particular candidate. These obvious evils make it certain that any uniform rule would be preferable to the present state of things. But, in fixing on one, it is the duty of statesmen to select that which is calculated to give to every portion of the Union its due share in the choice of a chief magistrate, and to every individual citizen a fair opportunity of voting according to his will. This would be effected by adopting the District System. It would divide every State into districts equal to the whole number of votes to be given, and the people of each district would be governed by its own majority, and not by a majority existing in some remote part of the State. This would be agreeable to the rights of individuals: for in entering into society, and submitting to be bound by the decision of the majority, each individual retained the right of voting for himself wherever it was practicable, and of being governed by a majority of the vicinage, and not by majorities brought from remote sections to overwhelm him with their accumulated numbers. It would be agreeable to the interests of all parts of the States; for each State may have different interests in different parts; one part may be agricultural, another manufacturing, another commercial; and it would be unjust that the strongest should govern, or that two should combine and sacrifice the third. The district system would be agreeable to the intention of our present constitution, which, in giving to each elector a separate vote, instead of giving to each State a consolidated vote, composed of all its electoral suffrages, clearly intended that each mass of persons entitled to one elector, should have the right of giving one vote, according to their own sense of their own interest.
The general ticket system now existing in ten States, was the offspring of policy, and not of any disposition to give fair play to the will of the people. It was adopted by the leading men of those States, to enable them to consolidate the vote of the State. It would be easy to prove this by referring to facts of historical notoriety. It contributes to give power and consequence to the leaders who manage the elections, but it is a departure from the intention of the constitution; violates the rights of the minorities, and is attended with many other evils.
The intention of the constitution is violated because it was the intention of that instrument to give to each mass of persons, entitled to one elector, the power of giving an electoral vote to any candidate they preferred. The rights of minorities are violated, because a majority of one will carry the vote of the whole State. The principle is the same, whether the elector is chosen by general ticket, or by legislative ballot; a majority of one, in either case, carries the vote of the whole State. In New York, thirty-six electors are chosen; nineteen is a majority, and the candidate receiving this majority is fairly entitled to receive nineteen votes; but he counts in reality thirty-six: because the minority of seventeen are added to the majority. These seventeen votes belong to seventeen masses of people, of 40,000 souls each, in all 680,000 people, whose votes are seized upon, taken away, and presented to whom the majority pleases. Extend the calculation to the seventeen States now choosing electors by general ticket or legislative ballot, and it will show that three millions of souls, a population equal to that which carried us through the Revolution, may have their votes taken from them in the same way. To lose their votes is the fate of all minorities, and it is theirs only to submit; but this is not a case of votes lost, but of votes taken away, added to those of the majority, and given to a person to whom the minority was opposed.
He said, this objection (to the direct vote of the people) had a weight in the year 1787, to which it is not entitled in the year 1824. Our government was then young, schools and colleges were scarce, political science was then confined to few, and the means of diffusing intelligence were both inadequate and uncertain. The experiment of a popular government was just beginning; the people had been just released from subjection to an hereditary king, and were not yet practiced in the art of choosing a temporary chief for themselves. But thirty-six years have reversed this picture; thirty-six years, which have produced so many wonderful changes in America, have accomplished the work of many centuries upon the intelligence of its inhabitants. Within that period, schools, colleges, and universities have multiplied to an amazing extent. The means of diffusing intelligence have been wonderfully augmented by the establishment of six hundred newspapers, and upwards of five thousand post-offices. The whole course of an American’s life, civil, social, and religious, has become one continued scene of intellectual and of moral improvement. Once in every week, more than eleven thousand men, eminent for learning and for piety, perform the double duty of amending the hearts, and enlightening the understandings, of more than eleven thousand congregations of people. Under the benign influence of a free government, both our public institutions and private pursuits, our juries, elections, courts of justice, the liberal professions, and the mechanical arts, have each become a school of political science and of mental improvement. The federal legislature, in the annual message of the President, in reports of heads of departments, and committees of Congress, and speeches of members, pours forth a flood of intelligence which carries its waves to the remotest confines of the republic. In the different States, twenty-four State executives and State legislatures, are annually repeating the same process within a more limited sphere. The habit of universal travelling, and the practice of universal interchange of thought, are continually circulating the intelligence of the country, and augmenting its mass. The face of our country itself, its vast extent, its grand and varied features, contribute to expand the human intellect and magnify its power. Less than half a century of the enjoyment of liberty has given practical evidence of the great moral truth, that under a free government, the power of the intellect is the only power which rules the affairs of men; and virtue and intelligence the only durable passports to honor and preferment. The conviction of this great truth has created an universal taste for learning and for reading, and has convinced every parent that the endowments of the mind and the virtues of the heart, are the only imperishable, the only inestimable riches which he can leave to his posterity.
This objection (the danger of tumults and violence at the elections) is taken from the history of the ancient republics; and the tumultuary elections of Rome and Greece. But the justness of the example is denied. There is nothing in the laws of physiology which admits a parallel between the sanguinary Roman, the volatile Greek, and the phlegmatic American. There is nothing in the state of the respective countries, or in the manner of voting, which makes one an example for the other. The Romans voted in a mass, at a single voting place, even when the qualified voters amounted to millions of persons.
They came to the polls armed, and divided into classes, and voted, not by heads, but by centuries.
In the Grecian republics all the voters were brought together in a great city, and decided the contest in one great struggle.
In such assemblages, both the inducement to violence, and the means of committing it, were prepared by the government itself. In the United States all this is different. The voters are assembled in small bodies, at innumerable voting places, distributed over a vast extent of country. They come to the polls without arms, without odious instructions, without any temptation to violence, and with every inducement to harmony.
If heated during the day of election, they cool off upon returning to their homes, and resuming their ordinary occupations.
But let us admit the truth of the objection. Let us admit that the American people would be as tumultuary at this presidential election as were the citizens of the ancient republics at the election of their chief magistrates. What then? Are we thence to infer the inferiority of the officers thus elected, and the consequent degradation of the countries over which they presided? I answer no. So far from it, that I assert the superiority of these officers over all others ever obtained for the same countries, either by hereditary succession, or the most select mode of election. I affirm those periods of history to be the most glorious in arms, the most renowned in arts, the most celebrated in letters, the most useful in practice, and the most happy in the condition of the people, in which the whole body of the citizens voted direct for the chief officer of their country. Take the history of that commonwealth which yet shines as the leading star in the firmament of nations. Of the twenty-five centuries that the Roman state has existed, to what period do we look for the generals and statesmen, the poets and orators, the philosophers and historians, the sculptors, painters and architects, whose immortal works have fixed upon their country the admiring eyes of all succeeding ages? Is it to the reign of the seven first kings?—to the reigns of the emperors, proclaimed by the prætorian bands?—to the reigns of the Sovereign Pontiffs, chosen by a select body of electors in a conclave of most holy cardinals? No.—We look to none of these, but to that short interval of four centuries and a half which lies between the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the re-establishment of monarchy in the person of Octavius Cæsar. It is to this short period, during which the consuls, tribunes, and prætors, were annually elected by a direct vote of the people, to which we look ourselves, and to which we direct the infant minds of our children, for all the works and monuments of Roman greatness; for roads, bridges, and aqueducts, constructed; for victories gained, nations vanquished, commerce extended, treasure imported, libraries founded, learning encouraged, the arts flourishing, the city embellished, and the kings of the earth humbly suing to be admitted into the friendship, and taken under the protection of the Roman people. It was of this magnificent period that Cicero spoke, when he proclaimed the people of Rome to be the masters of kings, and the conquerors and commanders of all the nations of the earth. And, what is wonderful, during this whole period, in a succession of four hundred and fifty annual elections, the people never once prepared a citizen to the consulship who did not carry the prosperity and glory of the Republic to a point beyond that at which he had found it.
It is the same with the Grecian Republics. Thirty centuries have elapsed since they were founded; yet it is to an ephemeral period of one hundred and fifty years only the period of popular elections which intervened between the dispersing of a cloud of petty tyrants, and the coming of a great one in the person of Philip, King of Macedon, that we are to look for that galaxy of names which shed so much lustre upon their country, and in which we are to find the first cause of that intense sympathy which now burns in our bosoms at the name of Greece.
These short and brilliant periods exhibit the great triumph of popular elections; often tumultuary, often stained with blood, but always ending gloriously for the country.
Then the right of suffrage was enjoyed; the sovereignty of the people was no fiction. Then a sublime spectacle was seen, when the Roman citizen advanced to the polls and proclaimed: “I vote for Cato to be consul;” the Athenian, “I vote for Aristides to be Archon;” the Hebran, “I vote for Pelopidas to be Bœotrach;” the Lacedemonian, “I vote for Leonidas to be first of the Ephori,” and why not an American citizen the same? Why may he not go up to the poll and proclaim, “I vote for Thomas Jefferson to be President of the United States?” Why is he compelled to put his vote in the hands of another, and to incur all the hazards of an irresponsible agency, when he himself could immediately give his own vote for his own chosen candidate, without the slightest assistance from agents or managers?
But I have other objections to these intermediate electors. They are the peculiar and favorite institution of aristocratic republics, and elective monarchies. I refer the Senate to the late republics of Venice and Genoa; of France, and her litter; to the Kingdom of Poland; the empire of Germany, and the Pontificate of Rome. On the contrary, a direct vote by the people is the peculiar and favorite institution of democratic republics; as we have just seen in the governments of Rome, Athens, Thebes, and Sparta; to which may be added the principal cities of the Amphyctionic and Achaian leagues, and the renowned republic of Carthage when the rival of Rome.
I have now answered the objections which were brought forward in the year ’78. I ask for no judgment upon their validity of that day, but I affirm them to be without force or reason in the year 1824.
Time and EXPERIENCE have so decided. Yes, time and experience, the only infallible tests of good or bad institutions, have now shown that the continuance of the electoral system will be both useless and dangerous to the liberties of the people, and that the only effectual mode of preserving our government from the corruptions which have undermined the liberties of so many nations, is, to confide the election of our chief magistrates to those who are farthest removed from the influence of his patronage; that is to say, to the whole body of American citizens.
The electors are not independent; they have no superior intelligence; they are not left to their own judgment in the choice of a President; they are not above the control of the people; on the contrary, every elector is pledged, before he is chosen, to give his vote according to the will of those who choose him.
He is nothing but an agent, tied down to the execution of a precise trust. Every reason which induced the convention to institute electors has failed. They are no longer of any use, and may be dangerous to the liberties of the people. They are not useful, because they have no power over their own vote, and because the people can vote for a President as easily as they can vote for an elector. They are dangerous to the liberties of the people, because, in the first place, they introduce extraneous considerations into the election of President; and in the second place, they may sell the vote which is intrusted to their keeping. They introduce extraneous considerations, by bringing their own character and their own exertions into the presidential canvass. Every one sees this. Candidates for electors are now selected, not for the reasons mentioned in the Federalist, but for their devotion to a particular party, for their manners, and their talent at electioneering. The elector may betray the liberties of the people, by selling his vote. The operation is easy, because he votes by ballot; detection is impossible, because he does not sign his vote; the restraint is nothing but his own conscience, for there is no legal punishment for this breach of trust. If a swindler defrauds you out of a few dollars of property or money, he is whipped and pilloried, and rendered infamous in the eye of the law; but, if an elector should defraud 40,000 people of their vote, there is no remedy but to abuse him in newspapers, where the best men in the country may be abused, as Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot.
Every reason for instituting electors has failed, and every consideration of prudence requires them to be discontinued. They are nothing but agents, in a case which requires no agent; and no prudent man would, or ought, to employ an agent to take care of his money, his property, or his liberty, when he is equally capable to take care of them himself.
But, if the plan of the constitution had not failed—if we were now deriving from electors all the advantages expected from their institution—I, for one, would still be in favor of getting rid of them.
I should esteem the incorruptibility of the people, their disinterested desire to get the best man for President, to be more than a counterpoise to all the advantages which might be derived from the superior intelligence of a more enlightened, but smaller, and therefore, more corruptible body. I should be opposed to the intervention of electors, because the double process of electing a man to elect a man, would paralyze the spirit of the people, and destroy the life of the election itself. Doubtless this machinery was introduced into our constitution for the purpose of softening the action of the democratic element; but it also softens the interest of the people in the result of the election itself. It places them at too great a distance from their first servant. It interposes a body of men between the people and the object of their choice, and gives a false direction to the gratitude of the President elected. He feels himself indebted to the electors who collected the votes of the people, and not to the people, who gave their votes to the electors.
It enables a few men to govern many, and, in time, it will transfer the whole power of the election into the hands of a few, leaving to the people the humble occupation of confirming what has been done by superior authority.
At ten o’clock the doors of the House of Representatives were opened to holders of tickets for the memorial services, and in less than half an hour the galleries were filled, a large majority of the spectators being ladies, mostly in black. There were no signs of mourning in the hall, even the full-length portrait of the late President, James Abram Garfield, painted by E. F. Andrews, of Washington, being undraped. The three front rows of desks had been replaced by chairs to accommodate the invited guests, and the Marine Band was stationed in the lobby, back of the Speaker’s desk.
Among the distinguished guests first to arrive were George Bancroft, W. W. Corcoran, Cyrus Field and Admiral Worden, who took seats directly in front of the clerk’s desk. Among the guests who occupied seats upon the floor were General Schenck, Governor Hoyt, of Pennsylvania; Foster, of Ohio; Porter, of Indiana; Hamilton, of Maryland, and Bigelow, of Connecticut, and Adjutant-General Harmine, of Connecticut.
At 11.30 Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Hancock, Howard and Meigs, and Admirals Ammen and Rodgers entered at the north door of the chamber and were assigned seats to the left of the Speaker’s desk, and a few moments later the members of the Diplomatic Corps, in full regalia, were ushered in, headed by the Hawaiian Minister, as dean of the Corps. The Supreme Court of the District, headed by Marshal Henry, arrived next. Mrs. Blaine occupied a front seat in the gallery reserved for friends of the President. At twelve o’clock the House was called to order by Speaker Keifer, and prayer was offered by the Chaplain. The Speaker then announced that the House was assembled and ready to perform its part in the memorial services, and the resolutions to that effect were read by Clerk McPherson. At 12.10 the Senate was announced, and that body, headed by its officers, entered and took their assigned seats. The Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, in their robes of office, came next, and were followed by President Arthur and his Cabinet. The President took the front seat on the right of the Presiding Officer’s chair, next to that occupied by Cyrus W. Field.
Senator Sherman and Representative McKinley (Ohio) occupied seats at the desk on the right and left of the orator of the day. Mr. West, the British Minister, was the only member of the Diplomatic Corps who did not wear the court uniform.
A delegation of gentlemen from the Society of the Army of the Cumberland acted as ushers at the main entrance to the Rotunda and in the various corridors leading to the galleries.
At 12.30 the orator of the day was announced, and after a short prayer by the Chaplain of the House, F. D. Power, president Davis said: “This day is dedicated by Congress for memorial services of the late President of the United States, James A. Garfield. I present to you the Hon. James G. Blaine, who has been fitly chosen as the orator for this historical occasion.”
Mr. Blaine then rose, and standing at the clerk’s desk, immediately in front of the two presiding officers, proceeded, with impressiveness of manner and clearness of tone, to deliver his eulogy from manuscript, 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 paroxysms of crime, as an infernal being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character.”
From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the uprising against Charles First, about twenty thousand emigrants came from old England to New England. As they came in pursuit of intellectual freedom and ecclesiastical independence rather than for worldly honor and profit, the emigration naturally ceased when the contest for religious liberty began in earnest at home. The man who struck his most effective blow for freedom of conscience by sailing for the colonies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to leave after 1640. The opportunity had then come on the soil of England for that great contest which established the authority of Parliament, gave religious freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, and committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the Supreme Executive authority of England. The English emigration was never renewed, and from these twenty thousand men with a small emigration from Scotland and from France are descended the vast numbers who have New England blood in their veins.
In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. scattered to other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, who were among the most intelligent and enterprising of French subjects—merchants of capital, skilled manufacturers, and handicraftsmen superior at the time to all others in Europe. A considerable number of these Huguenot French came to America; a few landed in New England and became honorably prominent in its history. Their names have in large part become anglicised, or have disappeared, but their blood is traceable in many of the most reputable families, and their fame is perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful institutions.
From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Huguenot, came the late President—his father, Abram Garfield, being descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other.
It was good stock on both sides—none better, none braver, none truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manliness, of imperishable love of liberty, of undying adherence to principle. Garfield was proud of his blood; and, with as much satisfaction as if he were a British nobleman reading his stately ancestral record in Burke’s Peerage, he spoke of himself as ninth in descent from those who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the brave French Protestants who refused to submit to tyranny even from the Grand Monarque.
General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and during his only visit to England, he busied himself in discovering every trace of his forefathers in parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons one night after a long day’s labor in this field of research, he said with evident elation that in every war in which for three centuries patriots of English blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional government and human liberty, his family had been represented. They were at Marston Moor, at Naseby and at Preston; they were at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had battled for the same great cause in the war which preserved the Union of the States.
Losing his father before he was two years old, the early life of Garfield 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 their destitution, none of their 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 of men, 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 a 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 freeholder 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 his 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 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 in the great battle 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. That of itself was a 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 indiscreet 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 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 great promotion for his 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 the 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 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 background, 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 seemed 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 by not more than six 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 that 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 marshaled 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 cases 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 Chas. 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. Each was a man 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 parliamentary 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 plenitude 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 his 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. Thaddeus 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 Steward 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 be valuable for future reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully phrased 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 history 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 defence 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, and striking resemblances are discernible in that most promising of modern conservatives, who died too early for his country and his fame, the Lord George Bentinck. He had all of Burke’s love for the sublime and the beautiful, with, possibly, something of his superabundance, and 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.