The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

THE SO-CALLED DE GOLLYER PAVEMENT.

“Now, I have tried to state that in the broadest way, with the broadest point forward. I ask the attention of this audience for a few moments to the testimony. In the first place, I want the audience to understand that the city of Washington is governed, and has always been governed so far as its own improvements are concerned, by its own laws and its own people, just as much as Warren has been governed by its own corporate laws and authority. I remember perfectly well what has been paraded in the papers so much of late that Congress has full power to legislate over the District of Columbia. Well, Congress has full jurisdiction over what is now called the District of Columbia, and Congress could, I suppose, make all the police regulations for the city of Washington; but Congress always has allowed the city of Washington to have its city council, or a legislature, until the present time. We have abolished it, because we had a cumbrous machine. In the year 1871 a law was passed by Congress creating the board of public works, appointing a governor, and creating a legislature for the District of Columbia. That act stated what the board of public works could do and what the other branches of the District government could do; and among other things, it empowered the legislature to levy taxes to make improvements on the streets. The legislature met. The board of public works laid before them an elaborate plan for improving the streets of Washington, a plan amounting to six million dollars in the first place, and the legislature adopted the plan and provided that one-third of the entire cost of carrying out that plan should be raised by assessing the front foot on the property holders, and the other two-thirds should be paid by money to be borrowed by the city government; in other words, by the issuing of their bonds. The city government of Washington borrowed money and raised by special taxation enough to carry on a vast system of improvement. When they got ready to execute their plan one of the questions that came before them was, What kind of pavement shall we put in? and in what way shall we go about the business of letting our paving contracts? In order to settle that question they wrote to all the principal cities and found out all the methods pursued by them, and finally appointed from leading officers of the army—General Humphreys, chief engineer; General Meigs, quartermaster-general; the Surgeon-General, and General Babcock of the engineer corps; and those four men sat as an advising board, having no power but merely to advise. They took up all kinds of pavement ever made; specimens were sent in; they looked over the whole, and as a result recommended this: ‘We recommend you, instead of letting this work be done by the lowest bidder, with all the scheming “straw-bids” that may come in, to fix a tariff of prices you will pay for different kinds of pavement, and we recommend as follows: If you put down concrete pavement you had better say you will pay so much per square yard for putting it down. We have looked the cities all over and find that it is the proper amount to pay; but for stone so much; for gravel so much; for asphaltum so much; and for wood so much.’ Now, that board of public works adopted the plan and that schedule of prices, and having elected if they put those various kinds of pavements down, they would put them down at those rates, they then said to all comers ‘bring in your various kinds of pavements and show us their merits, and when we have examined them we will act.’

“Then the various paving companies and patentees all over the country who had what they called good pavements, presented themselves; but in almost all cases by their attorneys. They sent men there to represent the relative merits of the pavements. A pavement company in Chicago employed Mr. Parsons, of Cleveland, as early as the month of April, 1872, to go before the board of public works and present the merits of their pavements. Mr. Parsons had nothing whatever to do with the question of prices; they had already been settled in advance by the board. Mr. Parsons was marshal of the Supreme Court at that time, and was just about running for Congress. He asked the Chief Justice of the United States whether there was any impropriety in his taking that case up and arguing it, merely because he was an appointee and under his direction, and the Chief Justice responded: ‘There was none in the world.’ He proceeded with the case until the 8th day of June, when, for the first time, I heard any thing about it. This was two days before the adjournment of Congress. On that day Mr. Parsons came to me and said to me he had an important case; he had worked a good while on it but was called away. He must leave. He did not want to lose his fee in it—was likely to lose it unless the work was completed; he must go at any rate. He asked me if I would argue the case for him; if I would examine into the merits of this pavement and make a statement of it before the board. I said, ‘I will do it if I, on examination, find the patent what it purports to be—the best wood pavement patent there is, but I can’t do it until after Congress adjourns.’ Congress adjourned two days later; the papers of patents were sent to me, modeled specimens, and documents showing where pavement had been used were forwarded to me. The investigation of the patents and the chemical analysis representing all the elements of the pavement was a laborious task and I worked at it as faithfully as any thing I ever worked at. I did it in open daylight. I have never been able to understand how any body has seen any thing in that on which to base an attack on me. I say I am to-day intellectually incapable of understanding the track of a man’s mind who sees in this any ground for attacking me. I made the argument; there were two patents contained in that pavement itself; there were some forty different wood pavements proposed, and to carefully and analytically examine all the relative merits of those was no small work. Mr. Parsons was to get a fee providing he was successful, and not any if he was not successful, and hence the sum offered was large—a contingent fee, as every lawyer knows.”

This is enough to show Mr. Garfield’s relation to the De Gollyer affair. After some further discussion of it this Warren speech closed as follows:

“If no further questions are to be asked I will conclude with a few general reflections on the whole subject.

“Nothing is more distasteful to me than to speak of my own work—but this discussion has been made necessary by the persistent misrepresentations of those who assail me.

“During my long public service the relation between the people of this district and myself has been one of mutual confidence and independence. I have tried to follow my own convictions of duty with little regard to personal consequences, relying upon the intelligence and justice of the people for approval and support. I have sought to promote, not merely local and class interests, but the general good of the whole country, believing that thereby I could honor the position I hold and the district I represent. On the other hand my constituents have given me the great support of their strong and intelligent approval. They have not always approved my judgment, nor the wisdom of my public acts. But they have sustained me because they knew I was earnestly following my convictions of duty, and because they did not want a representative to be the mere echo of the public voice, but an intelligent and independent judge of public questions.

“In conclusion, I appeal to the best men of the district—to men who are every way worthy and every way capable to judge my conduct—nor do I hesitate to refer all inquiries to those noble men with whom I have acted during my public life. They have worked with me as representatives during all these years, and know the character and quality of my work. I have sought to make myself worthy of an honorable fame among them, and have not sought in vain. They have placed me in many positions of large trust and responsibility, and in the present Congress I again hold the chairmanship of the committee of the second if not the first importance in the House of Representatives. I fearlessly appeal to the honorable members of the present Congress, and of all the Congresses in which I have served, to say if my conduct has not been high and worthy—the very reverse of what these home enemies represent it to be. [Applause.] All this time it has been a source of great strength and confidence to know that here in this district there has been a strong, manly, intelligent constituency willing to hold up my hands and enable me more effectually to serve the country and honor them by my service. While this has been true, a bitter few have long been doing all in their power to depreciate my work and weaken my support.

“Mr. Wilkins.—You are rising too fast; they are afraid of being eclipsed.

“Mr. Garfield.—In all this I have relied upon the good sense and justice of the people to understand both my motives and the motives and efforts of my enemies. On some questions of public policy there have been differences between some of my constituents and myself. For instance, on the currency question, I have followed what seemed to me to be the line of truth and duty, and in that course I believe that the majority of the people of this district now concur. Whether right or wrong in opinions of this sort, I have believed it to be my duty to act independently, and in accordance with the best light I could find.

“Fellow-citizens, I believe I have done my country and you some service, and the only way I can still continue thus to serve you is by enjoying, in a reasonable degree, your confidence and support. I am very grateful for the expression of confidence which you have again given me by choosing me a seventh time as your candidate. It was an expression which I have reason to believe was the result of your deliberate judgment, based on a full knowledge of my record; and it is all the more precious to me because it came after one of those storms of public feeling which sometimes sweeps away the work of a life-time.”

Aside from what has been here recounted, Garfield did not speak much on these unpleasant topics. Having put himself on record, he did not convict himself by protesting overmuch.

That he felt these things deeply one can not doubt. In a letter of January 4, 1875, written to B. A. Hinsdale, he said:

“With me the year 1874 has been a continuation, and in some respects an exaggeration, of 1873. That year brought me unusual trials, and brought me face to face with personal assaults and the trial that comes from calumny and public displeasure. This year has perhaps seen the culmination, if not the end, of that kind of experience. I have had much discipline of mind and heart in living the life which these trials brought me. Lately I have been studying myself with some anxiety to see how deeply the shadows have settled around my spirit. I find I have lost much of that exuberance of feeling, that cheerful spirit which I think abounded in me before. I am a little graver and less genial than I was before the storm struck me. The consciousness of this came to me slowly, but I have at last given in to it, and am trying to counteract the tendency.”

These efforts were successful; for prosperity and popularity returned to him; and even if they had not, General Garfield was not the man to acquire bitterness of spirit.

In fact, if there was one thing wherein Garfield was greater than any man in the illustrious group, whose names form a matchless diadem for the epoch in which he lived, it was in a sweetness of temper, a loftiness of spirit, the equal of which can hardly be found in secular history. His spirit knew no malice; his heart no revenge. A distinguished man who served with him in Congress, but who was not a great friend, told the writer that in this regard Garfield inspired him with awe. His conservative views made him many party enemies. Time after time these brilliant debaters—Farnsworth and the rest—would attack Garfield. No sarcasm was too cutting, no irony too cold. At times the speaker seemed to leave the quiver of ridicule without an arrow. When Garfield rose to reply, it was in a tone of calm discussion. He would proceed to the subject in hand in the friendliest and most earnest manner. No attack could provoke him to reply to personalities or invective. Never did he lose self-poise for a moment. It was said that a stranger entering the House after Garfield had begun his speech in answer to some most galling attack would never suspect that the speech was a reply to hostile and malignant assault.

The elections of 1874 having resulted favorably to the Democratic party, the Republicans found themselves with only a minority in the House in the Forty-Fourth Congress. Blaine lost his position as Speaker, and Michael C. Kerr, of Indiana, presided. Committees were all reorganized with Democratic chairmen and majorities.

Garfield, after having been four years Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, now found himself near the foot of the Committee of Ways and Means, with a weighty group of Democrats above him on the list. During his last four terms, Garfield was a member of the House Committee on Rules. His knowledge of Parliamentary Law amounted to a mastery of the subject.

In consequence of this change, General Garfield, suddenly relieved of his usual large responsibility in the work of legislation, was turned into a comparatively new field of public life. Relieved of the real work of legislation, for the first time he had a good opportunity to observe how others would do that work.

A very brief season of such observation on the part of Garfield and his fellow-partisans was enough to make them dissatisfied with Democratic statesmanship. The new majority began to destroy what Republicans had spent so many years in building up. Then came organized opposition.

The first great collision occurred in January, 1876. This first Democratic House since the war was, very naturally, led by Southern members. Many late rebel generals had been sent to it. It was popularly named the Confederate Congress—the rule of rebel brigadiers. Of course, it was not long till they began to propose measures peculiarly favorable to themselves.

When, at the close of the civil war, the Southern States were restored to their right places in the Union, many of their citizens, guilty of treason, had lost their political privileges. By acts of legislation and presidential proclamations, most of these disabilities had been removed. Early in the Forty-Fourth Congress the Amnesty Bill was proposed, extending pardon to all ex-Confederates unconditionally.

It had been the policy of the Government to restore the South completely in this respect, as fast as it was expedient to do so; but this was, as yet, too sweeping a measure. The Republican leaders were opposed to it; and Mr. Blaine proposed an amendment, excepting Jefferson Davis absolutely and by name, and excepting seven hundred and fifty others until they should renounce their treason by taking the oath of allegiance to the United States. The friends of the bill would not except even Davis, and on this point there arose one of the most exciting debates ever held in Congress.

The attack was first made by Mr. Blaine, in the course of a series of sharp thrusts between himself and Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, who had charge of the bill. Finally the “plumed knight” rushed to the front and dealt his heavy blows. It was a terrible arraignment of the Confederate President, making him responsible for the savage cruelties practiced on Union prisoners. All the horrors of Andersonville and Libby prisons were described. He read the celebrated order “Number Thirteen,” directing rebel guns to be turned on the suffering thousands at Andersonville, on the approach of Sherman. Davis, he said, was a party to these proceedings, and the American people would not, should not sanction any act which made it possible for this man ever again to hold any honorable public position within the gift of his Southern friends.

After Blaine’s speech, the debate was continued by Mr. Cox. Then came Benjamin Hill, of Georgia, and James A. Garfield, of Ohio. Hill took up the charges of Blaine, parried them skillfully without answering them, made counter-charges against the Government in its treatment of rebel prisoners, and, in fine, succeeded in his attempt to overcome the impression made by the Blaine attack. In this emergency, while the whole Democracy was exulting, and Hill was the hero of the hour, all eyes turned towards Garfield, for he promised a reply, and was known to be better able for that task than any other man.

On the next day, January 12, Mr. Garfield was given the floor, and began. After stating his regret that such an unpleasant discussion had arisen, he made a brief review of the situation, and proceeded thus:

“Let me say in the outset that, so far as I am personally concerned, I have never voted against any proposition to grant amnesty to any human being who has asked for it at the bar of the House. Furthermore, I appeal to gentlemen on the other side who have been with me in this hall many years, whether at any time they have found me truculent in spirit, unkind in tone or feeling toward those who fought against us in the late war. Twelve years ago this very month, standing in this place, I said this: ‘I believe a truce could be struck to-day between the rank and file of the hostile armies now in the field. I believe they could meet and shake hands together, joyful over returning peace, each respecting the courage and manhood of the other, and each better able to live in amity than before the war.’

“I am glad to repeat word for word what I said that day. For the purposes of this speech I will not even claim the whole ground which the Government assumed toward the late rebellion. For the sake of the present argument, I will view the position of those who took up arms against the Government in the light least offensive to them.

“Leaving out of sight for the moment the question of slavery, which evoked so much passion, and which was the producing cause of the late war, there were still two opposing political theories which met in conflict. Most of the Southern statesmen believed that their first obedience was due to their State. We believed that the allegiance of an American citizen was due to the National government, not by the way of a State capital, but in a direct line from his own heart to the government of the Union. Now, that question was submitted to the dreadful arbitrament of war, to the court of last resort—a court from which there is no appeal, and to which all other powers must bow. To that dread court the great question was carried, and there the right of a State to secede was put to rest forever. For the sake of peace and union, I am willing to treat our late antagonists as I would treat litigants in other courts, who, when they have made their appeal and final judgment is rendered, pay the reasonable costs and bow to its mandates. Our question to-day is not that, but is closely connected with it. When we have made our argument and the court has rendered its judgment, it may be that in the course of its proceedings the court has used its discretion to disbar some of its counselors for malpractice, for unprofessional conduct. In such a case a motion may be made to restore the disbarred members. Applying this illustration to the present case, there are seven hundred and fifty people who are yet disbarred before the highest authority of the Republic—the Constitution itself. The proposition is to offer again the privileges of official station to these people; and we are all agreed as to every human being of them save one.

“I do not object to Jefferson Davis because he was a conspicuous leader. Whatever we may believe theologically, I do not believe in the doctrine of vicarious atonement in politics. Jefferson Davis was no more guilty for taking up arms than any other man who went into the rebellion with equal intelligence. But this is the question: In the high court of war did he practice according to its well-known laws—the laws of nations? Did he, in appealing to war, obey the laws of war; or did he so violate those laws, that justice to those who suffered at his hands demands that he be not permitted to come back to his old privileges in the Union? That is the whole question; and it is as plain and fair a question for deliberation as was ever debated in this House.”

From this point Mr. Garfield proceeded by a long argument, well supported by authorities, to show forth the real history of the atrocities mentioned, and to demonstrate the responsibility of Jefferson Davis for them. He ended this portion of the discussion in these words:

“It seems to me incontrovertible that the records I have adduced lay at his door the charge of being himself the author, the conscious author, through his own appointed instrument, of the terrible work at Andersonville, for which the American people still hold him unfit to be admitted among the legislators of this Nation.

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“And now, Mr. Speaker, I close as I began. Toward those men who gallantly fought us on the field I cherish the kindest feeling. I feel a sincere reverence for the soldierly qualities they displayed on many a well-fought battle-field. I hope the day will come when their swords and ours will be crossed over many a doorway of our children, who will remember the glory of their ancestors with pride. The high qualities displayed in that conflict now belong to the whole Nation. Let them be consecrated to the Union, and its future peace and glory. I shall hail that consecration as a pledge and symbol of our perpetuity.

“But there was a class of men referred to in the speech of the gentleman yesterday for whom I have never yet gained the Christian grace necessary to say the same thing. The gentleman said that, amid the thunder of battle, through its dim smoke, and above its roar, they heard a voice from this side saying, ‘Brothers, come!’ I do not know whether he meant the same thing, but I heard that voice behind us. I heard that voice, and I recollect that I sent one of those who uttered it through our lines—a voice owned by Vallandigham. General Scott said, in the early days of the war, ‘When this war is over, it will require all the physical and moral power of the Government to restrain the rage and fury of the non-combatants.’ It was that non-combatant voice behind us that cried ‘Halloo!’ to the other side; that always gave cheer and encouragement to the enemy in our hour of darkness. I have never forgotten, and have not yet forgiven, those Democrats of the North whose hearts were not warmed by the grand inspirations of the Union, but who stood back, finding fault, always crying disaster, rejoicing at our defeat, never glorying in our victory. If these are the voices the gentleman heard, I am sorry he is now united with those who uttered them.

“But to those most noble men, Democrats and Republicans, who together fought for the Union, I commend all the lessons of charity that the wisest and most beneficent men have taught.

“I join you all in every aspiration that you may express to stay in this Union, to heal its wounds, to increase its glory, and to forget the evils and bitterness of the past; but do not, for the sake of the three hundred thousand heroic men who, maimed and bruised, drag out their weary lives, many of them carrying in their hearts horrible memories of what they suffered in the prison-pen—do not ask us to vote to put back into power that man who was the cause of their suffering—that man still unaneled, unshriven, unforgiven, undefended.”

As the autumn of 1876 approached, it became evident that the Democratic party, already dominant in the House; would make a desperate struggle at the November elections to get complete control of the Government.

Before the long session of that hot summer ended, Mr. Lamar, of Mississippi, took occasion to deliver in the House a powerful campaign speech, attempting to prove that the Republican party did not deserve further support from the people, and that the Democracy was eminently worthy to rule in their stead. The next day, August 4, Mr. Garfield replied. A part of this reply is here given:

“Mr. Chairman: I regret that the speech of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] has not yet appeared in the Record, so that I might have had its full and authentic text before offering my own remarks in reply. But his propositions were so clearly and so very ably stated, the doctrines that run through it were so logically connected, it will be my own fault if I fail to understand and appreciate the general scope and purpose of his speech.

“In the outset, I desire for myself and for a majority at least, of those for whom I speak, to express my gratitude to the gentleman for all that portion of his speech which had for its object the removal of the prejudices and unkindly feelings that have arisen among citizens of the Republic in consequence of the late war. Whatever faults the speech may have, its author expresses an earnest desire to make progress in the direction of a better understanding between the North and the South; and in that it meets my most hearty concurrence and approval.

“I will attempt to state briefly what I understand to be the logic of the gentleman’s speech.

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“Now I have stated—of course very briefly, but I hope with entire fairness—the scope of the very able speech to which we listened. In a word, it is this: The Republican party is oppressing the South; negro suffrage is a grievous evil; there are serious corruptions in public affairs in the national legislation and administration; the civil service of the country especially needs great and radical reform; and, therefore, the Democratic party ought to be placed in control of the Government at this time.

“It has not been my habit, and it is not my desire, to discuss mere party politics in this great legislative forum. And I shall do so now only in so far as a fair review of the gentleman’s speech requires. My remarks shall be responsive to his; and I shall discuss party history and party policy only as the logic of his speech leads into that domain.

“From most of the premises of the gentleman, as matters of fact and history, I dissent; some of them are undoubtedly correct. But, for the sake of argument only, admitting that all his premises are correct, I deny that his conclusion is warranted by his premises; and, before I close, I shall attempt to show that the good he seeks can not be secured by the ascendency of the Democratic party at this time.

“Before entering upon that field, however, I must notice this remarkable omission in the logic of his speech. Although he did state that the country might consider itself free from some of the dangers which are apprehended as the result of Democratic ascendency, he did not, as I remember, by any word attempt to prove the fitness of the Democracy as a political organization to accomplish the reforms which he so much desires; and without that affirmative proof of fitness his argument is necessarily an absolute failure.

“It is precisely that fear which has not only made the ascendency of the Democratic party so long impossible, but has made it incompetent to render that service so necessary to good government—the service of maintaining the position of a wise and honorable opposition to the dominant party. Often the blunders and faults of the Republican party have been condoned by the people because of the violent, reactionary, and disloyal spirit of the Democracy.

“He tells us that it is one of the well-known lessons of political history and philosophy, that the opposition party comes in to preserve and crystallize the measures which their antagonists inaugurated; and that a conservative opposition party is better fitted to accomplish such a work than an aggressive radical party, who roughly pioneered the way and brought in the changes. And to apply this maxim to our own situation, he tells us that the differences between the Republican and the Democratic parties upon the issues which led to the war, and those which grew out of it, were rather differences of time than of substance; that the Democracy followed more slowly in the Republican path, but have at last arrived, by prudent and constitutional methods, at the same results; and hence they will be sure to guard securely and cherish faithfully what the Republicans gained by reckless and turbulent methods. There is some truth in these ‘glittering generalities,’ but, as applied to our present situation, they are entitled only to the consideration which we give to the bright but fantastic pictures of a Utopian dream.

“I share all that gentleman’s aspirations for peace, for good government at the South; and I believe I can safely assure him that the great majority of the nation shares the same aspirations. But he will allow me to say that he has not fully stated the elements of the great problem to be solved by the statesmanship of to-day. The actual field is much broader than the view he has taken. And before we can agree that the remedy he proposes is an adequate one, we must take in the whole field, comprehend all the conditions of the problem, and then see if his remedy is sufficient. The change he proposes is not like the ordinary change of a ministry in England when the government is defeated on a tax-bill or some routine measure of legislation. He proposes to turn over the custody and management of the Government to a party which has persistently, and with the greatest bitterness, resisted all the great changes of the last fifteen years; changes which were the necessary results of a vast revolution—a revolution in national policy, in social and political ideas—a revolution whose causes were not the work of a day nor a year, but of generations and centuries. The scope and character of that mighty revolution must form the basis of our judgment when we inquire whether such a change as he proposes is safe and wise.

“In discussing his proposition we must not forget that, as the result of this revolution, the South, after the great devastations of war, the great loss of life and treasure, the overthrow of its social and industrial system, was called upon to confront the new and difficult problem of two races—one just relieved from centuries of slavery, and the other a cultivated, brave, proud, imperious race—to be brought together on terms of equality before the law. New, difficult, delicate, and dangerous questions bristle out from every point of that problem.

“But that is not all of the situation. On the other hand, we see the North, after leaving its 350,000 dead upon the field of battle and bringing home its 500,000 maimed and wounded to be cared for, crippled in its industries, staggering under the tremendous burden of public and private debt, and both North and South weighted with unparalleled burdens and losses—the whole nation suffering from that loosening of the bonds of social order which always follows a great war, and from the resulting corruption both in the public and the private life of the people. These, Mr. Chairman, constitute the vast field which we must survey in order to find the path which will soonest lead our beloved country to the highway of peace, of liberty and prosperity. Peace from the shock of battle; the higher peace of our streets, of our homes, of our equal rights, we must make secure by making the conquering ideas of the war every-where dominant and permanent.

“With all my heart I join with the gentleman in rejoicing that—

“‘The war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags are furled’—

and I look forward with joy and hope to the day when our brave people, one in heart, one in their aspirations for freedom and peace, shall see that the darkness through which we have traveled was a part of that stern but beneficent discipline by which the Great Disposer of events has been leading us on to a higher and nobler national life.

“But such a result can be reached only by comprehending the whole meaning of the revolution through which we have passed and are still passing. I say still passing; for I remember that after the battle of arms comes the battle of history. The cause that triumphs in the field does not always triumph in history. And those who carried the war for union and equal and universal freedom to a victorious issue can never safely relax their vigilance until the ideas for which they fought have become embodied in the enduring forms of individual and national life.

“Has this been done? Not yet.

“I ask the gentleman in all plainness of speech, and yet in all kindness, is he correct in his statement that the conquered party accept the results of the war? Even if they do, I remind the gentleman that accept is not a very strong word. I go further. I ask him if the Democratic party have adopted the results of the war? Is it not asking too much of human nature to expect such unparalleled changes to be not only accepted, but, in so short a time, adopted by men of strong and independent opinions?

“The antagonisms which gave rise to the war and grew out of it were not born in a day, nor can they vanish in a night.

“Mr. Chairman, great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods, whose feet were shod with wool. Our war of independence was a war of ideas, of ideas evolved out of two hundred years of slow and silent growth. When, one hundred years ago, our fathers announced as self-evident truths the declaration that all men are created equal, and the only just power of governments is derived from the consent of the governed, they uttered a doctrine that no nation had ever adopted, that not one kingdom on the earth then believed. Yet to our fathers it was so plain that they would not debate it. They announced it as a truth ‘self-evident.’

“Whence came the immortal truths of the Declaration? To me this was for years the riddle of our history. I have searched long and patiently through the books of the doctrinaires to find the germs from which the Declaration of Independence sprang. I found hints in Locke, in Hobbes, in Rousseau, and Fénelon; but they were only the hints of dreamers and philosophers. The great doctrines of the Declaration germinated in the hearts of our fathers, and were developed under the new influences of this wilderness world, by the same subtle mystery which brings forth the rose from the germ of the rose-tree. Unconsciously to themselves, the great truths were growing under the new conditions until, like the century-plant, they blossomed into the matchless beauty of the Declaration of Independence, whose fruitage, increased and increasing, we enjoy to-day.

“It will not do, Mr. Chairman, to speak of the gigantic revolution through which we have lately passed as a thing to be adjusted and settled by a change of administration. It was cyclical, epochal, century-wide, and to be studied in its broad and grand perspective—a revolution of even wider scope, so far as time is concerned, than the Revolution of 1776. We have been dealing with elements and forces which have been at work on this continent more than two hundred and fifty years. I trust I shall be excused if I take a few moments to trace some of the leading phases of the great struggle. And, in doing so, I beg gentlemen to see that the subject itself lifts us into a region where the individual sinks out of sight and is absorbed in the mighty current of great events. It is not the occasion to award praise or pronounce condemnation. In such a revolution men are like insects that fret and toss in the storm, but are swept onward by the resistless movements of elements beyond their control. I speak of this revolution not to praise the men who aided it, or to censure the men who resisted it, but as a force to be studied, as a mandate to be obeyed.

“In the year 1620 there were planted upon this continent two ideas irreconcilably hostile to each other. Ideas are the great warriors of the world; and a war that has no ideas behind it is simply brutality. The two ideas were landed, one at Plymouth Rock from the Mayflower, and the other from a Dutch brig at Jamestown, Virginia. One was the old doctrine of Luther, that private judgment in politics as well as religion, is the right and duty of every man; and the other that capital should own labor, that the negro had no rights of manhood, and the white man might justly buy, own, and sell him and his offspring forever. Thus freedom and equality on the one hand, and on the other the slavery of one race and the domination of another, were the two germs planted on this continent. In our vast expanse of wilderness, for a long time, there was room for both; and their advocates began the race across the continent, each developing the social and political institutions of their choice. Both had vast interests in common; and for a long time neither was conscious of the fatal antagonisms that were developing.

“For nearly two centuries there was no serious collision; but when the continent began to fill up, and the people began to jostle against each other; when the Roundhead and the Cavalier came near enough to measure opinions, the irreconcilable character of the two doctrines began to appear. Many conscientious men studied the subject, and came to the belief that slavery was a crime, a sin, or as Wesley said, ‘the sum of all villainies.’ This belief dwelt in small minorities for a long time. It lived in the churches and vestries, but later found its way into the civil and political organizations of the country, and finally found its way into this chamber. A few brave, clear-sighted, far-seeing men announced it here, a little more than a generation ago. A predecessor of mine, Joshua R. Giddings, following the lead of John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, almost alone held up the banner on this floor, and from year to year comrades came to his side. Through evil and through good report he pressed the question upon the conscience of the nation.

“And so the contest continued; the supporters of slavery believing honestly and sincerely that slavery was a divine institution; that it found its high sanctions in the living oracles of God and in a wise political philosophy; that it was justified by the necessities of their situation; and that slave-holders were missionaries to the dark sons of Africa, to elevate and bless them. We are so far past the passions of that early time that we can now study the progress of the struggle as a great and inevitable development, without sharing in the crimination and recrimination that attended it. If both sides could have seen that it was a contest beyond their control; if both parties could have realized the truth that ‘unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations,’ much less for the fate of political parties, the bitterness, the sorrow, the tears, and the blood might have been avoided. But we walked in the darkness, our paths obscured by the smoke of the conflict, each following his own convictions through ever-increasing fierceness, until the debate culminated in ‘the last argument to which kings resort.’

“This conflict of opinion was not merely one of sentimental feeling; it involved our whole political system; it gave rise to two radically different theories of the nature of our Government: the North believing and holding that we were a Nation, the South insisting that we were only a confederation of sovereign States, and insisting that each State had the right, at its own discretion, to break the Union, and constantly threatening secession where the full rights of slavery were not acknowledged.

“Thus the defense and aggrandizement of slavery, and the hatred of Abolitionism, became not only the central idea of the Democratic party, but its master-passion—a passion intensified and inflamed by twenty-five years of fierce political contest, which had not only driven from its ranks all those who preferred freedom to slavery, but had absorbed all the extreme pro-slavery elements of the fallen Whig party. Over against this was arrayed the Republican party, asserting the broad doctrines of nationality and loyalty, insisting that no State had a right to secede, that secession was treason, and demanding that the institution of slavery should be restricted to the limits of the States where it already existed. But here and there, many bolder and more radical thinkers declared, with Wendell Phillips, that there never could be union and peace, freedom and prosperity, until we were willing to see John Hancock under a black skin.

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“Mr. Chairman, after the facts I have cited, am I not warranted in raising a grave doubt whether the transformation occurred at all except in a few patriotic and philosophic minds? The light gleams first on the mountain peaks; but shadows and darkness linger in the valley. It is in the valley masses of those lately in rebellion that the light of this beautiful philosophy, which I honor, has not penetrated. It is safer to withhold from them the custody and supreme control of the precious treasures of the Republic until the midday sun of liberty, justice, and equal laws shall shine upon them with unclouded ray.

“In view of all the facts, considering the centuries of influence that brought on the great struggle, is it not reasonable to suppose that it will require yet more time to effect the great transformation? Did not the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. George F. Hoar] sum up the case fairly and truthfully when he said of the South, in his Louisiana report of 1874: ‘They submitted to the national authority, not because they would, but because they must. They abandoned the doctrine of State sovereignty, which they had claimed made their duty to the States paramount to that due to the nation in case of conflict, not because they would, but because they must. They submitted to the constitutional amendments which rendered their former slaves their equals in all political rights, not because they would, but because they must. The passions which led to the war, the passions which the war excited, were left untamed and unchecked, except so far as their exhibition was restrained by the arm of power.’

“Mr. Chairman, it is now time to inquire as to the fitness of this Democratic party to take control of our great nation and its vast and important interests for the next four years. I put the question to the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar], what has the Democratic party done to merit that great trust? He tried to show in what respects it would not be dangerous. I ask him to show in what it would be safe. I affirm, and I believe I do not misrepresent the great Democratic party, that in the last sixteen years they have not advanced one great national idea that is not to-day exploded and as dead as Julius Cæsar. And if any Democrat here will rise and name a great national doctrine his party has advanced, within that time, that is now alive and believed in, I will yield to hear him. [A pause.] In default of an answer, I will attempt to prove my negative.

“What were the great central doctrines of the Democratic party in the presidential struggle of 1860? The followers of Breckinridge said slavery had a right to go wherever the Constitution goes. Do you believe that to-day? Is there a man on this continent that holds that doctrine to-day? Not one. That doctrine is dead and buried. The other wing of the Democracy held that slavery might be established in the territories if the people wanted it. Does any body hold that doctrine to-day? Dead, absolutely dead!

“Come down to 1864. Your party, under the lead of Tilden and Vallandigham, declared the experiment of war to save the Union was a failure. Do you believe that doctrine to-day? That doctrine was shot to death by the guns of Farragut at Mobile, and driven, in a tempest of fire, from the valley of the Shenandoah by Sheridan less than a month after its birth at Chicago.

“Come down to 1868. You declared the Constitutional Amendments revolutionary and void. Does any man on this floor say so to-day? If so, let him rise and declare it.

“Do you believe in the doctrine of the Broadhead letter of 1868, that the so-called Constitutional Amendments should be disregarded? No; the gentleman from Mississippi accepts the results of the war! The Democratic doctrine of 1868 is dead!

“I walk across that Democratic camping-ground as in a graveyard. Under my feet resound the hollow echoes of the dead. There lies slavery, a black marble column at the head of its grave, on which I read: Died in the flames of the Civil War; loved in its life; lamented in its death; followed to its bier by its only mourner, the Democratic party, but dead! And here is a double grave: Sacred to the memory of Squatter Sovereignty. Died in the campaign of 1860. On the reverse side: Sacred to the memory of the Dred Scott-Breckinridge doctrine. Both died at the hands of Abraham Lincoln! And here a monument of brimstone: Sacred to the memory of the Rebellion; the war against it is a failure; Tilden et Vallandigham fecerunt, A. D. 1864. Dead on the field of battle; shot to death by the million guns of the Republic. The doctrine of Secession; of State Sovereignty. Dead. Expired in the flames of civil war, amidst the blazing rafters of the Confederacy, except that the modern Æneas, fleeing out of the flames of that ruin, bears on his back another Anchises of State Sovereignty, and brings it here in the person of the honorable gentleman from the Appomattox district of Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. [Laughter.] All else is dead.

“Now, gentlemen, are you sad, are you sorry for these deaths? Are you not glad that Secession is dead? that slavery is dead? that Squatter Sovereignty is dead? that the doctrine of the failure of the war is dead? Then you are glad that you were out-voted in 1860, in 1864, in 1868, and in 1872. If you have tears to shed over these losses, shed them in the graveyard, but not in this House of living men. I know that many a Southern man rejoices that these issues are dead. The gentleman from Mississippi has clothed his joy with eloquence.

“Now, gentlemen, if you yourselves are glad that you have suffered defeat during the last sixteen years, will you not be equally glad when you suffer defeat next November? [Laughter.] But pardon that remark; I regret it; I would use no bravado.

“Now, gentlemen, come with me for a moment into the camp of the Republican party and review its career. Our central doctrine in 1860 was that slavery should never extend itself over another foot of American soil. Is that doctrine dead? It is folded away like a victorious banner; its truth is alive for evermore on this continent. In 1864 we declared that we would put down the Rebellion and Secession. And that doctrine lives, and will live when the second Centennial has arrived! Freedom, national, universal, and perpetual—our great Constitutional Amendments, are they alive or dead? Alive, thank the God that shields both liberty and Union. And our national credit, saved from the assaults of Pendleton; saved from the assaults of those who struck it later, rising higher and higher at home and abroad; and only now in doubt lest its chief, its only enemy, the Democracy, should triumph in November.

“Mr. Chairman, ought the Republican party to surrender its truncheon of command to the Democracy? The gentleman from Mississippi says, if this were England, the ministry would go out in twenty-four hours with such a state of things as we have here. Ah, yes! that is an ordinary case of change of administration. But if this were England, what would she have done at the end of the war? England made one such mistake as the gentleman asks this country to make, when she threw away the achievements of the grandest man that ever trod her highway of power. Oliver Cromwell had overturned the throne of despotic power, and had lifted his country to a place of masterful greatness among the nations of the earth; and when, after his death, his great scepter was transferred to a weak though not unlineal hand, his country, in a moment of reactionary blindness, brought back the Stuarts. England did not recover from that folly until, in 1689, the Prince of Orange drove from her island the last of that weak and wicked line. Did she afterward repeat the blunder?

“For more than fifty years pretenders were seeking the throne; and the wars on her coast, in Scotland and in Ireland, threatened the overthrow of the new dynasty and the disruption of the empire. But the solid phlegm, the magnificent pluck, the roundabout common-sense of Englishmen steadied the throne till the cause of the Stuarts was dead. They did not change as soon as the battle was over and let the Stuarts come back to power.

“And how was it in our own country, when our fathers had triumphed in the war of the Revolution? When the victory was won, did they open their arms to the Loyalists, as they called themselves, or Tories, as our fathers called them? Did they invite them back? Not one. They confiscated their lands. The States passed decrees that no Tory should live on our soil. And when they were too poor to take themselves away, our fathers, burdened as the young nation was with debt, raised the money to transport the Tories beyond seas or across the Canada border. They went to England, to France, to Nova Scotia, to New Brunswick, and especially to Halifax; and that town was such a resort for them, that it became the swear-word of our boyhood. ‘Go to Halifax!’ was a substitute for a more impious, but not more opprobrious expression. The presence of Tories made it opprobrious.

“Now, I do not refer to this as an example which we ought to follow. Oh, no. We live in a milder era, in an age softened by the more genial influence of Christian civilization. Witness the sixty-one men who fought against us in the late war, and who are now sitting in this and the other chamber of Congress. Every one of them is here because a magnanimous nation freely voted that they might come; and they are welcome. Only please do not say that you are just now especially fitted to rule the Republic, and to be the apostles of liberty and of blessings to the colored race.

“Gentlemen, the North has been asked these many years to regard the sensibilities of the South. We have been told that you were brave and sensitive men, and that we ought not to throw firebrands among you. Most of our people have treated you with justice and magnanimity. In some things we have given you just cause for complaint; but I want to remind you that the North also has sensibilities to be regarded. The ideas which they cherished, and for which they fought, triumphed in the highest court, the court of last resort, the field of battle. Our people intend to abide by that verdict and to enforce the mandate. They rejoice at every evidence of acquiescence. They look forward to the day when the distinctions of North and South shall have melted away in the grander sentiment of nationality. But they do not think it is yet safe to place the control of this great work in your hands. In the hands of some of you they would be safe, perfectly safe; but into the hands of the united South, joined with the most reactionary elements of the Northern Democracy, our people will not yet surrender the government.

“I am aware that there is a general disposition ‘to let by-gones be by-gones,’ and to judge of parties and of men, not by what they have been, but by what they are and what they propose.

“That view is partly just and partly erroneous. It is just and wise to bury resentments and animosities. It is erroneous in this, that parties have an organic life and spirit of their own—an individuality and character which outlive the men who compose them; and the spirit and traditions of a party should be considered in determining their fitness for managing the affairs of a nation. For this purpose I have reviewed the history of the Democratic party.”

Long ago an arrangement was perfected by which each State of the Union should be allowed to place in the halls of Congress two statues of distinguished citizens. On December 19, 1876, the State of Massachusetts announced its readiness to comply with this arrangement, by presenting two statues, one of John Winthrop and one of Samuel Adams.

Speaking on the resolution of that day, accepting this gift, Mr. Garfield made one of the most felicitous of the many speeches of this kind that he has left on record. One paragraph from this address can not be omitted here:

“As, from time to time, our venerable and beautiful Hall has been peopled with statues of the elect of the States, it has seemed to me that a Third House was being organized within the walls of the Capitol—a house whose members have received their high credentials at the hands of history, and whose term of office will outlast the ages. Year by year we see the circle of its immortal membership enlarging; year by year we see the elect of their country, in eloquent silence, taking their places in this American Pantheon, bringing within its sacred circle the wealth of those immortal memories which made their lives illustrious; and year by year that august assembly is teaching a deeper and grander lesson to all who serve their brief hour in these more ephemeral Houses of Congress. And now two places of great honor have just been most nobly filled.”

Of a truth, General Garfield understood and appreciated the greatness of the Republic, and the grandeur of the character which belonged to its founders!

The election for President, in 1876, and the difficulty which arose in deciding its results, will not be forgotten by this generation, or left out of the studies of American statesmen in the future. We still vividly recollect how narrow the majority, and how uncertain; how all depended on three doubtful Southern States; how the “visiting statesmen” went to New Orleans to watch the count before the Returning Board; how the nation waited breathless while these momentous calculations were being made. And finally, we long shall remember that famous Electoral Commission which by an eight to seven vote made R. B. Hayes President of the United States.

Arriving at Washington early in November, General Garfield was requested by President Grant to go to New Orleans with the little company of Democratic and Republican leaders who were there. General Garfield arrived in New Orleans on November fourteenth. In common with other members of the Republican Committee, he refused to unite in any movement to in any way influence the Returning Board in its canvass of the vote. He was there simply to witness what was done; not to take part in the proceedings.

These visitors of both parties were given opportunities to witness the count, five of each party being there all the time. They were furnished with copies of all testimony taken; and to simplify the work, the study of this testimony was distributed out among individuals. General Garfield was given all the papers regarding East Feliciana parish, which he thoroughly examined, and even recalled and re-examined some of the witnesses.

In the work before the Returning Board, that Board allowed these witnesses to ask questions, and to take copies of all the papers. Each party was also represented by counsel, who argued the disputed points.

This was the work of the “visiting statesmen.” When the canvassing of votes was completed, without waiting for or trying to influence the result, General Garfield returned to Washington, as did nearly all the others.

It has been a question whether outsiders ought to have been at New Orleans at all in this emergency. Certainly a public man ran great risk of doing himself harm by going, and it required the utmost circumspection to get out of it, clear from suspicion of evil. A year afterward this affair was examined by the Potter Committee, and of Garfield, the worst they could say was this: “We found no fault in him.”

But the struggle at New Orleans did not decide it all. When January came it was seen that there would still be trouble in deciding who were elected. It was feared by all that an attempt to decide by the existing laws, without the help of further provisions, might lead to serious difficulties.

Accordingly, on January 29, 1877, there was passed in the House a law providing for the Electoral Commission, a body to be composed of five Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, five Senators and five Representatives, to whom should be committed the duty of deciding, by their recommendation, the votes of any disputed States.

General Garfield was opposed to this commission, which he thought an unhappy way of ending the trouble. His views are given in a speech made to the House, on January 25, wherein he said:

“What, then, are the grounds on which we should consider a bill like this? It would be unbecoming in me or in any member of this Congress to oppose this bill on mere technical or trifling grounds. It should be opposed, if at all, for reasons so broad, so weighty, as to overcome all that has been said in its favor, and all the advantages which I have here admitted may follow from its passage. I do not wish to diminish the stature of my antagonist; I do not wish to undervalue the points of strength in a measure before I question its propriety. It is not enough that this bill will tide us over a present danger, however great. Let us for a moment forget Hayes and Tilden, Republicans and Democrats; let us forget our own epoch and our own generation; and, entering a broader field, inquire how this thing which we are about to do will effect the great feature of our republic, and in what condition, if we pass this bill, we shall transmit our institutions to those who shall come after us. The present good which we shall achieve by it may be very great; yet if the evils that will flow from it in the future must be greater, it would be base in us to flinch from trouble by entailing remediless evils upon our children.

“In my view, then, the foremost question is this: What will be the effect of this measure upon our institutions? I can not make that inquiry intelligibly without a brief reference to the history of the Constitution, and to some of the formidable questions which presented themselves to our fathers nearly a hundred years ago, when they set up this goodly frame of Government.

“Among the foremost difficulties, both in point of time and magnitude, was how to create an executive head of the Nation. Our fathers encountered that difficulty the first morning after they organized and elected the officers of the Constitutional Convention. The first resolution introduced by Randolph, of Virginia, on the 29th day of May, recognized that great question, and invited the Convention to its examination. The men who made the Constitution were deeply read in the profoundest political philosophy of their day. They had learned from Montesquieu, from Locke, from Fénelon, and other good teachers of the human race, that liberty is impossible without a clear and distinct separation of the three great powers of government. A generation before their epoch, Montesquieu had said:

“‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws and execute them in a tyrannical manner.

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“‘There would be an end of every thing were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise these three powers, that of enacting the laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.’

“This was a fundamental truth in the American mind, as it had long been cherished and practiced in the British empire.

“There, as in all monarchies, the creation of a chief executive was easily regulated by adopting a dynasty, and following the law of primogeniture.

“But our fathers had drawn the deeper lesson of liberty from the inspirations of this free New World, that their Chief Executive should be born, not of a dynasty, but of the will of a free people regulated by law.

“In the course of their deliberations upon this subject, there were suggested seven different plans, which may be grouped under two principal heads or classes. One group comprised all the plans for creating the Chief Executive by means of some one of the preëxisting political organizations of the country. First and foremost was the proposition to authorize one or both Houses of the National Legislature to elect the Chief Executive. Another was to confer that power upon the governors of the States, or upon the legislatures of the States. Another, that he should be chosen directly by the people themselves under the laws of the States. The second group comprised all the various plans for creating a new and separate instrumentality for making the choice.

“At first the proposition that the Executive should be elected by the National Legislature was received by the Convention with almost unanimous approval; and for the reason that up to that time Congress had done all that was done in the way of national government. It had created the nation and led its fortunes through a thousand perils, had declared and achieved independence, and had preserved the liberty of the people in the midst of a great war. Though Congress had failed to secure a firm and stable Government after the war, yet its glory was not forgotten. As Congress had created the Union, it was most natural that our fathers should say Congress should also create the Chief Executive of the nation. And within two weeks after the Convention assembled, they voted for that plan with absolute unanimity.

“But with equal unanimity they agreed that this plan would be fatal to the stability of the Government they were about to establish, if they did not couple with it some provision that should make the President’s functions independent of the power that created him. To effect this, they provided that the President should be ineligible for reëlection. They said it would never do to create a Chief Executive by the voice of the National Legislature, and then allow him to be reëlected by that same voice; for he would thus become their creature.

“And so, from the first day of their session in May, to within five days of its close in September, they grappled with the mighty question. I have many times, and recently very carefully, gone through all the records that are left to us of that great transaction. I find that more than one-seventh of all the pages of the Madison papers are devoted to this Samson of questions, how the Executive should be chosen and made independent of the organization that made the choice. This topic alone occupied more than one-seventh of all the time of the Convention.

“After a long and earnest debate, after numerous votes and reconsiderations, they were obliged utterly to abandon the plan of creating the Chief Executive by means of the National Legislature. I will not stop now to prove the statement by a dozen or more pungent quotations from the masters of political science in that great assembly, in which they declared that it would be ruinous to the liberty of the people and to the permanence of the Republic if they did not absolutely exclude the National Legislature from any share in the election of the President.

“They pointed with glowing eloquence to the sad but instructive fate of those brilliant Italian republics that were destroyed because there was no adequate separation of powers, and because their senates overwhelmed and swallowed up the executive power, and, as secret and despotic conclaves, became the destroyers of Italian liberty.

“At the close of the great discussion, when the last vote on this subject was taken by our fathers, they were almost unanimous in excluding the National Legislature from any share whatever in the choice of the Chief Executive of the nation. They rejected all the plans of the first group, and created a new instrumentality. They adopted the system of electors. When that plan was under discussion, they used the utmost precaution to hedge it about by every conceivable protection against the interference or control of Congress.

“In the first place, they said the States shall create the electoral colleges. They allowed Congress to have nothing whatever to do with the creation of the colleges, except merely to fix the time when the States should appoint them. And, in order to exclude Congress by positive prohibition, in the last days of the Convention they provided that no member of either House of Congress should be appointed an elector; so that not even by the personal influence of any one of its members could the Congress interfere with the election of a President.

“The creation of a President under our Constitution consists of three distinct steps: First, the creation of the electoral colleges; second, the vote of colleges; and third, the opening and counting of their votes. This is the simple plan of the Constitution.

“The creation of the colleges is left absolutely to the States, within the five limitations I had the honor to mention to the House a few days ago. First, it must be a State that appoints electors; second, the State is limited as to the number of electors it may appoint; third, electors shall not be members of Congress or officers of the United States; fourth, the time for appointing electors may be fixed by Congress; and, fifth, the time when their appointment is announced, which must be before the date for giving their votes, may also be fixed by Congress.

“These five simple limitations, and these alone, were laid upon the States. Every other act, fact, and thing possible to be done in creating the electoral colleges was absolutely and uncontrollably in the power of the States themselves. Within these limitations, Congress has no more power to touch them in this work than England or France. That is the first step.

“The second is still plainer and simpler, namely, the work of the colleges. They were created as an independent and separate power, or set of powers, for the sole purpose of electing a President. They were created by the States. Congress has just one thing to do with them, and only one: it may fix the day when they shall meet. By the act of 1792 Congress fixed the day as it still stands in the law; and there the authority of the Congress over the colleges ended.

“There was a later act—of 1845—which gave to the States the authority to provide by law for filling vacancies of electors in these colleges; and Congress has passed no other law on the subject.

“The States having created them, the time of their assemblage having been fixed by Congress, and their power to fill vacancies having been regulated by State laws, the colleges are as independent in the exercise of their functions as is any department of the Government within its sphere. Being thus equipped, their powers are restrained by a few simple limitations laid upon them by the Constitution itself: first, they must vote for a native-born citizen; second, for a man who has been fourteen years a resident of the United States; third, at least one of the persons for whom they vote must not be a citizen of their own State; fourth, the mode of voting and certifying their returns is prescribed by the Constitution itself. Within these simple and plain limitations the electoral colleges are absolutely independent of the States and of Congress.

“One fact in the history of the Constitutional Convention, which I have not seen noticed in any of the recent debates, illustrates very clearly how careful our fathers were to preserve these colleges from the interference of Congress, and to protect their independence by the bulwarks of the Constitution itself. In the draught of the electoral system reported September 4, 1787, it was provided that Congress ‘may determine the time of choosing and assembling of the electors and the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes.’

“That was the language of the original draught; but our fathers had determined that the National Legislature should have nothing to do with the action of the colleges; and the words that gave Congress the power to prescribe the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes were stricken out. The instrument itself prescribed the mode. Thus Congress was wholly expelled from the colleges. The Constitution swept the ground clear of all intruders, and placed its own imperial guardianship around the independence of the electoral colleges by forbidding even Congress to enter the sacred circle. No Congressman could enter; and, except to fix the day of their meeting, Congress could not speak to the electors.

“These colleges are none the less sovereign and independent because they exist only for a day. They meet on the same day in all the States; they do their work summarily in one day, and dissolve for ever. There is no power to interfere, no power to recall them, no power to revise their action. Their work is done; the record is made up, signed, sealed, and transmitted; and thus the second great act in the Presidential election is completed. I ought to correct myself; the second act is the Presidential election. The election is finished the hour when the electoral colleges have cast their votes and sealed up the record.

“Still, there is a third step in the process; and it is shorter, plainer, simpler than the other two. These sealed certificates of the electoral colleges are forwarded to the President of the Senate, where they rest under the silence of the seals for more than two months. The Constitution assumes that the result of the election is still unknown. But on a day fixed by law, and the only day of all the days of February on which the law commands Congress to be in session, the last act in the plan of electing a President is to be performed.

“How plain and simple are the words that describe this third and last step. Here they are:

“‘The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.’

“Here is no ambiguity. Two words dominate and inspire the clause. They are the words open and count. These words are not shrouded in the black-letter mysteries of the law. They are plain words, understood by every man who speaks our mother-tongue, and need no lexicon or commentary.

“Consider the grand and simple ceremonial by which the third act is to be completed. On the day fixed by law the two Houses of Congress are assembled. The President of the Senate, who, by the Constitution, has been made the custodian of the sealed certificates from all the electoral colleges, takes his place. The Constitution requires a ‘person’ and a ‘presence.’ That ‘person’ is the President of the Senate; and that ‘presence’ is the ‘presence’ of the two Houses. Then two things are to be done. The certificates are to be opened, and the votes are to be counted. These are not legislative acts, but clearly and plainly executive acts. I challenge any man to find anywhere an accepted definition of an executive act that does not include both these. They can not be tortured into a meaning that will carry them beyond the boundaries of executive action. And one of these acts the President of the Senate is peremptorily ordered to perform. The Constitution commands him to ‘open all the certificates.’ Certificates of what? Certificates of the votes of the electoral colleges. Not any certificates that any body may choose to send, but certificates of electors appointed by the States. The President of the Senate is presumed to know what are the States in the Union, who are their officers, and, when he opens the certificates, he learns from the official record who have been appointed electors, and he finds their votes.

“The Constitution contemplated the President of the Senate as the Vice-President of the United States, the elect of all the people. And to him is confided the great trust, the custodianship of the only official record of the election of President. What is it to ‘open the certificates’? It would be a narrow and inadequate view of that word to say that it means only the breaking of the seals. To open an envelope is not to ‘open the certificates.’ The certificate is not the paper on which the record is made; it is the record itself. To open the certificates is not a physical but an intellectual act. It is to make patent the record; to publish it. When that is done the election of President and Vice-President is published. But one thing remains to be done; and here the language of the Constitution changes from the active to the passive voice, from the personal to the impersonal. To the trusted custodian of the votes succeeds the impersonality of arithmetic; the votes have been made known; there remains only the command of the Constitution: ‘They shall be counted’—that is, the numbers shall be added up.

“No further act is required. The Constitution itself declares the result:

“‘The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.’

“If no person has such majority, the House of Representatives shall immediately choose a President; not the House as organized for legislation, but a new electoral college is created out of the members of the House, by means of which each State has one vote for President, and only one.

“To review the ground over which I have traveled: The several acts that constitute the election of a President may be symbolized by a pyramid consisting of three massive, separate blocks. The first, the creation of the electoral college by the States, is the broad base. It embraces the legislative, the judicial, and the executive powers of the States. All the departments of the State government and all the voters of the State coöperate in shaping and perfecting it.

“The action of the electoral colleges forms the second block, perfect in itself, and independent of the others, superimposed with exactness upon the first.

“The opening and counting of the votes of the colleges is the little block that crowns and completes the pyramid.

“Such, Mr. Speaker, was the grand and simple plan by which the framers of the Constitution empowered all the people, acting under the laws of the several States, to create special and select colleges of independent electors to choose a President, who should be, not the creature of Congress, nor of the States, but the Chief Magistrate of the whole Nation—the elect of all the people.”

But the Electoral Commission was constituted by law, and Garfield himself chosen unanimously by his party as a member thereof. He accepted, saying: “Since you have appointed me, I will serve. I can act on a committee when I do not believe in its validity.” That fact could not affect the justice of his decisions.

It is impossible to even hint at more than a small portion of the vast field of work which occupied General Garfield during this and the succeeding Congress.

On November 16, 1877, he made a very able speech on the subject of Resumption of Payments; an address which would serve to perpetuate his fame, if he had no other monument.

In the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1876, appeared an article from his pen, entitled “The Currency Conflict.” On June 4, of the same year, he opposed, in an elaborate address, a tariff bill brought in by Mr. Morrison, of Illinois.

June 22, 1876, was to him the “sad occasion dear” of a revival of precious memories. In the preceding December his old friend and fellow-student of Hiram, Miss Booth, had died, and this day in June was appointed there for a memorial address by General Garfield. As at all such times when he spoke, we are struck with a sense of the wonderful delicacy of this man’s nature, which responded so perfectly to every delicate and holy sentiment known to the human heart. His very first words were:

“Mr. President: You have called me to a duty at once most sad and most sacred. At every step of my preparation for its performance, I have encountered troops of thronging memories that swept across the field of the last twenty-five years of my life, and so filled my heart with the lights and shadows of their joy and sorrow that I have hardly been able to marshal them into order or give them coherent voice. I have lived over again the life of this place. I have seen again the groups of young and joyous students, ascending these green slopes, dwelling for a time on this peaceful height in happy and workful companionship, and then, with firmer step, and with more serious and thoughtful faces, marching away to their posts in the battle of life.

“And still nearer and clearer have come back the memories of that smaller band of friends, the leaders and guides of those who encamped on this training-ground. On my journey to this assembly, it has seemed that they, too, were coming, and that I should once more meet and greet them. And I have not yet been able to realize that Almeda Booth will not be with us. After our great loss, how shall we gather up the fragments of the life we lived in this place? We are mariners, treading the lonely shore in search of our surviving comrades and the fragments of our good ship, wrecked by the tempest. To her, indeed, it is no wreck. She has landed in safety, and ascended the immortal heights beyond our vision.”

The death of Michael C. Kerr having made necessary the selection of a new Speaker, the Democratic majority in the House elected Samuel J. Randall, and the complimentary vote of the Republicans went to General Garfield. He was also their candidate in the two succeeding Congresses. He had divided the honor of leadership pretty evenly with Mr. Blaine, until, in 1877, the latter gentleman went to the Senate, and left Garfield without a rival. Fourteen years of able and faithful service had done their work grandly for his power and his fame.

On February 12, 1878, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York City, presented to Congress that great painting of Carpenter, “Lincoln and Emancipation.” At her request the presentation address was made by General Garfield.

His important speeches during this Congress were even more numerous than usual; especially in the special session held in the spring and summer of 1879. One of the best was that of February 19, 1878, on the “Policy of Pacification, and the Prosecutions in Louisiana.” At this time there were two serious political storms brewing in the air. First, there were divisions in the Republican party, and an alienation of some of its leaders from President Hayes; second, the Democratic party, with its cries of “fraud,” concerning the last election, and its Potter Committee, and its prosecutions against the members of the Louisiana Returning Board, was trying to destroy the people’s confidence in the Government as then constituted. The latter quarrel no doubt was the salvation of the party concerned in the former. Its members rallied and united. Garfield was leader and chief promoter of Republican harmony, as well as the strongest bulwark against the enemy.

This speech of February 19 contains the following pithy paragraph, descriptive of the way in which the nation had passed through the transformations of war:

“There was, first, the military stage—the period of force, of open and bloody war—in which gentlemen of high character and honor met on the field, and decided by the power of the strongest the questions involved in the high court of war. That period passed, but did not leave us on the calm level of peace. It brought us to the period of transition, in which the elements of war and peace were mingled together in strange and anarchic confusion. It was a period of civil and military elements combined. All through that semi-military period the administration of General Grant had, of necessity, to conduct the country. His administration was not all civil, it was not all military; it was necessarily a combination of both; and out of that combination came many of the strange and anomalous situations which always follow such a war.”

Again:

“Our great military chieftain, who brought the war to a successful conclusion, had command as chief executive during eight years of turbulent, difficult, and eventful administration. He saw his administration drawing to a close, and his successor elected—who, studying the question, came to the conclusion that the epoch had arrived, the hour had struck, when it was possible to declare that the semi-military period was ended, and the era of peace methods, of civil processes, should be fully inaugurated. With that spirit, and at the beginning of this third era, Rutherford B. Hayes came into the Presidency. I ought to say that, in my judgment, more than any other public man we have known, the present head of the administration is an optimist. He looks on the best side of things. He is hopeful for the future, and prefers to look upon the bright side rather than upon the dark and sinister side of human nature. His faith is larger than the faith of most of us; and with his faith and hope he has gone to the very verge of the Constitution in offering both hands of fellowship and all the olive-branches of peace to bring back good feeling, and achieve the real pacification to this country.”

After this came a brief protest against the Bland Silver Bill, February 28, 1878. On March 6, 1878, he delivered his “New Scheme of American Finance,” being in answer to a personal attack of William D. Kelley, the great protective tariff advocate, of Pennsylvania. Other addresses were, “The Army and the Public Peace,” May 21, 1878; reply to Mr. Tucker on the “Tariff,” June 4, 1878; “Honest Money,” a speech delivered at Boston, in Faneuil Hall, September 10, 1878; “Suspension and Resumption of Specie Payments,” at Chicago, January 2, 1879, before the Honest Money League of the North-west; in memory of Joseph Henry, January 16,1879; “Relation of Government to Science,” February 11, 1879; in memory of the late Hon. Gustave Schleicher, February 17, 1879; and a very interesting speech of February 26, 1879, about the “Sugar Tariff.”

When March 3,1879, came, the Forty-Fifth Congress went out with much of its important business undone; two of the great appropriation bills had not passed on account of political difficulties. The Democrats attempted to force assent to some of their schemes by tacking their propositions to the Appropriation bill. But this measure the Republicans resisted to the last. And so it happened that in March, 1879, President Hayes was obliged to call an extra session. But here the old fight was renewed, and a long “dead lock” followed.

Throughout this struggle, Garfield was the central figure in the front rank of his party in the House. Scarcely had Congress assembled when the old Army Bill was reported. Then, in Committee of the Whole, the old “rider” was moved as an amendment. The Chair decided this amendment in order, whereupon there was great indignation on the Republican side, and a remarkable debate ensued. Garfield made his principal protest while things were in this situation, on March 29, 1879, in a speech entitled “Revolution in Congress.”

Throughout this special session the fierce heat of political conflict grew more intense every day, like the sun whose burning rays beat down upon the Capitol. On April 4, Garfield spoke again on the subject which had occupied his attention six days before. April 26, he spoke on the passage of the Legislative Appropriation Bill; May 17, against unlimited coinage of silver; June 19, on the Judicial Appropriation Bill; June 21, concerning a proposed survey of the Mississippi River, in the course of which he said:

“But for myself, I believe that one of the grandest of our material national interests—one that is national in the largest material sense of that word—is the Mississippi River and its navigable tributaries. It is the most gigantic single natural feature of our continent, far transcending the glory of the ancient Nile or of any other river on the earth. The statesmanship of America must grapple the problem of this mighty stream. It is too vast for any State to handle; too much for any authority less than that of the nation itself to manage. And I believe the time will come when the liberal-minded statesmanship of this country will devise a wise and comprehensive system, that will harness the powers of this great river to the material interests of America, so that not only all the people who live on its banks and the banks of its confluents, but all the citizens of the Republic, whether dwellers in the central valley or on the slope of either ocean, will recognize the importance of preserving and perfecting this great natural and material bond of national union between the North and the South—a bond to be so strengthened by commerce and intercourse that it can never be severed.”

Thus refreshed by something more liberal than the recent discussions in which he had been engaged, Garfield soon resumed the struggle, and on June 27, 1879, gave the Democratic party and the South a regular broadside on “State Sovereignty.”

The Special Session of 1879 came to an end on July 1st. At its beginning the dominant power in the House loudly proclaimed its intention to push its measures through at all hazards. The appropriation bills, with their obnoxious “riders,” were passed; the President vetoed them. It then became a question of revolution or yielding. There was no revolution! Every dollar called for by the Government was voted, except the pay of the United States marshals, who overcame the difficulty by paying their own expenses, trusting a future session of Congress to repay them.

According to his custom, General Garfield spoke often during the Ohio campaign of 1879; a good specimen of his stump speeches is the one at Cleveland, on October 11th, of this year. At the Andersonville Reunion, held in Toledo, Ohio, on October 3d, he had been present and addressed the throng of Union soldiers and ex-prisoners who met there.

During the regular sessions of the Forty-Sixth Congress his activity was undiminished. In his speech of March 17, during the discussion of a bill to pay the United States marshals for the year ending June 30, 1880, we find such sterling utterances as these:

“Mr. Chairman: When I took my seat as a member of this House, I took it with all the responsibilities which the place brought upon me; and among others was my duty to keep the obligations of the law. Where the law speaks in mandatory terms to every body else and then to me, I should deem it cowardly and dishonorable if I should skulk behind my legislative privilege for the purpose of disobeying and breaking the supreme law of the land.

“The issue now made is somewhat different from that of the last session, but, in my judgment, it is not less significant and dangerous. I would gladly waive any party advantage which this controversy might give for the sake of that calm and settled peace which would reign in this Hall if we all obeyed the law. But if the leaders on the other side are still determined to rush upon their fate by forcing upon the country this last issue—that because the Democratic party happen not to like a law they will not obey it—because they happen not to approve of the spirit and character of a law they will not let it be executed—I say to gentlemen on the other side, if you are determined to make such an issue, it is high time that the American people should know it.

“Here is the volume of our laws. More sacred than the twelve tables of Rome, this rock of the law rises in monumental grandeur alike above the people and the President, above the courts, above Congress, commanding everywhere reverence and obedience to its supreme authority. Yet the dominant party in this House virtually declares that ‘any part of this volume that we do not like and can not repeal we will disobey. We have tried to repeal these election laws; we have failed because we had not the constitutional power to destroy them; the Constitution says they shall stand in their authority and power; but we, the Democratic party, in defiance of the Constitution, declare that if we can not destroy them outright by the repeal, they shall be left to crumble into ruin by wanton and lawless neglect.’

“Mr. Chairman, by far the most formidable danger that threatens the Republic to-day is the spirit of law-breaking which shows itself in many turbulent and alarming manifestations. The people of the Pacific Coast, after two years of wrestling with the spirit of communism in the city of San Francisco, have finally grappled with this lawless spirit, and the leader of it was yesterday sentenced to penal servitude as a violator of the law. But what can we say to Denis Kearney and his associates if to-day we announce ourselves the foremost law-breakers of the country and set an example to all the turbulent and vicious elements of disorder to follow us?

“I ask, gentlemen, whether this is a time when it is safe to disregard and weaken the authority of law. In all quarters the civil society of this country is becoming honeycombed through and through by disintegrating forces—in some States by the violation of contracts and the repudiation of debts; in others by open resistance and defiance; in still others by the reckless overturning of constitutions and letting the ‘red fool fury of the Seine’ run riot among our people and build its blazing altars to the strange gods of ruin and misrule. All these things are shaking the good order of society and threatening the foundations of our Government and our peace. In a time like this, more than ever before, this country needs a body of lawgivers clothed and in their right minds, who have laid their hands upon the altar of the law as its defenders, not its destroyers.”

April 5, 1880, General Garfield made a trenchant argument against a pet measure of the greenback apostle, Mr. Weaver. Five days afterward occurred a debate between Garfield and McMahon, also of Ohio, on the pending Appropriation bill.

On May first he made a personal explanation, defending his committee action in regard to the so-called wood-pulp monopoly. This pulp is obtained from soft wood and used in the manufacture of paper. The newspapers everywhere were calling for a removal of the duty on this their great necessity. Garfield stood out for a ten per cent. tariff, as a protection to our manufacturers from the Canadian manufacturers, who had no royalties to pay, and therefore could have undersold us. In this speech Garfield met the charge of being a monopoly supporter, and vindicated his policy on the disputed question.

Turning aside from this well-fought field where Garfield had so long stood, as a great representative of all that is good in the recent legislative history of our country, it is time to view the new honors which were now preparing for him.

On the fourteenth of January, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected James A. Garfield to the United States Senate, to succeed Mr. Thurman, whose term was to expire in the following March. So thoroughly had Garfield recovered from the wave of scandal which a few years earlier had swept over but could not overwhelm him, that he was the unanimous choice of his party; and the Democratic minority itself cordially united to make his election unanimous. All this came entirely without solicitation from him for such an honor.

At an informal reception held in the Capitol at Columbus, the evening after his election, General Garfield was called upon for a speech. In response, he made a brief and appropriate address. The following is an extract therefrom:

“Fellow-Citizens:—I should be a great deal more than a man, or a great deal less than a man, if I were not extremely gratified by this mark of your kindness you have shown me in recent days. I did not expect any such meeting as this. I knew there was a greeting awaiting me, but I did not expect so cordial, generous, and general a greeting, without distinction of party, without distinction of interests, as I have received here to-night. And you will allow me in a moment or two to speak of the memories this chamber awakens.

“I recognize the importance of the place to which you have elected me, and I should be base if I did not also recognize the great man whom you have elected me to succeed. I say for him, Ohio has had few larger-minded, broader-minded men in the records of our history than that of Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely from him as I have done in politics, and do, I recognize him as a man high in character and great in intellect; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have never before referred to in public—that many years ago, in the storm of party fighting, when the air was filled with all sorts of missiles aimed at the character and reputation of public men, when it was even for his party interest to join the general clamor against me and my associates, Senator Thurman said in public, in the campaign, on the stump,—where men are as likely to say unkind things as at any place in the world,—a most generous and earnest word of defense and kindness for me, which I shall never forget as long as I live. I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world; and where we can early pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so.

“And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, without distinction of party, I recognize this tribute and compliment made to me to-night. Whatever my own course may be in the future, a large share of the inspiration of my future public life will be drawn from this occasion and these surroundings, and I shall feel anew the sense of obligation that I owe to the State of Ohio. Let me venture to point a single sentence in regard to that work. During the twenty years that I have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my convictions at whatever personal cost to myself. I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name is Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not have his approbation, I should have bad companionship. And in this larger constituency which has called me to represent them now, I can only do what is true to my best self, applying the same rules. And if I should be so unfortunate as to lose the confidence of this larger constituency, I must do what every other fair-minded man has to do—carry his political life in his hand and take the consequences. But I must follow what seems to me to be the only safe rule of my life; and with that view of the case, and with that much personal reference, I leave the subject.

“Thanking you again, fellow-citizens, members of the General Assembly, Republicans and Democrats—all, party man as I am,—thanking you both for what you have done and for this cordial and manly greeting, I bid you good-night.”

CHAPTER IX.
GREAT QUESTIONS AND GREAT ANSWERS.

“Who shall make answer on such themes as these?”

It is now appropriate to consider somewhat in extenso the claims of James A. Garfield to be regarded as a statesman. It must needs be in the life of every public man, more particularly in the life of a Congressman, and more particularly still in the life of him who has risen to the rank of leader of the House, that he speak much on questions of passing interest. Many of the topics which engage his attention flit away with the occasion which gave them birth. They are the issues of the day, creatures of prejudice and partisanship. Hence in the history of the life of a public man, many paragraphs will be found which merely recount the battles fought and victories won in the ordinary contests of the arena.

In the most marked contrast with this, however, is another class of questions which rise to the level of perpetual interest, affecting not only the destinies of the hour, but pregnant with the fate of the future. Not questions of the day are these, passing like a shadow over the landscape of current events; but shining rather like those orbs from whose disks the effulgence is shed which makes shadows possible. Albeit, there are themes of statesmanship vitally affecting the life of the nation; and only he, who in the heated arena of public life shows himself able to grapple with such problems, is worthy of the name of statesman.

Was James A. Garfield a statesman? In considering this question, and finding therefor a fitting answer, it is necessary clearly to understand what are the leading themes of American statesmanship. Perhaps a fair analysis of this great question will show that those topics of public discussion which rise to the dignity of questions of statesmanship will present about four leading heads:

I. Questions affecting the Nationality of the United States.

II. Questions affecting the Financial and Monetary systems of the United States.

III. Questions affecting the Revenue and Expenditures of the United States.

IV. Questions concerning the General Character and Tendency of American Institutions.

If it be shown that James A. Garfield proved himself able to grasp and discuss any or all of the great questions falling under this comprehensive classification, in such a manner as to throw new light upon them, to fix the status of public opinion regarding them, and to that extent to build more securely than hitherto the substructure of American greatness, then indeed is he worthy of the name of statesman. Let us then, without fear or partiality, apply the crucial test to Garfield’s public life, and see whether indeed he is the peer and fit companion for the great names of our history—for Hamilton, and Adams, and Webster, and Sumner, and Chase.

Before beginning this discussion, however, it will be necessary to remind the reader, that in considering the claims of Garfield to the rank of statesman under the outline presented above, the chronological order of the narrative will be broken up, and such a grouping made of his public speeches and papers as will best illustrate his views and establish his rank among the great men of our country.

First, then, as to questions affecting the Nationality of the United States. What is the record of him whose life is here recounted concerning those great and vital themes upon which rests our perpetuity as a nation? Three utterances, his earliest, his latest, and his most characteristic, must be taken as representatives of the entire class.

On February 1, 1866, being thirty-five years of age, he presented his views on the general question of the restoration of the States lately in rebellion: