PRESIDENT GARFIELD AND THE NEGRO.
The mind of President Garfield was too broad and generous, his nature too honest and sincere, for him not to take at once and forever the part of the wronged, however humble, as against the wrong-doer, however powerful. He knew too well the value of education to one who was compelled to struggle up from the depths of poverty for place and power not to emphasize the duty of putting the opportunity and facilities for education within reach of all the ignorant.
He first knew of the Congressional Record when he saw it in the hands of an opponent in a discussion of the slavery question. He began his political life in the days when the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott decision, had asserted that slavery was the genius of our Constitution, and liberty the child only of local and state regulations. With clearest vision he saw when the war began that the real issue was the death or the supremacy of slavery, and threw his whole soul into that conflict. He was selected by the constituents of Giddings, as the one most worthy to succeed that veteran opponent of slavery in Congress.
After his nomination to the Presidency, in his first regular speech, made in response to a serenade in New York City by the Boys in Blue, he said, speaking of the Freedmen: “We will stand by them until the sun of liberty, fixed in the firmament of the Constitution, shall shine with equal ray upon every man, white or black, throughout the Union. Fellow-citizens, fellow-soldiers, in this there is all the beneficence of eternal justice, and by this we will stand forever.” A noble sentiment, which must become a fact established beyond the possibility of successful assault before the nation can enter upon the path of peace or safety.
In reply to an address by a delegation of colored men who visited him in Mentor, just before he left home to assume the duties of his high office, he said, in effect, that it was not within the power of the President by appointments and official recognitions to raise the colored people to the level of social recognition and honor. The path to this leads through education and thrift. The negro, like every one else, must be the architect of his own fortunes, and compel by worth the respect he seeks. But turning from the negro who would have appointment to the nation which he held responsible for his condition—to the nation endangered by that condition—he said in his inaugural address, which his successor, nor Congress, nor the people should neither forget nor fail to heed: “The census has already sounded the alarm in the appalling figures which mark how dangerously high the tide of illiteracy has risen among our voters and their children. To the South this question is one of supreme importance. But the responsibility for the existence of slavery did not rest upon the South alone. The nation itself is responsible for the extension of the suffrage, and is under special obligation to aid in removing the illiteracy which it has added to the voting population. For the North and South alike there is but one remedy. All the constitutional power of the nation and of the states, and all the volunteer forces of the people, should be summoned to meet this danger by the saving influence of universal education. It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them by intelligence and virtue for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work sections and races should be forgotten, and partisanship should be unknown.”
He also at the same time gave due recognition to the efforts made by the Freedmen: “The emancipated race have already made remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear, they have ‘followed the light as God has given them to see light.’ They are rapidly laying the material foundations of self-support, widening the circle of intelligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that gather around the homes of the industrious poor. They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men. So far as my authority can lawfully extend, they shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the Constitution and laws.”
He said to the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, who at his invitation visited him at Mentor, on the 30th of September, 1880: “Now, friends, the earthly saviour of your people must be universal education, and I believe your voices are preparing the way for the coming of that blessing. You have sung a great University into being. I hope your voices are heralding the great liberation which education will bring to your lately enslaved brethren. You are fighting for light and for the freedom it brings, and in that contest I would rather be defeated with you than to be victorious against you. In the language of the song you have just sung, I say to you, ‘March on, and you shall win the victory—you shall gain the day.’”
His indignation because of the injustice done this people flashed out just before his assassination, when learning that this band of singers had been refused admission to the hotels in Springfield, Ill., he caused a telegram to be sent to them saying, that if they received similar treatment when they came to Washington, he would be glad to receive them as his own guests at the White House.
It would be unjust to the memory of this great and good man to leave at least this much unsaid of his interest in the race whose wrongs appealed so strongly to his sympathies, and whose fate he saw to be so intimately and indissolubly linked with that of the nation; and whatever in his life and character may be celebrated and memorialized, justice will not have been done him until suitable commemoration is made of this interest.