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

“Mr. Chairman, the dogma of State Sovereignty, which has re-awakened to such vigorous life in this chamber, has borne such bitter fruits and entailed such suffering upon our people that it deserves more particular notice. It should be noticed that the word ‘sovereignty’ can not be fitly applied to any government in this country. It is not found in our constitution. It is a feudal word, born of the despotism of the Middle Ages, and was unknown even in imperial Rome. A ‘sovereign’ is a person, a prince, who has subjects that owe him allegiance. There is no one paramount sovereign in the United States. There is no person here who holds any title or authority whatever, except the official authority given him by law. Americans are not subjects, but citizens. Our only sovereign is the whole people. To talk about the ‘inherent sovereignty’ of a corporation—an artificial person—is to talk nonsense; and we ought to reform our habit of speech on that subject.

“But what do gentlemen mean when they tell us that a State is sovereign? What does sovereignty mean in its accepted use, but a political corporation having no superior? Is a State of this Union such a corporation? Let us test it by a few examples drawn from the Constitution. No State of this Union can make war or conclude a peace. Without the consent of Congress it can not raise or support an army or a navy. It can not make a treaty with a foreign power, nor enter into any agreement or compact with another State. It can not levy imposts or duties on imports nor exports. It can not coin money. It can not regulate commerce. It can not authorize a single ship to go into commission anywhere on the high seas; if it should, that ship would be seized as a pirate or confiscated by the laws of the United States. A State can not emit bills of credit. It can enact no law which makes any thing but gold and silver a legal tender. It has no flag except the flag of the Union. And there are many other subjects on which the States are forbidden by the Constitution to legislative.

“How much inherent sovereignty is left in a corporation which is thus shorn of all these great attributes of sovereignty?

“But this is not all. The Supreme Court of the United States may declare null and void any law or any clause of the constitution of a State which happens to be in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States. Again, the States appear as plaintiffs and defendants before the Supreme Court of the United States. They may sue each other; and, until the Eleventh Amendment was adopted, a citizen might sue a State. These ‘sovereigns’ may all be summoned before their common superior to be judged. And yet they are endowed with supreme inherent sovereignty!

“Again, the government of a State may be absolutely abolished by Congress, in case it is not republican in form. And, finally, to cap the climax of this absurd pretension, every right possessed by one of these ‘sovereign’ States, every inherent sovereign right, except the single right to equal representation in the Senate, may be taken away, without its consent, by the vote of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the States. But, in spite of all these disabilities, we hear them paraded as independent, sovereign States, the creators of the Union and the dictators of its powers. How inherently ‘sovereign’ must be that State west of the Mississippi which the Nation bought and paid for with the public money, and permitted to come into the Union a half century after the Constitution was adopted! And yet we are told that the States are inherently sovereign and created the National Government.

“The dogma of State Sovereignty in alliance with chattel slavery made its appeal to that court of last resort where the laws are silent, and where kings and nations appear in arms for judgment. In that awful court of war two questions were tried: Shall slavery live? And is a State so sovereign that it may nullify the laws and destroy the Union? These two questions were tried on the thousand battle-fields of the war; and if war ever ‘legislates,’ as a leading Democrat of Ohio once wisely affirmed, then our war legislated finally upon those subjects, and determined, beyond all controversy, that slavery should never again live in this Republic, and that there is not sovereignty enough in any State to authorize its people either to destroy the Union or nullify its laws.”

Ten years ago a biographer who loved Garfield and cared for his fame would have omitted the speech from which we are about to give extracts. It is, however, no secret that, in 1871, General Garfield split with his party upon what was known in contemporary politics as “The Force Bill.” This bill was drawn, under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, to protect the Republicans of the Southern States from outrage and murder. The President had laid before Congress a most terrible state of affairs. The Ku-Klux Klan, that bloody and mysterious organization, which was the terror of loyal men, and the guilty perpetrator of unnumbered crimes, thrust its hideous head into the face of the men who had fought for the Union. Murder, ostracism, incendiarism, bull-dozing, intimidation, ballot-box stuffing, and a thousand other outrages were committed. The best picture of the time is in “The Fool’s Errand.” These things, perhaps, (we do not say so) magnified by fear, hate, and political rancor, were too much for the Republican Congress and the men who had worn the blue under Southern skies. There was terrible bitterness. Revenge darkened the Northern heart. The majority in Congress resolved to clutch the demon’s throat with the iron grip of law. In a former chapter we spoke of the battle as an experience, and how it perpetually reproduced itself in the mind of its participants. The illustration of that is found in the attitude of President Grant and the soldier majority in Congress at the time of which we are writing. The “Force Bill” was really a tremendous battery. It was surrounded with sulphurous smoke, and was as grim as death.

But to the rule General Garfield was an exception. At the close of the war, he said, we passed into another political epoch. He believed in the Nation, but the calm balance of his mind refused assent to any extreme measure. There was no wavering on the supremacy of the Nation. But after all this was a Republic, and despotism, the one extreme, was as fatal as disunion, the other. General Garfield opposed the extreme parts of the “Force Bill.” He looked to the future of our country as well as the past. We summarize his elaborate speech:

THE FORCE BILL.

“Mr. Speaker: I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose ignorance is bliss, or a man of transcendant genius whom no difficulties can daunt and whose clear vision no cloud obscures.