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

A political party has other than financial resources. It owns newspapers—manufacturers of public sentiment. It makes the men that make it. It controls offices, and places of trust and profit. It has all the powers of centralization. One man in a State is at the head of the organism. He is an autocrat, a czar, a sultan. At the crack of his finger the political head of his grand vizier falls under the headsman’s ax. The party has in its service the most plausible writers, the most eloquent orators, the most ingenious statisticians, and the most graphic artists. In its service are all the brilliant and historic names and reputations. Military glory, statesmanship, diplomacy, are alike appropriated to itself. Wealth, genius, love, and beauty, alike lay their treasures at its feet.

A party as well as the nation has its laws. Its delegates and committeemen are as certain to be elected, and those elections are required to occur at times and places as definitely settled by party rule as those for Congressmen or President.

The thing which we have been describing did not begin with the Republic. It is substantially a growth of the last fifty years. Its beginning was marked by the rise of the convention, its most public and prominent feature. Formerly, congressional and legislative caucuses nominated the candidates for office. But about 1831 a change began to come about. When the first severe cold of winter begins, every floating straw or particle of dust on the surface of a pond becomes the center of a crystallization around itself. The distances between the nearer and smaller, then the more isolated and larger, centers, are gradually bridged until the icy floor is built. So in the rise of party organism in the Republic. The local organizations, the town clubs, the township conventions for the nomination of trustee and road master, became the initial centers of a process of crystallization which was to go on until the icy floor of party organization and platforms covered the thousand little waves and ripples of individual opinions from shore to shore.

The delegate and the convention, the permanent committee and the caucus, became the methods by which the organization grew. Stronger and stronger have they grown, twining themselves like monster vines around the central trunk of the Republic. Every Presidential election has doubled the power, unity, centralization and resources of the monsters. The surplus genius and energy of the American people for organizing, being unexhausted and unsatisfied by the simple forms of the Republic, has spent itself in the political party.

With the rise of the party as an independent, self-sustaining organism, which, like the government, derives its powers from the consent of the people, two facts have become more and more prominent: first, the struggle for the delegateships to the conventions; second, the struggle to control delegates by instructions after they were elected. While these are both called struggles, the word has a widely different meaning in the two places. In the first it stands for the contest between candidates. Not only did the party become a nationalized organism for a campaign against the enemy, but the candidacies within the party for its nomination for a national office also became nationalized. But, in the second place, the word struggle stands for a contest, not between men, but between principles. In every phase of this long conflict the underlying struggle was between two opposite tendencies. The one was toward stronger and stronger party organization, greater centralization, increased powers of the caucus, the absolute tyranny of the majority, in short, the subordination of the individual to the machine, in the name of party discipline. The other tendency was toward less organization, less centralization, less binding powers for the caucus on its members, the representation of minorities, the subordination of the machine to the individual.

The struggle between these tendencies, of which the unit rule or the control of the vote of solid delegations, by instructions or by the voice of the majority of the delegation, was but a single aspect, reached its highest point so far, in the Republican National Convention which assembled in Chicago, June 2d, 1880. As will be seen, the contests of that convention must make it absolutely unique. The tremendous tide toward organization received a strong check. The events of that convention are far more significant of the political life-tendencies of the American people than the election of the following November.

All other ages and countries have distrusted the people, have concentrated power in the hands of the few, and perpetuated it by the rigid forms of despotic government. In America that tendency was defeated. But the same instincts are still present in the hearts of men. It is not impossible that in the struggles toward organization, discipline, party centralization and the machine aspect of politics, we see the same devilish forces of the past at work in a new field. It is not impossible that in party “bosses,” and the tyranny of the machine, we are really looking in the face of the ancient foe of mankind, whose sole aim was to concentrate and perpetuate power in the hands of the few.

When, after General Grant returned from his trip around the world, he consented to become a candidate for the Presidency, he had a perfect right to do so. It was the privilege of his countrymen to bring forward and support for that position the great Captain of the nineteenth century. The three men who were instrumental in bringing about his candidacy, and who managed the campaign for him, were Roscoe Conkling, of New York; Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Republican National Committee; and John A. Logan, of Illinois. The history of the canvass for the nomination of General Grant shows an ability so remarkable that his defeat must still be a matter of wonder. The New York member of the triumvirate caused a resolution to be passed in his State convention instructing the delegates to vote solidly for Grant. Cameron achieved the same thing in Pennsylvania. In Illinois, Logan, fearing or foreseeing that instructions were a feeble reliance, attempted the more heroic method of electing a solid Grant delegation by a majority of votes in the State convention. The minority, to protect itself, held meetings by congressional districts and selected contesting delegates. Over the right to instruct and the right to elect solid delegations the battle was fought. It was unquestioned that with three solid delegations from the three most populous States in the Union, and his other strong support, Grant’s nomination was overwhelmingly assured. The country, in the few days preceding the convention was wrought up to a pitch of feverish excitement.

The three principal candidates for the Presidency, whose names were openly before the convention, were: Ulysses S. Grant, of Illinois; James G. Blaine, of Maine; and John Sherman, of Ohio.

General Grant is the best known living American. His wonderful career is familiar throughout the civilized world. Rising from the trade of a tanner in an Illinois village, he became the commander of the armies of the Republic, the greatest soldier of the age, President of the United States for two terms, and the most distinguished citizen of the Union. The foundation of his fame is his military achievements. Taciturn, self-poised, alike unmoved by victory or defeat, grim, immovable, bent only on achieving the thing which lay before him, of deadly earnestness, equal to every emergency, Grant must be admitted to be a man of solitary and sublime genius. For practical resources, the age has not produced his equal.