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

“Vilified and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands, but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny’s ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once; its force is spent: and the name of Grant will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish that name have moldered in forgotten graves, and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished utterly.

“Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee’s surrender foreshadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his aversion to war, and his love of peace by an arbitration of international disputes, which stands the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the world’s diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both Houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone, overthrew expansion, and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, to him immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is as good as gold.

“With him as our leader we shall have no defensive campaign. No! We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet.

“Life, liberty, and property will find a safeguard in him. When he said of the colored men in Florida, ‘Wherever I am they may come also;’ when he so said, he meant that had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Denis Kearney in California, he meant that Communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole city, would find a foe in him. He meant that popular or unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may.

“His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequaled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one which would dumbfounder Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen what stultification does not such a fallacy involve. The American people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? Why? Because he was the arch-traitor and would-be destroyer; and now the same people is asked to ostracise Grant, and not to trust him. Why? Why, I repeat? Because he was the arch-preserver of his country, and because not only in war, but twice as Civil Magistrate, he gave his highest, noblest efforts to the Republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy’s masquerade? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; no department of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, what man do you reject because, by his works, you have known him, and found him faithful and fit? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent? Who dares—who dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American people? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate his term? He has no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without patronage and without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house to this Convention, or running from his house anywhere else, this man is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt unless this Convention did as they said. He is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the candidates of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and they mean to uphold that faith against not only the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps, and guerrillas—the men who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and then on the other. This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. It can break that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose very existence is a standing protest against progress.

“The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very hope of existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to order and progress. I say this Convention can overthrow that power. It can dissolve and emancipate a solid South. It can speed the Nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements. Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.”

After Mr. Bradley, of Kentucky, had seconded Grant’s nomination, the call proceeded, and Ohio being reached, General Garfield arose. Amid great applause he advanced to Mr. Conkling’s late high station on a table, and, as soon as order was restored, said:

“Mr. President: I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep solicitude. No emotion touches my heart more quickly than a sentiment in honor of a great and noble character. But as I sat on these seats and witnessed these demonstrations, it seemed to me you were a human ocean in a tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunshine bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of the people.

“When our enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find the calm level of public opinion, below the storm, from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where 15,000 men and women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed; not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of 756 delegates waiting to cast their votes into the urn and determine the choice of their party; but by 5,000,000 Republican firesides, where the thoughtful fathers, with wives and children about them, with calm thoughts inspired by love of home and love of country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and the knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by,—there God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but in the sober quiet that comes between now and November, in the silence of deliberate judgment, will this great question be settled. Let us aid them to-night.

“But now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want? Bear with me a moment. Hear me for this cause, and for a moment, be silent that you may hear. Twenty-five years ago this Republic was wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with the traffic in the body and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people. The baleful doctrine of State sovereignty had shocked and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the National Government, and the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin Territories of the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from the fire of liberty which God has lighted in every man’s heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and save the Republic. It entered the arena when beleaguered and assailed Territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free forever.