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

“‘I should think so, certainly,’ I replied. ‘But if he can not do so then, he can in a short time, anyhow.’

“‘Wal, I will think on it. He wants to come back bad enough, and I guess I’ll have to let him. I never thought of it that way afore.’

“I knew I was safe. It was the financial question that troubled the old gentleman, and I knew that would be overcome when Henry got to teaching, and could earn his money himself. He would then be so far along, too, that he could fight his own battles. He came all right the next fall; and, after finishing at Hiram, graduated at an Eastern college.”

“The other man I spoke of was a different case. I knew that this youth was going to leave mainly for financial reasons also, but I understood his father well enough to know that the matter must be managed with exceeding delicacy. He was a man of very strong religious convictions, and I thought he might be approached from that side of his character; so when I got the letter of the son telling me, in the saddest language that he could muster, that he could not come back to school any more, but must be content to be simply a farmer, much as it was against his inclination, I revolved the matter in my mind, and decided to send an appointment to preach in the little country church where the old gentleman attended. I took for a subject the parable of the talents, and, in the course of my discourse, dwelt specially upon the fact that children were the talents which had been intrusted to parents, and, if these talents were not increased and developed, there was a fearful trust neglected. After church, I called upon the parents of the boy I was besieging, and I saw that something was weighing upon their minds. At length the subject of the discourse was taken up and gone over again, and, in due course, the young man himself was discussed, and I gave my opinion that he should, by all means, be encouraged and assisted in taking a thorough course of study. I gave my opinion that there was nothing more important to the parent than to do all in his power for the child. The next term the young man again appeared upon Hiram Hill, and remained pretty continuously till graduation.”

One relic of his famous debates at this time, on the subject of Christianity, still exists in a letter written to President Hinsdale, which we give:

“Hiram, January 10, 1859.

“The Sunday after the debate I spoke in Solon on ‘Geology and Religion,’ and had an immense audience. Many Spiritualists were out.... The reports I hear from the debate are much more decisive than I expected to hear. I received a letter from Bro. Collins, of Chagrin, in which he says: ‘Since the smoke of the battle has partially cleared away, we begin to see more clearly the victory we have gained.’ I have yet to see the first man who claims that Denton explains his position; but they are all jubilant over his attack on the Bible. What you suggest ought to be done I am about to undertake. I go there next Friday or Saturday evening, and remain over Sunday. I am bound to carry the war into Carthage, and pursue that miserable atheism to its hole.

“Bro. Collins says that a few Christians are quite unsettled because Denton said, and I admit, that the world has existed for millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that ‘the battle of the evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.’”

In the year preceding the date which this letter bears, the sweet romance of his youth reached its fruition, in the marriage of Garfield to Lucretia Rudolph. During the years which of necessity elapsed since the first-whispered vows, on the eve of his departure to Williams, the loving, girlish heart had been true. They began life, “for better for worse,” in an humble cottage fronting on the waving green of the college campus. In their happy hearts rose no picture of another cottage, fronting on the ocean, where, in the distant years, what God had joined man was to put asunder. Well for them was it that God veiled the future from them.

But the enormous activities already enumerated of this man did not satisfy his unexhausted powers. The political opinions formed at college began to bear fruit. In those memorable years just preceding the outbreak of the Rebellion—the years “when the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin territories of the West, and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage;” the years of the underground railroad and of the fugitive slave law; of the overseer and the blood-hound; the years of John Brown’s heroic attempt to incite an insurrection of the slaves themselves, such as had swept every shackle from San Domingo; of his mockery trial, paralleled only by those of Socrates and Jesus, and of his awful martyrdom,—the genius of the man, whose history this is, was not asleep. The instincts of resistance to oppression, and of sympathy for the oppressed, which he inherited from his dauntless ancestry, began to stir within him. As the times became more and more stormy, his spirit rose with the emergency, and he threw his strength into political speeches. Already looked upon as the rising man of his portion of the State, it was natural that the people should turn to him for leadership. In 1859, he was nominated and elected to the State Senate, as member from Portage and Summit counties.