“Just at this time (have you observed the fact?) we have no man who has power to ride upon the storm and direct it. The hour has come, but not the man. The crisis will make many such. But I do not love to speculate on so painful a theme. I am chosen to respond to a toast on the Union at the State Printers’ Festival here next Thursday evening. It is a sad and difficult theme at this time.”
This letter is the key to Garfield’s record in the Ohio Senate. On the 24th of January he championed a bill to raise and equip 6,000 State militia. The timid, conservative and politically blind members of the legislature he worked with both day and night, both on and off the floor of the Senate, to prepare them for the crisis which his genius foresaw. But as his prophetic vision leaped from peak to peak of the mountain difficulties of the future, he saw not only armies in front, but traitors in the rear. He drew up and put through to its passage a bill defining treason—“providing that when Ohio’s soldiers go forth to maintain the Union, there shall be no treacherous fire in the rear.”
In the hour of darkness his trumpet gave no uncertain sound. He was for coercion, without delay or doubt.
He was the leader of what was known as the “Radical Triumvirate,” composed of J. D. Cox, James Monroe, and himself—the three men who, by their exhaustless efforts, wheeled Ohio into line for the war. The Ohio legislature was as blind as a bat. Two days after Sumter had been fired on, the Ohio Senate, over the desperate protests of the man who had for months foreseen the war, passed the Corwin Constitutional Amendment, providing that Congress should have no power ever to legislate on the question of slavery! Notwithstanding this blindness, through the indomitable zeal of Garfield and his colleagues, Ohio was the first State in the North to reach a war footing. When Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men reached the legislature, Senator Garfield was on his feet instantly, moving, amid tumultuous cheers, that 20,000 men and $3,000,000 be voted as Ohio’s quota. In this ordeal, the militia formerly organized proved a valuable help.
The inner history of this time will probably never be fully written. Almost every Northern legislative hall, particularly in border States, was the scene of a coup d’état. Without law or precedent, a few determined men broke down the obstacles with which treason hedged the path of patriotism. As we have said, the inner history of those high and gallant services, of the midnight counsels, the forced loans, the unauthorized proclamations, will never be written. All that will be known to history will be that, when the storm of treason broke, every Northern State wheeled into line of battle; and it is enough.
Of Garfield it is known that he became at once Governor Dennison’s valued adviser and aid. The story of one of his services to the Union has leaked out. After the attack on Sumter, the State capital was thronged with men ready to go to war, but there were no guns. Soldiers without guns were a mockery. In this extremity it was found out that at the Illinois arsenal was a large quantity of muskets. Instantly, Garfield started to Illinois with a requisition. By swift diplomacy he secured and shipped to Columbus five thousand stand of arms, a prize valued at the time more than so many recruits. But while the interior history of the times will never be fully known, the exterior scenes are still fresh in memory. The opening of the muster-rolls, the incessant music of martial bands, the waving of banners, the shouts of the drill-sergeant, the departure of crowded trains carrying the brave and true to awful fields of blood and glory,—all this we know and remember. The Civil War was upon us, and James A. Garfield, in the morning of his power, was to become a soldier of the Union.
CHAPTER IV.
A SOLDIER OF THE UNION.
And there was mounting in hot haste—the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car