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

Much as the War Department at Washington thought of Rosecrans at this time, his violent temper and invincible obstinacy rendered it imperative that some one should be with him who would prevent an absolute rupture upon trifling grounds. But in addition to these things, the chief of staff had to be a man of faultless generosity and unselfishness; he had to be a man who would exert his own genius for another’s glory; he had to be willing to see the plans of brilliant campaigns, which were the product of his own mind, taken up and used by another; he had to be willing to see reports of victories, which were the results of his own military skill, sent to Washington over the name of the commanding general, in which his own name was never mentioned. He was to do the work and get no glory for it. All this he had to do cheerfully, and with a heart loyal to his superior. There must be no division of counsel, no lukewarm support, no heart-burnings at head-quarters. To the army and the world there was but one man—the general. In reality there were two men—the general and his chief of staff.

A prime minister sometimes succeeds in erecting for himself a fame separate, and not merged in the splendor of his sovereign. Wolsey and Richelieu and Talleyrand all did so. But the chief of staff was to know no fame, no name for himself. His light was merged and lost in the corruscations of the man above him. To find a man who united the highest military ability with a genial nature, and who was willing to go utterly without glory himself, was a difficult task. In a moment Stanton fixed his eye on Garfield. Without warning, the commission to South Carolina was revoked. Garfield was ordered to report at once to General Rosecrans, whose head-quarters were at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as a result of the victory at Stone River.

Rosecrans has said that he was prejudiced against Garfield before his arrival. He had heard that he was a Campbellite preacher, and fond of theological debate, and a school teacher. These three things were enough to spoil any man for Rosecrans. So he gave Garfield a cool enough reception on the January morning when the latter presented himself at head-quarters. Rosecrans, of course, had the option of taking the man whom the Department had sent him, to be his confidential adviser or not. Garfield’s appearance, to be sure, was not that of the pious fraud, or the religious wrangler, or the precise pedagogue. In the book, Down in Tennessee, we find the following superb description of his appearance at this time, by one who saw him:

“In a corner by the window, seated at a small pine desk—a sort of packing-box, perched on a long-legged stool, and divided into pigeonholes, with a turn-down lid—was a tall, deep-chested, sinewy-built man, with regular, massive features, a full, clear blue eye, slightly tinged with gray, and a high, broad forehead, rising into a ridge over the eyes, as if it had been thrown up by a plow. There was something singularly engaging in his open, expressive face, and his whole appearance indicated, as the phrase goes, ‘great reserve power.’ His uniform, though cleanly brushed and sitting easily upon him, had a sort of democratic air, and every thing about him seemed to denote that he was ‘a man of the people,’ A rusty slouched hat, large enough to have fitted Daniel Webster, lay on the desk before him; but a glance at that was not needed to convince me that his head held more than the common share of brains. Though he is yet young—not thirty-three—the reader has heard of him, and if he lives he will make his name long remembered in our history.”

After some conversation, Rosecrans concluded to go a little slow before he rejected his services. He kept Garfield around head-quarters for a day or two, quizzing him occasionally, and trying to make up his estimate of the man. This sort of dancing attendance for a position he did not want, would have galled a man of less ability and cheaper pride than Garfield; but he had the patience of a planet. “Rosey,” as his soldiers called him, soon found himself liking this great whole-souled Ohioan, and, what was still more significant, he began to reverence the genius of the man. He was unable to sink a plumb-line to the bottom of Garfield’s mind. After each conversation, the depths of reserve power seemed deeper than before. Rosecrans decided within himself to take him, if possible. Only one thing stood in the way. If Garfield preferred to go to the field, as he had himself prophesied from his name (Guard-of-the-field) just before leaving college in 1856, Rosecrans was not the man to chain him up at head-quarters. The choice was open to Garfield to take a division or accept the position of chief of staff. The latter had fifty times the responsibility, and no opportunity whatever for fame. But without a moment’s struggle, Garfield quietly said: “If you want my services as chief of staff, you can have them.”

The opinion in the army of the selection of General Garfield to succeed the lamented Garesché, may be gathered from a volume called: “Annals of the Army of the Cumberland,” published shortly after Garfield’s appointment, and written by an officer in the army. “With the selection of General Garfield, universal satisfaction is everywhere expressed. Possessed of sound natural sense, an excellent judgment, a highly cultivated intellect, and the deserved reputation of a successful military leader, he is not only the Mentor of the staff, but his opinions are sought and his counsels heeded by many who are older, and not less distinguished than himself.”

An incident which occurred soon after his appointment, illustrates well the aspect of his many-sided character, as presented to the common soldier. Civilians have little idea of the gulf which military discipline and etiquette places between the regular army officer and the private soldier. Never was a Russian czar more of a despot and autocrat than a West Point graduate. It seems to be an unavoidable outgrowth of the profession of arms and military discipline that the officer should be a sultan and the private a slave. One night, at Rosecrans’s head-quarters in Murfreesboro, the officers’ council lasted till the small hours of the morning. The outer hall, into which the room used by the council opened, was occupied by a dozen orderly sergeants, who were required to be there, ready for instant service all the time. As the hours advanced, and there was no indication of an adjournment within, this outer council got sleepy, and selecting one of its number to keep watch, rolled itself up in various ragged army blankets and tumbled on the floor. It was not long till the air trembled with heavy blasts from the leaden trumpet of sleep. The unlucky fellow, who was left to guard, was envious enough of his sleeping comrades. Tilting his seat back against the wall, he sank into deep meditation upon the pleasures of sleep. A few minutes later, sundry sudden jerks of his head, from side to side, told that he, too, had found surcease from sorrow in sonorous slumber. Just at this unlucky moment the door opened, and General Garfield stepped out into the dimly-lighted passage, on his way to his quarters. The sleeper’s legs were stretched out far in front of him with lofty negligence; his arms hung by his side; his head, from which the cap was gone, hung down in an alarming manner, as if he were making a profound and attentive investigation of his boots. At this unlucky moment, Garfield stumbled over the sergeant, and fell with his full weight upon the frightened orderly. Military discipline required that Garfield should fire a volley of oaths at the poor fellow, supplemented by a heavy cannonade of kicks in the enemy’s rear, and the cutting down of his supplies to bread and water for a week. Orderlies at head-quarters knew this to be the plan of battle. General Garfield rose to his feet as quickly as possible, gave the unfortunate and trembling sergeant his assistance to rise, and after a kindly “excuse me, Sergeant, I did not see you. I’m afraid you did not find me very light,” passed on his way. It is easy to see why the common soldiers loved a chief of staff in whom the gentleman was stronger than the officer.

During the tedious delay at Murfreesboro, the officers and men exercised their ingenuity in inventing games to pass away the time. Phil. Sheridan, out at his quarters in the forest surrounding the town, had invented a game which he called Dutch ten-pins. Out in front of his cabin, from the limb of a lofty tree, was suspended a rope. At the end was attached a cannon-ball, small enough to be easily grasped by the hand. Underneath the rope were set the ten-pins, with sufficient spaces between them for the ball to pass without hitting. At first the fun-loving little General only tried to throw the ball between the pins without knocking any. But as his skill increased, he enlarged the opportunity for it by making the game to consist not only in avoiding the pins on the throw, but in making the ball hit them on the return. Sheridan became very fond of the exercise, and in the three throws allowed each player for a game, he could bring down twenty pins out of the thirty possible. The reputation of the novel game and Sheridan’s skill reached the commanding General’s head-quarters. One day Rosecrans, Garfield, and a few brother officers, rode out to see “little Phil,” as Sheridan was called, and take a hand in the game which had made for itself such a name. The guests were cordially received, and after a good many jokes and much bantering, Sheridan began the game. At the first throw the returning ball brought down six pins; at the second, seven; and the third the same number, making a score of twenty. Several tried with more or less success, but not approaching the host’s score. When Rosecrans took the ball, the merry company laughed at his nervous way of handling it. After a lengthy aim, he threw and knocked down every pin by the throw. Again he tried it, and again the ball failed even to get through the wooden line. Sheridan nearly exploded with laughter. A third time he met with the same ill-luck, failing to make a single tally. Then General Garfield stepped forward, saying: “It’s nothing but mathematics. All you need is an eye and a hand.” So saying, he carelessly threw the ball, safely clearing the pins on the forward swing, and bringing down seven on the return. Every body shouted “Luck! luck! Try that again.” The chief of staff laughed heartily, and with still greater indifference, tossed the ball, making eight; the third throw had a like result, scoring Garfield twenty-three, and giving him the game. It was no wonder that an officer said of him, “That man Garfield beats every thing. No matter what he does, he is the superior of his competitors, without half trying.”

On the 25th of April, 1863, Garfield issued a circular to the Army of the Cumberland, upon the barbarities and unspeakable outrages of the Southern prison-pens. The circular contained a verbatim statement by an escaped prisoner of his treatment by the rebels. After a few burning words, General Garfield concluded: “We can not believe that the justice of God will allow such a people to prosper. Let every soldier know that death on the battle-field is preferable to a surrender followed by such outrages as their comrades have undergone.”

Every word of the circular was true. The time may come, when the South will be forgiven for fighting for principles which it believed to be right. The time may come when the sorrows of the North and South will become alike the sorrows of each other, over the ruin wrought by human folly. The right hand of fellowship will be extended. The Southern people, as a people, may be relieved of the fearful charge of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and posterity may come to look at it as the infernal offspring of a few hell-born hearts. The day is upon us when much of this is already true. But the men who directly or indirectly caused or countenanced the starvation, the torture, the poisoned and rotten food, the abandonment to loathsome disease, the crowding of thousands of Union prisoners into stockades, opening only heavenward, and all the other unparalleled atrocities of the Southern prisons, atrocities that violated every rule of warfare; atrocities, to find the equals of which the history of barbarous and savage nations, without the light of religion, or the smile of civilization, will be ransacked in vain, shall be handed down to an eternity of infamy. They shall take rank with the Caligulas, the Neros, the inquisitors, all the historic monsters in human form, whose names and natures are the common dishonor and disgrace of mankind.