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

“It has sought in all the corners of the Republic to find some hiding-place in which to shelter itself from the death it so richly deserves.

“It sought an asylum in the untrodden territories of the west, but, with a whip of scorpions, indignant freemen drove it thence. I do not believe that a loyal man can now be found who would consent that it should again enter them. It has no hope of harbor there. It found no protection or favor in the hearts or consciences of the freemen of the Republic, and has fled for its last hope of safety behind the shield of the Constitution. We propose to follow it there, and drive it thence, as Satan was exiled from heaven. But now, in the hour of its mortal agony, in this hall, it has found a defender.

“My gallant colleague [Mr. Pendleton], for I recognize him as a gallant and able man, plants himself at the door of his darling, and bids defiance to all assailants. He has followed slavery in its flight, until at last it has reached the great temple where liberty is enshrined—the Constitution of the United States—and there, in that last retreat, declares that no hand shall strike it. It reminds me of that celebrated passage in the great Latin poet, in which the serpents of the Ionian sea, when they had destroyed Laocoon and his sons, fled to the heights of the Trojan citadel and coiled their slimy lengths around the feet of the tutelar goddess, and were covered by the orb of her shield. So, under the guidance of my colleague [Mr. Pendleton], slavery, gorged with the blood of ten thousand freemen, has climbed to the high citadel of American nationality, and coiled itself securely, as he believes, around the feet of the statue of Justice and under the shield of the Constitution of the United States. We desire to follow it even there, and kill it beside the very altar of liberty. Its blood can never make atonement for the least of its crimes.

“But the gentleman has gone further. He is not content that the snaky sorceress shall be merely under the protection of the Constitution. In his view, by a strange metamorphosis, slavery becomes an invisible essence, and takes up its abode in the very grain and fiber of the Constitution, and when we would strike it he says, ‘I can not point out any express clause that prohibits you from destroying slavery; but I find a prohibition in the intent and meaning of the Constitution. I go under the surface, out of sight, into the very genius of it, and in that invisible domain slavery is enshrined, and there is no power in the Republic to drive it thence.’

“But he has gone even deeper than the spirit and intent of the Constitution. He has announced a discovery, to which I am sure no other statesman will lay claim. He has found a domain where slavery can no more be reached by human law than the life of Satan by the sword of Michael. He has marked the hither boundary of this newly discovered continent, in his response to the question of the gentleman from Iowa.

“Not finding any thing in the words and phrases of the Constitution that forbids an amendment abolishing slavery, he goes behind all human enactments, and far away among the eternal equities, he finds a primal law which overshadows States, nations, and constitutions, as space envelops the universe, and by its solemn sanctions one human being can hold another in perpetual slavery. Surely, human ingenuity has never gone farther to protect a malefactor, or defend a crime. I shall make no argument with my colleague on this point, for in that high court to which he appeals, eternal justice dwells with freedom, and slavery has never entered.

“On the justice of the amendment itself no arguments are necessary. The reasons crowd in on every side. To enumerate them would be a work of superfluity. To me it is a matter of great surprise that gentlemen on the other side should wish to delay the death of slavery. I can only account for it on the ground of long continued familiarity and friendship. I should be glad to hear them say of slavery, their beloved, as did the jealous Moor:

“Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.”

“Has she not betrayed and slain men enough? Are they not strewn over a thousand battle-fields? Is not this Moloch already gorged with the bloody feast? Its best friends know that its final hour is fast approaching. The avenging gods are on its track. Their feet are not now, as of old, shod with wool, for slow and stately stepping, but winged, like Mercury’s, to bear the swift message of vengeance. No human power can avert the final catastrophe.”

Five days after this address, Mr. Garfield, together with Henry Winter Davis, made a lively attack on the War Department. At this time the writ of habeas corpus was suspended, and the art of imprisoning men without warrant or accusation was reaching a high state of perfection. The Carroll and Old Capital prisons were full of victims who could not find out why they were thus arbitrarily confined.