He was as ready to work as he was to study or defend himself. He often got employment in the haying and harvesting season from the farmers of Orange. When he was sixteen he walked ten miles to Aurora, in company with a boy older than himself, looking for work. They offered their services to a farmer who had a good deal of hay to cut. “What wages do you expect?” asked the man. “Man’s wages—a dollar a day,” replied young Garfield. The farmer thought they were not old enough to earn full wages. “Then let us mow that field by the acre,” said the young man. The farmer agreed; the customary price per acre was 50 cents. By four o’clock in the afternoon the hay was down and the boys earned a dollar apiece. Then the farmer engaged them for a fortnight. James’s first wages were earned from a merchant who had an ashery where he leached ashes and made black salts, which were shipped by lake and canal to New York. He got $9 a month and his board, and stuck to the business for two months, at the end of which his hair below his cap was bleached and colored by the fumes until it assumed a lively red hue. About that time he took a job of cutting 100 cords of oak wood at 50 cents a cord, and put up his two cords a day without any trouble.
Like most active and restless boys he wanted to become a sailor, and went to Cleveland to ship on a lake schooner. The first captain to whom he applied greeted him with such a torrent of profanity that he turned about to go home, but afterwards accepted an offer from his cousin, Amos Setcher, to drive horses on the canal boat tow path for “$10 a month and found,” a dazzling offer in those days. A few months of association with the rough canal boatmen dispelled much of the romance with which his fancy had invested an aquatic life, and after falling into the canal no less than 14 times, the last time barely escaping with his life, he made up his mind that Providence might have something better in store for him than driving a canal boat. His brief canal experience was followed by a long fit of sickness, and after his recovery he took his savings, and with some assistance from his brother Thomas, began his education in earnest.
Accompanied by a cousin and another young man from the neighborhood, and supplied by his mother with a few pots, frying pans and dinner plates, he set out for Chester, where the academy was located. The three young men rented a room in an old, unpainted building near the academy, and, with their cooking utensils, a few dilapidated chairs, loaned by a kindly neighbor, and some straw ticks, which they spread upon the floor to sleep on, they set up housekeeping—for they were too poor to pay board as well as tuition. Garfield paid his own way by taking odd jobs from carpenters Saturdays and evenings. During the summer he made enough by chopping wood to pay his board for the next academy term, the price for his board, washing, and lodging being $1.06 a week.
He now thought himself competent to teach a country school, but in two days’ tramping through Cuyahoga county failed to find employment. Some schools had already engaged teachers, and where there was still a vacancy the trustees thought him too young. He returned home completely discouraged and greatly humiliated by the rebuffs he had met with. He made a resolution that he would never again ask for a position of any sort, and the resolution was kept, for every public place he has since had has come to him unsought.
Next morning, while still in the depths of despondency, he heard a man call to his mother from the road, “Widow Gaffield” (a local corruption of the name Garfield), “where’s your boy Jim? I wonder if he wouldn’t like to teach our school at the Ledge.” James went out and found a neighbor from a district a mile away, where the school had been broken up for two winters by the rowdyism of the big boys. He said he would like to try the school, but before deciding must consult his uncle, Amos Boynton. That evening there was a family council. Uncle Amos pondered over the matter, and finally said, “You go and try it. You will go into that school as the boy, ‘Jim Gaffield,’ see that you come out as Mr. Garfield, the school-master.” The young man mastered the school, after a hard tussle in the school-room with the bully of the district, who resented a flogging and tried to brain the teacher with a billet of wood. His wages were $12 a month and board, and he “boarded around” in the families of the pupils.
In the fall of this term he first met Lucretia Rudolph, whom the whole world now honors as Mrs. Garfield. English grammar, natural philosophy, arithmetic and algebra were his principal studies, and he soon had sufficient knowledge of them to teach in a district school. For three years he continued his work at the academy, at the school, and in the carpenters’ shops in autumn and winter, and in the woods in the summer, thus managing not only to pay his expenses at the academy, but to save something toward the expenses of his college education. It was while he was teaching during his academy life that he became personally interested in religion and joined the Christian Disciples, or Campbellites as they are often called from their founder. Of this denomination he was ever after a consistent and active member. In the fall of 1851 he went to Hiram and asked of the trustees of the institution there the privilege of making the fires and sweeping to pay a portion of his expenses. He soon became a teacher, and in 1854, was ready to enter college in advance and had $350 saved toward meeting his expenses. His decided anti-slavery opinions led him to seek admission to some New England college, and a friendly reply from President Mark Hopkins, of Williams College, to a letter of inquiry, secured for Williams her most illustrious alumnus. He graduated at Williams in 1856, returned to Hiram as professor of Greek and Latin, and two years later was married and elected president of Hiram College.
Up to 1856 Mr. Garfield had taken but little interest in public affairs, but with the Kansas-Nebraska legislation his political pulses began to stir. He then became an active Republican, and entered into politics with the same ardor that characterized his efforts as an educator. His first political speech was made at Williamstown in 1856, just before he left college, in behalf of Fremont, the first Republican candidate for the Presidency. His first vote was cast at the Presidential election that fall. In 1859 he was elected by a large majority to the Senate of Ohio from the counties of Portage and Summit, and though yet scarcely 28, at once took high rank as a man unusually well informed on the subjects of legislation, and effective and powerful in debate. His most intimate friend in the Senate, Jacob D. Cox, afterward became a Major-General, Governor of the State, and Secretary of the Interior. Garfield pushed his law studies forward, and early in the winter of 1860 was admitted to the bar of the supreme court. He was serving in the State Senate when the war broke out, and when the President’s call for 75,000 men was read in the chamber, amidst the tumultuous acclamations of the assemblage, he moved that 20,000 troops and $3,000,000 at once be voted as the quota of the State. When the time came for appointing the officers for the Ohio troops, Gov. Dennison offered him command of the Forty-Second Infantry, but he modestly declined, on account of his lack of military experience, and, resigning the Presidency of Hiram College, he accepted a position as Lieutenant-Colonel. A few weeks later, when the Forty-Second was organized, he yielded to the universal desire of its officers, and accepted the Colonelcy. His first military duty was the conduct of an expedition against Humphrey Marshall, in Eastern Kentucky, by which he won a Brigadier-Generalship. He was at Shiloh, at Corinth, and at Chickamauga, where he wrote every order but one, and for his gallant bravery at Chickamauga he was made a Major-General. While he was in camp, after the battle of Shiloh, a fugitive slave took refuge with the Union soldiers. A few moments later the owner rode up and demanded his property. Gen. Garfield was not present, and the slaveholder passed on to the division commander, who ordered Garfield, by written order, to deliver the fugitive. Garfield answered by simply endorsing on the order: “I respectfully but positively decline to allow my command to search for or deliver up any fugitive slaves. I conceive that they are here for quite another purpose.” This position was sustained by a general order subsequently issued by the war department.
In 1862 Ohio Republicans of the 19th Ohio District elected Gen. Garfield to succeed Joshua R. Giddings in the House of Representatives. At President Lincoln’s suggestion he reluctantly resigned his commission in December, 1863, to enter Congress, where he was the youngest member. From that time until 1880 he represented his district in the House, and came to be the Republican leader of that body and the party candidate for Speaker. It is impossible to detail here his congressional services, but he did most faithful and valuable work as chairman of the important committees on military affairs, banking and currency, and appropriations. In the winter of 1880 he was elected U. S. Senator to succeed Allen G. Thurman, receiving the vote of every Republican member of the Ohio Legislature in the nominating caucus, an honor never before accorded to any politician in the Buckeye State. Gen. Garfield went to the Chicago convention as the leader of the Ohio delegation, and when the nominations were made he presented the name of John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury, in a most eloquent speech.
When the balloting began, a single delegate from Pennsylvania voted for Garfield. No attention was paid to this vote, which was thought to be a mere eccentricity on the part of the man who cast it. Later on a second Pennsylvania delegate joined the solitary Garfield man. So the balloting continued, the fight being between Grant, Blaine, and Sherman, with Washburne, Edmunds, and Windom in the field.
Some unsuccessful efforts were made on the second day’s voting to rally on Edmunds and Washburne. Finally, on the thirty-fourth ballot, the Wisconsin men determined to make an effort in an entirely new direction to break the deadlock. They threw their seventeen votes for Garfield.