The Story of Garfield / Farm-boy, Soldier, and President

by William G. Rutherford

Called to Washington—Elected to the Congress—His Plan for increasing the Army—The Slaves' Friend—Abraham Lincoln shot—Stilling the Tumult.

After the battle of Chickamauga, General Garfield retired from the army. His help was greatly needed in a sphere where the same courage would find scope, but where other gifts besides decision and dash were required.

He had been a State Senator for Ohio for several years. Now he was to become a Member of Congress, the national Parliament of the United States.

He was elected a representative of Congress in 1862, but did not immediately take his seat. So far, his place seemed with the army; but when, in 1863, immediately after the battle of Chickamauga, he went with despatches to Washington, President Lincoln expressed a strong desire that he should remain, and help to guide the affairs of the war in the national Parliament. Such help as his was needed. Lincoln was beset by timid and divided, and in some cases interested, advisers, and the presence of a strong, fearless counsellor, as wise and experienced as Garfield, was a great accession of strength.

Here his moral courage was soon put to the test. More soldiers were urgently required, and two plans were laid before the country. One was to offer a bounty to volunteers; the other plan was to pass a law requiring every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to be enrolled.

Garfield's party favoured the former plan. Garfield himself approved the latter. He said that, in such times as these, only the most worthless men would want to be bought, the best would feel it a duty to serve their country, and his vote was given in favour of compulsory enlistment. It was a step that required courage, for it placed him in opposition to the whole of his friends and supporters. But he said, "I must vote according to conscience. My constituents may refuse to elect me again, but for fear of that, I cannot trample on my convictions." By his eloquence he was able to carry the law calling out half a million of men, and it was not long before he convinced the whole country, as he had convinced Congress, of the wisdom of his advice.

Garfield had long ago discovered that it was almost as dangerous to refuse his friends as to oppose his foes. But the straight and simple line he had marked out for himself was his sufficient guide. There was one man, he used to say, from whose company he could never escape. He must eat, walk, work, and sleep with him; and no matter whom he disappointed besides, he was bound to gain and keep the respect of that one individual, who was himself. It was a wholesome saying, and it expressed the principles which guided all his public life.

While the war lasted, no man more resolutely opposed any kind of concession to the rebels; but when it was ended, he was foremost in his attempts to soothe the passions which the war had enkindled.

From one point, however, he never flinched; that was in the treatment of the negroes. He had begun his career as their advocate, he continued it as their protector and friend. When an officer on service, he had risked his position, and even his life, by refusing to surrender a poor fugitive slave who had sought shelter in his camp, although ordered to do so by his superior officer. And when, at the close of the war, a bill was brought before Congress to limit the rights of the freed slaves, Garfield indignantly and successfully opposed it.

On the 14th of April 1865, just after being elected to the Presidency for the second time, Abraham Lincoln was shot by a rebel sympathiser, named Booth. And the same night the life of the Secretary of State, Seward, was also attempted. These crimes roused the people of the North to madness. In every city the men assembled with ominous cries for vengeance.