Chapter VII: Leader and Statesman (1)

As a politician, General Garfield was peculiar. In fact, he was scarcely a politician at all. The title of this chapter tells what he was. While he was in Europe the inflation cry was raised. Greenbacks were good. The Government printing-presses were idle. Why not put the presses at work making more greenbacks? There were plenty of worthy, industrious men, who were poor. Why not have money enough to place every one in comfortable circumstances? What a capital idea! Why had no one thought of it before? The West, and particularly Ohio, laughed aloud with pleasure at the new fountain of wealth which had been right under the people’s noses all the time, and no one ever suspected it. In order to make things even all around, it was the thing to do to make the bondholders take greenbacks instead of gold for their bonds. If they objected, no matter; they could stand it. Ohio Republicans took up this battle cry. General Garfield’s constituents were for inflation with all their hearts. As for himself he had, in March, 1866, declared for hard money, and for the payment of the bonds in gold. Congressmen have to go to the country every two years, so that the popular sentiment may be constantly represented in the Lower House of Congress. Garfield had been reëlected three times. To secure another election, most men would have found their political opinions, about election time, gradually coming around to those of the people. Read the following extract from a letter by General Garfield to his confidential friend, Hinsdale, written March 8, 1868:

“_The State convention at Columbus has committed itself to some
financial doctrines that, if I understand them, I can not and will
not indorse. If my constituents approve them, they can not approve
me._ Before many weeks my immediate political future will be
decided. I care less about the result than I have ever cared
before.”

How is that for independence?

But the private letter was only the preface to an expression of the same thing in public. When General Garfield came home his friends found that he was immovable on the financial question. A short time before the nominating convention he was about to return to Washington. Some friends at Jefferson arranged to give him a reception on the eve of his departure. There was to be some speech-making. His friends had urged him to let the financial question alone. The welcoming address contained some broad hints. The speaker hinted at the greenback platform, and delicately intimated that General Garfield’s return was conditioned upon his indorsement of the platform. Then the thunderer let fly. Garfield took up the question of finance, and, in the boldest terms, denounced the party platform as dishonest and despicable. He declared that if a life-time of office were offered him, with the understanding that he was to support the platform, he would refuse it at once. Then he took himself off to Washington. When the time for the convention came he was renominated, and a short time later elected.

It is impossible to even sketch the varied activities of the man from this time on, in Congress. His voluminous reports, his comprehensive debates on every leading subject, his immense and varied committee work, comprise a vast field, the very outline of which would surpass the limits of this work. No subject of national importance escaped his attention. Reconstruction, pensions, navigation, tariff, internal improvements, the census, education, the Indian question, corporations, the currency, national banks, public expenditures, civil service reform, railways, civil rights, polygamy, the Chinese—these are only a few of the great subjects which he mastered. His speeches are incomparable for their profound learning, their exhaustive research, their glowing rhetoric. They might serve as text-books upon the great governmental problems of the age. In looking over the record of the proceedings in Congress at this period, one can but be impressed with the marked superiority of his efforts over those of the large majority of his compeers. However worthy the utterances of these latter may be viewed alone, they are dwarfed by the forced comparison with the productions of his majestic mind. These speeches mark the man as a carefully trained intellectual giant, perfectly at home and a terror in the field of debate. They are of inestimable value now, as giving his intellectual biography.

On December 14, 1868, he introduced a bill “To strengthen the public credit.” This subsequently became a part of the great bill making our bonds payable in gold. Around this fortification of the public credit, for ten years, political warfare raged the fiercest, but the rampart was never taken; and, in 1879, when resumption was accomplished, the law still remained on the statute book. Every attempt to repeal it was fought by Garfield on the principles of political science, and his name must be placed with those of Grant and Sherman on this question.

February 26, 1869, General Garfield, as Chairman of the Military Committee, made the monster report upon the reorganization of the army. It contains one hundred and thirty-seven printed pages. The stupendous problem of readjusting the armies of the republic to a peace footing, had occupied Garfield for years. His report was the result of examinations of all the leading army officers. It contained the history of each department of the army. It illuminated all the dark corners, the secret channels, the hidden chambers of corruption which had been constructed in the military policy of the country, and was the product of enormous labor.

In the spring of 1869 General Garfield introduced a resolution for the appointment of a committee to examine into the necessities for legislation upon the subject of the ninth census, to be taken the following year. He was appointed chairman. His speeches on the great subject of statistics are most characteristic. They are wholly out of the rut of Congressional speeches. They show Garfield in the light of a political scientist. Nothing could more strikingly prove the enormous reach of his mind. He showed himself abreast of the scientific thought of the age. Volume after volume of the _Congressional Globe_ will be searched in vain to find speeches from any other man which even approximate these studies in the region of social science. Nowhere in or out of Congress can be found so succinct and admirable a statement of the importance of statistics. Here is an extract from his first speech, made April 6, 1869:

“This is the age of statistics, Mr. Speaker. The word ‘statistics’
itself did not exist until 1749, whence we date the beginning of a
new science on which modern legislation must be based, in order to
be permanent. The treatise of Achenwall, the German philosopher who
originated the word, laid the foundation of many of the greatest
reforms in modern legislation. Statistics are state facts, facts for
the consideration of statesmen, such as they may not neglect with
safety. It has been truly said that ‘statistics are history in
repose; history is statistics in motion.’ If we neglect the one, we
shall deserve to be neglected by the other. The legislator without
statistics is like the mariner at sea without the compass. Nothing
can safely be committed to his guidance. A question of fearful
importance, the well-being of this Republic, has agitated this House
for many weeks. It is this: Are our rich men growing richer, and our
poor growing poorer? And how can this most vital question be
settled, except by the most careful and honest examination of the
facts? Who can doubt that the next census will reveal to us more
important truths concerning the situation of our people than any
census ever taken by any nation? By what standard could we measure
the value of a complete, perfect record of the condition of the
people of this country, and such facts as should exhibit their
burdens and their strength? Who doubts that it would be a document
of inestimable value to the legislator and the nation? How to
achieve it, how to accomplish it, is the great question.

“We are near the end of a decade that has been full of earthquakes,
and amid the tumult we have lost our reckoning. We do not yet
comprehend the stupendous changes through which we have passed, nor
can we until the whole field is resurveyed. If a thousand volcanoes
had been bursting beneath the ocean, the mariner would need new
charts before he could safely sail the seas again. We are soon to
set out on our next decade with a thousand new elements thrown in
upon us by the war. The way is trackless. Who shall pilot us? The
war repealed a part of our venerable census law. One schedule was
devoted to slaves. Thank God! it is useless now. Old things have
passed away, and a multitude of new things are to be here recorded;
and not only the things to be taken, but the manner of taking them,
requires a thorough remodeling at our hands. If this Congress does
not worthily meet the demands of this great occasion, every member
must bear no small share of the odium that justly attaches to men
who fail to discharge duties of momentous importance, which once
neglected can never be performed.”

On December 16, 1867, General Garfield made a second speech on the subject, so elaborate and remarkable, so unlike any thing to be found elsewhere in all the annals of the American Congress, that we yield large space to it. The latter part of the speech relates to the defects of the old law, and the advantages of the proposed new one:

“The modern census is so closely related to the science of
statistics that no general discussion of it is possible without
considering the principles on which statistical science rests and
the objects which it proposes to reach.

“The science of statistics is of recent date, and, like many of its
sister sciences, owes its origin to the best and freest impulses of
modern civilization. The enumerations of inhabitants and the
appraisements of property made by some of the nations of antiquity
were practical means employed sometimes to distribute political
power, but more frequently to adjust the burdens of war, but no
attempt was made among them to classify the facts obtained so as to
make them the basis of scientific induction. The thought of studying
these facts to ascertain the wants of society had not then dawned
upon the human mind, and, of course, there was not a science of
statistics in this modern sense.

“It is never easy to fix the precise date of the birth of any
science, but we may safely say that statistics did not enter its
scientific phase before 1749, when it received from Professor
Achenwall, of Göttingen, not only its name, but the first
comprehensive statement of its principles. Without pausing to trace
the stages of its growth, some of the results of the cultivation of
statistics in the spirit and methods of science may be stated as
germane to this discussion:

“1. It has developed the truth that society is an organism, whose
elements and forces conform to laws as constant and pervasive as
those which govern the material universe; and that the study of
these laws will enable man to ameliorate his condition, to
emancipate himself from the cruel dominion of superstition, and from
countless evils which were once thought beyond his control, and will
make him the master rather than the slave of nature. Mankind have
been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe—that the
world is a cosmos and not a chaos.

“The assertion of the reign of law has been stubbornly resisted at
every step. The divinities of heathen superstition still linger in
one form or another in the faith of the ignorant, and even
intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one supreme will
acting regularly, not fortuitously, through laws beautiful and
simple rather than through a fitful and capricious system of
intervention.

“Lecky tells us that in the early ages it was believed that the
motion of the heavenly bodies, as well as atmospheric changes, was
affected by angels. In the Talmud, a special angel was assigned to
every star and every element, and similar notions were general
throughout the Middle Ages.

“The scientific spirit has cast out the demons, and presented us
with nature clothed and in her right mind and living under the reign
of law. It has given us, for the sorceries of the alchemist, the
beautiful laws of chemistry; for the dreams of the astrologer, the
sublime truths of astronomy; for the wild visions of cosmogony, the
monumental records of geology; for the anarchy of diabolism, the
laws of God. But more stubborn still has been the resistance against
every attempt to assert the reign of law in the realm of society. In
that struggle, statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has
poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and
pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

“We no longer hope to predict the career and destiny of a human
being by studying the conjunction of planets that presided at his
birth. We study rather the laws of life within him, and the elements
and forces of nature and society around him. We no longer attribute
the untimely death of infants wholly to the sin of Adam, for we know
it is the result of bad nursing and ignorance. We are beginning to
acknowledge that—

“‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’

Governments are only beginning to recognize these truths.

“In 1853 the Presbytery of Edinburgh petitioned the British ministry
to appoint a day of national fasting and prayer, in order to stay
the ravages of cholera in Scotland. Lord Palmerston, the Home
Secretary, replied in a letter which a century before no British
statesman would have dared to write. He told the clergy of Scotland
that: ‘The plague being already upon them, activity was preferable
to humiliation; that the causes of disease should be removed by
improving the abodes of the poor, and cleansing them from those
sources of contagion which would infallibly breed pestilence and be
fruitful in death in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a
united but inactive nation.’ Henry Thomas Buckle expressed the
belief that this letter will be quoted in future ages as a striking
illustration of the progress of enlightened public opinion. But that
further progress is possible is seen in the fact that within the
last three years an English bishop has attributed the rinderpest to
the Oxford essays and the writings of Colenso.

“In these remarks I disclaim any reference to the dominion of the
Creator over his spiritual universe, and the high and sacred duty of
all his intelligent creatures to reverence and worship him. I speak
solely of those laws that relate to the physical, intellectual, and
social life of man.

“2. The development of statistics is causing history to be
rewritten. Till recently the historian studied nations in the
aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges,
and battles. Of the people themselves—the great social body with
life, growth, sources, elements, and laws of its own—he told us
nothing. Now statistical inquiry leads him into the hovels, homes,
workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all places where
human nature displays its weakness and its strength. In these
explorations he discovers the seeds of national growth and decay,
and thus becomes the prophet of his generation.

“Without the aid of statistics, that most masterly chapter of human
history, the third of Macaulay’s first volume, could never have been
written.

“3. Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In
legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood
that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws.
The legislator must formulate in his statues not only the national
will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by
statistics. He must study society rather than black-letter learning.
He must learn the truth ‘that society usually prepares the crime,
and the criminal is only the instrument that accomplishes it;’ that
statesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in punishing
or evading results.

“Light is itself a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses
that grow in the darkness disappear like owls and bats before the
light of day. For example, who can doubt that before many months the
press of this country will burn down the whipping-posts of Delaware
as effectually as the mirrors of Archimedes burned the Roman ships
in the harbor of Syracuse?

“I know of no writer who has exhibited the importance of this
science to statesmanship so fully and so ably as Sir George Cornwall
Lewis, in his treatise _On the Methods of Observation and Reasoning
on Politics_.

“After showing that politics is now taking its place among the
sciences, and as a science its superstructure rests on observed and
classified facts, he says of the registration of political facts,
which consists of history and statistics, that ‘it may be considered
as the entrance and propylæa to politics. It furnishes the materials
upon which the artificer operates, which he hews into shape and
builds up into a symmetrical structure.’

“In a subsequent chapter, he portrays the importance of statistics
to the practical statesman in this strong and lucid language:

“‘He can hardly take a single safe step without consulting them.
Whether he be framing a plan of finance, or considering the
operation of an existing tax, or following the variations of trade,
or studying the public health, or examining the effects of a
criminal law, his conclusions ought to be guided by statistical
data.’—Vol. i, p. 134.

“Napoleon, with that wonderful vision vouchsafed to genius, saw the
importance of this science when he said:

“‘Statistics is the budget of things; and without a budget there is
no public safety.’

“We may not, perhaps, go as far as Goethe did, and declare that
‘figures govern the world;’ but we can fully agree with him that
‘they show how it is governed.’

“Baron Quetelet, of Belgium, one of the ripest scholars and
profoundest students of statistical science, concludes his latest
chapter of scientific results in these words:

“‘One of the principal results of civilization is to reduce more and
more the limits within which the different elements of society
fluctuate. The more intelligence increases the more these limits are
reduced, and the nearer we approach the beautiful and the good. The
perfectibility of the human species results as a necessary
consequence of all our researches. Physical defects and
monstrosities are gradually disappearing; the frequency and severity
of diseases are resisted more successfully by the progress of
medical science; the moral qualities of man are proving themselves
not less capable of improvement; and the more we advance, the less
we shall have need to fear those great political convulsions and
wars and their attendant results, which are the scourges of
mankind.’

“It should be added that the growing importance of political
science, as well as its recent origin, is exhibited in the fact that
nearly every modern nation has established within the last half
century a bureau of general statistics for the uses of statesmanship
and science. In the thirty states of Europe they are now assiduously
cultivating the science. Not one of their central bureaus was fully
organized before the year 1800.

“The chief instrument of American statistics is the census, which
should accomplish a two-fold object. It should serve the country by
making a full and accurate exhibit of the elements of national life
and strength, and it should serve the science of statistics by so
exhibiting general results that they may be compared with similar
data obtained by other nations.

“In the light of its national uses and its relations to social
science, let us consider the origin and development of the American
census.

“During the colonial period, several enumerations of the inhabitants
of the Colonies were made by the order of the British Board of
Trade; but no general concerted attempt was made to take a census
until after the opening of the Revolutionary War. As illustrating
the practical difficulty of census-taking at that time, a passage in
a letter, written in 1715 to the Lords of Trade, by Hunter, the
colonial governor of New York, may be interesting:

“‘The superstition of this people is so unsurmountable that I
believe I shall never be able to obtain a complete list of the
number of inhabitants of this province.’—_New York Colonial MSS._,
vol. v, p. 459.

“He then suggests a computation, based upon returns of militia and
of freemen, afterward the women and children, and then the servants
and slaves.

“William Burnet, colonial governor of New Jersey, to the Lords of
Trade, June 26, 1726, after mentioning returns made in 1723, says:

“‘I would have then ordered the like accounts to be taken in New
Jersey, but I was advised it might make the people uneasy, they
being generally of a New England extraction, and thereby
enthusiasts; and that they would take it for a repetition of the
same sin that David committed in numbering the people, and might
bring on the like judgments. This notion put me off from it at the
time, but since your lordships desire it, I will give the orders to
the sheriffs, that it may be done as soon as may be.’

“That this sentiment has not wholly disappeared, may be seen from
the following: At a public meeting held on the evening of November
12, 1867, in this city, pending the taking of the census of the
District of Columbia by the Department of Education and the
municipal authorities, a speaker, whose name is given in the
reported proceedings, said:

“‘I regard the whole matter as illegal. Taking the census is an
important matter. In the Bible we are told David ordered Joab to
take the census when he had no authority to do so, and Joab was
punished for it.’ He thought these parties, the Metropolitan police,
should be enjoined from asking questions, and he advised those who
had not returned the blank, not to fill it up or answer a single
question.

“As early as 1775 the Continental Congress resolved that certain of
the burdens of the war should be distributed among the Colonies,
‘according to the number of inhabitants of all ages, including
negroes and mulattoes, in each colony;’ and also recommended to the
several colonial conventions, councils, or committees of safety, to
ascertain the number of inhabitants in each colony, and to make
returns to Congress as soon as possible. Such responses as were made
to this recommendation, were probably of no great value, and are
almost wholly lost.

“The Articles of Confederation, as reported by John Dickinson, in
July, 1776, provided for a triennial enumeration of the inhabitants
of the States, such enumeration to be the basis of adjusting the
‘charges of war and all other expenses that should be incurred for
the common defense or general welfare.’ The eighth of the articles,
as they were finally adopted, provided that these charges and
expenses should be defrayed out of a common treasury, to be supplied
by the several States in ‘proportion to the value of land within
each State granted to or surveyed for any person; and such land and
the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according
to such mode as the United States, in Congress assembled, shall from
time to time direct and appoint.’

“The ninth article gave Congress the authority ‘to agree upon the
numbers of land forces, and to make requisitions from each of its
quota in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such
State.’ These articles, unquestionably contemplated a national
census, to include a valuation of land and an enumeration of
population, but they led to no substantial results. When the blanks
in the revenue report of 1783 were filled, the committee reported
that they had been compelled to estimate the population of all the
States except New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and
Maryland.

“The next step is to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The
charter of Government, framed by that body, provided for a national
census to be taken decennially. Moreau de Jonnés, a distinguished
French writer on statistics, in his ‘Elements de Statistique,’
refers to the constitutional provision in the following elevated
language:

“‘The United States presents in its history a phenomenon which has
no parallel. It is that of a people who instituted the statistics of
their country on the very day when they formed their Government, and
who regulated in the same instrument the census of their citizens,
their civil and political rights, and the destinies of the country.’

“De Jonnés considers the American census the more remarkable because
it was instituted at so early a date by a people very jealous of
their liberties; and he gives emphasis to his statement by referring
to the heavy penalties imposed by the first law of Congress to carry
these provisions into effect.

“It must be confessed, however, that the American founders looked
only to practical ends. A careful search through the ‘Madison
Papers’ has failed to show that any member of the Convention
considered the census in its scientific bearings. But they gave us
an instrument by which those ends can be reached. ‘They builded
wiser than they knew.’

“In pursuance of the requirements of the Constitution, an act
providing for an enumeration of the inhabitants of the United States
was passed March 1, 1790.

“As illustrating the growth of the American census, it is worth
observing that the report of the first census was an octavo pamphlet
of fifty-two pages, and that of 1800, a folio of seventy-eight
pages.

“On the 23d of January, 1800, a memorial of the American
Philosophical Society, signed by Thomas Jefferson as its President,
was laid before the Senate. In this remarkable paper, written in the
spirit and interest of science, the memorialists prayed that the
sphere of the census might be greatly extended; but it does not
appear to have made any impression on the Senate, for no trace of it
is found in the annals of Congress.

“The results attained by the first six censuses were meager for the
purposes of science. That of 1790 embraced population only, its
single schedule containing six inquiries. That of 1800 had only a
population schedule with fourteen inquiries. In 1810, an attempt was
made to superadd statistics of manufactures, but the results were of
no value. In 1820 the statistics of manufactures were again
worthless. In 1830 the attempt to take them was abandoned. In 1840
there were schedules of population and manufactures, and some
inquiries relating to education and employment.

“The law of May 23, 1850, under which the seventh and eighth
censuses were taken, marks an important era in the history of
American statistics. This law owes many of its wisest provisions and
much of the success of its execution to Mr. Joseph C. G. Kennedy,
under whose intelligent superintendence the chief work of the last
census was accomplished. This law marks the transition of the
American census from the merely practical to the scientific phase.
The system thus originated needs correction to make it conform to
the later results of statistical science and to the wants of the
American people. Nevertheless, it deserves the high commendations
passed upon it by some of the most eminent statisticians and
publicists of the Old World.”

In continuing his speech, General Garfield considered the defects in the method of taking the census. Among the many improvements suggested are the following:

“The war has left us so many mutilated men, that a record should be
made of those who have lost a limb or have been otherwise disabled,
and the committee have added an inquiry to show the state of public
health and the prevalence of some of the principal diseases. Dr.
Jarvis, of Massachusetts, one of the highest living authorities on
vital statistics, in a masterly paper presented to the committee,
urged the importance of measuring as accurately as possible the
effective physical strength of the people.

“It is not generally known how large a proportion of each nation is
wholly or partially unfitted by physical disability for
self-support. The statistics of France show that, in 1851, in a
population of less than thirty-six millions, the deaf, dumb, blind,
deformed, idiotic, and those otherwise mutilated or disabled,
amounted to almost two millions. We thus see that in a country of
the highest civilization the effective strength of its population is
reduced one-eighteenth by physical defects. What general would
venture to conduct a campaign without ascertaining the physical
qualities of his soldiers as well as the number on his rolls? In
this great industrial battle, which this nation is now fighting, we
ought to take every available means to ascertain the effective
strength of the country.”

Farther on he says:

“An inquiry was also added in regard to dwellings, so as to exhibit
the several principal materials for construction, as wood, brick,
stone, etc., and the value of each. Few things indicate more fully
the condition of the people than the houses they occupy. The average
home is not an imperfect picture of the wealth, comfort, refinement,
and civilization of the average citizen.”

The next paragraph is devoted to the question of determining the number of voters. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution reduced a State’s representation in Congress to the measure of its votes. This was thought at the time to refer merely to the States where negroes were not allowed to vote, but Garfield found that in all the States, there were _eighty restrictions in the right to vote, besides color_ and crime, ranging all the way from residence to education and character.

Under the topic of agricultural products, he said:

“It is believed that the schedule thus amended will enable us to
ascertain the elements of those wonderful forces which have made our
country the granary of the civilized world; will exhibit also the
defects of our agricultural methods, and stimulate our farmers to
adopt those means which have doubled the agricultural products of
England since the days of the Stuarts, and have more than doubled
the comforts of her people. The extent of that great progress can be
seen in such facts as these: that ‘in the reign of Henry VII. fresh
meat was never eaten even by the gentleman attendant on a great
earl, except during the short interval between midsummer and
Michaelmas,’ because no adequate means were known of fattening
cattle in the winter, or even of preventing the death of one-fifth
of their whole number each year; that Catharine, queen of Charles
II. sent to Flanders for her salad, which the wretched gardening of
England did not sufficiently provide.”

Under the head of corporation statistics, he makes the following significant statement:

“Now that the great question of human slavery is removed from the
arena of American politics, I am persuaded that the next great
question to be confronted, _will be that of corporations, and their
relation to the interests of the people and to the national life.
The fear is now entertained by many of our best men, that the
National and State legislatures of the Union, in creating these vast
corporations, have evoked a spirit which may escape and defy their
control and which may wield a power greater than legislatures
themselves._ The rapidity with which railroad corporations have been
consolidated and placed within the power of a few men, during the
past year, is not the least alarming manifestation of this power.
Without here discussing the right of Congress to legislate on all
the matters suggested in this direction, the committee have provided
in this bill to arm the census office with the power to demand from
these corporations a statement of the elements of which they are
composed and an exhibit of their transactions.”

The learning, the philosophic and advanced views, the masterly grouping of social phenomena throughout this speech are absolutely novel and unique in the wilderness of Congressional oratory. After all the wealth of industry and thought expended on the subject, the bill failed to pass the Senate, so that the ninth census had to be taken under the old law. The body of the bill, however, eventually became the law under which the unequaled census of 1880 was taken.

As we advance through the multitude of General Garfield’s congressional speeches, selecting here and there some typical extract, his report on “Black Friday” attracts attention. Every one remembers the gold panic of September 24, 1869. It was the greatest financial conspiracy known to history. Wall Street, the scene of innumerable frauds, snares, conspiracies, and panics, never saw any thing to compare with the historic “Black Friday.” The House of Representatives appointed the Committee of Banking and Currency of which General Garfield had been made chairman at the opening of the Forty-First Congress, to investigate the causes of that financial convulsion. He went to New York, _incog._, managed to get into the private room of the Gold Board, where the matter was undergoing a secret investigation. Here General Garfield made notes, and got his clue. When he could stay no longer, he left a clever substitute. Each witness was attached as he left the building and hurried down to Washington before he could be primed. General Garfield’s examination of the witnesses was adroit and successful. The taciturn and self-poised Gould, the wily and exuberant Jim Fisk, alike were compelled to lay open the full details of the scheme. General Garfield’s report, made March 1,1870, goes to the bottom of this the darkest conspiracy ever planned. It reads like a novel, and contains the material for a whole library of fiction. Some idea of the foul plot may be had from the following summary and extracts:

BLACK FRIDAY.

“On the first of September, 1868, the price of gold was one hundred
and forty-five. During the autumn and winter it continued to
decline, interrupted only by occasional fluctuations, till in March,
1869, it touched one hundred and thirty and one-fourth (its lowest
point for three years), and continued near that rate until the
middle of April, the earliest period to which the evidence taken by
the committee refers. At that time, Mr. Jay Gould, president of the
Erie Railroad Company, bought seven millions of gold, and put up the
price from one hundred and thirty-two to one hundred and forty.
Other brokers followed his example, and by the twentieth of May had
put up the price to one hundred and forty-four and seven-eighths,
from which point, in spite of speculation, it continued to decline,
and on the last day of July stood at one hundred and thirty-six.

“The first indication of a concerted movement on the part of those
who were prominent in the panic of September was an effort to secure
the appointment of some person who should be subservient to their
schemes, as Assistant Treasurer at New York, in place of Mr. H. H.
Van Dyck, who resigned in the month of June. In this effort Mr.
Gould and Mr. A. R. Corbin, a brother-in-law of President Grant,
appear to have been closely and intimately connected. If the
testimony of the witnesses is to be believed, Mr. Corbin suggested
the name of his stepson-in-law, Robert B. Catherwood, and Mr. Gould
joined in the suggestion.

“On what grounds Mr. Catherwood declined to be a candidate does not
appear. The parties next turned their attention to General
Butterfield, and, both before and after his appointment, claimed to
be his supporters. Gould and Catherwood testify that Corbin claimed
to have secured the appointment, though Corbin swears that he made
no recommendation in the case. General Butterfield was appointed
Assistant Treasurer, and entered upon the duties of that office on
the first of July. It is, however, proper to state that the
committee has no evidence that General Butterfield was in any way
cognizant of the corrupt schemes which led the conspirators to
desire his appointment, nor that their recommendations had any
weight in securing it. In addition to these efforts, the
conspirators resolved to discover, if possible, the purposes of the
President and the Secretary of the Treasury in regard to the sales
of gold. The first attempt in this direction, as exhibited in the
evidence, was made on the 15th of June, when the President was on
board one of Messrs. Fisk and Gould’s Fall River steamers, on his
way to Boston. At nine o’clock in the evening, supper was served on
board, and the presence at the table of such men as Cyrus W. Field,
with several leading citizens of New York and Boston, was sufficient
to prevent any suspicion that this occasion was to be used for the
benefit of private speculation; but the testimony of Fisk and Gould
indicates clearly the purpose they had in view. Fisk says:

“‘On our passage over to Boston with General Grant, we endeavored to
ascertain what his position in regard to finances was. We went down
to supper about nine o’clock, intending, while we were there, to
have this thing pretty thoroughly talked up, and, if possible, to
relieve him from any idea of putting the price of gold down.’”

“Mr. Gould’s account is as follows:

“‘At this supper the question came up about the state of the
country, the crops, prospects ahead, etc. The President was a
listener; the other gentlemen were discussing; some were in favor of
Boutwell’s selling gold, and some opposed to it. After they had all
interchanged views, some one asked the President what his view was.
He remarked that he thought there was a certain amount of
fictitiousness about the prosperity of the country, and that the
bubble might as well be tapped in one way as another. We supposed,
from that conversation, that the President was a contractionist. His
remark struck across us like a wet blanket.’

“It appears that these skillfully-contrived efforts elicited from
the President but one remark, and this opened a gloomy prospect for
the speculators. Upon their return to New York, Fisk and Gould
determined to bring a great pressure upon the administration, to
prevent, if possible, a further decline in gold, which would
certainly interfere with their purposes of speculation. This was to
be effected by facts and arguments presented in the name of the
country and its business interests; and a financial theory was
agreed upon, which, on its face, would appeal to the business
interests of the country, and enlist in its support many patriotic
citizens, but would, if adopted, incidentally enable the
conspirators to make their speculations eminently successful. That
theory was, that the business interests of the country required an
advance in the price of gold; that, in order to move the fall crops
and secure the foreign market for our grain, it was necessary that
gold should be put up to 145. According to Mr. Jay Gould, this
theory, for the benefit of American trade and commerce, was
suggested by Mr. James McHenry, a prominent English financier, who
furnished Mr. Gould the data with which to advocate it.”

This plan was tried vigorously. Hired newspapers filled their editorial pages with arguments. Every mail brought pamphlets, papers, memorials, arguments, etc., to the silent President. Wherever he turned, some one was at hand to pour into his ear a plea for the poor country. If the Government would sell no gold, the conspirators would have the market in their own hands. Men having contracts to furnish gold would have to buy of them at any price. There was no word from Grant, but the conspirators continued to buy up gold. Gould took in a partner:

“Fisk was told that Corbin had enlisted the interests of persons
high in authority, that the President, Mrs. Grant, General Porter,
and General Butterfield were corruptly interested in the movement,
and that the Secretary of the Treasury had been forbidden to sell
gold. Though these declarations were wickedly false, as the evidence
abundantly shows, yet the compounded villainy presented by Gould and
Corbin was too tempting a bait for Fisk to resist. He joined the
movement at once, and brought to its aid all the force of his
magnetic and infectious enthusiasm. The malign influence which
Catiline wielded over the reckless and abandoned youth of Rome,
finds a fitting parallel in the power which Fisk carried into Wall
Street, when, followed by the thugs of Erie and the debauchees of
the Opera House, he swept into the gold-room and defied both the
Street and the Treasury. Indeed, the whole gold movement is not an
unworthy copy of that great conspiracy to lay Rome in ashes and
deluge its streets in blood, for the purpose of enriching those who
were to apply the torch and wield the dagger.

“With the great revenue of the Erie Railway Company at their
command, and having converted the Tenth National Bank into a
manufactory of certified checks to be used as cash at their
pleasure, they terrified all opponents by the gigantic power of
their combination, and amazed and dazzled the dissolute gamblers of
Wall Street by declaring that they had in league with them the chief
officers of the National Government.

“They gradually pushed the price of gold from one hundred and
thirty-five and one-half, where it stood on the morning of the
thirteenth of September, until, on the evening of Wednesday, the
twenty-second, they held it firm at one hundred and forty and
one-half.

“The conspirators had bought sixty millions of gold up to that date.
Every thing depended on Grant’s preventing the sale of gold by the
Treasury. Brother-in-law Corbin was to manage that. Every cent
advance in gold added $15,000 to Corbin’s profit. On the 17th, it
was determined to have Corbin write a long letter to the President.

“The letter contained no reference to the private speculation of
Corbin, but urged the President not to interfere in the fight then
going on between the bulls and bears, nor to allow the Secretary of
the Treasury to do so by any sales of gold. The letter also repeated
the old arguments in regard to transportation of the crops.

“While Corbin was writing it, Gould called upon Fisk to furnish his
most faithful servant to carry the letter. W. O. Chapin was
designated as the messenger, and early on the following morning went
to Mr. Corbin’s house and received it, together with a note to
General Porter. He was instructed to proceed with all possible
haste, and telegraph Fisk as soon as the letter was delivered. He
reached Pittsburgh a little after midnight, and, proceeding at once
by carriage to Washington, Pennsylvania, thirty miles distant,
delivered the letter to the President, and, after waiting some time,
asked if there was any answer. The President told him there was no
answer, and he hurried away to the nearest telegraph office and sent
to Mr. Fisk this dispatch: ‘Letters delivered all right,’ and then
returned to New York. Mr. Fisk appears to have interpreted the ‘all
right’ of the dispatch as an answer to the doctrine of the Corbin
letter, and says he proceeded in his enormous purchases upon that
supposition. This letter, which Corbin had led his co-conspirators
to trust as their safeguard against interference from Mr. Boutwell,
finally proved their ruin. Its effect was the very reverse of what
they anticipated. The letter would have been like hundreds of other
letters received by the President, if it had not been for the fact
that it was sent by a special messenger from New York to Washington,
Pennsylvania, the messenger having to take a carriage and ride some
twenty-eight miles from Pittsburgh. This letter, sent in that way,
urging a certain policy on the administration, taken in connection
with some rumors that had got into the newspapers at that time as to
Mr. Corbin’s having become a great bull in gold, excited the
President’s suspicions, and he believed that Mr. Corbin must have a
pecuniary interest in those speculations; that he was not actuated
simply by a desire to see a certain policy carried out for the
benefit of the administration. Feeling in that way, he suggested to
Mrs. Grant to say, in a letter she was writing to Mrs. Corbin, that
rumors had reached her that Mr. Corbin was connected with
speculators in New York, and that she hoped that if this was so he
would disengage himself from them at once; that he (the President)
was very much distressed at such rumors. She wrote a letter that
evening. It was received in New York on the evening of Wednesday,
the twenty-second. Late that night Mr. Gould called at Corbin’s
house. Corbin disclosed the contents of the letter, and they sat
down to consider its significance. This letter created the utmost
alarm in the minds of both of these conspirators. The picture of
these two men that night, as presented in the evidence, is a
remarkable one. Shut up in the library, near midnight, Corbin was
bending over the table and straining with dim eyes to decipher and
read the contents of a letter, written in pencil, to his wife, while
the great gold gambler, looking over his shoulder, caught with his
sharper vision every word.”

Corbin tried to get Gould to buy him out, so as to tell the President he had no interest in the market. Gould, too, plotted to save himself by ruining his co-conspirators. They held a meeting. Gould secretly sold to Fisk and his associates. The latter, of course, had no idea that it was Gould they were buying out. The meeting resolved to force gold up to 160 on the next day (“Black Friday”), publish a list of all firms who had contracts to furnish gold, offer to settle with them at the price named before three o’clock, but threatening higher prices to all who delayed:

“While this desperate work was going on in New York, its alarming
and ruinous effects were reaching and paralyzing the business of the
whole country, and carrying terror and ruin to thousands. Business
men everywhere, from Boston to San Francisco, read disaster in every
new bulletin. The price of gold fluctuated so rapidly that the
telegraphic indicators could not keep pace with its movement. The
complicated mechanism of these indicators is moved by the electric
current carried over telegraphic wires directly from the gold-room,
and it is in evidence that in many instances these wires were melted
or burned off in the efforts of the operators to keep up with the
news.

“The President returned from Pennsylvania to Washington on Thursday,
the twenty-third, and that evening had a consultation with the
Secretary of the Treasury concerning the condition of the gold
market. The testimony of Mr. Boutwell shows that both the President
and himself concurred in the opinion that they should, if possible,
avoid any interference on the part of the Government in a contest
where both parties were struggling for private gain; but both agreed
that if the price of gold should be forced still higher, so as to
threaten a general financial panic, it would be their duty to
interfere and protect the business interests of the country. The
next morning the price advanced rapidly, and telegrams poured into
Washington from all parts of the country, exhibiting the general
alarm, and urging the Government to interfere, and, if possible,
prevent a financial crisis.”

At 11:42 A. M. came the crack of doom.

TREASURY DEPARTMENT, September 24, 1869.

“_Daniel Butterfield, Assistant Treasurer, United States, New York_:

“Sell four millions (4,000,000) gold to-morrow, and buy four
millions (4,000,000) bonds.

GEORGE S. BOUTWELL, Sec’y Treasury.

“Charge to Department. Sent 11:42 A. M.”

“Within the space of fifteen minutes the price fell from one hundred
and sixty to one hundred and thirty-three, and in the language of
one of the witnesses, half of Wall Street was involved in ruin.

“It was not without difficulty that the conspirators escaped from
the fury of their victims and took refuge in their up-town
stronghold—the office of the Erie Railroad Company.

“During the day and morning previous, the conspirators had succeeded
in forcing many settlements at rates ruinous to their victims.”

On March 14, 1870, General Garfield spoke on the subject of the civil service. The speech abounded in details, and was pointed with references to classes of salaries which were too high. On April 1st of the same session, he delivered a great speech on the tariff question. It was characterized by its conservative avoidance of extremes, and will stand as the best expression of modern scholarship, practical statesmanship on this most important public question. It is probable that there can nowhere be found an argument on the subject of the tariff which more nearly approaches perfect legislative wisdom.

In 1870, the total amount of national bank circulation being limited by law to $300,000,000 and largely absorbed in the East, a cry arose in the South and West against this injustice. General Garfield drew up and presented a bill which became a law, increasing the limit $54,000,000, and providing for the cancellation of the surplus of notes in States having more than their quota, as fast as the Southern and Western States, having less than their quota, organized national banks and commenced to issue currency. It was a just measure, and was exactly in the line of future legislation, but the Western and Southern States had no capital to invest for banking purposes, and consequently availed themselves but slightly of the opportunity. The measure, however, was of a character to allay public clamor, demonstrate the folly of the outcry against the existing law, and facilitate the progress toward resumption. It was the forerunner of the law, removing all limit to national bank circulation, and making the volume of the currency adjustable to the demand. General Garfield’s great speech on the bill, delivered June 7, 1870, has been the inexhaustible quiver from which most of the arrows of financial discussion have since been drawn by all smaller marksmen. A second speech on the same subject on June 15th, was but little its inferior.

The last day of the Forty-First Congress witnessed a remarkable attempt of the Senate to encroach upon the constitutional prerogative of the House to originate all bills for raising revenues, the claim being that the measure was one to _reduce_ revenue instead of _raising_ it. It was a bill to abolish the income tax. Garfield favored the reduction, but an encroachment which might become a dangerous precedent had to be resisted. His argument covered the vast field of the history of the House of Commons, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, and the precedents of Congress. His conclusions were:

_First._—That the exclusive right of the House of Commons of Great
Britain to originate money bills, is so old that the date of its
origin is unknown; it has always been regarded as one of the
strongest bulwarks of British freedom against usurpation of the King
and of the House of Lords, and has been guarded with the most
jealous care; that in the many contests which have arisen on this
subject between the Lords and Commons, during the last three hundred
years, the Commons have never given way, but have rather enlarged
than diminished their jurisdiction of this subject; and that since
the year 1678, the Lords have conceded, with scarcely a struggle,
that the Commons had the exclusive right to originate, not only
bills for raising revenue, but for decreasing it; not only for
imposing, but also for repealing taxes; and that the same exclusive
right extended also to all general appropriations of money.

_Second._—The clause of our Constitution, now under debate, was
borrowed from this feature of the British Constitution, and was
intended to have the same force and effect in all respects as the
corresponding clause of the British Constitution, with this single
exception, that our Senate is permitted to offer amendments, as the
House of Lords is not.

_Third._—In addition to the influence of the British example, was
the further fact, that this clause was placed in our Constitution to
counterbalance some special privileges granted to the Senate. It was
the compensating weight thrown into the scale to make the two
branches of Congress equal in authority and power. It was first put
into the Constitution to compensate the large States for the
advantages given to the small States in allowing them an equal
representation in the Senate; and, when subsequently it was thrown
out of the original draft, it came near unhinging the whole plan.

“It was reinserted in the last great compromise of the Constitution,
to offset the exclusive right of the Senate to ratify treaties,
confirm appointments, and try impeachments. The construction given
to it by the members of the Constitutional Convention, is the same
which this House now contends for. The same construction was
asserted broadly and fully, by the First Congress, many of the
members of which were framers of the Constitution. It has been
asserted again and again, in the various Congresses, from the First
till now; and, though the Senate has often attempted to invade this
privilege of the House, yet in no instance has the House surrendered
its right whenever that right has been openly challenged; and,
finally, whenever a contest has arisen, many leading Senators have
sustained the right of the House as now contended for.

* * * * *