Chapter VII: Leader and Statesman (2)

“Again, if the Senate may throw their whole weight, political and
moral, into the scale in favor of the repeal or reduction of one
class of taxes, they may thereby compel the House to originate
bills, to impose new taxes, or increase old ones to make up the
deficiency caused by the repeal begun in the Senate, and thus
accomplish by indirection, what the Constitution plainly prohibits.
What Mr. Seward said in 1856, of the encroachment of the Senate, is
still more strikingly true to-day.

“The tendency of the Senate is constantly to encroach,—not only upon
the jurisdiction of the House, but upon the rights of the Chief
Executive of the nation. The power of confirming appointments is
rapidly becoming a means by which the Senate dictates appointments.
The Constitution gives to the President the initiative in
appointments, as it gives to the House the initiative in revenue
legislation. Evidences are not wanting that both these rights are
every year subjected to new invasions. If, in the past, the
Executive has been compelled to give way to the pressure, and has,
in some degree yielded his constitutional rights, it is all the more
necessary that this House stand firm, and yield no jot or tittle of
that great right intrusted to us for the protection of the people.”

This speech was absolutely conclusive on the question, and must take its place with all the immortal arguments and efforts put forth in the past to preserve the rights of the popular branch of national legislature. February 20, 1871, General Garfield delivered a powerful speech against the McGarraghan claim, one of the many jobs of which Congress was the victim.

General Garfield was by this time recognized as the highest authority on the intricate subjects of finance, revenue, and expenditure, in the House. It will be seen that these topics fall within the general head of political economy, “the dismal science.” Of these he was the acknowledged master. Accordingly, at the beginning of the Forty-Second Congress, in 1871, Garfield was made chairman of the Committee of Appropriations. It is probable that in this capacity he never had an equal. Something must be said of his work.

In order to master the great subject of public expenditures, he studied the history of those of European nations. He read the “budget speeches” of the English chancellors of the exchequer for a long period. He refreshed his German, and studied French, in order to read the best works in the world on the subjects, the highest authorities being in those languages. He examined the British and French appropriations for a long period. After an exhaustive study of the history of foreign nations, he commenced with our own country at the time of the Revolution. Charles Sumner was the greatest reader, and had the longest book list at the Congressional Library of any man in Washington. The library records show that General Garfield’s list was next to Sumner’s, being but slightly below it. After Sumner’s death, the man who was second became first. This gathering of facts was followed by wide inductions. National expenditures were found by him to be subject to a law as fixed as that of gravitation. There was a proportion between population, area of country, and the necessary outlay for public expenses, which was fixed. Any thing beyond this was waste. No covering could hide official robbery from the reach of such a detective as the establishment of this law. Every miscreant left a tell-tale track.

The results of his studies were embodied in an elaborate speech on January 22, 1872, in the introduction of his appropriation bill. The close study of political economy, however, did not divert him from other questions. He kept himself thoroughly versed on every question of public importance and was always equal to every demand.

On April 4, 1871, he delivered a speech in opposition to a Republican bill for the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment. At the time it brought down upon him the censure of his party. But he was firm. There could be no doubt of his loyalty to the nation, and his distrust of the malignant South. But he was too conservative for the war leaders and politicians. A compromise was effected, with which, however, his opponents were much dissatisfied.

Another notable speech was made on the bill to establish an educational fund from the proceeds of the sale of public lands. The speech abounded in citations from English, French, and German authorities on the subject of education. One doctrine enunciated was that matters of education belong to the State governments, not to the nation; that Congress made no claim to interfere in the method, but only to assist in the work.

In the summer of 1872, General Garfield undertook a delicate mission to the Flat-Head Indians. Their removal was required by the Government. But the noble red man refused to stir an inch from his ancestral hunting-grounds. Garfield’s mission was to be the last pacific effort. He was successful when the department had given up hope in any resource but war.

On his return from the West, General Garfield found the Credit Mobilier scandal looming up like a cyclone in the Congressional sky. Living a life of study, research, and thought, of spotless character and the purest intention, he was inexpressibly pained. A private letter of December 31, 1872, to his bosom friend Hinsdale, is indicative of his feelings:

“The Credit Mobilier scandal has given me much pain. As I told you
last fall, I feared it would turn and that the company itself was a
bad thing. So I think it will, and perhaps some members of Congress
were conscientiously parties to its plans. It has been a new form of
trial for me to see my name flying the rounds of the press in
connection with the basest of crimes. It is not enough for one to
know that his heart and motives have been pure and true, if he is
not sure but that good men here and there, who do not know him, will
set him down among the lowest men of doubtful morality. There is
nothing in my relation to the case for which the tenderest
conscience of the most scrupulous honor can blame me. It is
fortunate that I never fully concluded to accept the offer made me;
but it grieves me greatly to have been negotiating with a man who
had so little sense of truth and honor as to use his proposals for a
purpose in a way now apparent to me. I shall go before the
committee, and in due time before the House, with a full statement
of all that is essential to the case, so far as I am concerned. You
and I are now nearly in middle life, and have not yet become soured
and shriveled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be
delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh,
sweet sensations for us.”

His correspondence at this time with President Hinsdale, in which he uncovers his secret heart, is full of expressions of disgust with politics, “where ten years of honest toil goes for naught in the face of one vote,” as he says. Once he declares: “Were it not for the Credit Mobilier, I believe I would resign.” How plainly his character appears in the following little extract:

“You know that I have always said that my whole public life was an
experiment to determine whether an intelligent people would sustain
a man in acting sensibly on each proposition that arose, and in
doing nothing for mere show or for demagogical effect. I do not now
remember that I ever cast a vote of that latter sort. Perhaps it is
true that the demagogue will succeed when honorable statesmanship
will fail. If so, public life is the hollowest of all shams.”

In another letter to Colonel Rockwell, he speaks from his heart:

“I think of you as away, and in an elysium of quiet and peace, where
I should love to be, out of the storm and in the sunshine of love
and books. Do not think from the above that I am despondent. There
is life and hope and fight in your old friend yet.”

It is hardly possible to understand the tortures which his sensitive nature underwent at this time. To an honest man the worst pain comes from the poisoned dagger of mistrust. At a later day, General Garfield was to make his defense to his constituents.

During this plague of heart and brain, there was no remission of the enormous activity in the chosen field of finance, revenue, and expenditure. But we can only plant foot upon the mountain peaks as we pass over the Alps of General Garfield’s Congressional labors. March 5, 1874, he delivered another great speech on “Revenues and Public Expenditures.”

On April 8, 1874, the first great “inflation” bill, by which the effects of the terrible panic of 1873 were to be relieved or cured, came up for discussion. General Garfield exhausted history in his opposition to the bill. It must be remembered that his constituents were clamoring for the passage of this bill which was to make money plenty. Taking his political life in his hand, he fought it with all his power. As in 1866, 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1871, so, in 1874, he said that “next to the great achievements of the nation in putting down the rebellion, destroying its cause, and reuniting the Republic on the principle of liberty and equal rights to all, is the task of paying the fabulous expenses of the war, the funding of the debt, the maintenance of public credit, and the launching of the nation on its career of prosperity.” The speech contains citations of authority against inflation and irredeemable paper currency from John Stuart Mill, Benjamin Franklin, R. H. Lee, Washington, Adams, Peletiah Webster, Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Webster, Gonge, Calhoun, and Chase. The reader will remember that the measure passed the House and the Senate by overwhelming majorities, but was struck dead by the veto of President Grant.

On June 23, 1874, General Garfield spoke at length on the subject of appropriations for the year. In this address, as in all others upon this topic, he handled figures and statistics with the greatest skill and familiarity. The House had come to rely upon his annual speech on this subject for its information on the expenses of the Government.

Almost at the same time he delivered a speech on the Railway Problem. The pending question was upon making certain appropriations for River, Harbor, and Canal Surveys, as a preliminary to cheaper transportation. General Garfield endeavored to have a similar commission organized on the Railway question. He felt that any investigation of cheap transportation was lame which did not include “the greatest of our modern means of transportation, the Railway.” We quote a part of his discussion, which must be of interest to every reader:

THE RAILWAY PROBLEM.

“We are so involved in the events and movements of society that we
do not stop to realize—what is undeniably true—that during the last
forty years all modern societies have entered upon a period of
change, more marked, more pervading, more radical than any that has
occurred during the last three hundred years. In saying this, I do
not forget our own political and military history, nor the French
Revolution of 1793. The changes now taking place have been wrought,
and are being wrought, mainly, almost wholly, by a single mechanical
contrivance, the steam locomotive. There are many persons now living
who well remember the day when Andrew Jackson, after four weeks of
toilsome travel from his home in Tennessee, reached Washington and
took his first oath of office as President of the United States. On
that day, the railway locomotive did not exist. During that year,
Henry Clay was struggling to make his name immortal by linking it
with the then vast project of building a national road—a
turnpike—from the national capital to the banks of the Mississippi.

“In the autumn of that very year George Stephenson ran his first
experimental locomotive, the ‘Rocket,’ from Manchester to Liverpool
and back. The rumble of its wheels, redoubled a million times, is
echoing to-day on every continent.

“In 1870, there were about 125,000 miles of railroad on the two
hemispheres, constructed at a cost of little less than $100,000 per
mile, and representing nearly $12,000,000,000 of invested capital.

“A parliamentary commission found that during the year 1866 the
railway cars of Great Britain carried an average of 850,000
passengers per day; and during that year the work done by their
8,125 locomotives would have required for its performance three and
a half million horses and nearly two million men.

“What have our people done for the locomotive, and what has it done
for us? To the United States, with its vast territorial area, the
railroad was a vital necessity.

“Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that ‘the United States
was a giant without bones.’ Since that time our gristle has been
rapidly hardening. Sixty-seven thousand miles of iron track is a
tolerable skeleton, even for a giant. When this new power appeared,
our people everywhere felt the necessity of setting it to work; and
individuals, cities, States, and the nation lavished their resources
without stint to make a pathway for it. Fortunes were sunk under
almost every mile of our earlier roads in the effort to capture and
utilize this new power. If the State did not head the subscription
for a new road, it usually came to the rescue before the work was
completed.

“The lands given by the States and by the national Government to aid
in the construction of railroads, reach an aggregate of nearly two
hundred and fifty million acres—a territory equal to nine times the
area of Ohio. With these vast resources we have made paths for the
steam giant; and to-day nearly a quarter of a million of our
business and working men are in his immediate service. Such a power
naturally attracts to its enterprise the brightest and strongest
intellects. It would be difficult to find in any other profession so
large a proportion of men possessed of a high order of business
ability as those who construct, manage, and operate our railroads.

“The American people have done much for the locomotive; and it has
done much for them. We have already seen that it has greatly
reduced, if not wholly destroyed, the danger that the Government
will fall to pieces by its own weight. The railroad has not only
brought our people and their industries together, but it has carried
civilization into the wilderness, has built up States and
Territories, which but for its power would have remained deserts for
a century to come. ‘Abroad and at home,’ as Mr. Adams tersely
declares, ‘it has equally nationalized people and cosmopolized
nations.’ It has played a most important part in the recent movement
for the unification and preservation of nations.

“It enabled us to do what the old military science had pronounced
impossible—to conquer a revolted population of eleven millions,
occupying a territory one-fifth as large as the continent of Europe.
In an able essay on the railway system, Mr. Charles F. Adams, Jr.,
has pointed out some of the remarkable achievements of the railroad
in our recent history. For example, a single railroad track enabled
Sherman to maintain eighty thousand fighting men three hundred miles
beyond his base of supplies. Another line, in a space of seven days,
brought a reinforcement of two fully-equipped army corps around a
circuit of thirteen hundred miles, to strengthen an army at a
threatened point. He calls attention to the still more striking fact
that for ten years past, with fifteen hundred millions of our
indebtedness abroad, an enormous debt at home, unparalleled public
expenditures, and a depreciated paper currency, in defiance of all
past experience, we have been steadily conquering our difficulties,
have escaped the predicted collapse, and are promptly meeting our
engagements; because, through energetic railroad development, the
country has been producing real wealth, as no country has produced
it before. Finally, he sums up the case by declaring that the
locomotive has ‘dragged the country through its difficulties in
spite of itself.’

“In discussing this theme, we must not make an indiscriminate attack
upon corporations. The corporation limited to its proper uses is one
of the most valuable of the many useful creations of law. One class
of corporations has played a most important and conspicuous part in
securing the liberties of mankind. It was the municipal
corporations—the free cities and chartered towns—that preserved and
developed the spirit of freedom during the darkness of the Middle
Ages, and powerfully aided in the overthrow of the feudal system.
The charters of London and of the lesser cities and towns of England
made the most effective resistance to the tyranny of Charles II. and
the judicial savagery of Jeffries. The spirit of the free town and
the chartered colony taught our own fathers how to win their
independence. The New England township was the political unit which
formed the basis of most of our states.

“This class of corporations have been most useful, and almost always
safe, because they have been kept constantly within the control of
the community for whose benefit they were created. The State has
never surrendered the power of amending their charters.

“Under the name of private corporations organizations have grown up,
not for the perpetuation of a great charity, like a college or
hospital, not to enable a company of citizens more conveniently to
carry on a private industry, but a class of corporations unknown to
the early law writers has arisen, and to them have been committed
the vast powers of the railroad and the telegraph, the great
instruments by which modern communities live, move, and have their
being.

“Since the dawn of history, the great thoroughfares have belonged to
the people, have been known as the king’s highways or the public
highways, and have been open to the free use of all, on payment of a
small uniform tax or toll to keep them in repair. But now the most
perfect and by far the most important roads known to mankind are
owned and managed as private property by a comparatively small
number of private citizens.

“In all its uses the railroad is the most public of all our roads;
and in all the objects to which its work relates, the railway
corporation is as public as any organization can be. But in the
start it was labeled a private corporation; and, so far as its legal
status is concerned, it is now grouped with eleemosynary
institutions and private charities, and enjoys similar immunities
and exemptions. It remains to be seen how long the community will
suffer itself to be the victim of an abstract definition.

“It will be readily conceded that a corporation is strictly and
really private when it is authorized to carry on such a business as
a private citizen may carry on. But when the State has delegated to
a corporation the sovereign right of eminent domain, the right to
take from the private citizen, without his consent, a portion of his
real estate, to build its structure across farm, garden, and lawn,
into and through, over or under, the blocks, squares, streets,
churches, and dwellings of incorporated cities and towns, across
navigable rivers, and over and along public highways, it requires a
stretch of the common imagination and much refinement and subtlety
of the law to maintain the old fiction that such an organization is
not a public corporation.

“In view of the facts already set forth, the question returns, what
is likely to be the effect of railway and other similar combinations
upon our community and our political institutions? Is it true, as
asserted by the British writer quoted above, that the state must
soon recapture and control the railroads, or be captured and
subjugated by them? Or do the phenomena we are witnessing indicate
that general breaking-up of the social and political order of modern
nations so confidently predicted by a class of philosophers whose
opinions have hitherto made but little impression on the public
mind?

“The analogy between the industrial condition of society at the
present time and the feudalism of the Middle Ages is both striking
and instructive.

“In the darkness and chaos of that period the feudal system was the
first important step toward the organization of modern nations.
Powerful chiefs and barons intrenched themselves in castles, and in
return for submission and service gave to their vassals rude
protection and ruder laws. But as the feudal chiefs grew in power
and wealth they became the oppressors of their people, taxed and
robbed them at will, and finally in their arrogance, defied the
kings and emperors of the mediæval states. From their castles,
planted on the great thoroughfares, they practiced the most
capricious extortions on commerce and travel, and thus gave to
modern language the phrase, ‘levy black-mail.’

“The consolidation of our great industrial and commercial companies,
the power they wield and the relations they sustain to the state and
to the industry of the people, do not fall far short of Fourier’s
definition of commercial or industrial feudalism. The modern barons,
more powerful than their military prototypes, own our greatest
highways and levy tribute at will upon all our vast industries. And
as the old feudalism was finally controlled and subordinated only by
the combined efforts of the kings and the people of the free cities
and towns, so our modern feudalism can be subordinated to the public
good only by the great body of the people, acting through the
government by wise and just laws.

“I shall not now enter upon the discussion of methods by which this
grand work of adjustment may be accomplished. But I refuse to
believe that the genius and energy which have developed these
tremendous forces will fail to make them, not the masters, but the
faithful servants of society.”

This chapter has so far been devoted to General Garfield’s public life during this period. One would think that what has been recounted occupied all his time and powers. Not so. With his political and financial studies he kept up his literary life. On June 29, 1869, he delivered an oration, before the Commercial College in Washington City, on the “Elements of Success.” We select a few thought-flowers from the blooming garden of the address. At the outset he said:

“I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than a man. I never meet a
ragged boy on the street without feeling that I owe him a salute,
for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his
shabby coat. When I meet you in the full flush of mature life, I see
nearly all there is of you; but among these boys are the great men
of the future—the heroes of the next generation, the philosophers,
the statesmen, the philanthropists, the great reformers and molders
of the next age. Therefore, I say, there is a peculiar charm to me
in the exhibitions of young people engaged in the business of
education.”...

Speaking of the modern college curriculum, he said:

“The prevailing system was established at a time when the learning
of the world was in Latin and Greek; when, if a man would learn
arithmetic, he must first learn Latin; and if he would learn the
history and geography of his own country, he could acquire that
knowledge only through the Latin language. Of course, in those days
it was necessary to lay the foundation of learning in a knowledge of
the learned languages. The universities of Europe, from which our
colleges were copied, were founded before the modern languages were
born. The leading languages of Europe are scarcely six hundred years
old. The reasons for a course of study then are not good now. The
old necessities have passed away. We now have strong and noble
living languages, rich in literature, replete with high and earnest
thought,—the language of science, religion, and liberty,—and yet we
bid our children feed their spirits on the life of dead ages,
instead of the inspiring life and vigor of our own times.

“The present Chancellor of the British Exchequer, the Right
Honorable Robert Lowe, one of the brightest minds in that kingdom,
said, in a recent address before the venerable University of
Edinburgh: ‘I was a few months ago in Paris, and two graduates of
Oxford went with me to get our dinner at a restaurant, and if the
white-aproned waiter had not been better educated than all three of
us, we might have starved to death. We could not ask for our dinner
in his language, but fortunately he could ask us in our own language
what we wanted.’ There was one test of the insufficiency of modern
education....

“Let me beg you, in the outset of your career, to dismiss from your
minds all idea of succeeding by luck. There is no more common
thought among young people than that foolish one that by-and-by
something will turn up by which they will suddenly achieve fame or
fortune. No, young gentlemen; things don’t turn up in this world
unless somebody turns them up. Inertia is one of the indispensable
laws of matter, and things lie flat where they are until by some
intelligent spirit (for nothing but spirit makes motion in this
world) they are endowed with activity and life. Luck is an _ignis
fatuus_. You may follow it to ruin, but not to success. The great
Napoleon, who believed in his destiny, followed it until he saw his
star go down in blackest night, when the Old Guard perished round
him, and Waterloo was lost. A pound of pluck is worth a ton of
luck....

“Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of
ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed
overboard, and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my
acquaintance I have never known one to be drowned who was worth
saving. This would not be wholly true in any country but one of
political equality like ours. The editor of one of the leading
magazines of England told me, not many months ago, a fact startling
enough in itself, but of great significance to a poor man. He told
me that he had never yet known, in all his experience, a single boy
of the class of farm-laborers (not those who own farms, but mere
farm-laborers) who had ever risen above his class. Boys from the
manufacturing and commercial classes had risen frequently, but from
the farm-labor class he had never known one.

“The reason is this: in the aristocracies of the Old World, wealth
and society are built up like the strata of rock which compose the
crust of the earth. If a boy be born in the lowest stratum of life,
it is almost impossible for him to rise through this hard crust into
the higher ranks; but in this country it is not so. The strata of
our society resembles rather the ocean, where every drop, even the
lowest, is free to mingle with all others, and may shine at last on
the crest of the highest wave.”

His correspondence is full of glimpses of literary life. At one time he breaks into glee over a new book. At another he solemnly urges the necessity of his friend Hinsdale and himself mastering French and German. Again he sighs for more time to read, and, with the reader’s inconsistency, gives an elaborate criticism of some book he had just finished. Once he says:

“I can’t see that John Stuart Mill ever came to comprehend human
life as a reality from the actual course of human affairs beginning
with Greek life down to our own. Men and women were always, with
him, more or less of the nature of abstractions; while, with his
enormous mass of books, he learned a wonderful power of analysis,
for which he was by nature surprisingly fitted. But his education
was narrow just where his own mind was originally deficient. He was
educated solely through books; for his father was never a companion.
His brothers and sisters bored him. He had no playfellows, _and of
his mother not a word is said in his autobiography_.”

The last fact mentioned must have seemed remarkable to Garfield. In another letter, he says:

“Permit me to transcribe a metrical version which I made the other
day of the third ode of Horace’s first book. It is still in the
rough.”

And then he actually gives a full translation of the poem: “To the Ship which carried Virgil to Athens.” At the close, he naively says: “I can better most of the verses.” Every peep of his private life has an exquisite charm. It perpetually surprises one with its frankness, its simplicity, and artless affection. In Homer’s _Iliad_, the great Hector, clad in dazzling armor and helmet, stoops to kiss his child before going forth to mortal combat. But the child drew back, afraid of his strange and terrible aspect. Swiftly the father removed the panoply of war, and then stooped to the child to be received with outstretched arms. In the fierce arena of debate we see Garfield clad with the stern helmet and buckler of battle. But in his private life he laid aside the armor, and stood forth in all the beauty of a grand, simple, and affectionate nature.

During the period covered by this chapter his home remained at Hiram, Ohio, where he spent his vacations from Congress. Here he lived in a very modest manner, keeping neither carriage nor horse, and borrowing or hiring when he desired to be conveyed to the railroad station, four miles off.

Mr. Frederick E. Warren, an attorney of Cincinnati, Ohio, was a student at Hiram College from 1869 to 1875. During this time he became acquainted with General Garfield. Of his impressions and acquaintance he furnishes a vivacious narrative. He says:

“General Garfield’s return home was always an event with the college
boys, by whom he was greatly admired and beloved. My earliest
impressions of him, as he came one morning striding up the old plank
walk that stretched across the college campus, realized all that I
had heard spoken of him as to his appearance and bearing. Even God
had seemed to set his seal upon him, ‘to give the world assurance of
a _man_.’ Subsequent acquaintance merely ripened this impression.
None of us required a formal introduction to him. The boys and he
instinctively knew each other. He took the stranger cordially by the
hand, gave him a kindly and encouraging word, and made him feel at
once that he was his _friend_, and you may rest assured that the boy
was forever _his_.

“We learned much from the General’s ‘talks,’ as he styled them.
Whenever at home, he regularly attended the chapel exercises each
morning. As soon as the religious services were concluded, he
invariably was called upon to say something; to give us a ‘talk.’ He
never failed to respond. His remarks were usually brief, but
delightfully instructive, and there was a freshness and novelty
which characterized them that I have never met with in any other
public speaker or teacher.

“On one occasion, when going to chapel, he saw a horse-shoe lying at
the side of the path, which he picked up, and carried along with
him. After prayer, when asked, as usual, to say something to us (I
must sorrowfully confess that a majority of the boys were impatient
of prayers when the General was about), he produced the horse-shoe,
and proceeded to explain its history and use from the remotest
period, in so entertaining a manner that I am sure that no one who
was present has ever forgotten it. At another time he delivered a
similar off-hand lecture upon the hammer, suggested by one he had
found somewhere about the college premises. In all he said to the
students he was eminently practical, and it seemed to us that he
could convey more information in fifteen minutes’ talk than the
combined faculty could have done in an hour.

“The general effect of these frequent brief discourses can readily
be imagined. The more thoughtful vacated the playground, and
gathered in groups about the boarding places, to discuss some
question of interest suggested by the General, or retired to their
rooms for reading and reflection upon the subject, inspired with a
renewed love of knowledge, and desire for improvement.

“His application to business and study was extraordinary. It
appeared to make no difference at what hour of the day or night one
called upon him, he would be found in his library at work. If there
was a ‘night owl’ _par excellence_ in Hiram College from the winter
of 1869 until the winter of 1875, it was myself, yet however late
the hour I retired might be, I had but to look three doors westward
to see the light still burning in General Garfield’s window, and he
was nearly always up with the sun. It was often asked if he ever
slept.

“_Apropos_ of this, I am able to recall a very agreeable incident,
and one highly characteristic of the man. I was reading late one
night Momssen’s ‘History of Rome,’ and several times came across the
word ‘symmachy,’ which I failed to find in the English dictionary.
Somewhat puzzled with its frequent recurrence, and seeing that the
General was still up, I decided, although it was two o’clock in the
morning, to call upon him for the meaning of the word. I found him
hard at work, and after excusing myself for the interruption,
explained the object of my unseasonable visit. He immediately
replied: ‘It is coined from the Greek, a frequent practice with
Momssen;’ and taking from a book-case a Greek lexicon, he quickly
furnished me with the information I was in quest of. He then
insisted upon my sitting down, and for a couple of hours entertained
me with an account of a recent trip to Europe.

“Leaving this topic, he returned to Momssen, whom he pronounced
eccentric and tedious, and indulged in a lengthy and learned
comparison between him and Niebuhr.

“I noticed upon his shelves a copy of Bryant’s translation of Homer.
He complained that the book-seller had sent him an imperfect copy,
there being one hundred and ninety lines at the beginning of the
first volume omitted through the carelessness of the binder. He
repeated some of the omitted lines, and spoke of them in terms of
high critical eulogy. It was quite daylight before he allowed me to
depart.

“The General was very peculiar in the discipline of his children.
One evening an agent for a Babcock Fire Extinguisher was exhibiting
the machine on a pile of lighted tarred boxes, on the public square,
in the presence of a large crowd, among them General Garfield and
his little son Jim, who is a chip off the old block, as the saying
is. A gentleman accidentally stepped on the boy’s foot. He did not
yell, as most boys might have done under such a pressure, but
savagely sprang at the gentleman and dealt him a blow with his fist
somewhere in the region of the abdomen, about as high as he could
reach. The father observed it, and immediately had the crowd open
and ordered the fireman to turn the hose upon Jim, which was done,
and the boy was extinguished in less than a minute.

“When he was in Washington, and we wanted—as frequently happened—any
public documents or any facts to aid us in our society debates,
which were not accessible from any other source, all we had to do
was to write to the General for them, and it was flattering to us
how promptly he complied with these requests.

“While apparently of the most amiable temper, he taught us the duty
of self-defense, and the right to resist aggression. He was not by
any means a non-combatant, and when aroused must have borne some
resemblance to an enraged lion. I understand he entered the war as a
soldier with extraordinary zeal, and the country knows with what
gallantry he fought its battles. He was naturally a belligerent, but
discipline, the habitual practice of self-command, and a strong
religious sense, enabled him to keep this warlike disposition under
perfect control. He was an excellent boxer and fencer, a good shot
with both rifle and pistol, and took a lively interest in all manly
exercises. He was a skillful croquet player, and enlivened the game
with constant conversation, which made it a most agreeable pastime
to the other players and lookers on.”

Can biography anywhere present a more simple, manly nature? Is there a better sign of it than to be beloved by college boys?

In Washington, up to 1869, he boarded a part of the time, and lived in a rented house for the remainder. In that year he built the comfortable residence on the corner of Thirteenth and I Streets, opposite Franklin Square, which he continued to occupy till his election to the Presidency. The whole house overflowed with books, but the library was the most characteristic room. General Garfield’s reading was in special fields of investigation. At one time he explored and studied the entire subject of Goethe and his contemporaries and critics. Horace was also the subject of enormous study. Of all that he read he made elaborate notes. He made a whole library of scrap books, all perfectly indexed. The habit was begun on his first entrance into public life. These were supplemented by prodigious diaries. Probably no man ever left such a complete record of his intellectual life upon paper. In addition to all this, he kept a series of labeled drawers, in which were filed away newspaper cuttings, items, pamphlets, and documents. This collection was most carefully classified and indexed by subjects. It is easy to see why Garfield was known as the best posted and readiest man in Congress. His marvelous memory and splendid system enabled him, on short notice, to open the drawer containing all the material on almost any subject, and equip himself in an hour for battle. No encyclopedia could compare in value with this collection to its owner. It made Garfield absolutely terrible in debate. A charge would be made, a historical reference indicated by some poorly-posted antagonist; at the next session Garfield was on hand with the documents to overwhelm his opponent.

Among the many literary and other miscellaneous addresses delivered during this period, was one of November 25, 1870, before the Army of the Cumberland, on the “Life and Character of George H. Thomas,” and one on “The Future of the Republic,” delivered July 2d, 1873, before the students of Hudson College. From the former we give extracts, although to give any thing less than the entire address is spoliation. As an argument defending Thomas from Robert E. Lee’s charge of disloyalty, it is overwhelming. Garfield loved Thomas as a brother; and with the dead hero for a theme, the orator rose to the loftiest heights. Among his opening remarks were the following:

“There are now living not less than two hundred thousand men who
served under the eye of General Thomas; who saw him in sunshine and
storm—on the march, in the fight, and on the field when the victory
had been won. Enshrined in the hearts of all these, are enduring
images and most precious memories of their commander and friend. Who
shall collect and unite into one worthy picture, the bold outlines,
the innumerable lights and shadows which make up the life and
character of our great leader? Who shall condense into a single hour
the record of a life which forms so large a chapter of the Nation’s
history, and whose fame fills and overfills a hemisphere? No line
can be omitted, no false stroke made, no imperfect sketching done,
which you, his soldiers, will not instantly detect and deplore. I
know that each of you here present sees him in memory at this
moment, as we often saw him in life; erect and strong, like a tower
of solid masonry; his broad, square shoulders and massive head; his
abundant hair and full beard of light brown, sprinkled with silver;
his broad forehead, full face, and features that would appear
colossal, but for their perfect harmony of proportion; his clear
complexion, with just enough color to assure you of robust health
and a well-regulated life; his face lighted up by an eye which was
cold gray to his enemies, but warm, deep blue to his friends; not a
man of iron, but of live oak. His attitude, form, and features, all
assured you of inflexible firmness, of inexpugnable strength; while
his welcoming smile set every feature aglow with a kindness that won
your manliest affection. If thus in memory you see his form and
features, even more vividly do you remember the qualities of his
mind and heart. His body was the fitting type of his intellect and
character; and you saw both his intellect and character tried, again
and again, in the fiery furnace of war, and by other tests not less
searching. Thus, comrades, you see him; and your memories supply a
thousand details which complete and adorn the picture.”

In closing what might be called more particularly the biographical portion of the address he said:

“Thomas’s life is a notable illustration of the virtue and power of
hard work; and in the last analysis the power to do hard work is
only another name for talent. Professor Church, one of his
instructors at West Point, says of his student life, that ‘he never
allowed any thing to escape a thorough examination, and left nothing
behind that he did not fully comprehend.’ And so it was in the army.
To him a battle was neither an earthquake nor a volcano, nor a chaos
of brave men and frantic horses, involved in vast explosions of
gunpowder. It was rather a calm, rational concentration of force
against force. It was a question of lines and positions; of weight
of metal and strength of battalions. He knew that the elements and
forces which bring victory are not created on the battle-field, but
must be patiently elaborated in the quiet of the camp, by the
perfect organization and outfit of his army. His remark to a captain
of artillery, while inspecting a battery, is worth remembering, for
it exhibits his theory of success: ‘Keep every thing in order, for
the fate of a battle may turn on a buckle or a linch-pin.’ He
understood so thoroughly the condition of his army, and its
equipment, that when the hour of trial came, he knew how great a
pressure it could stand, and how hard a blow it could strike.

“His character was as grand and as simple as a colossal pillar of
chiseled granite. Every step of his career as a soldier was marked
by the most loyal and unhesitating obedience to law—to the laws of
his government and to the commands of his superiors. The obedience
which he rendered to those above him he rigidly required of those
under his command.

“His influence over his troops grew steadily and constantly. He won
his ascendancy over them, neither by artifice nor by any one act of
special daring, but he gradually filled them with his own spirit,
until their confidence in him knew no bounds. His power as a
commander was developed slowly and silently; not like volcanic land
lifted from the sea by sudden and violent upheaval, but rather like
a coral island, where each increment is a growth—an act of life and
work.

“Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms—strength and
force—each possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its
own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain.
Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, the thunderbolt.
The great tragic poet of Greece, in describing the punishment of
Prometheus for rebellion against Jupiter, represented Vulcan
descending from heaven, attended by two mighty spirits, Strength and
Force, by whose aid he held and bound Prometheus to the rock.

“In subduing our great rebellion, the Republic called to its aid men
who represented many forms of great excellence and power. A very few
of our commanders possessed more force than Thomas—more genius for
planning and executing bold and daring enterprises; but, in my
judgment, no other was so complete in embodiment and incarnation of
strength—the strength that resists, maintains, and endures. His
power was not that of the cataract which leaps in fury down the
chasm, but rather that of the river, broad and deep, whose current
is steady, silent, and irresistible.”

From the peroration the following is taken:

“The language applied to the Iron Duke, by the historian of the
Peninsular War, might also be mistaken for a description of Thomas.
Napier says:

“‘He held his army in hand, keeping it, with unmitigated labor,
always in a fit state to march or to fight.... Sometimes he was
indebted to fortune, sometimes to his natural genius, always to his
untiring industry; for he was emphatically a painstaking man.’

“The language of Lord Brougham, addressed to Wellington, is a
fitting description of Thomas:

“‘Mighty captain! who never advanced except to cover his arms with
glory; mightier captain! who never retreated except to eclipse the
glory of his advance.’

“If I remember correctly, no enemy was ever able to fight Thomas out
of any position he undertook to hold.

“On the whole, I can not doubt that the most fitting parallel to
General Thomas is found in our greatest American, the man who was
‘first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen.’ The personal resemblance of General Thomas to
Washington was often the subject of remark. Even at West Point,
Rosecrans was accustomed to call him General Washington. He
resembled Washington in the gravity and dignity of his character; in
the solidity of his judgment; in the careful accuracy of all his
transactions; in his incorruptible integrity, and in his extreme,
but unaffected, modesty....

“But his career is ended. Struck dead at his post of duty, a
bereaved nation bore his honored dust across the continent and laid
it to rest on the banks of the Hudson, amidst the tears and grief of
millions. The nation stood at his grave as a mourner. No one knew
until he was dead how strong was his hold on the hearts of the
American people. Every citizen felt that a pillar of state had
fallen; that a great and true and pure man had passed from earth.

“There are no fitting words in which I may speak of the loss which
every member of this society has sustained in his death.

“The general of the army has beautifully said, in his order
announcing the death of Thomas:

“‘Though he leaves no child to bear his name, the _Old Army of the
Cumberland_, numbered by tens of thousands, called him father, and
will weep for him in tears of manly grief.’

“To us, his comrades, he has left the rich legacy of his friendship.
To his country and to mankind, he has left his character and his
fame as a priceless and everlasting possession.

“‘O iron nerve to true occasion true!
O fallen at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!’
... ‘His work is done;
But while the races of mankind endure,
Let his great example stand
Colossal seen of every land,
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure,
Till in all lands and through all human story,
The path of Duty be the way to Glory.’”