Chapter VIII · THE NOONTIDE. (continued 2)

It has been a question whether outsiders ought to have been at New Orleans at all in this emergency. Certainly a public man ran great risk of doing himself harm by going, and it required the utmost circumspection to get out of it, clear from suspicion of evil. A year afterward this affair was examined by the Potter Committee, 291and of Garfield, the worst they could say was this: “We found no fault in him.”

But the struggle at New Orleans did not decide it all. When January came it was seen that there would still be trouble in deciding who were elected. It was feared by all that an attempt to decide by the existing laws, without the help of further provisions, might lead to serious difficulties.

Accordingly, on January 29, 1877, there was passed in the House a law providing for the Electoral Commission, a body to be composed of five Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, five Senators and five Representatives, to whom should be committed the duty of deciding, by their recommendation, the votes of any disputed States.

General Garfield was opposed to this commission, which he thought an unhappy way of ending the trouble. His views are given in a speech made to the House, on January 25, wherein he said:

“What, then, are the grounds on which we should consider a bill like this? It would be unbecoming in me or in any member of this Congress to oppose this bill on mere technical or trifling grounds. It should be opposed, if at all, for reasons so broad, so weighty, as to overcome all that has been said in its favor, and all the advantages which I have here admitted may follow from its passage. I do not wish to diminish the stature of my antagonist; I do not wish to undervalue the points of strength in a measure before I question its propriety. It is not enough that this bill will tide us over a present danger, however great. Let us for a moment forget Hayes and Tilden, Republicans and Democrats; let us forget our own epoch and our own generation; and, entering a broader field, inquire how this thing which we are about to do will effect the great feature of our republic, and in what condition, if we pass this bill, we shall transmit our institutions to those who shall come after us. The present good which we shall achieve by it may be very great; yet if the evils that will flow from it in the future must be greater, it would be base in us to flinch from trouble by entailing remediless evils upon our children.

“In my view, then, the foremost question is this: What will be the effect of this measure upon our institutions? I can not make that inquiry intelligibly without a brief reference to the history of the Constitution, and to some of the formidable questions which presented themselves to 292our fathers nearly a hundred years ago, when they set up this goodly frame of Government.

“Among the foremost difficulties, both in point of time and magnitude, was how to create an executive head of the Nation. Our fathers encountered that difficulty the first morning after they organized and elected the officers of the Constitutional Convention. The first resolution introduced by Randolph, of Virginia, on the 29th day of May, recognized that great question, and invited the Convention to its examination. The men who made the Constitution were deeply read in the profoundest political philosophy of their day. They had learned from Montesquieu, from Locke, from Fénelon, and other good teachers of the human race, that liberty is impossible without a clear and distinct separation of the three great powers of government. A generation before their epoch, Montesquieu had said:

“‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws and execute them in a tyrannical manner.

“‘There would be an end of every thing were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise these three powers, that of enacting the laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.’

“This was a fundamental truth in the American mind, as it had long been cherished and practiced in the British empire.

“There, as in all monarchies, the creation of a chief executive was easily regulated by adopting a dynasty, and following the law of primogeniture.

“But our fathers had drawn the deeper lesson of liberty from the inspirations of this free New World, that their Chief Executive should be born, not of a dynasty, but of the will of a free people regulated by law.

“In the course of their deliberations upon this subject, there were suggested seven different plans, which may be grouped under two principal heads or classes. One group comprised all the plans for creating the Chief Executive by means of some one of the preëxisting political organizations of the country. First and foremost was the proposition to authorize one or both Houses of the National Legislature to elect the Chief Executive. Another was to confer that power upon the governors 293of the States, or upon the legislatures of the States. Another, that he should be chosen directly by the people themselves under the laws of the States. The second group comprised all the various plans for creating a new and separate instrumentality for making the choice.

“At first the proposition that the Executive should be elected by the National Legislature was received by the Convention with almost unanimous approval; and for the reason that up to that time Congress had done all that was done in the way of national government. It had created the nation and led its fortunes through a thousand perils, had declared and achieved independence, and had preserved the liberty of the people in the midst of a great war. Though Congress had failed to secure a firm and stable Government after the war, yet its glory was not forgotten. As Congress had created the Union, it was most natural that our fathers should say Congress should also create the Chief Executive of the nation. And within two weeks after the Convention assembled, they voted for that plan with absolute unanimity.

“But with equal unanimity they agreed that this plan would be fatal to the stability of the Government they were about to establish, if they did not couple with it some provision that should make the President’s functions independent of the power that created him. To effect this, they provided that the President should be ineligible for reëlection. They said it would never do to create a Chief Executive by the voice of the National Legislature, and then allow him to be reëlected by that same voice; for he would thus become their creature.

“And so, from the first day of their session in May, to within five days of its close in September, they grappled with the mighty question. I have many times, and recently very carefully, gone through all the records that are left to us of that great transaction. I find that more than one-seventh of all the pages of the Madison papers are devoted to this Samson of questions, how the Executive should be chosen and made independent of the organization that made the choice. This topic alone occupied more than one-seventh of all the time of the Convention.

“After a long and earnest debate, after numerous votes and reconsiderations, they were obliged utterly to abandon the plan of creating the Chief Executive by means of the National Legislature. I will not stop now to prove the statement by a dozen or more pungent quotations from the masters of political science in that great assembly, in which they declared that it would be ruinous to the liberty of the people and 294to the permanence of the Republic if they did not absolutely exclude the National Legislature from any share in the election of the President.

“They pointed with glowing eloquence to the sad but instructive fate of those brilliant Italian republics that were destroyed because there was no adequate separation of powers, and because their senates overwhelmed and swallowed up the executive power, and, as secret and despotic conclaves, became the destroyers of Italian liberty.

“At the close of the great discussion, when the last vote on this subject was taken by our fathers, they were almost unanimous in excluding the National Legislature from any share whatever in the choice of the Chief Executive of the nation. They rejected all the plans of the first group, and created a new instrumentality. They adopted the system of electors. When that plan was under discussion, they used the utmost precaution to hedge it about by every conceivable protection against the interference or control of Congress.

“In the first place, they said the States shall create the electoral colleges. They allowed Congress to have nothing whatever to do with the creation of the colleges, except merely to fix the time when the States should appoint them. And, in order to exclude Congress by positive prohibition, in the last days of the Convention they provided that no member of either House of Congress should be appointed an elector; so that not even by the personal influence of any one of its members could the Congress interfere with the election of a President.

“The creation of a President under our Constitution consists of three distinct steps: First, the creation of the electoral colleges; second, the vote of colleges; and third, the opening and counting of their votes. This is the simple plan of the Constitution.

“The creation of the colleges is left absolutely to the States, within the five limitations I had the honor to mention to the House a few days ago. First, it must be a State that appoints electors; second, the State is limited as to the number of electors it may appoint; third, electors shall not be members of Congress or officers of the United States; fourth, the time for appointing electors may be fixed by Congress; and, fifth, the time when their appointment is announced, which must be before the date for giving their votes, may also be fixed by Congress.

“These five simple limitations, and these alone, were laid upon the States. Every other act, fact, and thing possible to be done in creating the electoral colleges was absolutely and uncontrollably in the power of 295the States themselves. Within these limitations, Congress has no more power to touch them in this work than England or France. That is the first step.

“The second is still plainer and simpler, namely, the work of the colleges. They were created as an independent and separate power, or set of powers, for the sole purpose of electing a President. They were created by the States. Congress has just one thing to do with them, and only one: it may fix the day when they shall meet. By the act of 1792 Congress fixed the day as it still stands in the law; and there the authority of the Congress over the colleges ended.

“There was a later act—of 1845—which gave to the States the authority to provide by law for filling vacancies of electors in these colleges; and Congress has passed no other law on the subject.

“The States having created them, the time of their assemblage having been fixed by Congress, and their power to fill vacancies having been regulated by State laws, the colleges are as independent in the exercise of their functions as is any department of the Government within its sphere. Being thus equipped, their powers are restrained by a few simple limitations laid upon them by the Constitution itself: first, they must vote for a native-born citizen; second, for a man who has been fourteen years a resident of the United States; third, at least one of the persons for whom they vote must not be a citizen of their own State; fourth, the mode of voting and certifying their returns is prescribed by the Constitution itself. Within these simple and plain limitations the electoral colleges are absolutely independent of the States and of Congress.

“One fact in the history of the Constitutional Convention, which I have not seen noticed in any of the recent debates, illustrates very clearly how careful our fathers were to preserve these colleges from the interference of Congress, and to protect their independence by the bulwarks of the Constitution itself. In the draught of the electoral system reported September 4, 1787, it was provided that Congress ‘may determine the time of choosing and assembling of the electors and the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes.’

“That was the language of the original draught; but our fathers had determined that the National Legislature should have nothing to do with the action of the colleges; and the words that gave Congress the power to prescribe the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes were stricken out. The instrument itself prescribed the mode. Thus Congress 296was wholly expelled from the colleges. The Constitution swept the ground clear of all intruders, and placed its own imperial guardianship around the independence of the electoral colleges by forbidding even Congress to enter the sacred circle. No Congressman could enter; and, except to fix the day of their meeting, Congress could not speak to the electors.

“These colleges are none the less sovereign and independent because they exist only for a day. They meet on the same day in all the States; they do their work summarily in one day, and dissolve for ever. There is no power to interfere, no power to recall them, no power to revise their action. Their work is done; the record is made up, signed, sealed, and transmitted; and thus the second great act in the Presidential election is completed. I ought to correct myself; the second act is the Presidential election. The election is finished the hour when the electoral colleges have cast their votes and sealed up the record.

“Still, there is a third step in the process; and it is shorter, plainer, simpler than the other two. These sealed certificates of the electoral colleges are forwarded to the President of the Senate, where they rest under the silence of the seals for more than two months. The Constitution assumes that the result of the election is still unknown. But on a day fixed by law, and the only day of all the days of February on which the law commands Congress to be in session, the last act in the plan of electing a President is to be performed.

“How plain and simple are the words that describe this third and last step. Here they are:

“‘The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.’

“Here is no ambiguity. Two words dominate and inspire the clause. They are the words open and count. These words are not shrouded in the black-letter mysteries of the law. They are plain words, understood by every man who speaks our mother-tongue, and need no lexicon or commentary.

“Consider the grand and simple ceremonial by which the third act is to be completed. On the day fixed by law the two Houses of Congress are assembled. The President of the Senate, who, by the Constitution, has been made the custodian of the sealed certificates from all the electoral colleges, takes his place. The Constitution requires a ‘person’ and a ‘presence.’ That ‘person’ is the President of the Senate; and that 297‘presence’ is the ‘presence’ of the two Houses. Then two things are to be done. The certificates are to be opened, and the votes are to be counted. These are not legislative acts, but clearly and plainly executive acts. I challenge any man to find anywhere an accepted definition of an executive act that does not include both these. They can not be tortured into a meaning that will carry them beyond the boundaries of executive action. And one of these acts the President of the Senate is peremptorily ordered to perform. The Constitution commands him to ‘open all the certificates.’ Certificates of what? Certificates of the votes of the electoral colleges. Not any certificates that any body may choose to send, but certificates of electors appointed by the States. The President of the Senate is presumed to know what are the States in the Union, who are their officers, and, when he opens the certificates, he learns from the official record who have been appointed electors, and he finds their votes.

“The Constitution contemplated the President of the Senate as the Vice-President of the United States, the elect of all the people. And to him is confided the great trust, the custodianship of the only official record of the election of President. What is it to ‘open the certificates’? It would be a narrow and inadequate view of that word to say that it means only the breaking of the seals. To open an envelope is not to ‘open the certificates.’ The certificate is not the paper on which the record is made; it is the record itself. To open the certificates is not a physical but an intellectual act. It is to make patent the record; to publish it. When that is done the election of President and Vice-President is published. But one thing remains to be done; and here the language of the Constitution changes from the active to the passive voice, from the personal to the impersonal. To the trusted custodian of the votes succeeds the impersonality of arithmetic; the votes have been made known; there remains only the command of the Constitution: ‘They shall be counted’—that is, the numbers shall be added up.

“No further act is required. The Constitution itself declares the result:

“‘The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.’

“If no person has such majority, the House of Representatives shall immediately choose a President; not the House as organized for legislation, but a new electoral college is created out of the members of the House, by means of which each State has one vote for President, and only one.

298“To review the ground over which I have traveled: The several acts that constitute the election of a President may be symbolized by a pyramid consisting of three massive, separate blocks. The first, the creation of the electoral college by the States, is the broad base. It embraces the legislative, the judicial, and the executive powers of the States. All the departments of the State government and all the voters of the State coöperate in shaping and perfecting it.

“The action of the electoral colleges forms the second block, perfect in itself, and independent of the others, superimposed with exactness upon the first.

“The opening and counting of the votes of the colleges is the little block that crowns and completes the pyramid.

“Such, Mr. Speaker, was the grand and simple plan by which the framers of the Constitution empowered all the people, acting under the laws of the several States, to create special and select colleges of independent electors to choose a President, who should be, not the creature of Congress, nor of the States, but the Chief Magistrate of the whole Nation—the elect of all the people.”

But the Electoral Commission was constituted by law, and Garfield himself chosen unanimously by his party as a member thereof. He accepted, saying: “Since you have appointed me, I will serve. I can act on a committee when I do not believe in its validity.” That fact could not affect the justice of his decisions.

It is impossible to even hint at more than a small portion of the vast field of work which occupied General Garfield during this and the succeeding Congress.

On November 16, 1877, he made a very able speech on the subject of Resumption of Payments; an address which would serve to perpetuate his fame, if he had no other monument.

In the Atlantic Monthly of February, 1876, appeared an article from his pen, entitled “The Currency Conflict.” On June 4, of the same year, he opposed, in an elaborate address, a tariff bill brought in by Mr. Morrison, of Illinois.

June 22, 1876, was to him the “sad occasion dear” of a revival of precious memories. In the preceding December his old friend and fellow-student of Hiram, Miss Booth, had died, and this day 299in June was appointed there for a memorial address by General Garfield. As at all such times when he spoke, we are struck with a sense of the wonderful delicacy of this man’s nature, which responded so perfectly to every delicate and holy sentiment known to the human heart. His very first words were:

“Mr. President: You have called me to a duty at once most sad and most sacred. At every step of my preparation for its performance, I have encountered troops of thronging memories that swept across the field of the last twenty-five years of my life, and so filled my heart with the lights and shadows of their joy and sorrow that I have hardly been able to marshal them into order or give them coherent voice. I have lived over again the life of this place. I have seen again the groups of young and joyous students, ascending these green slopes, dwelling for a time on this peaceful height in happy and workful companionship, and then, with firmer step, and with more serious and thoughtful faces, marching away to their posts in the battle of life.

“And still nearer and clearer have come back the memories of that smaller band of friends, the leaders and guides of those who encamped on this training-ground. On my journey to this assembly, it has seemed that they, too, were coming, and that I should once more meet and greet them. And I have not yet been able to realize that Almeda Booth will not be with us. After our great loss, how shall we gather up the fragments of the life we lived in this place? We are mariners, treading the lonely shore in search of our surviving comrades and the fragments of our good ship, wrecked by the tempest. To her, indeed, it is no wreck. She has landed in safety, and ascended the immortal heights beyond our vision.”

The death of Michael C. Kerr having made necessary the selection of a new Speaker, the Democratic majority in the House elected Samuel J. Randall, and the complimentary vote of the Republicans went to General Garfield. He was also their candidate in the two succeeding Congresses. He had divided the honor of leadership pretty evenly with Mr. Blaine, until, in 1877, the latter gentleman went to the Senate, and left Garfield without a rival. Fourteen years of able and faithful service had done their work grandly for his power and his fame.

300On February 12, 1878, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, of New York City, presented to Congress that great painting of Carpenter, “Lincoln and Emancipation.” At her request the presentation address was made by General Garfield.

His important speeches during this Congress were even more numerous than usual; especially in the special session held in the spring and summer of 1879. One of the best was that of February 19, 1878, on the “Policy of Pacification, and the Prosecutions in Louisiana.” At this time there were two serious political storms brewing in the air. First, there were divisions in the Republican party, and an alienation of some of its leaders from President Hayes; second, the Democratic party, with its cries of “fraud,” concerning the last election, and its Potter Committee, and its prosecutions against the members of the Louisiana Returning Board, was trying to destroy the people’s confidence in the Government as then constituted. The latter quarrel no doubt was the salvation of the party concerned in the former. Its members rallied and united. Garfield was leader and chief promoter of Republican harmony, as well as the strongest bulwark against the enemy.

This speech of February 19 contains the following pithy paragraph, descriptive of the way in which the nation had passed through the transformations of war:

“There was, first, the military stage—the period of force, of open and bloody war—in which gentlemen of high character and honor met on the field, and decided by the power of the strongest the questions involved in the high court of war. That period passed, but did not leave us on the calm level of peace. It brought us to the period of transition, in which the elements of war and peace were mingled together in strange and anarchic confusion. It was a period of civil and military elements combined. All through that semi-military period the administration of General Grant had, of necessity, to conduct the country. His administration was not all civil, it was not all military; it was necessarily a combination of both; and out of that combination came many of the strange and anomalous situations which always follow such a war.”

Again:

“Our great military chieftain, who brought the war to a successful 301conclusion, had command as chief executive during eight years of turbulent, difficult, and eventful administration. He saw his administration drawing to a close, and his successor elected—who, studying the question, came to the conclusion that the epoch had arrived, the hour had struck, when it was possible to declare that the semi-military period was ended, and the era of peace methods, of civil processes, should be fully inaugurated. With that spirit, and at the beginning of this third era, Rutherford B. Hayes came into the Presidency. I ought to say that, in my judgment, more than any other public man we have known, the present head of the administration is an optimist. He looks on the best side of things. He is hopeful for the future, and prefers to look upon the bright side rather than upon the dark and sinister side of human nature. His faith is larger than the faith of most of us; and with his faith and hope he has gone to the very verge of the Constitution in offering both hands of fellowship and all the olive-branches of peace to bring back good feeling, and achieve the real pacification to this country.”

After this came a brief protest against the Bland Silver Bill, February 28, 1878. On March 6, 1878, he delivered his “New Scheme of American Finance,” being in answer to a personal attack of William D. Kelley, the great protective tariff advocate, of Pennsylvania. Other addresses were, “The Army and the Public Peace,” May 21, 1878; reply to Mr. Tucker on the “Tariff,” June 4, 1878; “Honest Money,” a speech delivered at Boston, in Faneuil Hall, September 10, 1878; “Suspension and Resumption of Specie Payments,” at Chicago, January 2, 1879, before the Honest Money League of the North-west; in memory of Joseph Henry, January 16,1879; “Relation of Government to Science,” February 11, 1879; in memory of the late Hon. Gustave Schleicher, February 17, 1879; and a very interesting speech of February 26, 1879, about the “Sugar Tariff.”

When March 3,1879, came, the Forty-Fifth Congress went out with much of its important business undone; two of the great appropriation bills had not passed on account of political difficulties. The Democrats attempted to force assent to some of their schemes by tacking their propositions to the Appropriation bill. But this measure the Republicans resisted to the last. And so it happened that in March, 1879, President Hayes was 302obliged to call an extra session. But here the old fight was renewed, and a long “dead lock” followed.

Throughout this struggle, Garfield was the central figure in the front rank of his party in the House. Scarcely had Congress assembled when the old Army Bill was reported. Then, in Committee of the Whole, the old “rider” was moved as an amendment. The Chair decided this amendment in order, whereupon there was great indignation on the Republican side, and a remarkable debate ensued. Garfield made his principal protest while things were in this situation, on March 29, 1879, in a speech entitled “Revolution in Congress.”

Throughout this special session the fierce heat of political conflict grew more intense every day, like the sun whose burning rays beat down upon the Capitol. On April 4, Garfield spoke again on the subject which had occupied his attention six days before. April 26, he spoke on the passage of the Legislative Appropriation Bill; May 17, against unlimited coinage of silver; June 19, on the Judicial Appropriation Bill; June 21, concerning a proposed survey of the Mississippi River, in the course of which he said:

“But for myself, I believe that one of the grandest of our material national interests—one that is national in the largest material sense of that word—is the Mississippi River and its navigable tributaries. It is the most gigantic single natural feature of our continent, far transcending the glory of the ancient Nile or of any other river on the earth. The statesmanship of America must grapple the problem of this mighty stream. It is too vast for any State to handle; too much for any authority less than that of the nation itself to manage. And I believe the time will come when the liberal-minded statesmanship of this country will devise a wise and comprehensive system, that will harness the powers of this great river to the material interests of America, so that not only all the people who live on its banks and the banks of its confluents, but all the citizens of the Republic, whether dwellers in the central valley or on the slope of either ocean, will recognize the importance of preserving and perfecting this great natural and material bond of national union between the North and the South—a bond to be so strengthened by commerce and intercourse that it can never be severed.”

303Thus refreshed by something more liberal than the recent discussions in which he had been engaged, Garfield soon resumed the struggle, and on June 27, 1879, gave the Democratic party and the South a regular broadside on “State Sovereignty.”

The Special Session of 1879 came to an end on July 1st. At its beginning the dominant power in the House loudly proclaimed its intention to push its measures through at all hazards. The appropriation bills, with their obnoxious “riders,” were passed; the President vetoed them. It then became a question of revolution or yielding. There was no revolution! Every dollar called for by the Government was voted, except the pay of the United States marshals, who overcame the difficulty by paying their own expenses, trusting a future session of Congress to repay them.

According to his custom, General Garfield spoke often during the Ohio campaign of 1879; a good specimen of his stump speeches is the one at Cleveland, on October 11th, of this year. At the Andersonville Reunion, held in Toledo, Ohio, on October 3d, he had been present and addressed the throng of Union soldiers and ex-prisoners who met there.

During the regular sessions of the Forty-Sixth Congress his activity was undiminished. In his speech of March 17, during the discussion of a bill to pay the United States marshals for the year ending June 30, 1880, we find such sterling utterances as these:

“Mr. Chairman: When I took my seat as a member of this House, I took it with all the responsibilities which the place brought upon me; and among others was my duty to keep the obligations of the law. Where the law speaks in mandatory terms to every body else and then to me, I should deem it cowardly and dishonorable if I should skulk behind my legislative privilege for the purpose of disobeying and breaking the supreme law of the land.

“The issue now made is somewhat different from that of the last session, but, in my judgment, it is not less significant and dangerous. I would gladly waive any party advantage which this controversy might 304give for the sake of that calm and settled peace which would reign in this Hall if we all obeyed the law. But if the leaders on the other side are still determined to rush upon their fate by forcing upon the country this last issue—that because the Democratic party happen not to like a law they will not obey it—because they happen not to approve of the spirit and character of a law they will not let it be executed—I say to gentlemen on the other side, if you are determined to make such an issue, it is high time that the American people should know it.

“Here is the volume of our laws. More sacred than the twelve tables of Rome, this rock of the law rises in monumental grandeur alike above the people and the President, above the courts, above Congress, commanding everywhere reverence and obedience to its supreme authority. Yet the dominant party in this House virtually declares that ‘any part of this volume that we do not like and can not repeal we will disobey. We have tried to repeal these election laws; we have failed because we had not the constitutional power to destroy them; the Constitution says they shall stand in their authority and power; but we, the Democratic party, in defiance of the Constitution, declare that if we can not destroy them outright by the repeal, they shall be left to crumble into ruin by wanton and lawless neglect.’

“Mr. Chairman, by far the most formidable danger that threatens the Republic to-day is the spirit of law-breaking which shows itself in many turbulent and alarming manifestations. The people of the Pacific Coast, after two years of wrestling with the spirit of communism in the city of San Francisco, have finally grappled with this lawless spirit, and the leader of it was yesterday sentenced to penal servitude as a violator of the law. But what can we say to Denis Kearney and his associates if to-day we announce ourselves the foremost law-breakers of the country and set an example to all the turbulent and vicious elements of disorder to follow us?

“I ask, gentlemen, whether this is a time when it is safe to disregard and weaken the authority of law. In all quarters the civil society of this country is becoming honeycombed through and through by disintegrating forces—in some States by the violation of contracts and the repudiation of debts; in others by open resistance and defiance; in still others by the reckless overturning of constitutions and letting the ‘red fool fury of the Seine’ run riot among our people and build its blazing altars to the strange gods of ruin and misrule. All these things are shaking the good order of 305society and threatening the foundations of our Government and our peace. In a time like this, more than ever before, this country needs a body of lawgivers clothed and in their right minds, who have laid their hands upon the altar of the law as its defenders, not its destroyers.”

April 5, 1880, General Garfield made a trenchant argument against a pet measure of the greenback apostle, Mr. Weaver. Five days afterward occurred a debate between Garfield and McMahon, also of Ohio, on the pending Appropriation bill.

On May first he made a personal explanation, defending his committee action in regard to the so-called wood-pulp monopoly. This pulp is obtained from soft wood and used in the manufacture of paper. The newspapers everywhere were calling for a removal of the duty on this their great necessity. Garfield stood out for a ten per cent. tariff, as a protection to our manufacturers from the Canadian manufacturers, who had no royalties to pay, and therefore could have undersold us. In this speech Garfield met the charge of being a monopoly supporter, and vindicated his policy on the disputed question.

Turning aside from this well-fought field where Garfield had so long stood, as a great representative of all that is good in the recent legislative history of our country, it is time to view the new honors which were now preparing for him.

On the fourteenth of January, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected James A. Garfield to the United States Senate, to succeed Mr. Thurman, whose term was to expire in the following March. So thoroughly had Garfield recovered from the wave of scandal which a few years earlier had swept over but could not overwhelm him, that he was the unanimous choice of his party; and the Democratic minority itself cordially united to make his election unanimous. All this came entirely without solicitation from him for such an honor.

At an informal reception held in the Capitol at Columbus, the evening after his election, General Garfield was called upon for a speech. In response, he made a brief and appropriate address. The following is an extract therefrom:

306“Fellow-Citizens:—I should be a great deal more than a man, or a great deal less than a man, if I were not extremely gratified by this mark of your kindness you have shown me in recent days. I did not expect any such meeting as this. I knew there was a greeting awaiting me, but I did not expect so cordial, generous, and general a greeting, without distinction of party, without distinction of interests, as I have received here to-night. And you will allow me in a moment or two to speak of the memories this chamber awakens.

“I recognize the importance of the place to which you have elected me, and I should be base if I did not also recognize the great man whom you have elected me to succeed. I say for him, Ohio has had few larger-minded, broader-minded men in the records of our history than that of Allen G. Thurman. Differing widely from him as I have done in politics, and do, I recognize him as a man high in character and great in intellect; and I take this occasion to refer to what I have never before referred to in public—that many years ago, in the storm of party fighting, when the air was filled with all sorts of missiles aimed at the character and reputation of public men, when it was even for his party interest to join the general clamor against me and my associates, Senator Thurman said in public, in the campaign, on the stump,—where men are as likely to say unkind things as at any place in the world,—a most generous and earnest word of defense and kindness for me, which I shall never forget as long as I live. I say, moreover, that the flowers that bloom over the garden wall of party politics are the sweetest and most fragrant that bloom in the gardens of this world; and where we can early pluck them and enjoy their fragrance, it is manly and delightful to do so.

“And now, gentlemen of the General Assembly, without distinction of party, I recognize this tribute and compliment made to me to-night. Whatever my own course may be in the future, a large share of the inspiration of my future public life will be drawn from this occasion and these surroundings, and I shall feel anew the sense of obligation that I owe to the State of Ohio. Let me venture to point a single sentence in regard to that work. During the twenty years that I have been in public life, almost eighteen of it in the Congress of the United States, I have tried to do one thing. Whether I was mistaken or otherwise, it has been the plan of my life to follow my convictions at whatever personal cost to myself. I have represented for many years a district in Congress whose approbation I greatly desired; but though it may seem, perhaps, a little 307egotistical to say it, I yet desired still more the approbation of one person, and his name is Garfield. He is the only man that I am compelled to sleep with, and eat with, and live with, and die with; and if I could not have his approbation, I should have bad companionship. And in this larger constituency which has called me to represent them now, I can only do what is true to my best self, applying the same rules. And if I should be so unfortunate as to lose the confidence of this larger constituency, I must do what every other fair-minded man has to do—carry his political life in his hand and take the consequences. But I must follow what seems to me to be the only safe rule of my life; and with that view of the case, and with that much personal reference, I leave the subject.

“Thanking you again, fellow-citizens, members of the General Assembly, Republicans and Democrats—all, party man as I am,—thanking you both for what you have done and for this cordial and manly greeting, I bid you good-night.”

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