Chapter IX · GREAT QUESTIONS AND GREAT ANSWERS. (continued 3)

There can be no question that Garfield was the most perfect master of the themes of revenue and expenditure in his generation. With the exception of the tariff, they were not questions which could be brought into politics. In their nature, they were so dry and complicated that the House itself, much less the people, knew but little of the enormous labor performed by General Garfield on the subject. He applied his immense energies to the task as cheerfully as if the questions were those of the next campaign, instead of being known only in the committee-room. His research would gain him no contemporary laurels, his toil bring him no applause. But he grappled with the monster of public debt, which had its clutch on England’s throat, and was reaching toward the New Republic. He who knew so well how to thrill the audience and shake the building with plausive thunders, embodied the results of his work in speeches, which his friends possibly thought impractical and certainly tiresome. They lie embalmed in the mighty mausoleum of the Congressional Record, hidden away from the prying eyes of mankind. Some future statesman, with more industry or genius than his contemporaries, will, perchance, come with pick and shovel to excavate and disinter the buried children of the brain. If so, like the recently-discovered remains at Mycenæ and Thebes, they will be pronounced of royal blood.

We now pass to the last branch of the subject discussed in this chapter. This relates to the record of Garfield in relation to questions concerning the general character and tendency of American institutions.

385This question opens the door to what would make a volume of General Garfield’s speeches. Under a rigid necessity of condensation, we can only give broken extracts from three addresses.

On July 2, 1873, before the students of the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio, he spoke on—

THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC.

“What do men mean when they predict the immortality of any thing earthly?

“The first Napoleon was one day walking through the galleries of the Louvre, filled with the wonders of art which he had stolen from the conquered capitals of Europe. As he passed the marvelous picture of Peter Martyr, one of the seven masterpieces of the world, he overheard an enthusiastic artist exclaim: ‘Immortal work!’ Turning quickly upon his heel, the Emperor asked: ‘What is the average life of an oil-painting?’ ‘Five hundred years,’ answered the artist. ‘Immortal!’ the Corsican scornfully repeated as he passed on, thinking doubtless of Austerlitz and Marengo. Six years ago the wonderful picture of Peter Martyr was dissolved in the flames of a burning church at Venice, and, like Austerlitz, is now only a memory and a dream.

“When the great lyric poet of Rome ventured to predict immortality for his works, he could think of no higher human symbol of immortality than the Eternal City and her institutions, crowded with seven centuries of glorious growth; and so Horace declared that his verses would be remembered as long as the high-priest of Apollo and the silent vestal virgin should climb the steps of the Capitol. Fifteen centuries ago the sacred fires of Vesta went out, never to be rekindled. For a thousand years Apollo has had no shrine, no priest, no worshiper on the earth. The steps of the Capitol, and the temples that crowned it, live only in dreams, and to-day the antiquary digs and disputes among the ruins, and is unable to tell us where on the Capitoline hill the great citadel of Rome stood.

“There is much in the history of dead empires to sadden and discourage our hope for the permanence of any human institution. But a deeper study reveals the fact that nations have perished only when their institutions have ceased to be serviceable to the human race; when their faith has become an empty form, and the destruction of the old is indispensable to the growth of the new. Growth is better than permanence; and 386permanent growth is better than all. Our faith is large in time; and we—

“‘Doubt not through the ages, an increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.’

“It matters little what may be the forms of national institutions, if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured. To save the life of a nation, it is sometimes necessary to discard the old form and make room for the new growth; for—

“‘Old decays but foster new creations;

Bones and ashes feed the golden corn;

Fresh elixirs wander every moment

Down the veins through which the live part feeds its child, the life unborn.’

“There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation—the forces of repression and expression. The one acts from without—limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within—expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs belong to the first. The free play of individual life, the opinion and action belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.

“How are these forces acting upon our nation at the present time?

“Our success has been so great hitherto, we have passed safely through so many perils which at the time seemed almost fatal, that we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper, unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are, and what we are to be, unless at the same time we compare our strength with the magnitude of our dangers.

“What, then, are our dangers: and how can they be conquered?...

“In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We do not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to find the elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is territorial expansion—overgrowth; the danger that we shall break in pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of historians and publicists for many centuries; and its truth has found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But we have fair ground for believing that new conditions and new forces have nearly, if not wholly, removed the ground of this danger. Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent amazing growth in the means 387of intercommunion. For political and industrial purposes, California and Massachusetts are nearer neighbors to-day than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of the Revolution. The people of all our thirty-seven States know more of each other’s affairs than the Vermonter knew of his Virginia neighbor’s fifty years ago. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of separate parts that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of antiquity. Public affairs are now more public, and private less private, than in former ages. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the Press, have virtually brought our citizens, with their opinions and industries, face to face; and they live almost in each other’s sight. The leading political, social, and industrial events of this day will be reported and discussed at more than two millions of American breakfast-tables to-morrow morning. Public opinion is kept in constant exercise and training. It keeps itself constantly in hand—ready to approve, condemn, and command. It may be wrong, it may be tyrannical; but it is all-pervading, and constitutes, more than ever before, a strong band of nationality.

“After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.”

In the latter part of the address, he discussed Lord Macaulay’s famous letter, in which he predicted that, with universal suffrage, our Republic was all sail and no ballast; that when the country was populated like Europe, the Government would fall in the inevitable conflict between labor and capital.

“With all my heart I repel that letter as false. My first answer is this: No man who has not lived among us can understand one thing about our institutions; no man who has been born and reared under monarchical governments can understand the vast difference between theirs and ours. How is it in monarchical governments? Their society is one series of caste upon caste. Down at the bottom, like the granite rocks in the crust of the earth, lie the great body of laboring men. An Englishman told me not long ago that in twenty-five years of careful study of the agricultural class of England, he had never known one who was born and reared in the ranks of farm laborers that rose above his class and became a well-to-do citizen. That is a most terrible sentence, that 388three millions of people should lie at the bottom of society, with no power to rise. Above them the gentry, the hereditary capitalist; above them, the nobility; above them, the royalty; and, crowning all, the sovereign—all impassable barriers of caste.

“No man born under such institutions can understand the mighty difference between them and us in this country. Thank God, and thank the fathers of the Republic who made, and the men who carried out the promises of the Declaration, that in this country there are no classes, fixed and impassable. Here society is not fixed in horizontal layers, like the crust of the earth, but as a great New England man said, years ago, it is rather like the ocean, broad, deep, grand, open, and so free in all its parts that every drop that mingles with the yellow sand at the bottom may rise through all the waters, till it gleams in the sunshine on the crest of the highest waves. So it is here in our free society, permeated with the light of American freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, however humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a true heart, a strong arm, he may not rise through all the grades of society, and become the crown, the glory, the pillar of the State.

“Again, in depicting the dangers of universal suffrage, Macaulay leaves wholly out of the account the great counterbalancing force of universal education. He contemplates the government delivered over to a vast multitude of ignorant, vicious men, who have learned no self-control, who have never comprehended the national life, and who will wield the ballot solely for personal and selfish ends. If this were indeed the necessary condition of Democratic communities, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to escape the logic of Macaulay’s letter. And here is a real peril—the danger that we shall rely upon the mere extent of the suffrage as a national safeguard. We can not safely, even for a moment, lose sight of the quality of the suffrage, which is more important than its quantity.

“Our faith in the Democratic principle rests upon the belief that intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in liberty, regulated by just and equal laws; and that in the distribution of political power it is safe to follow the maxim, ‘Each for all, and all for each.’ We confront the dangers of the suffrage by the blessings of universal education.”

389We present next a brief extract from an address delivered February 11, 1879,

ON THE RELATION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO SCIENCE.

“What ought to be the relation of the National Government to science? What, if any thing, ought we to do in the way of promoting science? For example, if we have the power, would it be wise for Congress to appropriate money out of the Treasury to employ naturalists to find out all that is to be known of our American birds. Ornithology is a delightful and useful study; but would it be wise for Congress to make an appropriation for the advancement of that science? In my judgment manifestly not. We would thereby make one favored class of men the rivals of all the ornithologists who in their private way, following the bent of their genius, may be working out the results of science in that field. I have no doubt that an appropriation out of our Treasury for that purpose would be a positive injury to the advancement of science, just as an appropriation to establish a church would work injury to religion.

“Generally the desire of our scientific men is to be let alone to work in free competition with all the scientific men of the world; to develop their own results, and get the credit of them, each for himself; not to have the Government enter the lists as a rival of private enterprise.

“As a general principle, therefore, the United States ought not to interfere in matters of science, but should leave its development to the free, voluntary action of our great third estate, the people themselves.

“In this non-interference theory of the Government I do not go to the extent of saying that we should do nothing for education—for primary education. That comes under another consideration—the necessity of the nation to protect itself, and the consideration that it is cheaper and wiser to give education than to build jails. But I am speaking now of the higher sciences.

“To the general principle I have stated, there are a few obvious exceptions which should be clearly understood when we legislate on the subject. In the first place the Government should aid all sorts of scientific inquiry that are necessary to the intelligent exercise of its own functions.

“For example, as we are authorized by the Constitution, and compelled by necessity, to build and maintain light-houses on our coast and establish fog-signals, we are bound to make all necessary scientific inquiries 390in reference to light and its laws, sound and its laws—to do whatever in the way of science is necessary to achieve the best results in lighting our coasts and warning our mariners of danger. So, when we are building iron-clads for our navy, or casting guns for our army, we ought to know all that is scientifically possible to be known about the strength of materials and the laws of mechanics which apply to such structures. In short, wherever in exercising any of the necessary functions of the Government, scientific inquiry is needed; let us make it to the fullest extent, and at the public expense.

“There is another exception to the general rule of leaving science to the voluntary action of the people. Wherever any great popular interest, affecting whole classes, possibly all classes of the community, imperatively need scientific investigation, and private enterprise can not accomplish it, we may wisely intervene and help, where the Constitution gives us authority. For example, in discovering the origin of yellow fever, and the methods of preventing its ravages, the nation should do, for the good of all, what neither the States nor individuals can accomplish. I might perhaps include, in a third exception, those inquiries which, in consequence of their great magnitude and cost, can not be successfully made by private individuals. Outside these three classes of inquiries, the Government ought to keep its hands off, and leave scientific experiment and inquiry to the free competition of those bright, intelligent men whose genius leads them into the fields of research.”

Passing abruptly from valley to mountain-peak, we present the substance of one of the most characteristic and original speeches mentioned in this book. It was delivered March 29, 1879. Though political in its immediate object, it will probably be remembered and quoted from as long as the name of Garfield lingers on the lips of men. The speaker states the question before the House better than any one else could do.

REVOLUTION IN CONGRESS.

“Let me, in the outset, state as carefully as I may, the precise situation. At the last session, all our ordinary legislative work was done, in accordance with the usages of the House and the Senate, except as to two bills. Two of the twelve great appropriation bills for the support of the Government were agreed to in both Houses as to every matter of detail 391concerning the appropriation proper. We were assured by the committees of conference in both bodies that there would be no difficulty in adjusting all differences in reference to the amount of money to be appropriated and the objects of its appropriation. But the House of Representatives proposed three measures of distinctly independent legislation; one upon the Army Appropriation Bill, and two upon the Legislative Appropriation Bill. The three grouped together are briefly these: first, the substantial modification of certain sections of the law relating to the use of the army; second, the repeal of the jurors’ test oath; and third, the repeal of the laws regulating elections of members of Congress.

“These three propositions of legislation were insisted upon by the House, but the Senate refused to adopt them. So far it was an ordinary proceeding, one which occurs frequently in all legislative bodies. The Senate said to us, through their conferees: ‘We are ready to pass the appropriation bills, but are unwilling to pass, as riders, the three legislative measures you ask us to pass.’ Thereupon the House, through its conference committee, made the following declaration. And, in order that I may do exact justice, I read from the speech of the distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck]:

“‘The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem determined that unless those rights were secured to the people—’

“Alluding to the three points I have named—‘in the bill sent to the Senate they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to make appropriations to carry on the Government, if the dominant majority in the Senate insisted upon the maintenance of these laws and refused to consent to their appeal.’

“Then, after stating that if the position they had taken compelled an extra session, and that the new Congress would offer the repealing bills separately, and forecasting what would happen when the new House should be under no necessity of coercing the Senate, he declared that—

“‘If, however, the President of the United States, in the exercise of the power vested in him, should see fit to veto the bills thus presented to him, ... then I have no doubt those same amendments will be again made part of the appropriation bills, and it will be for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of Government and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than allow the representatives of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as subversive of their rights and privileges.... Whether that course is 392right or wrong, it will be adopted, and I have no doubt adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation bills.’

“That was the proposition made by the Democracy in Congress at the close of the Congress now dead.

“Another distinguished Senator [Mr. Thurman]—and I may properly refer to Senators of a Congress not now in existence—reviewing the situation, declared, in still more succinct terms:

“‘We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two centuries of contest, to say we will not grant the money of the people unless there is a redress of grievances.’

“These propositions were repeated with various degrees of vehemence by the majority in the House.

“The majority in the Senate and the minority on this floor expressed the deepest anxiety to avoid an extra session and to avert the catastrophe thus threatened—the stoppage of the Government. They pointed out the danger to the country and its business interests of an extra session of Congress, and expressed their willingness to consent to any compromise consistent with their views of duty which should be offered—not in the way of coercion but in the way of fair adjustment—and asked to be met in a spirit of just accommodation on the other side. Unfortunately no spirit of adjustment was manifested in reply to their advances. And now the new Congress is assembled: and after ten days of caucus deliberation, the House of Representatives has resolved, substantially, to reaffirm the positions of its predecessors.

THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT.

“I had occasion, at a late hour of the last Congress, to say something on what may be called the voluntary element in our institutions. I spoke of the distribution of the powers of Government. First, to the nation; second, to the States; and third, the reservation of power to the people themselves.

“I called attention to the fact that under our form of government the most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not delegated to the nation, nor to the States, but are reserved to the third estate—the people themselves. I called attention to the interesting fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire made the declaration that it was the chief object of the existence of the German government to defend and maintain the religion of Jesus Christ—an object in reference to 393which our Congress is absolutely forbidden by the Constitution to legislate at all. Congress can establish no religion; indeed, can make no law respecting it, because in the view of our fathers—the founders of our government—religion was too precious a right to intrust its interests by delegation to any body. Its maintenance was left to the voluntary action of the people themselves.

“In continuation of that thought, I wish now to speak of the voluntary element inside our Government—a topic that I have not often heard discussed, but one which appears to me of vital importance in any comprehensive view of our institutions.

“Mr. Chairman, viewed from the stand-point of a foreigner, our Government may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our stand-point, and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why would a foreigner call it the feeblest? He can point out a half-dozen ways in which it can be destroyed without violence. Of course, all governments may be overturned by the sword; but there are several ways in which our Government may be annihilated without the firing of a gun.

“For example, if the people of the United States should say we will elect no Representatives to the House of Representatives. Of course, this is a violent supposition; but suppose they do not, is there any remedy? Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two years there would be no House of Representatives; of course no support of the Government, and no Government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their Legislatures, we will elect no Senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this Government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent it.

“Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order, and a majority of one, in this body or in the Senate should firmly band themselves together and say, we will vote to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every session during our two years of existence; the Government would perish, and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it. Or again, if a majority of one of either body should declare that they would vote down, and did vote down, every bill to support the Government by appropriations, can you find in the whole range of our judicial or our executive authority any remedy whatever? A Senator, or a member of this House is free, and may vote ‘no,’ on every proposition. Nothing but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not so with the executive and judicial officers. 394They have no power to destroy this Government. Let them travel an inch beyond the line of the law, and they fall within the power of impeachment. But, against the people who create Representatives; against the Legislatures who create Senators; against Senators and Representatives in these Halls, there is no power of impeachment; there is no remedy, if, by abstention or by adverse votes, they refuse to support the Government.

“At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise as our fathers were, should have left a whole side of their fabric open to these deadly assaults; but on a closer view of the case their wisdom will appear. What was their reliance? This: The sovereign of this nation, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed sovereign, in whom resides ‘the State’s collected will,’ and to whom we all owe allegiance, is the people themselves. Inspired by love of country and by a deep sense of obligation to perform every public duty; being themselves the creators of all the agencies and forces to execute their own will, and choosing from themselves their representatives to express that will in the forms of law, it would have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of these voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the Government. Public opinion—that great ocean of thought from whose level all heights and depths are measured—was trusted as a power amply able, and always willing, to guard all the approaches on that side of the Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation.

“Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never been such a refusal to exercise those primary functions of sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple the Government; nor have the majority of the representatives of that sovereign in either House of Congress ever before announced their purpose to use their voluntary powers for its destruction. And now, for the first time in our history, and I will add for the first time for at least two centuries in the history of any English speaking nation, it is proposed and insisted upon that these voluntary powers shall be used for the destruction of the Government. I want it distinctly understood that the proposition which I read at the beginning of my remarks, and which is the programme announced to the American people to-day, is this: that if the House can not have its own way in certain matters, not connected with appropriations, it will so use, or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the Government.

“Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the other side that when 395a demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that runs the risk of stopping and destroying the Government, is the one that resists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor to follow my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this denial good.

FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS.

“Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this Republic can be law without consent—the free consent of the House; the free consent of the Senate; the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the free consent of two-thirds of these bodies. Will any man deny that? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions? And yet the programme announced two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused to consent to the demand of the House, the Government should stop. And the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third independent branch in the legislative power of the Government whose consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this Government; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty, shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to destroy the Government. This is the proposition which we confront; and we denounce it as revolution.

“It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall be adopted against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every fair-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though his own life depended upon his resistance.

“Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of legislation; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of the fundamental element of American liberty, the free consent of all the powers that unite to make laws.

“In opening this debate, I challenge all comers to show a single instance in our history where this consent has been coerced. This is the great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all others into insignificance. 396Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle of Waterloo, that the struggle of the two armies was like the wrestling of two giants, when a chip under the heel of one might determine the victory. It may be that this amendment is the chip under your heel, or it may be that it is the chip on our shoulder. As a chip it is of small account to you or to us; but when it represents the integrity of the Constitution and is assailed by revolution, we fight for it as if it were a Koh-i-noor of purest water. [Applause.]

“The proposition now is, that after fourteen years have passed, and not one petition from one American citizen has come to us asking that this law be repealed; while not one memorial has found its way to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have heard, the Democratic House of Representatives now hold if they are not permitted to force upon another House and upon the Executive against their consent the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal shall be considered a sufficient ground for starving this Government to death. That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution. [Applause on the Republican side.]

“And here I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the other side while I offer a suggestion which I make with reluctance. They will bear me witness that I have in many ways shown my desire that the wounds of the war should be healed; that the grass that has grown green over the graves of both armies might symbolize the returning spring of friendship and peace between citizens who were lately in arms against each other.

“But I am compelled by the necessities of the case to refer to a chapter of our recent history. The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Republicans, ‘If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your Government to death;’ and the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln President of the United States.

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out on the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the Government was saved.

“To-day, after eighteen years’ defeat, the book of your domination is 397again opened, and your first act awakens every bitter memory, and threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page; not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field, but you say if all the legislative powers of the Government do not consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you will not shoot our Government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter; but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you can not coerce an independent branch of this Government against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the Government to death. [Great applause on the Republican side.]

“Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this Government; you have it in your power by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of our Constitution with the paralysis of death; and you have declared your purpose to do this, if you can not break down that fundamental element of free consent which, up to this hour, has always ruled in the legislation of this Government.”

The question stated at the beginning of this chapter is: Was Garfield a Statesman? In view of what the reader has perused since that question was put, it must at this point be restated—Was Garfield not a Statesman? The burden of proof has shifted. It is, of course, too soon to form a complete estimate of Garfield’s stature. We are too near to the man we loved. It will be for some future generation, farther removed from the spell of his name, and more able calmly to contemplate his life apart from the bloody death. This is the task for the historian of the future.

But what we say enters into the contemporary estimate of the dead President’s life and work. While the relative height of the mountain peak can only be told by viewing it from a long distance, where the entire range pictures its upper outline on the eye, the people who dwell at the foot of the mountain know it as the highest of their neighborhood. Moreover, some of the strongest 398objections to the contemporary estimates of a public man are entirely wanting in the present case. One of these is the popularity of his opinions or achievements. Men are apt to overestimate the abilities of a man who agrees with them. But time and again, on different questions, as in the currency and the enforcement act, the Wade-Davis manifesto, and the defense of Bowles and Milligan, we have seen General Garfield, not merely opposing, but openly defying the opinions of the people who elected him. When he thought a thing was true, no personal consideration could affect his public utterance. Such a spectacle is rare indeed in American politics.

Another reason why the present contemporary estimate of Garfield is more likely than usual to pass into history is that, in a sense, the vindication of his policy is already accomplished. When Cromwell died his work was incomplete. It was only one act in the great drama of the struggle against kings. The result was unknown at the time. Other fields were to run red with patriot blood, other monarchs to expire on the scaffold, before the solution of the deadly struggle should appear. It was uncertain whether any other government than monarchy was possible. No man was wise enough to tell, at Cromwell’s death, whether he had advanced or retarded civilization and progress. But this is a more rapid age. Events hurry on quickly. The questions growing out of the Civil War are very largely settled already. The historic genius which sits in judgment upon men and institutions is no longer in doubt as to those questions. Similarly, too, the stupendous problem of national finance, to which Garfield devoted such herculean labor, has reached its solution. It may be that all men are not willing to surrender yet, but beyond a doubt the return to a specie basis, and the wonderful improvement of the times following it, are a vindication of General Garfield’s statesmanship. It is the same with his position on the Force Bill and the Tariff. Some things, however, are still incomplete. The railway problem and the perpetuity of American institutions the future alone can pass upon; but these are the exceptions. The completeness of Mr. Lincoln’s work at the time of his assassination was not generally recognized, but we see it now. So with Garfield’s labors. They 399were in a sense complete. We may pass judgment upon them. The vindication of history is already at hand.

There is still another reason why the contemporary estimate of James A. Garfield is likely to become permanent. It is because the field of his principal achievements was not one of popular interest. It was not one which takes hold of the people’s hearts, and sweeps the popular judgment from its moorings. It lacked the glamour of military fame. The present age will hand down to posterity the fame of mighty soldiers, but their glory must be viewed with some reserve, some mistrust for the present.

Julius Cæsar, who was assassinated as a tyrant, now takes his place at the head of all secular history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mention of whose name has, for three quarters of a century, been enough to convulse Paris and fill every wall with placards and every street with barricades, is likely to become the most odious figure of modern times. Garfield’s chosen field of work, that where his fame must rest, was to the careless masses dull. Men grow excited over battles, but not a pulse beats higher over a computation of interest on the public debt. The stories of marches and sieges thrill the reader a thousand years after every combatant has been vanquished by the black battalions of Death. But the most eloquent orator in America finds it difficult to hold an audience with the discussion of the tariff list or of public expenditures or of the currency, even when every man in the audience knows that his pocket is touched. If such discussions are thrown into newspaper editorials they are but little read. No argument, however powerful, on the fallacy of fiat money ever drew a tear or roused a cheer. No table of the reduction of public expenditure is ever greeted with huzzas. When the news of a victory comes, every corner has a bonfire and every window an illumination. But the change of the balance of trade in our favor only awakens a quiet satisfaction in the merchant’s heart as he glances through the morning papers. A new kind of gun attracts world-wide attention; it is talked over at every breakfast-table and described in every paper, but a new theory of surplus and deficits in the public treasury is utterly unnoticed. We see no flushed assemblies straining 400to catch every word that falls from the orator’s lips as he discusses the tariff on sugar or quinine. But when Kearney shouts his hoarse note of defiance to capital, the street is packed with listening thousands.

Hence it is that the man who significantly whispers “Garfield is overestimated” is more likely to be wrong than right. There is no tide of popular excitement over his work. The calm conviction of his abilities is a different thing from the feverish hurrahs of a campaign. In 1859 his old neighbors in his county had this conviction when they sent him to the State Senate. From the county, this spread to his Congressional district; from the district to the State of Ohio; from Ohio to the Union. It was gradual, and sure.

Garfield’s speeches must be the foundation for his fame. To these history will turn as a basis for its estimate. The first thing which is to be said of them, is that they dealt with the real problems of the epoch. That he was a great orator is true; that he was much more than this is equally true. While other men busied themselves with political topics Garfield took hold of the great non-political problems of the time. He refused to view them from a partisan or a personal stand-point. He grappled with the leviathans of reconstruction, tariff, and currency in the spirit of the statesman. That he was always right, we are not prepared to say; that he was right in his views on the great questions above mentioned, that with regard to them he was a leader of leaders, seems hardly to admit of a doubt. He was so radical in opinion that on almost every question he was ahead of his party and the country. This was the case in his arguments on the status of the rebel States, and what ought to be done with them; in his arguments in favor of a reduction of the tariff as prices declined after the war, and in his discussion of the currency and banking problems. Yet so nearly right was he that in every one of these instances Congress and the country gradually moved up to and occupied the position which he had taken in advance of them.

On the other hand, he was so conservative in practice that 401on no question was he ever an extremist. While he was a strong believer in the nationality of the Republic, and its powers of self-preservation, he faced the entire North in his opposition to the provisions of the “Force Bill,” for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the declaration of martial law in a country bleeding at every wound from war, but in a state of peace. Let no reader omit his speech of April 4, 1871. We say it the more willingly because at the time we thought Garfield was wrong. While he was a protectionist, he believed in a tariff which avoided both extremes. While he was an original and unintermittent hard-money man, he believed in the necessity of an elastic volume of currency. As the end of resumption forbade inflation, he demanded that every part of the country should have its share of banks, and the drafts and checks which they threw into the circulation.

Of the variety as well as the quantity of his work, men will not soon cease to wonder. There were few who could equal him in the discussion of any one of the great topics of the day, much less all of them. His name and fame can never be identified with any single question or measure, for he displayed the same ability on every subject alike.

In other respects he also differed from the men around him. He was a scholar in the broadest sense. His speeches are absolutely unequaled anywhere for their scientific method. In their philosophical discussions they were the product of the ripest scholarship; in their practical suggestions and arguments, they were, they are the product of the highest statesmanship.

Finally, a man of more spotless honor and loftier integrity never trod the earth than James A. Garfield. He lived in an atmosphere of purity and unselfishness, which, to the average man, is an unknown realm. After all, there are men enough with intellect in politics, but too few with character. An estimate of Garfield would be incomplete which failed to include the inflexible honesty of the great orator and legislator, whether in affairs public or private. History shows that while no institutions ever decayed because of the intellectual weakness 402of the people among which they flourished, empire after empire has perished from the face of the earth through the decay of morals in its people and its public men. History repeats itself. What has been, will be. Name after name of the great men of the new Republic is stained with private immorality and public crime. The noblest part of Garfield, with all his genius, was his spotless character. There was, there is, no greater, purer, manlier man.

“His tongue was framed to music,

His hand was armed with skill,

His face was the mold of beauty,

And his heart the throne of will.”

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