Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1882 — Untitled [ARTICLE]

reputation previously acquired, or to eminence won outside; no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings or failures of beginners. What a man gains in tbe House he gains by sheer force of his own character, and, if he loses and falls back, he must expect no mercy and will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival of the strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can survive and no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is impartially weighed, his rank is irrevocably decided. With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest member in the Honse when he entered, and was bat seven years from his college graduation ; but he had not been in his seat sixty days before bis ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there ; the Honse was crowded with strong men of both parties: nineteen of them have since been transferred to the Senate, and many of them have served with distinction in the Gubernatorial chairs of tbeir respective States and on foreign missions of great consequence. But, among all, none new so rapid Iv, none so firmly, as Garfield. As is said by Teyelan of his parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because, when once in the front, he played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease that were bat the outward symptoms of the immense reserves of energy on which it was in his power to draw. Indeed, the apparently reserved force which Garfield possessed was one of his great characteristics. Ho never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better. He never expended so much strength but that he seemed to be holding additional power at call. .This is one of tho happiest and rarest distinctions of an effective leader, and often counts for as much in persuading an assembly as eloquent and elaborate argument. His military life, illustrated by honorable performance and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, prematurely terminated and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might have done in a field where the great prizes are so few cannot be profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a soldier he did his duty bravely, he did it intelligently, he won an enviable fame and he retired from the service without blot or breath against him. As a lawyer, though admirably equipped for the profession, he can scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts made at the bar were distinguished by the same high order of talent which he exhibited on every field where he was put to the test, and, if a man may be accepted as a competent judge of his own capacities and adaptations, the law was the profession to which Garfield should have devoted himself. But fate ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will rest largely upon his services in the House of Representatives. That servioe was exceptionally long. He was nine times consecutively Congressman to the House, an honor enjoyed by not more than six other Representatives of the more than 1,000 who have been elected from the organization of the Government to this hour.

As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined, where the position had been chosen and the ground laid out, Garfield must be assigned a very high rank—more perhaps than any man with whom he was associated in public life. He gave careful and systematic study to public questions, and he came to every discussion in which he took pait with elaborate and complete preparations. He was a steady and indefatigable worker. Those who imagine that talent or genius can supply the placo or achieve the results of labor will find no encouragement in Garfield’s life. Iu preliminary work he was apt, rapid and skillful. He possessed in a high degree the power of readily absorbing ideas and facts, and, like Dr. Johnson, had the art of getting from a book all that was of value in it by a reading apparently so quick and cursory that it seemed like a mere glance at the table of contents. He was pre-eminently a fair and candid man; in debate he took no petty advantage, stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal allusion, rarely appealed to prejudice, did not seek to inflame passion. He had a quicker eye for the strong point of his adversary than for his weak point, and oil his own side he so marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his hearers forget any possible lack in the complete strength of his position. He had a habit of stating his opponent’s side with such amplitude of fairness and such liberality of concession that his , followers often complained that he was giving his case away. But never In his prolonged participation in the proceedings in the House did he give his case away or fail, in the judgment of competent and impartial listeners, to gain the mastery. These characteristics which marked Garfield as a great debater did not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A parliamentary leader, as that term is understood wherever free representative government exis.'s, is necessarily and very strictly the organ of his party. An ardent American defined tho instinctive warmth of patriotism when he offered the toast, “ Our country, always right; but, right or wrong, our country.” The parliamentary leader who has a body or followers that will do, and dare, and die for the cause is one who believes his party always right, but, right or wrong, is for his party'. No more important or exacting duty devolved upon him tban the selection of the field and the time for contest. He must know not merely how to strike, bnt where to strike and when to strike. He often skillfully avoids the strength of his opponent’s position and scatters confusion in his ranks by attacking an exposed point, when really the righteousness of ihe cause and the strength of the logical intrenchment are against him. He conquers often both against the right and the heavy battalions, as when young Charles Fox, in the days of his Toryism, carried the House of Commons against justice, against immemorial rights, against his own convictions—if, indeed, at that period Fox had convictions—and in the interests of a corrupt ndm lustration, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, drove Wilkes from tho seat to which th-j electors of Middlesex had chosen him, and installed Luttrell, in defiance not merely of law but of public decency. For an achievement of that kind Garfield was disqualified—disqualified by the texture of his mind, by the honesty of his heart, by his conscience, and by every instinct and aspiration of his nature. The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas ana Thaddeus Stevens. Each wag a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, differing widely each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common—the power to command. In the give and take of daily discussion ; in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers ; in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition and to meet with competency and courage the various phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with theße a fourth namo in all our Congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in the parliamentary annals of tbe world a parallel to Mr. Clay in 1841, when, at 64 years of age, he took the control of tho Whig party from the President who had received their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise in the Honse. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plentitnde of power, he hurled against John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his administration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Congress into a repeal of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, in his contest from 1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until Congress tied the hands of the President and governed the country by its own will, leaving only perfunctory duties to be discharged by the Executive. With 8200,000,000 of patronage in his hands at the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the Cabinet and the moral power of Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson coujd not command the support of one-third in either house against the parliamentary uprising of which Thaddens Stevens was toe animating spirit and the unquestioned leader. From these three great men Garfield differed radi-cally-differed in the quality of his mind, in temperament, in toe form and phase of ambition He could not do what they did, but he couid do what they could not, aud in toe breadth of his Congressional work he left that which will long exert a potential influence among men, and which, measured by the severe test of posthumous criticism, will secure a more enduring and more enviable fame. Those unfamiliar with Garfield’s Industry and ignorant of the details of his work may in some degree measure them by the annal* of Congress. No one of the generation of publio men to which he belonged has contributed ao

much that will be valuable for future reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully phrased and exhaustive of the subject under consideration. Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal octavo volumes of Congressional Rcctfds, they would present an invaluable compendium of the political history of the most important era through which the national Government has ever passed. When toe history of this period shall be impartially written, when war legislation, measures of reconstruction, protection of human rights, amendments to toe constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed, unsurronnded by prejudice and disconnected from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their true value, and will be fonnd to oomprise a vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority were accessible his speecLes in the Honse of Representatives from December, 1863, to Jnne, 1880, would give a well-connected history and complete defense of the important legislation of the seventeen eventful years that constitute his parliamentary life. Far beyond that his speeches would be fonnd to forecast many great measures yet to be completed—measures which he knew were beyond the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently believed would secure popular approval within toe period of his own lifetime, and by the aid of his own efforts. Differing as Garfield did from the brilliant parliamentary leaders, it is not easy to find his counterpart anywhere in the record of American public life. He perhaps more nearly resembled Mr. Seward in his supreme faith in the all-conquenng power of principle. He had the love of learning and the patient industry of investigation to which John Adams owes his prominence and his Presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which indeed in all our public life have left the great Massachusetts Senator without an intellectual peer. In English parliamentary history as m our own the leaders in the Honse of Commons present points of essential difference from Garfield. But some of his methods recall toe best features in the strong, independent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking resemblances are discernible in that most promising of modern Conservatives who died too early for his country and his fame, Lord George Bentick. He had all of Burke’s love for the sublime and the beautiful, with possibly something of his superabundance, aud in his faith and in his magnanimity, in his power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and world of illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of today, who, confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the dauntless, reviled by those whose supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with serene courage for toe amelioration of Ireland and for toe honor of the English name. Garfield’s nomination to the Presidency, while not predicted or anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye as a man occupying the very highest range among those entitled to be called statesmen. It was not mere chanco that brought him this high honor. “We nmst,” says Mr. Emerson, “reckon success a constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust healtti and has slept well, and is at the top of bis condition and 30 years old at his departure from Greenwald, he will steer west and his ship will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric and put in a stronger and bolder man, and toe ships will sail 600, 1,000, 1,500 miles farther and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results.” As a candidate Garfield steadily grew in popular favor. He was met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it continued with increasing volume and momentum until the close of his victorious campaign. No might nor greatness in mortality can censure escape, back-wounding calumny tho whitest virtuo strikes. What King so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? Under it all he was calm, and strong, and confident, never lost his self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill-con-sidered word. Indeed, nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more creditable than his bearing through those five full mouths of vituperation—a prolonged agony of trial to a sensitive man, a constant and cruel draft upon the powers of moral endurance. Tho great mass of these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and, with the general debris of the campaign, fell into oblivion. But in a few instances the iron entered his soul, and he died with the injury nnforgotten, if not uuforgiven. One aspect of Garfield’s candidacy was unprecedented. Never beforo in the history of partisan contests in this country had a successful Presidential candidate spoken freely ou passing events and current issues. To attempt anything of toe kind seemed novel, rash and even desperate. The older class of voters recalled toe unfortunate Alabama letter in which Mr. Clay was supposed to have signed his political death-warrant They remembered also the hot-tempered effusion by which Gen. Scott lost a large share of his popularity beforo nis nomination, and the unfortunate speeches which rapidly consumed the remainder. The younger voters had seen Mr. Greeley in a series or vigorous and original addresses preparing the pathway for his own defeat. Unmindful of these warnings, unheeding too advice of friends, Garfield spoke to large crowds, as he journeyed to and from New York iu August, to a great multitude in that city, to delegations and deputations of every kind that called at Mentor during the summer and autumn. With innumerable critics watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might be turned into odium or ridicule, or a sentence that might be distorted to his own or his party's injury, Garfield did not trip or halt in any one of his seventy speeches. This seems all the more remarkable when it is remembered that he did not write what he said, and yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such admirable decision of phrase as to defy the accident of misrsport ana the malignity of misrepresentation.

In the beginning of his Presidential life Garfield's experience did not yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so large a portion of toe President’s time were distasteful to him, and were unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. “I have been dealmg all these years with ideas,” he impatiently exclaimed one day, “and hero I’m dealing only with persons. I have been heretofore treating of the fundamental principles of Government, and here I am considering all day whether A or B shall be appointed to this or that office.” • Ho was earnestly seeking some practical way of correcting the evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldy patron-age-evils always appreciated and often discussed by him, but whose magnitude had been more deeply impressed upon his mind since his accession to the Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive improvement in the mode of appointment and in the tenure of office wonld have been proposed by him, and, with tbe aid of Congress, no doubt, perfected. But, while many of the executive duties were not grateful to him, he was assiduous and conscientious in toeir discharge. From the very outset he exhibited administrative talent of a high order. ’He grasped the helm of office with the hand \of a master. In this respect, indeed, he constantly surprised many who were not mosrintimately associated with him in the Government, and especially those who feared he might be lacking in the executive faculty. His disposition of business was orderly and rapid ; bis power of analysis and his skill in classification', enabled him to dispatch a vast mass of detail with singular promptness and ease; his Cabinet meetings were admirably conducted ; his clear presentation of official subjects, his well-considered suggestions of topics on which discussion was invitod, his quick decision when ali had been heard, combined to show a thoroughness oi mental training as rare as bis natural ability and. his facile adaptation to a new and enlarged fiekhof labor. With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, with a cebl calculation 6f toe obstacles in toe way, impelled'atiyays by a generons enthusiasm, Garfield conceived that much might be done by his administration toward restoring harmony between the different sections of the Union. He was anxious to go South and speak to the people. As early as April he had ineffectually endeavored to arrange for a trip to Nashville, whither he had been cordially invited, and he was again disappointed a few weeks after to find he could not go to South Carolina to attend the centennial commemoration of the victory of Cowpens; hut for the autumn, he definitely coanted on being present at three memorable assemblios in the South—the celebration at Yorktown, the opening of toe Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, and the meeting of toe Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already, turmng over in his mind ms address for’each occasion, and toe three taken together, he said to a friond, gave him the exact scope and verge he needed. At Yorktown he would have before him tbe associations of a hundred years that bound the Booth and the North in the •acred memory of a oommon danger and a con-

mon victory; at Atlanta he would present tbe material interests and the industrial development which appealed to toe thrift and independence of every household, and which should unite the two sections by the instinct of selfinterest and self-defence. At Chattanooga, he wonld revive memories of the war only to show that, after all its disasters and all its sufferings, the country was stronger and greater, the Union rendered indissoluble, and the future, through the agony and blood of one generation, made brighter and better for aIL Garfield’s ambition for toe success of his administration was high. With strong cantion and conservatism in his nature, he was in no danger of attempting rash experiments or es resorting to toe empiricism of statesmanship; bnt he believed that renewed and closer attention should bo given to questions affecting the material interests and commercial prosperity of 50,000,000 of people. He believed that our continental relations, extensive and undeveloped as they are, involved responsibility, and could be cultivated in profitable friendship, or be abandoned to harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He believed with eqnal confidence that an essential forerunner to a new era of national, progress mast be a feeling of contentment in every section of the Union, and a general belief that the benefits and burdens of government would be common to all Himself a conspicuous illustration of what ability and ambition may do under republican institutions, he loved his country with a passion of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given to her advancement. He was an American in all his aspirations, Ind he looked to the destiny and influence of toe United States with tbe philosophical composure of Jefferson and the demonstrative confidence of John Adams. The political events which disturbed the President's serenity for many weeks before that fateful day in July form an important chapter in his career, and inhisown judgment involvod matters of principle and of right which are vitally essential to the constitutional administration of the Federal Government. It would be out of place hero and now to speak toe language of controversy, but toe events referred to, however they may continue to be toe source of contention with others, have become, so far as Garfield is concerned, as much a matter of history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his illustrious service in the House. Detail is not needed, full and personal. Antagonism shall not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. The motives of those opposing him are not to be here adversely interpreted nor their course harshly characterized, but of toe dead President this is to 'be said, and said because his own speech Is forever silenced, and he can be no more heard except through the fidelity and the love of surviving friends. From the beginning to the end of the controversy he so much deplored the President was never for one moment actuated by motives of gain to himself or loss to others. Least of all did he harbor revenge ; rarely did he ever show resentment; and malico was not in his nature. He was congenially employed onlv in the exohange of good offices and the doing of kindly deeds. There was not an hour from the beginning of the trouble until the fatal shot entered his body when the President would not gladly, for the sake of restoring harmony, have retraced Ruy step he had taken, if such retracing had merely involved consequences personal to himself. "The pride of consistency, or any supposed sense of humiliation that might result from surrendering his position, had not a feather's weight with him. No man was lesa subject to such influences from within or without ; but after most anxious deliberation and the coolest survey of all circumstances he solemnly believed that the true prerogatives of the Executive were iuvolvod in the issue which had been raised, and that he would be unfaithful to his supreme obligation if he failed to maintain in all then - vigor the constitutional rights and dignities of the great office. He believed this in all tho convictions of conscience, when in sound and vigorous health, and he believed it in his suffering and prostration, in the last conscious thought which his wearied mind bestowed on transitory struggles of life. More than this need nob be said ; less than this could not be said. Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the living, demands the declaration that in all the bearings of the subject, actual or possible, the President wai} content in his mind, justified in his conscience, immovable in his conclusions. The religious element in Garfield’s character was deep and earnest. In his youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that great Baptist communion which, in different ecclesiastical establishments, is so numerous and so influential through all parts of the United States ; but the broadening tendency of his mind and his active spirit of inquiry were early apparent, and carried him beyond the dogmas of sect and the restraints of association. In selecting a college in which to continue his education, he rejected Bethany, though presided over by Alexander Campbell, the greatest preacher of his church. His reasons were eh&racteristical: First, that Bethany leaned too heavily toward slavery ; and, second, that, being himself a Disciple and tho son of Disciple parents, he had little acquaintance with people of other beliefs, and he thought it would make him more liberal, quoting his own words, both in his religious and general views, to go into a new circle and be under new influences. The liberal tendency which he anticipated as toe result of wider culture was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere sectarian belief, and with eager interest pushed his investigation in the direction of modern progressive thought. He followed with quickening stops tithe paths of exploration and speculation so fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall and by other living scientists of the radical and advanced type. His own church binding its disciples by no formulated creed but accepting toe Old and New Testament as toe word of God, with unbiased liberty of private interpretation, favored if it did not stimulate the spirit of investigation. Its members profess with sincerity, aud profess only to be of one mind and one faith with those who followed the Master and who were first called Christians at Antioch. But however high Garfield reasoned of “fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,” he was never separated from the Church of the Disciples in his affections and in his associations. For him it held the Ark of the Covenant; to him was the gate of heaven. The world of religious belief is fall of solecisms and contradictions. A philosophic observer declares that men by toe thousand will die in defense of a creed whose doctrines they do not comprehend, and whose tenets they habitually violate. It is equally true that men by the thousands will cling to church organizations with instinctive and undying fidelity when their belief in mature years is radically different from that which inspires them as neophytes. But after this range of speculation and this latitude of doubt, Garfield came back always with freshness and delight to simpler instincts of religious faith which, earliest implanted, longest survive. Not many weeks before his assassination, walking on the banks of toe Potomac with a friend, and conversing on these topics of personal religion, concerning whioh noble natures nave an unconquerable reserve, he said that he found' toe Lord’s prayer and the simple petitions learned in infancy infinitely restful to him, not merely in their stated repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as he went about toe daily duties of life. Certaiu texts of Scripture had a very strong hold on his memory and heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh Borne years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been toe subject of careful study with Garfield during all his religious life. He was greatly impressed by the elocution of the preacher, and declared that it had imparted a new and deeper meaning to toe majestic utterances of St. Paul. He" referred often in after years to that memorable service, and dwelt with exaltation of feeling upon toe radiant promise and toe assured hope with which toe great apostle of toe Gentiles was persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The crowning characteristic of Gen. Garfield’s religions opinions, as indeed all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the qualities he possessed himself ; sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression. With him the inquiry was not as to what a man believes, but does he believe it ? The lines of his friendship and his confidence incircled men in every creed, and to the end of bis life on his everlengthening list of friends were to be fonnd the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an honest-minded and generous and free thinker. On toe morning of Saturday, Juiy 2, the President was * contented and happy man, not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly, happy. On his way to the railroad station, to wniob he drove slowly, in consoious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an onn outed «mum of leisure and a keen anticipation of