CHAPTER L.

THE LIFE AND CAREER OF JAMES A. GARFIELD, THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT.

The National Republican Convention of 1880—Nomination of James A. Garfield as President Hayes’s Successor—The History of His Life—His Humble Home—Death of His Father—Hardships and Privations of Pioneer Life—Struggles of His Mother to Support the Family—Splitting Fence Rails with her own Hands—The Future President’s Early School Days—Working as a Carpenter—Chopping Wood for a Living—Leaving Home—Life as a Canal Boat Boy—Narrow Escapes—Beginning His Education in Earnest—School Life at Chester—How He Paid His Own Way—First Meeting with his Future Wife—Early Religious Experience—Enters Williams College—Professor and President—His First Appearance in Politics—His Brilliant Military Record—His Services at Shiloh, Corinth, and Chickamauga—His Congressional Career—Republican Leader of the House of Representatives—He is Elected to the United States Senate—His Appearance as the Leader of the Sherman Forces at the Chicago Convention—He is Himself Nominated amid the Wildest Enthusiasm—An Exciting Campaign—His Triumphant Election.

The occupants of the White House, from March, 1877, to March, 1881, were Rutherford B. and Lucy Webb Hayes, of Ohio. Mr. Hayes’s nomination by the Republican National Convention, at Cincinnati, was a surprise to his party and the country, and his election was for a long time in doubt. Both the Republicans and the Democrats claimed the electoral votes of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, and at one time civil war seemed a not remote possibility, so intense was the partisan excitement, and so inflammable the state of the public mind. But better and wiser counsels prevailed, and by the efforts of leading men of both parties an electoral commission was established to which all doubtful matters were referred, and Mr. Hayes was declared elected by a majority of one electoral vote over Samuel J. Tilden, of New York. Many of Mr. Tilden’s friends and party supporters, and some of those who had opposed his election, questioned the legality of Mr. Hayes’s election, and contended that Mr. Tilden should have had the position. Mr. Hayes’s administration was generally quiet and uneventful, save that it marked the resumption of specie payments, and witnessed the transition from almost unprecedented business depression and industrial inactivity to a period of almost unexampled industrial activity and business prosperity. Mrs. Hayes was perhaps the most popular President’s wife who had ever occupied the White House, and more of the people of the United States saw the inside of the Executive Mansion during her residence there than during any previous administration, or perhaps all of them combined. No one of the many excursion parties that visited Washington while Mrs. Hayes was there was allowed to go away without seeing the “blue room,” the “red room,” and the famous White House conservatory, if any wish to that effect was expressed; and besides opening the White House freely to the people, Mrs. Hayes received her multitude of visitors no less gracefully and cordially than if they had been neighbors who had “dropped in” of an afternoon or evening.

The National Republican Convention, which met at Chicago, in 1880, to select a candidate to succeed Mr. Hayes, nominated James Abram Garfield. That Ohio should carry off the first honor of the Republican party for two successive Presidential terms was an extraordinary circumstance, but Gen. Garfield’s nomination, while it pleased Ohio men, electrified the country, and awoke great enthusiasm.

James Abram Garfield was born in a log cabin at Orange, Ohio, November 19, 1831. His father, Abram Garfield, was born in New York from Massachusetts ancestry, the founder of the Garfield family in the United States, Edward, having emigrated from England in 1736, and settled at Watertown, Mass. Two of Edward Garfield’s sons, Abraham and Solomon, took part in the revolutionary war, and when that war was over Solomon left New England, and fixed his residence in Otsego county, New York. It was there that Abram Garfield was born, and after his marriage with Eliza Ballou, a New Hampshire girl, and a connection of Hosea Ballou, one of the great apostles of Universalism in this country, the young couple went to Ohio and wrested a farm from the primeval forest.

The dwelling of the Garfields was built after the standard pattern of the houses of poor Ohio farmers in that day. Its walls were of logs, its roof was of shingles split with an axe, and its floor of rude thick planking split out of tree-trunks with a wedge and maul. It had only one room, at one end of which was the big cavernous chimney, where the cooking was done, and at the other a bed. The younger children slept in a trundle-bed, which was pushed under the bedstead of their parents in the daytime to get it out of the way, for there was no room to spare; the older ones climbed a ladder to the loft under the steep roof.

The father worked hard early and late to clear his land and plant and gather his crops. No man in all the region around could wield an axe like him. Fenced fields soon took the place of the forest; an orchard was planted, a barn built, and the family was full of hope for the future when death removed its strong support. Just before he died, pointing to his children, he said to his wife: “Eliza, I have planted four saplings in these woods. I leave them to your care.” He was buried in a corner of a wheat-field on his farm. James, the baby, was eighteen months old at the time.

The eldest of Mrs. Garfield’s four children was a daughter, aged eleven; then came Thomas, aged nine; then a daughter of seven, and the baby boy of two summers. A part of the farm was sold to pay off the debt, and Mrs. Garfield and Thomas cultivated the rest, and kept the family together. Mrs. Garfield split rails for fencing with her own hands, slight and delicate woman though she was. Some of her neighbors undertook to give her a “bee” to help her get out rails for fencing, but went home when she declined to treat them with rum, and the brave little woman split her own rails. Mrs. Garfield’s anxiety that her children, and especially James, should have educational advantages was so great that the first school house in that region was built on land which she gave for that purpose.

There, at the age of three, James began his life of study, and that he was enabled to pursue his studies after he reached the age when he could work was largely due to the self-denial of his mother and his brother Thomas. The first pair of shoes which the little fellow had were bought with money which Thomas had earned, and it was the pleasure of this elder brother, who is now living near Grand Rapids, Mich., to do everything in his power to help James along. For that he gave up his own desire for an education, and he always rejoiced in his brother’s advancement and renown as though it had been his own.

James was a precocious boy, both physically and mentally. At four, he received at the district school the prize of a New Testament as the best reader in the primary class. At eight he had read all the books contained in the little log farm-house, and began to borrow from the neighbors such works as “Robinson Crusoe,” Josephus’s “History and Wars of the Jews,” Goodrich’s “United States,” and Pollock’s “Course of Time.” These were read and re-read, until he could relate whole chapters from memory. At the district school James was known as a fighting boy. He found that the larger boys were disposed to insult and abuse a little fellow who had no father or big brother to protect him, and he resented such imposition with all the force of a sensitive nature backed by a hot temper, great physical courage, and a strength unusual for his age. Many stories are told of the pluck shown in his encounters with the rough country lads in defence of his boyish rights and honor. They say he never began a fight and never cherished malice, but when enraged by taunts or insults would attack boys of twice his size with the fury and tenacity of a bull-dog. When he was twelve years old his brother returned from Michigan, where he had been employed by a farmer to make clearings, with money enough to build a frame house for his mother. James assisted him, and did so well that one of the joiners advised him to follow carpentering as a trade. During the next two years he worked regularly as a carpenter, going to school only at intervals, but studying diligently in spare hours at home.

He was as ready to work as he was to study or defend himself. He often got employment in the haying and harvesting season from the farmers of Orange. When he was sixteen he walked ten miles to Aurora, in company with a boy older than himself, looking for work. They offered their services to a farmer who had a good deal of hay to cut. “What wages do you expect?” asked the man. “Man’s wages—a dollar a day,” replied young Garfield. The farmer thought they were not old enough to earn full wages. “Then let us mow that field by the acre,” said the young man. The farmer agreed; the customary price per acre was 50 cents. By four o’clock in the afternoon the hay was down and the boys earned a dollar apiece. Then the farmer engaged them for a fortnight. James’s first wages were earned from a merchant who had an ashery where he leached ashes and made black salts, which were shipped by lake and canal to New York. He got $9 a month and his board, and stuck to the business for two months, at the end of which his hair below his cap was bleached and colored by the fumes until it assumed a lively red hue. About that time he took a job of cutting 100 cords of oak wood at 50 cents a cord, and put up his two cords a day without any trouble.

Like most active and restless boys he wanted to become a sailor, and went to Cleveland to ship on a lake schooner. The first captain to whom he applied greeted him with such a torrent of profanity that he turned about to go home, but afterwards accepted an offer from his cousin, Amos Setcher, to drive horses on the canal boat tow path for “$10 a month and found,” a dazzling offer in those days. A few months of association with the rough canal boatmen dispelled much of the romance with which his fancy had invested an aquatic life, and after falling into the canal no less than 14 times, the last time barely escaping with his life, he made up his mind that Providence might have something better in store for him than driving a canal boat. His brief canal experience was followed by a long fit of sickness, and after his recovery he took his savings, and with some assistance from his brother Thomas, began his education in earnest.

Accompanied by a cousin and another young man from the neighborhood, and supplied by his mother with a few pots, frying pans and dinner plates, he set out for Chester, where the academy was located. The three young men rented a room in an old, unpainted building near the academy, and, with their cooking utensils, a few dilapidated chairs, loaned by a kindly neighbor, and some straw ticks, which they spread upon the floor to sleep on, they set up housekeeping—for they were too poor to pay board as well as tuition. Garfield paid his own way by taking odd jobs from carpenters Saturdays and evenings. During the summer he made enough by chopping wood to pay his board for the next academy term, the price for his board, washing, and lodging being $1.06 a week.

He now thought himself competent to teach a country school, but in two days’ tramping through Cuyahoga county failed to find employment. Some schools had already engaged teachers, and where there was still a vacancy the trustees thought him too young. He returned home completely discouraged and greatly humiliated by the rebuffs he had met with. He made a resolution that he would never again ask for a position of any sort, and the resolution was kept, for every public place he has since had has come to him unsought.

Next morning, while still in the depths of despondency, he heard a man call to his mother from the road, “Widow Gaffield” (a local corruption of the name Garfield), “where’s your boy Jim? I wonder if he wouldn’t like to teach our school at the Ledge.” James went out and found a neighbor from a district a mile away, where the school had been broken up for two winters by the rowdyism of the big boys. He said he would like to try the school, but before deciding must consult his uncle, Amos Boynton. That evening there was a family council. Uncle Amos pondered over the matter, and finally said, “You go and try it. You will go into that school as the boy, ‘Jim Gaffield,’ see that you come out as Mr. Garfield, the school-master.” The young man mastered the school, after a hard tussle in the school-room with the bully of the district, who resented a flogging and tried to brain the teacher with a billet of wood. His wages were $12 a month and board, and he “boarded around” in the families of the pupils.

In the fall of this term he first met Lucretia Rudolph, whom the whole world now honors as Mrs. Garfield. English grammar, natural philosophy, arithmetic and algebra were his principal studies, and he soon had sufficient knowledge of them to teach in a district school. For three years he continued his work at the academy, at the school, and in the carpenters’ shops in autumn and winter, and in the woods in the summer, thus managing not only to pay his expenses at the academy, but to save something toward the expenses of his college education. It was while he was teaching during his academy life that he became personally interested in religion and joined the Christian Disciples, or Campbellites as they are often called from their founder. Of this denomination he was ever after a consistent and active member. In the fall of 1851 he went to Hiram and asked of the trustees of the institution there the privilege of making the fires and sweeping to pay a portion of his expenses. He soon became a teacher, and in 1854, was ready to enter college in advance and had $350 saved toward meeting his expenses. His decided anti-slavery opinions led him to seek admission to some New England college, and a friendly reply from President Mark Hopkins, of Williams College, to a letter of inquiry, secured for Williams her most illustrious alumnus. He graduated at Williams in 1856, returned to Hiram as professor of Greek and Latin, and two years later was married and elected president of Hiram College.

Up to 1856 Mr. Garfield had taken but little interest in public affairs, but with the Kansas-Nebraska legislation his political pulses began to stir. He then became an active Republican, and entered into politics with the same ardor that characterized his efforts as an educator. His first political speech was made at Williamstown in 1856, just before he left college, in behalf of Fremont, the first Republican candidate for the Presidency. His first vote was cast at the Presidential election that fall. In 1859 he was elected by a large majority to the Senate of Ohio from the counties of Portage and Summit, and though yet scarcely 28, at once took high rank as a man unusually well informed on the subjects of legislation, and effective and powerful in debate. His most intimate friend in the Senate, Jacob D. Cox, afterward became a Major-General, Governor of the State, and Secretary of the Interior. Garfield pushed his law studies forward, and early in the winter of 1860 was admitted to the bar of the supreme court. He was serving in the State Senate when the war broke out, and when the President’s call for 75,000 men was read in the chamber, amidst the tumultuous acclamations of the assemblage, he moved that 20,000 troops and $3,000,000 at once be voted as the quota of the State. When the time came for appointing the officers for the Ohio troops, Gov. Dennison offered him command of the Forty-Second Infantry, but he modestly declined, on account of his lack of military experience, and, resigning the Presidency of Hiram College, he accepted a position as Lieutenant-Colonel. A few weeks later, when the Forty-Second was organized, he yielded to the universal desire of its officers, and accepted the Colonelcy. His first military duty was the conduct of an expedition against Humphrey Marshall, in Eastern Kentucky, by which he won a Brigadier-Generalship. He was at Shiloh, at Corinth, and at Chickamauga, where he wrote every order but one, and for his gallant bravery at Chickamauga he was made a Major-General. While he was in camp, after the battle of Shiloh, a fugitive slave took refuge with the Union soldiers. A few moments later the owner rode up and demanded his property. Gen. Garfield was not present, and the slaveholder passed on to the division commander, who ordered Garfield, by written order, to deliver the fugitive. Garfield answered by simply endorsing on the order: “I respectfully but positively decline to allow my command to search for or deliver up any fugitive slaves. I conceive that they are here for quite another purpose.” This position was sustained by a general order subsequently issued by the war department.

In 1862 Ohio Republicans of the 19th Ohio District elected Gen. Garfield to succeed Joshua R. Giddings in the House of Representatives. At President Lincoln’s suggestion he reluctantly resigned his commission in December, 1863, to enter Congress, where he was the youngest member. From that time until 1880 he represented his district in the House, and came to be the Republican leader of that body and the party candidate for Speaker. It is impossible to detail here his congressional services, but he did most faithful and valuable work as chairman of the important committees on military affairs, banking and currency, and appropriations. In the winter of 1880 he was elected U. S. Senator to succeed Allen G. Thurman, receiving the vote of every Republican member of the Ohio Legislature in the nominating caucus, an honor never before accorded to any politician in the Buckeye State. Gen. Garfield went to the Chicago convention as the leader of the Ohio delegation, and when the nominations were made he presented the name of John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury, in a most eloquent speech.

When the balloting began, a single delegate from Pennsylvania voted for Garfield. No attention was paid to this vote, which was thought to be a mere eccentricity on the part of the man who cast it. Later on a second Pennsylvania delegate joined the solitary Garfield man. So the balloting continued, the fight being between Grant, Blaine, and Sherman, with Washburne, Edmunds, and Windom in the field.

Some unsuccessful efforts were made on the second day’s voting to rally on Edmunds and Washburne. Finally, on the thirty-fourth ballot, the Wisconsin men determined to make an effort in an entirely new direction to break the deadlock. They threw their seventeen votes for Garfield.

General Garfield sprang to his feet and protested against this proceeding, making the point of order that nobody had a right to vote for any member of the Convention without his consent, and that consent, he said, “I refuse to give.” The chairman declared that the point of order was not well taken, and ordered the Wisconsin vote to be counted. On the next ballot nearly the whole Indiana delegation swung over to Garfield, and a few scattering votes were changed to him from other States, making a total of fifty votes cast for him in all. Now it became plain that, by a happy inspiration, a way out of the difficulty had been found. On the thirty-sixth ballot, State after State swung over to Garfield amid intense excitement, and Gen. Garfield was finally nominated on the tenth day of the convention, in a whirlwind of enthusiasm. His election followed by a large majority, the Electoral College standing 214 for Gen. Garfield to 155 for Gen. Hancock.