History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 123

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 574

USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 123

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The next day the President went to the committee room, and had an interview with the Republican members. With the sad, mysterious light in his melancholy eyes, as if they were familiar with the things hidden from mor- tals, and the grand pathos of his voice and manner, he stated the position of things, then-the last of June- three hundred and eighty thousand Union soldiers then in the field would return home, by the ensuing October. Under the existing law, the draft of one million of men would be required to give fifty thousand to the army. If the departing soldiers could not be replaced, Grant could not maintain himself before Richmond, and Sherman must retire from before Atlanta. He was answered : "It is on the eve of the election. Our places in the house depended on that. The President's own election was in- volved; all depended on these two." Drawing himself up on his seat, to a height of grandeur, he answered. "I have thought that all over; my election is not necessary; I must put down the rebellion; I must have five hun- dred thousand more men."

A substitute for the decapitated bill was at once intro- duced, and the war over it flashed up anew. On the

LIFE AT THE CAPITAL.

twenty-fifth of June, General Garfield delivered a masterly and exhaustive speech in its favor. The bill was passed. The President issued his proclamation for five hundred thousand men, and the people responded-

"We are coming, Father Abraham,

Five hundred thousand more."

A new inspiration, fresh life, restored strength and courage sprang up and revived the North.

Garfield's vote against the increase of bounties was bitterly reprobated in his district. A public meeting near his home wrote him a letter, and required his resignation. He made a temperate reply, and said he should expect from each of the signers a written apology for it, in the calm of the near future. He retained the paper, and was able to score against each name the mark of an apol- ogy received ; and all were thus crossed within a year.

He delivered his enlightened and liberal speech on our commercial relations with Canada in the house, in March, to which future reference will be made. On the eighth of April he delivered the awful reply (no other one word so aptly characterizes it), to Alexander Long, of Cincinnati. Probably it is the most complete and per- fect piece of invective, sarcasm, and indignant denuncia- tion ever heard in the American congress. It is a good deal more than that, as the reader will see by the follow- ing passages:

REPLY TO HONORABLE ALEXANDER LONG, APRIL 8, 1864. MR. CHAIRMAN:

I should be obliged to you if you would direct the sergeant-at-arms to bring a white flag and plant it in the aisle, between myself and my colleague who has just addressed you.

I recollect on one great occasion when two great armies stood face to face, that, under a white flag just planted, I approached a company of men dressed in the uniform of the rebel confederacy, and reached out my hand to one of their number and told him I respected him as a brave man. Though he wore the emblems of disloyalty and treason, still, underneath his vestment, I beheld a brave and honest soul.

I would reproduce that scene here this afternoon. I say were there such flag of truce -- but God forgive me if I did it under any other cir- cumstances !- I would reach out this right hand and ask that gentle- man to take it; because I respect his bravery and his honesty. I be- lieve what has just fallen from his lips is the honest sentiment of his heart, and in uttering it he has made a new epoch in the history of this war. Ile has done a new thing under the sun; he has done a brave thing-braver than to face cannon and musketry-and I honor him for his candor and frankness.

But now, I ask you to take away the flag of truce; and I will go back inside the U'nion lines and speak of what he has done. 1 am reminded by it of a distinguished character ir Paradise Lost. When he had re- belled against the glory of God and "led away a third part of 1 leaven's sons, conjured against the Highest;" when after terrible battles in which mountains and hills were hurled by each contending host "with jacula- tion dire;" when, at last, the leader and his host were hurled down "nine times the space that measures day and night," and, after the ter- rible fall, lay stretched prone on the burning lake, Satan lifted up his shattered bulk, crossed the abyss, looked away into Paradise, and, so- liloquizing, said: "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell." It seems to me in that utterance he expressed the very sentiment to which you

have just listened; uttered by one no less brave, malign and fallen. This man gathers up the meaning of this great contest, the philosophy of the moment, the prophecies of the hour, and in sight of the para- dise of victory and peace, utters his conclusion in this wail of terrible despair, "Which way I fly is hell." He ought to add, "Myself am hell." * * * * *

But now, when hundreds of thousands of brave souls have gone up to God under the shadow of the flag, and when thousands more, maimed and shattered in the contest, are sadly awaiting the deliver- ance of death ; now, when three years of terriffic war have raged over us, when our armies have pushed the rebellion back over mountains and rivers, and crowded it into narrow limits, until a wall of fire girds it ; now, when the uplifted hand of a majestic people is about to let fall the lightning of its conquering power upon the rebellion ; now, in the quiet of this hall, hatched in the lowest depths of a similar dark treason, there rises a Benedict Arnold, and proposes to surrender us all up, body and spirit, theNation and the flag, its genius and its honor, now and forever, to the accursed traitors to our country. And that propo- sition comes-God forgive and pity my beloved State !- it comes from a citizen of the honored and loyal Commonwealth of Ohio.

I implore you, brethren in this house, not to believe that many births ever gave pangs to my mother State such as she suffered when that traitor was born [suppressed applause and sensation]. I beg you not to believe that on the soil of that State another such growth has ever de- formed the face of nature, and darkened the light of God's day [an audible whisper, "Vallandigham"]. * * *

But the gentleman takes higher ground-and in that I agree with him-namely, that five million or eight million people possess the right of revolution. Grant it ; we agree there. If fifty-nine men can make rev- olution successful, they have the right of revolution. If one State wishes to break its connection with the Federal government, and does it by force, maintaining itself, it is an independent nation-If the eleven southern States are determined and resolved to leave the Union, to secede, to revolutionize, and can maintain that revolution by force, they have the revolutionary right to do so; grant it. I stand on that platform with the gentleman. And now the question comes, is it our constitutional duty to let them do it? That is the question, and in order to reach it, I beg to call your attention, not to an argument, but to the condition of affairs which would result from such action-the mere statement of which becomes the strongest possible argument. What does this gentleinan propose ? Where will he draw the line of division ? If the rebels carry into successful secession what they desire to carry, if their revolution envelops as many States as they intend it shall envelop, if they draw the line where Isham G. Harris, the rebel governor of Tennessee, in the rebel camp near our lines, told Mr. Val- landigham they would draw it-along the line of the Ohio and the Potomac-if they make good their declaration to him that they will never consent to any other line, then I ask what is this thing that the gentleman proposes to do ? * *

I tell you, and I confess it here, that while I hope I have something of human courage, I have not enough to contemplate such a result. I am not brave enough to go to the brink of the precipice of successful secession, and look down into its damned abyss. If my vision were keen enough to pierce to its bottom, I would not dare to look. If there be a man here who dare contemplate such a spectacle, 1 look upon him as the bravest of the sous of women, or as a downright madman. Secession to gain peace ! Secession is the tocsin of eternal war. There can be no end to such a war as will be inaugurated if this thing be done.

Suppose the policy of the gentleman were adopted to-day. Let the order go forth; sound the "recall" on your bugles, and let it ring from Texas to the far Atlantic, and tell the armies to come back. Call the victorious legions back over the battlefield of blood, forever now disgraced. Call them back over the territory they have conquered and

LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD.

redeemed. Call them back, and let the minions of secession chase them with derision and jeers as they come-and then tell them that that man across the aisle from the free State of Ohio gave birth to the monstrous proposition.

Mr. Chairman, if such a word should be sent forth through the armies of the Union, the wave of terrible vengeance that would sweep back over this land could find no parallel in the records of time. Almost in the moments of final victory the "recall" is sounded by a craven people not deserving freedom! We ought, every man, to be made a slave forever should we sanction such a sentiment.

The gentleman has told us there is no such thing as coercion justifi- able under the constitution. I ask him for one moment to reflect that no statute was ever enforced without coercion. It is the basis of every law in the universe-human or divine. A law is no law without coercion behind it. You levy taxes; coercion secures their collection. It follows the shadow of the thief, and brings him to justice. It lays its iron hand on the murderer; tries him, and hangs. It accompanies your diplomacy to foreign courts, and backs the declaration of the na- tion's rights by a pledge of the nation's strength. But when the life of that nation is imperilled, we are told that it has no coercive power against the parricides in its own bosom. . * * *

I said a little while ago that I accepted the proposition of the gentle- man that the rebels possessed the right of revolution. The decisive issue between us and the rebellion is, whether they shall revolutionize and destroy, or we shall subdue and preserve. We take the latter ground. We take the common weapons of war to meet them; and if these be not sufficient, I would take any element which will overwhelm and destroy; 1 would sacrifice the dearest and best beloved; 1 would take all the old sanctions of law and the constitution and fling them to the winds, if necessary, rather than let the nation be broken in pieces and its people destroyed with endless ruin.

What is the constitution that these gentlemen are perpetually fling- ing in our faces whenever we desire to strike hard blows against the rebellion? It is the production of the American people. They made it, and the creator is mightier than the creature. The power which made the constitution can also make other instruments to do its great work in the day of its dire necessity. * * * *

Mr. Chairman, let me mention another class of facts in this same connection. We were compelled last year to send our secret service men to ferret out the insidious work of that organization known as the "Knights of the Golden Circle," which was attempting to corrupt the army and destroy its efficiency. It was found that by the most subtle and secret means, the signs and pass-words of that order were being made known to such men in the army as were disaffected or could be corrupted. Witness also the riots and murders which their agents are committing throughout the loyal north, under the head and guidance of the party whose representatives sit yonder across the aisle. And now, just as the time is coming when we are to select a President for the next four years, one rises among them and fires the beacon, throws up the blue-light, which will be seen and rejoiced over at the rebel capital as the signal that the traitors in our camp are organized and ready for their hellish work. I believe the utterance of to-day is the uplifted banner of revolt. 1 ask you to mark the signal that blazes here, and see if there will not soon appear the answering signal of trait- ors all over the land. If I am wrong in this prediction, I shall be thankful, but I am only too fearful of its truth.

The close of the long session saw Mr. Garfield one of the most conspicuous men of the house. Probably in the annals of congress no fresh young man ever advanced to such a position in so short time, certainly none ever went

to it so securely and certainly. Though the public gaze was on the armies and generals, and popular sympathy was with the soldiers, the labors and high qualities of the young representative did not escape general notice, and appreciation. In the presidential campaign of 1864, his services as a speaker were everywhere sought. In it he delivered sixty-five speeches and traveled seven thousand five hundred miles. As he received his first nomi- nation and election while absent in the field, so now he left his people to form their own estimate of him, and continue or reject him, as they would. The district nom- inating convention was called late in the season, and met while he was at home for a short visit. He returned to find the entire Reserve in flames over the Wade-Davis review of the war policy of the President. Unquestion- ably that was the subject of severe and just criticism. He had never seen it, knew nothing of it, save by rumor. He was charged with holding to the views-even with the authorship of the paper. Wade himself was bitterly denounced. Garfield was proscribed by the popular clamor. His re-nomination was wholly dependent on his ability to clear himself from complicity with the man- ifesto, and sympathy with its statements and spirit. He read the paper, approved of it, and felt himself doomed. He was written to, and requested to be at Warren, at the convention and take care of himself, with a very direct in- timation that salvation meant denunciation of Wade and Winter Davis. He felt challenged. The knightly spirit of the old Crusader heard the trumpet call to the listed field. He answered that he would be in Warren on the day at a namcd hotel. There he remained in seclusion. The convention met, organized, took a recess for dinner, and sent him a delegation, who curtly informed him that the convention requested his presence. He entered, coldly, and proudly took his seat in front of the grim and frowning body. After an ominous silence he said he had complied with their request. Why was his presence required? Very directly the chairman told him of the manifesto, of his reputed connection with it. The chair hoped he would appreciate the situation. The district would not permit any criticism of President Lin- coln, nor any opposition to his policy.

The young man arose. His six feet seemed seven, with his head thrown well back, and his eyes and face flashing. In courteous terms he thanked them for their former trust, venturing to remind them that it had been unsought. It was frank on their part to inform him of the terms upon which it could alone be continued. He denied the authorship of the paper-had only recently read it. He was sorry to read it. It gave him infinitely greater sorrow that it was entirely true. "I fully approve

LIFE AT THE CAPITAL.

of it. If you throw over, cut off old Ben Wade, your course is clear with me. Truly yours, I am more truly my own. Good day, gentlemen." He strode out with the certainty that he bore his head, as he had his polit- ical life, in his hand. Down the stairs he stalked, giving them the resounding blows of his spurning heels. They had just crunched the gravel in front of the entrance when the roof of the assembly seemed to be lifted by ac- clamations. This was their shout over his fall, and he walked away haughtier than he had approached. He had not gone half a square when the delegates of the convention came running and shouting after him.

His speech electrified the resolved and frowning con- vention. A young man from Ashtabula was the first to recover breath. He sprang to his feet, declaring that the man who had the grit and courage to come there and face a convention like that, ought to be nominated. "I move that he be nominated by acclamation !" And he was. That vote it was, that greeted the ears of the retir- ing hero as he smote his foot upon the ground below. Adjournment instantly followed, when the more eager flew after the restored favorite. In their after cooler mo- ments, many of the usually impassive men felt as if the act marked the convention for ridicule. "Huh!" ex- claimed an old man, "when we had a resolved an' sent for 'im to receive his sentence, he jest took us by the noses, pulled our beards, lafed in our faces, an' went off, an' we up an' nominated 'im quicker'n lightnin'. It beats all nater!" So it did, such nature as theirs, which was a very good and true nature, after all.

The proclamation of the President abolished slavery in all the rebel States, and immense armies in their bor- ders were giving it bloody effect. An act of congress swept it from the District of Columbia, but it remained in its bad integrity, in Maryland, and though fearfully shaken in Kentucky, it then had the sanction of State authority. During the Thirty-seventh congress, Mr. Lin- coln, by a solemn message to the two houses, proposed a plan of emancipation on compensation, similar to that which purged the District of Columbia. The men of Maryland and Kentucky, with the stupidity of slave- holders, rejected it. Congress and the executive were resolved. Slavery should be abolished. Time and change must compensate slave-holders. This was the work of the second session of the Thirty-eighth congress. The great enterprise was to be accomplished by a solemn amendment of the constitution. It was elabo- rately debated. Mr. Pendleton made an able, adroit speech against it. His argument was, that the central idea of the constitution could not be abrogated by an amendment. That this was that purely State institu-

tions (slavery) were placed beyond the reach of a power outside the State. That, in no event, could the concur- rent action of three-fourths of the States so change the constitution as to thus reach a State institution of the other fourth of them. Slavery was a State institution, and therefore, not to be thus reached. He said much of the subtle, hidden soul and essence of the constitution. He was answered by Garfield, from whom I quote speci- mens of his reply, and methods of dealing with the questions involved :

MR. SPEAKER : We shall never know why slavery dies so hard in this Republic and in this hall till we know why sin has such longevity and Satan is immortal. With marvellous tenacity of existence, it has outlived the expectations of its friends and the_ hopes of its enemies. It has been declared here and elsewhere to be in all the several stages of mortality, wounded, moribund, dead. The question was raised by my colleague [Mr. Cox] yesterday, whether it was indeed dead, or only in a troubled sleep. I know of no better illustration of its condition than is found in Sallust's admirable history of the great conspirator, Cataline, who, when his final battle was fought and lost, his army broken and scattered, was found far in advance of his own troops, lying among the dead enemies of Rome, yet breathing a little, but exhibiting in his countenance all that ferocity of spirit which had char- acterized his life. So, sir, this body of slavery lies before us among the dead enemies of the Republic, mortally wounded, impotent in its fiendish wickedness, but with its old ferocity of look, bearing the unmistakable marks of its infernal origin.

Speaking of the covers of slavery and Pendleton's de- fense, he said :

It sought an asylum in the untrodden territories of the West, but, with a whip of scorpions, indignant freemen drove it thence. I do not believe that a loyal man can now be found who would consent that it should again enter them. It has no hope of harbor there. It found no protection or favor in the hearts or consciences of the freemen of the Republic, and has fled for its last hope of safety behind the shield of the Constitution. We propose to follow it there, and drive it thence, as Satan was exiled from heaven. But now, in the hour of its mortal agony, in this hall, it has found a defender.

My gallant colleague [Mr. Pendleton,] for I recognize him as a gallant and able man, plants himself at the door of his darling, and bids defiance to all assailants. He has followed slavery in its flight, until at last it has reached the great temple where liberty is enshrined -the constitution of the United States-and there, in that last retreat, declares that no hand shall strike it. It reminds me of that celebrated passage in the great Latin poet, in which the serpents of the Ionian sea, when they had destroyed Laocoon and his sons, fled to the heights of the Trojan citadel and coiled their slimy lengths around the feet of the tutelar goddess, and were covered by the orb of her shield. So, under the guidance of my colleague, [Mr. Pendleton, ] slavery, gorged with the blood of ten thousand freemen, has climbed to the high citadel of American nationality, and coiled itself securely, as he believes, around the feet of the statue of justice and under the shield of the constitution of the United States. We desire to follow it even there, and kill it beside the very altar of liberty. Its blood can never make atonement for the least of its crimes.

But the gentleman has gone further. He is not content that the snaky sorceress shall be merely under the protection of the constitu- tion. In his view, by a strange metamorphosis, slavery becomes an in- visible essence and takes up its abode in the very grain and fiber of the constitution, and when we would strike it he says, " I cannot point out

LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD.

any express clause that prohibits you from destroying slavery; but I find a prohibition in the intent and meaning of the constitution. I go under the surface, out of sight, into the very genius of it, and in that invisible domain slavery is enshrined, and there is no power in the Re- public to drive it thence." * * * * *

He goes behind the letter of the constitution, and finds a refuge for slavery in its intent, and with that intent, he declares we have no right to deal in the way of amendment.

But he has gone even deeper than the spirit and intent of the consti- Intion. He has announced a discovery, to which I am sure no other statesman will lay claim. He has found a domain where slavery can no more be reached by human law than the life of Satan by the sword or Michael. He has marked the hither boundary of this newly discov- " ered continent, in his response to the question of the gentleman from lowa.

Not finding anything in the words and phrases of the constitution that forbids an amendment abolishing slavery, he goes behind all human enactments, and far away, among the eternal equities, he finds a primal law which overshadows States, nations, and constitutions, as space envelopes the universe, and by its solemn sanctions, one human being can hold another in perpetual slavery. Surely, human ingenuity has never gone farther to protect a malefactor, or defend a crime. 1 shall make no argument with my colleague on this point, for in that high court to which he appeals, eternal justice dwells with freedom, and slavery has never entered.

He grappled the argument, luminously tracing the power to make and amend the constitution from its true source. He demonstrated the constitutional power to change the organic law as the amendment proposed. The speech, like most of its author's, abounds in filicit- ous expressions, and sharply cut points as the reader has seen.

The session ended with the congress on the third of March, 1865.

CHAPTER III. IN CONGRESS .- EUROPEAN TOUR.

Assassination, Destruction, Restoration .- Studies .- Needs of the Day. -Placed on the Ways and Means .- Eulogy of Lincoln. - Records of the Secretary of War .- The Milligan Case .- Bureau of Education. -Europe .- Return .- What He Found .- Jefferson Receives a Les- son.

Mr. Garfield was in New York on the night of the as- sassination. A ghastly colored waiter made his way to his room at early dawn and communicated the tale to him. After generations cannot now appreciate the first effects of the blow. For a day the government lay in shattered frag- ments, and had its strength and life resided in physical force, and the trappings of power, it might have been overthrown. Its citadel was in the hearts of millions of people, and its strength their intelligent love. It was, and is, indestructible. For one hour, for one time, the mind of Garfield acted with less than its usual clear-

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History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 123

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902 Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers Number of Pages: 574

Author: Williams bros., Cleveland, pub. [from old catalog]; Riddle, A. G. (Albert Gallatin), 1816-1902
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 574