History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 139

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 139

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LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD.

dren alike, in the presence of General Garfield, is the frank, natural warmth and tenderness of his reception. Never was a man so approachable, nor a man so unre- served; nothing hidden, nothing kept back, nothing but self, which, as a thing to be cherished, has for him no existence. He has no secrets; nothing hidden, or to be hidden. It is impossible to betray him in this way. What he is he says; what he has, is any man's. His love and kindliness surround him with an atmosphere which every one feels who approaches him, magnetic, all-pervading; more constant than his shadow born of the sun without, this radiates from the never setting sun within. No other word expresses it but love, never- changing, all-embracing, and, like love, not seeing faults ; some times so strong as to overpower judgment, where he alone is concerned. Probably there is no better or more accurate judge of men than Garfield now living. Men do not impose on him; they never will, He sees their faults and likes them, maugre their failings. There is, however, another element of character and mind ever active, his just sense of responsibility, and accurate esti- mate of means to ends. He knows exactly what is needed for any certain purpose, and will never use that which does not fully meet all the requirements. His first qualification for an agent would be eminently that of moral fitness. No man of blemish would be trusted by him. The man himself he would love, could not help it, but the incongruity of using him with a known defect would ensure his rejection.

There is something noticeable in these qualities of Garfield, not falling under any definition or general head -his sense of the fitness of things, his eye for proportion and symmetry, the artist element, which is very large, that which leads him to study and demand the congruous in all his own work, and in all the things about him. He once, in his inimitable way, told of meeting a young maiden of twelve, in the far-off Orange, pre-canal days, in some lonely way. She was draped in a badly worn and not less soiled "tow" frock, repaired in front with a large flannel patch. Barefoot she was, this maiden of twelve, and over her sun-burned face she wore a light silk veil. The bare feet kissed the earth harmoniously. The woolen and coarse linen were a matter of necessity, which he allowed for, and not unseemly, but the veil- that veil, with that dress, and the bare feet, struck him violently as incongruous. The unconscious child went her barefooted way. Her image dwelt not in the boy's heart, but brain, an idea, a form of incongruity, always ready to suggest comparisons. "This is a patch-frocked, bare-footed girl, with a veil." "This is my barefooted, tow-frocked girl's veil," became an oft mental observa-

tion upon his own work. This sense of the congruous finally compelled him to have the top line of the fence in front of his Mentor home reduced to a right line, without reference to the modest swell of the ground on which it stood. There was also the important question of the color of a screening lattice, between the floor of the veranda and the ground. What should it be? Then followed an original disquisition upon colors, and the congruous. There was a law, which, when deduced, would direct the waiting painter in the weighty matter of this lattice. It must not offend the eye by incongruity. It was a lattice near the ground. Its purpose and position must, allowing for one or two other things, control its color. Everybody would know what it was. It was not a foundation, nor a part of the build- ing; nor yet a blind for a window, but a screen to hide ån unseemly opening-a gap. It must do that and please the eye, with reference to all the surroundings. This sense of fitness and proportion is a habit of the mind, a quality of the man, referring to the moral and intellectual, as to the physical world, and is a governing law. It may be a real instinct, a necessity which com- pels him to find foundations for everything, and build with such infinite care. No faulty, imperfect material, stick, brick or stone, has the least chance for use any- where.

Next to the magnitude of the intellect, so often men- tioned, is its many-sidedness. Roundness and complete- ness, without angles, better express it. We have seen that it is eminently original, from the aptitude with which it finds newness and freshness in common things, a better test of originality than any eccentric plunge into the unknown, in search of the uncertain. Yet, while thus original, it tests and corrects its thought, by all the lights, a comparison with all the methods and models known to history and human experience. These, alway used in subordination and as aids, test helps. The union of these mental qualities is rare. The great original mind, usually so strong and conscious of its creative power, - whose structures, so near that they seem to dwarf and discountenance the remote edifices of others, even in the absence of egoism, and they seem of no account. Secure in itself, it seldom seeks aid. We found in the summing up of Part First, that Garfield lacks egoism, and hence always under-estimates himself, and his work. So he docilely and modestly looks for and accepts all help from all hands and lands, old and new.

There is also the union of the powers of a rare memory, with the productive faculties of creating, not often witnessed save among those who build of borrowed material, which he does not. His quotation

THE MAN.

from Tennyson, on the first anniversary of Lincoln's death, will be remembered. When called to pronounce the first commemorative oration at Arlington, he wrote with much care-a rare thing with him, the entire ad- dress. Later he revised and cut it down, and thus im- proved it. Then he laid it by, intending to read it. He did not see it again until on his way to Arlington for its delivery, when he hastily ran it over. At Arlington were fifteen thousand living and fifteen thousand of the dead to confront him, with the three thousand or four thou- sand flags of all nations and people. The President, cabinet, and foreign ministers were there. He had never attempted to read but once or twice. He would not read to these. He arose, full of his theme, and launched himself boldly on outspread pinion of free, happy, and seemingly spontaneous speech. It was taken by the reporters. Friends afterward compared it with the two, the original and the amended written copies. It was found identical with the last. It was, after all, an unconscious production of the wonderful memory.

His is an intellect of great creative power, capable of quarrying a mountain and throwing up a temple in a single day. Every great monolith would be polished and inscribed with classic legend, the whole chastely garlanded by fancy, and bearing rare flowers of poetry. It is a wonderful mind, wonderful and masterful, whose masterfulness, in its unconsciousness, yet wins by its modesty and unostentatious riches. It is curious, with the warmth and ardor of temperament of the man, this mind is eminently conservative, as all great balanced in- tellects must be. In all his utterances, is there a suspi- cion of the visionary? Calm, self-sustained, he never labors to a height whence, abandoning himself to impulse, he throws himself in soaring eccentric flight. He must always bear himself with himself, and then he is calm and self-sustained.

One likes to know the methods of such a man. Strong and healthy, nourishing food and good measures of rest are necessary for him. He must have plenty of rich red blood. His power of work can be estimated by the hints and glances rather than a full survey we have taken of it. He seldom, almost never, writes a speech. He walks as he thinks, and thinks in words which he speaks aloud, accompanying the expressive parts with the swing of that left hand, the gift of Eliza Ballou. The heads of these extemporized speeches he notes, and when the whole subject is thus rolled into com- pass and well in hand, it is laid away for its hour ch use. Language-all words-comes when needed. The thought well mastered instinctively finds its own just foundation, and the word - structure springs spontane-

ously into just and enduring structures. Would be greatly admired for their beauty and often majesty, did not men find them so solid, roomy and useful in prac- tical life. As a public speaker, an orator, he stands fully with the very first of his time. He never declaims. Happy, copious, strong, massive, finished, alive and leap- ing with the throb and pulse of great thought, his speech flows full with human sympathy and tenderness. What- ever he says and does is full of the great-heartedness of the man.

He is an actor born, with great facial power and a mimetic talent which enables him to reproduce the voice and manner of most living men. I am not aware that he has ever availed himself of this in public. Hints of it may have escaped him. One wants to see him at home, live with him, so as to be certain of his happiest times, at his own table, or wherever it comes. There, too, one should hear him, to have an accurate idea of his force and power as an orator. There where he mo- mentarily gives himself into the hands of a mighty emo- tion or some grotesque fancy, to be reproved perhaps by the admonitory hand of maternal Eliza.

On one of these times he once uttered an eulogium of Grant in the wilderness. The great general was sitting on a log in the woods, smoking, with his staff around him, while his army was executing a great decisive movement. Suddenly there dashed up an officer from a remote com- mander of a corps, staggering under the very weight of the message he bore, and announced that the whole rebel army was executing a simultaneous movement that would place it successfully in Grant's rear with the most awful consequences. All men were aghast. The Gen- eral removed his cigar, and calmly directed him to re-state his message, which he did. An instant's re- flection! That wonderful brain which planned all, knew all, knew better what was happening than a skilful gen- aral who actually saw it. He quietly answered "I don't believe it." Let the movement go on." "That," said the general, who with wonderful power had pictured the whole thing, the messenger, the unmoved Grant, the fright and terror produced on others-"That was Godlike," and then as the idea of the wonderful pres- cience grew on him, so passing the boundaries of human knowledge, partaking of the quality of the Highest, with a face whose expression culminated, he brought his mighty arm down with a grand sweep- "That was God !" Never, as I believe, were three words of any language uttered with such prodigious effect. Never before did the whole man so deliver, so discharge his whole self. Men and women's eyes were on the glow- ing face, saw the descending hand, but the boldness and

LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD.

grandeur of the climax could not be calculated. The emotions produced are incommunicable. Even pious Eliza was overwhelmed, and the awful, the almost pro- fane boldness of the figure, passed unreproved even by her. However great, and wherever great, he is greatest and best at home.

He puts himself well on paper. His purely literary labors are characterized by the limpid unconsciousness of his style, and the simple, compact vigor of his sen- tences. He uses words on paper as any one who recalls the club of child critics, must know he would. In work of this sort so sure is he of himself, that he finishes each page as he goes, and when the last is written the article is done. And yet he sometimes finds himself halting on the threshold of a sentence that won't form itself, no1 let him pass it, and there he stops until it yields.

He never leaves anything in his rear. He who searched for the lowest beginning place in boyhood, never has to go back to finish up or rebuild. How deep and ineradicable was that first love for the sea, is shown by his constant return to the visions of a sailor-boy, whence he draws more figures for his speeches than from all other sources.

Here I linger a moment to recall the half-limned pic- ture of two years ago, in Part First of this little history. It seemed to me then, that the changes in his life were produced by extraneous causes, and were not due at all to any plan of his own. The instances in proof of this have multiplied. Things which wanted him have come and taken him. He was willing to receive the senator- ship-would not go to seek it. Having received that, he wanted, as many did for him, his six full years in the senate. This which threatens to intervene was fortuitous -came at the least prematurely. It came as other things have alway come to him, and whatever attends its com- ing, it was unsought and in a way unwelcome.

That other thing, strongly marked in my study of him, was his remarkable growth upon the public. This is certainly to go on unchecked as it has gone. He is a primitive man, standing on the earth, with God and Heaven over him ; with mother, wife, and children about him; the first, oldest, the everlasting helps of mortal man. With these, whatever happens, he will go on de- veloping and growing, until Americans and the world recognize him in many ways the largest of his countrymen.

Here these slight labors end. I cannot more prop- erly conclude them than with his speech at Painesville, July 3, 1880, at the unveiling of the soldiers' statue. After the programme of addresses and reports was concluded by the very able oration of ex-Governor Cox, there came from ten thousand voices a com-

pelling call for General Garfield, who sat among the invited guests. A moment's hesitation, with the old instinct of foundation and construction, and the ever- present spirit of the young teacher aroused, he arose, and with all his great advantages of person and voice, quite at their best, he said :

Fellow citizens : I cannot fail to respond on such an occasion and in sight of such a monument, of such a cause, sustained by such men. While I have listened to what my friend, [General Cox], has said, two questions have been sweeping through my heart. One was, "What does the monument mean?" and the other, "What will the monument teach?"

Let me try to ask you for a moment to help me answer-"What does this monument mean?" Oh! the monument means a world of memories, a world of deeds, a world of tears and a world of glory. You know, thousands know, what it is to offer up your life to the coun- try, and that is no small thing, as every soldier knows. Let me put a question to you. Suppose your country in the embodied form of Ma- jestic Law should stand up before you and say, "I want your life, come up on this platform and offer it," how many would walk up before that Majestic Presence and say, "Here am I; take this life and use it for your great needs." And yet almost two millions of men made that answer, and the monument stands yonder to commemorate their ans- wer. That is one of its meanings. But, my friends, let me try you a little further. To give up life is much; for it is to give up wife, and home, and child, and ambition, and almost all. Let me test you this way; suppose that Majestic Form should call out to you and say, "I ask you to give up health, and drag yourself, not dead, but half alive, through a miserable existence for long years, until you perish and die in your crippled and hopeless condition." To volunteer to do that calls for a higher reach of patriotism and self-sacrifice; thousands of our soldiers did that. That is what our monument means also.

But let me ask you to go one step further. Suppose your country should say, "Come here on this platform, and in my name and for my sake consent to be idiots, consent that your brain and intellect shall be broken down into hopeless idiocy, for my sake." How many could be found to make that venture? and yet thousands did that with their eyes wide open to the horrible consequence. Let me tell you that one hundred and eighty thousand of our soldiers were prisoners of war, and many, when death was stalking, when famine was climbing up into their hearts, and when idiocy was threatening all that was left of their intellects, the gates of their prison stood open for them if they would just desert their flag and enlist under the flag of the enemy. Out of one hundred and eighty thousand, not two per cent. ever re- ceived a liberation from death, starvation, idiocy, or all that might come to them, but they took all these horrors and sufferings in prefer- ence to deserting the flag of their country and the glory of its truth. Was ever such measure of patriotism reached by man on this earth before? That is what your monument means.

By the subtle chemistry that no man knows, all the blood that was shed by our brothers, all the lives that were devoted, all the grief that was felt, at last crystallized itself into granite and rendered immortal the great truths for which they died. It stands there to-day-and that is what your monument means.

Now, what will the monument teach? I remember a story of one of the old conquerors of Greece, who, when he traveled in bis boyhood over the battle-fields, and saw trophies, the trophies set up by the con- queror, said: "These trophies of Miltiades will never let me sleep." Why? Something had taught him a lesson he could never forget; and, fellow-citizens, that silent sentinel that crowns your granite column will Jook down upon the boys that shall walk the streets generations to

THE MAN.

come, and will not let them sleep when their country calls. From his granite lips will sound out a call that the sons of Lake county will hear after the grave has covered us all and our immediate children. That is the teaching of your monument-that is the lesson. Its lesson is the endurance of what we believe-its lesson of sacrifice for what we love- - the lesson of heroism for what we mean to sustain, and that lesson cannot be lost upon a people like this. It is not a lesson of revenge, it is not a lesson of wrath, it is a grand, sweet lesson of the immortality of truth, that we hope will soon cover like the Schekina of light and glory, all parts of this Republic from the lakes to the Gulf. 1 once entered a house in old Massachusetts where over its door were

two crossed swords-one was the sword carried by the grandsire of its owner on the field of Bunker Hill, the other was the sword carried by the English grandsire of the wife, on the same field and on the other side of the conflict. Under these crossed swords in restored harmony and domestic peace lived a happy, contented and free family in the light of our Republican liberties; and I trust the time is not far distant when under the crossed swords and the locked shields of America, North and South, our people will sleep in peace, rise in liberty, and live in harmony under our flag of stars.

RESUMING THE NARRATIVE.

The preceding parts of this volume were given to the public amid the kindling excitement, the enthusiasm, the hope, of the great canvass of 1880. After the lapse of a single year, with the subject of it awaiting his final inurning, amid the emblems and manifestations of National and personal sorrow, when a common grief has dissolved hostile hosts, and opposing parties have be- come a common people, I sit down to write the con- cluding chapter of the great life therein so hastily sketched.

I took leave of him encamped at the head of one of the National hosts, about to engage in the great civic bat- · tle which was to make him the head of the Nation, when the disbanded multitudes, losing the guise of hos- tility, would turn to him in accord as the chosen, des- tined to lift the people to a higher life, and conduct the Nation to a more advanced position. I took leave of him surrounded with family, kindred and friends ; leav- ing to other hands to carry forward his personal history to years beyond my time, when these other forms might become the property of history, and stand grouped about their natural chief. Thus far, all the years seemed but preliminary to the greater future ; all his labors but dis- ciplinary for greater achievements.

A single year, and to the conclusion.

I turn back to the termination of his congressional career, where mention is made of the journey to Chi- cago. Here I take up the thread, compelled to subject the great events of the year to the same rapid treatment of the period immediately preceding.

We have seen power slipping from Republican hands and know something of the causes which led to the loss. The overwhelming majority of the Democrats in the House of the Forty-fourth Congress was greatly reduced in that of the Forty-fifth ; but the causes which produced it continued to influence, and produce in the Senate changes adverse to the Republicans, and the end of the last session of that Congress saw the Democratic party in possession of both houses. The great popular up- heaval, for such it was, had not placed the Democratic

party in entire ascendency in the Republic. Why it stopped short of that I do not now discuss.

THE CONTEST OF 1880.

The eve of the great contest of 1880 saw the United States as nearly divided, and the National parties as equally balanced, as at any similar contest under the constitution. To a close observer the rising popular in- fluence was seemingly adverse to the Democrats. They complained of being defrauded of the Presidency in 1876, yet, in the contest, lost the effect of that claim, by not making a direct appeal to the Nation, with the same candidate, and thus trying their case in the great forum.

Probably the spirit and determination of two opposing parties were never more firmly bent on success than were those of the confronting hosts of that year of fate. The Republicans had prestige, great leaders, large intelli- gence, but great divisions and mortal enmities. The Democrats were compact, had one hundred and thirty- eight votes assured, great leaders, and their unfortunate history. Each could command the needed sinews of war. The contest from the first was most doubtful. Its influence upon history under the ensuing complications no man attempts to forecast.

The Republicans, with the eclat of their career and prestige, took the initiative, held their convention first, placed their candidates before the world, with their dec- laration of measures and policy, and sounded the note of defiance and onset.

In its own time and place the Democracy assembled in general convention, settled its representations, com- posed its dissensions, arraigned its opponents, selected its candidates, set its squadrons in the field, sent an an- swering challenge, and joined in the proffered battle.

The differences among the Republicans survived the convention, and weakened their line.

THE CHICAGO CONVENTION.

The Republican convention was held at Chicago the 2d of June, and the Democratic at Cincinnati on the 2 2d of the same month. General Garfield was one of the delegates of his State at large. Curiously enough,

RESUMING THE NARRATIVE.

- with his declared support of Senator Sherman, he proba- bly could not have been elected a delegate in his own old Congressional district, which was emphatic for an- other, and yet he whom he opposed throughout for the Presidency was his choice for Secretary of State. Many of his personal friends, who wished his nomination at the convention in advance, urged him strongly to decline be- ing a delegate, and remain away from the convention, which, in his absence, might nominate him. It is certain that he did not wish the nomination; and, while he felt that the Republicans had a right to his services in the convention, it was his declared judgment that his pres- ence there would check and defeat any tendency in his own favor. Undoubtedly his presence, bearing and ser- vices in that memorable body largely contributed to, if they did not inspire and dictate its final action. Through all the days, as the strife for supremacy became more in- tense, while the great leader of New York held the Grant forces with steady devotion to their purpose, and the Blaine men came to see the hope lessness of their cause, the spontaneous acclamations of the thousands in the galleries proclaimed the wish of the popular heart, and the instinctive judgment of the intelligent multitude, which had great effect. That the object of this unsought favor labored to the extent of his powers for the chosen of his State with zealous fidelity was never questioned. That he did not wish the nomination at that time is known to hundreds. When, in spite of him, it came upon him, he was overwhelmed with a moment's anguish, which now seems prophetic. Obviously a nomination for the Presi- dency was within a reasonable forecast of his future, and had been discussed with friends. That he seriously did not wish it at that time, and deplored it then and later, and before the assaults upon him of the opposing host is well known to many. He wanted his term in the Sen- ate. He wanted the help, discipline and growth that it would give him. He knew that debate, the mastery, un- folding and enforcement of great themes and subjects, in the National forum, were his proper field, and the Presi- dency might come after, if it would. To more than one, and on more than one occasion he deplored the close of his career in the National legislature. Some of the most successful of his speeches, as well as the most effective, were delivered in that fatal convention, notably the two or three elementary paragraphs, on the motion to expel the three delegates who had dared to vote against a pending resolution.

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History of Buchanan County, Iowa, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 139

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