History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 27

Author: Williams Brothers
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 443

USA > Ohio > Lake County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 27
USA > Ohio > Geauga County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 27

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Mention has been made of the slenderness of his means and meagreness of compensation he earned, where it seemed to reflect light on his character. Had I ever heard of his higgling over the price of a barlow-knife, or woodchuck-skin whip-lash, I should mention the oft-repeated scantiness of his expenditures, and the sum total of his debt when he took metaphysical leave of Williams. It might then help to a better understanding of the man. Great men may be small in money matters; when they are, it may as well be known. It helps to equalize great and common men. Mr. Garfield seems rather of the temper of the knight who twisted off an unweighed quantity of his golden chain, and threw it in silent disdain to the churl who asked wages for hospitality.

On his return to Ohio he was honored with the post of languages in the Hiram Institute. The next year he became its president. As an instructor, he became famous, so far as such a post can confer distinction. Doubtless there are minds gifted with a special aptitude for instructing. It was now thought this was his gift. He never had any of the pedagogue. He never would have realized any man's idea, save his own, of a professor. I doubt whether there was any one or two things that peculiarly fitted him for teaching. I think there are few things to which, if he turned and concentrated himself, that he would not do about as well as the best in that line, and shortly. It is said that Greek and Latin, in his mouth, ceased to be dead languages, a manner. That the secrets of most of the sciences revealed themselves to him, and so were freely translated. The power lay in the warmth and magnetism of his nature. A power to animate things, make them move and take color. In some sense a born orator, his rank as such I do not speak of. His mastery of language gave him a copious vocabulary. He was full of enthusiasm. Anything which engaged his attention five minutes awakened it. Never was there such talkings up of lessons as his; nor had any studies ever before seemed so attractive to the pupils. They saw them through his medium, which was warmth as well as light. He was born-had all his days save his Williams days-lived at the heart-beat of the common people, and knew exactly the influences which control them, and that they measure everything by the money standard of cost and what could be got for it in cash. He knew that they even estimated him by the money he could earn at teaching, and hence the eagerness to know the money cost of his education. A young farmer, in the emu- lation which the young professor's name produced, secured a quarter in the insti- tute. He became charmed at the world of letters opened to him. His father refused, hesitated ; was seen and talked with by the young president, who made it clear, to even his apprehension, that a more thorough education enhanced the cash value of the youth. Would it have been better on the whole that Garfield had remained a college professor or president ? It is pretty certain he would not long have remained at Hiram. His proportions were not suited to that, and he would have grown much the faster. Would it have been better if his plans of life had embraced the idea of adhering to some one thing? Was he incapable of that ? Is here the weakness in him? Or is there too much of him or of something,-too much or too little ?

The years of his teaching coincide with the years of his preaching. What- ever may have been the effect on others, which must have been salutary, and al- though it was a useful training-school to the young men, the drawback-less hurtful to him than to most-is the half-odium attaching to an ex-clergyman. Most of the callings a man may turn from to others, without a shadow of discredit. The clerical is not one of them. He was at the most a lay preacher. Under the disciple rule any brother may offer his views. Of all peoples they were most given to discussions, public, private, and all the time; of reading, discussing, and expounding the Scriptures. A young man of Garfield's gifts and temperament, dealing with Scripture texts and lessons, would become a public speaker on the themes of such universal interest. Of course he excelled. I have no doubt he liked to preach. All true artists love to practice their art. For a real boro speaker, with warmth of temperament and imagination, the exercise of his gift

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has a great charm. To feel every fibre alive and tremulous with a theme, and rise and launch himself with fearless confidence on speech, " wreak himself on expression," kindle and glow, lift the audience and be lifted till the sentiment and emotion of all becomes one, and his the utterance of it, gives to the speaker a rare delight. The pleasurable glow remains though the physical frame may be- come exhausted. Garfield had no call to preach ; felt none. Had none of the intense religious enthusiasm that has made so many smaller men so famous. He had natural enthusiasm, warmth, sympathy, sensibility, language, rare powers of speech,-had faith. He lacked the kindling inspiration of an intense evangelical spirit that hears the voice of the strong necessities of its own nature. He was never set apart for the ministry of the word by the authority of his people. Though he spoke often, in many places, was famous among his people, who have produced so many able and some widely-famous ministers, few of whom have much of the clergyman about them. Earnest, zealous, able, eloquent Christian teachers are they, with a very small modicum of the clergyman. Perhaps had Garfield remained a college professor or president he would have continued to preach, with what success is not difficult to forecast. In the superabundance of him he did other things beside. Among them, it is even said that in 1858-59 he saved some money, which was a thing he would be less likely to succeed in than in any other field of human enterprise that occurs to me. A weakness in this matter is doubtless amiable ; it is a great personal inconvenience, and not by any means necessarily allied to excellence of mind, character, or morals. Money values are not be be ruled out as vulgar or vicious. They are the only measures of property, and should be kept in their place. To estimate a man by his worth in money provokes a guffaw of the gods. Whatever he may have done in the way of this acquisition, he made many political anti-slavery speeches. Here was a field broad and standing thick with material, the use of which could not fail to be most effective in his hands. Since the pre-revolutionary period no cause has done so much for American oratory, as we still miscall our public speaking. The other two together, Temperance and Woman's Rights, save with the sex, do not approach it. Most of the good platform speakers of middle life of the North were formed in this school, so nearly allied to the more vulgar and not very useful political speaking common to all parts of the country.

With his great personal popularity Mr. Garfield could not well have avoided politics and becoming officially a public man. I don't think he tried. He must have had a relish for affairs. I don't see how, with his robust vitality and abound- ing animal life, he could well have long lived in a college cloister. He was elected to the Ohio Senate in the autumn of 1859, and was then twenty-eight. This indicates a possible change in the plans of life. So earnest and thoughtful a man had plans and programmes, and long had carefully arranged and adhered to pro- grammes for the discharge of his duties and avocations. Such men by such means conquer time and win leisure. There is one other evidence of this change of plan. In the same autumn he entered his name as a student-at-law in the office of Messrs. Williamson & Riddle, of Cleveland, and had full five minutes' conver- sation with the junior as to the books and course of reading, from whose hand he subsequently received a paper that he had diligently studied that science two years, under whose instruction was omitted, and was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court at Columbus. He doubtless then intended, as he has several times since, to turn himself to the practice of the law. Of the cause which could have led to this, speculation would be useless. We have a catalogue of the reasons which turned him from the sea, though they did not banish the viking from his heart. Less cogent reasons, and perhaps fewer in number, may have been ample to lead to change in the plans of his life.

He was then a member of the Ohio Senate, and quite every day from that to the present has been spent in the public service. His figure on the public stage soon became conspicuous. The character of his services and the manner in which he has rendered them early called the public attention to him. As his period of ser- vice lengthened, his fame broadened ; the impressions he produced deepened. As we study and contemplate him he grows upon us.

Perhaps I might leave him here. His career is matter of already written his- tory. Its muse will assuredly care for him. This sketch is not written for him or his friends, nor at their dictation. I have undertaken to furnish some sketches of many men well known to me, though less known to fame than he, for a domestic history. I must in the fulfillment of this undertaking so far glance at the inci- dents of these later years, or of some of them, as to suggest the lights and shades they throw upon him, to show the effect they have produced, the changes they have wrought in the man himself, and help as I may to form an estimate of him.

It will be remembered that Garfield entered the Ohio Senate in 1859, when the leaders of slavery had so far changed the forms of resistance to the exercise of their constitutional rights by the northern people that the contest would inevi- tably escape from the forms of political action and assume that of war. It cannot be said that the North were not amply warned in time. Hardly a man of that

region, a year later, believed the South meant an actual collision of arms. It may be that it was as well that the North was incapable of being thus alarmed. The parties were mutually deceived. The South was in earnest, but, in turn, believed that war, inevitable and bloody, would not ensue, for it was assured that the farmers, mechanics, traders, and manufacturers would not attempt to enforce the rights and laws of the nation against them. The South was more foolhardy than the North supposed; the North less timid and pusillanimous than the South believed. Curious it now seems, that the peoples of one blood, language, laws, and actual government, who had lived, associated, traded, and intermarried, occu- pied the same lands, and jointly carried on the same political institutions, could be so divided by the single thing of slavery, that they could have so misunderstood each other. So it was. The conflict was rapidly approaching. The domestic agitations and political convulsions that must precede a contest so great and near, were shaking and shaping the minds and actions of the peoples of the two sec- tions, and, unconsciously on the part of the North, conducting them to the mar- gin of the inevitable conflict. These interests and agitations superseded the ordi- nary themes and interests of legislation and discussion. It was the day for the advent of large-brained, warm-natured men of profound convictions, under the passionate impulses of the fiery blood, beating out the fullest pulse of youth. In a way, Gar- field's constitutional make, the source from which he sprang, the life he had lived, the training and discipline he had gone through with, fitted him admirably for the im- portant part he performed in preparing Ohio for the contest, and leading her side by side with the more advanced northern States into it, and preparing himself and fellows for their own individual shares in it. It is still strange how that war fought itself, and though utterly unprepared with material, soldiers, and commanders, perhaps the most surprising thing, after all, was the admirable and thorough prepa- ration of the people themselves for the war, amazed as they were when it broke upon them. The causes which led to it worked this fitting-the planters, nursers and growers of the ideas, the germinal elements which produced the northern half of these fashioning causes, were older than Garfield. He and the men of his generation, the young, fiery orators, who, under the impetus of older forces and movements, were but to shape the things of the last moments ere the conflict, were to arouse, marshal, and lead the masses into the field, transformn and be trans- formed into soldiers and commanders. His share of this work he did faithfully and well. When has he shirked or been wanting ? He became almost at once the foremost in it. That, too, is quite his way. Who would expect him long to lag in rear of the most advanced, and that not wholly from emulation,-he has given little evidence of great personal ambition,-as from the qualities and forces of his nature, which, when turned in a given direction, take him as far as men can go, and greatly in advance of all save the very few ? With these his race is proba- bly yet to be run. The man's nature makes it inevitable. Seemingly he leaves himself in the hands of events.

No quotation I could make from any speech of the several effective ones deliv- ered by Mr. Garfield in the Ohio Senate would do them or him justice. Quota- tions are always unjust. Of his immediate associates, J. D. Cox, of Trumbull county, and James Monroe, of Lorain, then in the Senate, were his most efficient co-workers. I make no comparisons of these men, nor shall I contrast Mr. Gar- field with any. It is probable that with Cox was he the more intimate. When it became probable to these two young men that a conflict of arms would ensue, each knew that he should go to the field, each felt that he would be called on to lead others. However that might be, each would be there to meet whatever foe he might find. They at once applied themselves to study the art of war. Both had read Cæsar, were familiar with the history of modern campaigning. They now took the subject up as an elementary study. Garfield, as we know from the nat- ural logical thoroughness of his mind, began at the soldier's towpath. Cox showed all through the war his natural aptitude, and the helps he drew from study never remitted.

Whatever may be said of the genius or talent or both, necessary to fit forth a great military leader, the glitter and dazzle, the pomp and splendor, which ever attend the movements and encounters of men in arms, throws so much glamour over the names of successful generals that their essential merits are lost sight of. The real nature and quality of the faculties, by the possession and exercise of which men succeed as generals, is, after all, a little dubious. The war showed that there was an abundance of this talent among us, and of excellent quality. It is useful in war, itself the most absurdly useless of human avocations. Barba- rians and savages have it, and doubtless it is developed early in men. Men suc- ceed early in life as commanders, and with us men who failed in everything else, before and after the war, succeeded well as subordinate commanders, and may have had the ability to conduct a campaign.

At the start, Cox received the first command. The early three months' regiments were permitted to elect their field-officers. Upon the organization of the Seventh, Garfield was at Cleveland, and at Camp Taylor, and may have

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been willing to have been its colonel. The pushing, dashing Tyler carried off that honor. The first of his exploits was to sit down to breakfast with the boys one morning, at Cross Lanes, in the enemy's country, never thinking that chaps unmannerly enough to break out of the Union would break in on a colonel at his breakfast, but they did, and broke up the Seventh. During the summer, Gar- field, who began as lieutenant-colonel, was in command of the Forty-second at Camp Chase, and stamped himself upon it in a month. He was teacher, profes- sor, and colonel in one. On the 15th of December, in obedience to an order from General Buell, commanding the Department of the Ohio, the Forty-second was sent to Cattlettsburg, Kentucky, and its colonel proceeded to headquarters at Louisville. The preparations and expectations, the longings, possible doubtings, of the eager, anxious months were to be put to the test of actual war.

What a picture the interview of Buell and Garfield would make in the hands of an artist ! Buell, the most accomplished military scholar and critic of the old army, and the most unpopular as well as one of the most deserving generals of volunteers of the war, astute, silent, cold. Garfield, with his glowing thirty years and splendid figure, made to fill and set off the simple blue uniform, with his massive head well borne, and eager, flushing face, and bringing the warm atmos- phere of his generous nature to confront his questioning and undetermined fate. A keen, sharp, searching glance, with a few cold, unconnected questions. Hum- phrey Marshall was moving down the valley of the Big Sandy, threatening eastern Kentucky. Zollicoffer was on the way from Cumberland Gap, towards Mill Spring. In concise words, as if to one skilled in military technics, the gen- eral, with a map before him, pointed out the position and strength of Marshall, the locations of the Union forces, the topography of the country, and lifting his cold eyes to the face of the silent listener, said, " If you were in command of this sub-district what would you do ? Report your answer here at nine to-morrow morning." The colonel, with a silent bow, departed. Daylight found him with a sketch of the proposed campaign still incomplete. At nine sharp he laid it before his commander. The skilled eye mastered it in a minute, and issued to its author an order, creating the Eighteenth Brigade of the Army of the Cum- berland, assigned Colonel Garfield to the command. After directing the process of embodying the troops, came this sentence, brief enough for the soul of wit :

"Then proceed, with the least possible delay, to the mouth of the Sandy, and move with the force in that vicinity up that river, and drive the enemy back or cut him off." Never was order more literally executed, or with greater prompti- tude. Buell seemingly risked much on the accuracy of his judgment. Garfield, who had never seen an enemy or heard a musket fired in action, suddenly found himself in command of four regiments of infantry and eight companies of cav- alry, charged with the duty of driving from his native State the reputedly ablest of its officers, not educated to war, whom Kentucky had given to the rebellion, who commanded about five thousand men and could choose his own position. He was at Paintville, sixty miles up the Sandy, was expected ultimately to unite with Zollicoffer, advance to Lexington, and establish the rebel provisional govern- ment in the State. He was a man of great intellectual abilities, and famous for having led the Kentuckians in the charge at Buena Vista. The roads were hor- rible, the time midwinter, and the rains incessant.

Before nightfall of the 9th of January, 1862, Garfield had, at the head of fifteen hundred men, driven in the enemy's pickets between Abbott's and Middle creeks. He dispatched .orders to his reserves at Paintville, twenty miles away, less than one thousand strong, and bivouacked in the pitiless rain, to await morning and the struggle. Wrapped in his heavy cloak, with his men about him, on the edge of unknown battle, he lay. There was plenty of time to think,-to think of everything. How the mind, armed with incredible flight in such a supreme moment, will flash the world around ! Back over all his life. The canal, his boyhood, trivial things, his mother, old Williams. His wife and babies, and then the Hiram Eclectic boys, a full company of whom were then near him, because he was there. They had followed him. He knew their fathers and mothers. They had, in a way, put them into his hands, and he had brought them here. Somewhere near lay the enemy, of known superior strength. Where should he find them ? At odds, in position as in numbers, he must expect. His main force, the Fortieth, the Forty-second, had never fuced an enemy. How would they behave? And then he turned to himself to question-question his inner- most self-for weak places, lingering, unexpectedly maybap, in spirit, perhaps in mere nerve, in the lowest part of his body, who can tell where may be a treacherous weakness? Then his thoughts wandered away to things he had always revered. And then came the drowsy numbness of sleep, with a sense of the nearness, the presence of the dear ones in his precious, peaceful home.

After all, it was not so easy to find General Humphrey Marshall. Not on Abbott's creek at all. He was so near, his foe could feel his presence ; had found his cavalry and artillery. Where was Marshall's self and his army ? Garfield could almost hear him breathe. What a day of hunt that was ! He was certainly

on Abbott's creek ; and Garfield would strike Middle creek, and so get in his rear. In executing this movement, he found the enemy perked up on the side of a ragged, wooded hill, as if to be up out of danger. In fact, he was too much up to defend himself. And about four P.M. a rattling fire began. About as much as could be got out of one thousand muskets that attacked on one side, and three thousand on the other. Never was there such a banging as the rebs made. They, too, were raw, and firing down a steep hill. On level ground raw troops fire up too high, and wound the clouds, if in range. The rebs could not get down to our boys, who, under cover of the trees, kept onward and up- ward. There were too many rebs, for the trees and logs would not cover a fifth of the poor fellows.

Though an up-hill business, the Union soldiers did not aim too high, and they were pushing on up to see where they hit. Finally a rebel reinforcement came up over the crest, and the idea seemed to strike them to make a rush down and sweep the Union line-thin as a skirmish-line-out. At this instant Union Colonel Monroe and his Kentuckians-four or five hundred-got up so as to get in a very unpleasant enfilading fire, when round a curve in the road came Colonel Sheldon, with his one thousand from Paintville, through twenty miles of mud. Round they came, in the rear of Garfield's little handful of reserves, and gave a loud cheer. The reserves took it up and sent it to the struggling boys on the side-hill, who sent it up to Humphrey Marshall. Sheldon threw his men in line, and, though the ground was miry, they started on a double-quick. Too late. That shout and the sight of the shouters did the rest of Humphrey's busi- ness. The shoutees did not wait for shot, or anything worse, but turned and scrambled up hill, followed by the Ohio boys. Night came down : the soldiers gathered up their wounded, and the whole force concentrated on a good position, -pickets thrown out, and preparations made for a final struggle the next day.

Shortly after dark a bright light blazed up behind the hill of battle. The Union soldiers beheld it with wonder. It was Humphrey Marshall's last fire. In it he consumed every possible thing that might hinder flight or be of value to his foe, and by the light he hied him away to Pound Gap.

In reading the histories of the numerous generals on both sides of the war, the greatest stress is laid upon the fact of whether a given man had been tried by the only reliable test,-a separate, independent command. If he had not, or failed under it, his fame had yet a flaw. Garfield met this at his entrance on the field. I never attempted but once an opinion on the movements of our army. I saw the flight from the first battle of Bull Run, and I ventured to suggest that the move- ment was in the wrong direction, and, as I remember, not executed with military precision. For this criticism I was promptly hanged, burned, and drowned,-in effigy. I venture nothing on the merit of this campaign. Military writers have awarded it high praise. Its fault was the temerity of the attack. The commander had no knowledge of the character of the force and commander opposed to him, save what his unpracticed eye could hastily catch when in a possibly too danger- ous neighborhood. Probably the dispositions made by Marshall might have re- vealed all that it was necessary to know, but I have no doubt he would have been attacked under almost any circumstances. Garfield was capable of extra- ordinary personal exertions, and the weight of his force-in fighting, pluck, and morale-was perhaps never surpassed by men of their experience. His own sub- sequent criticism of his conduct was that the attack was rash in the extreme. "As it was, having gone into the army with the notion that fighting was our business, I didn't know any better." The general plan of the campaign must have been based on true military principles, for it was approved by Buell.

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History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 27

Author: Williams Brothers Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages: 443

Author: Williams Brothers
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 443