128 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



when the contest for religious liberty began in earnest 

 at home. The man who struck his most effective 

 blow for freedom of conscience by sailing for the colo- 

 nies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to 

 leave after 1640. The opportunity had then come on 

 the soil of England for that great contest which es- 

 tablished the authority of Parliament, gave religious 

 freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, and 

 committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the su- 

 preme executive authority of England. The English 

 emigration was never renewed, and from these twenty 

 thousand men, with a small emigration from Scotland 

 and from France, are descended the vast numbers who 

 have New England blood in their veins. 



u In 1685 tlie revocation of the Edict of Nantes by 

 Louis XIV scattered to other countries four hundred 

 thousand Protestants, who were among the most intel- 

 ligent and enterprising of French subjects merchants 

 of capital, skilled manufacturers, and handicraftsmen, 

 superior at the time to all others in Europe. A con- 

 siderable number of these Huguenot French came to 

 America ; a few landed in New England and became 

 honorably prominent in its history. Their names 

 have in large part become anglicized, or have disap- 

 peared, but their blood is traceable in many of the most 

 reputable families, and their fame is perpetuated in 

 honorable memorials and useful institutions." 



ANCESTORS. 



" From these two sources, the English-Puritan and 

 the French-Huguenot, came the late President his 

 father, Abram Garfield, being descended from the one, 

 and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other. 



" It was good stock on both sides none better, none 

 braver, none truer. There was in it an inheritance of 

 courage, of manliness, of imperishable love of liberty, 

 of undying adherence to principle. Garfield was proud 

 of his blood ; and with as much satisfaction as if he 

 were a British nobleman reading his stately ancestral 

 record in Burke's 'Peerage,' he spoke of himself as 

 ninth in descent from those who would not endure 

 the oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent 

 from the brave French Protestants who refused to sub- 

 mit to tyranny even from the Grand Monarque. 



" General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, 

 and, during his only visit to England, he busied him- 

 self in discovering every trace of his forefathers in 

 parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting 

 with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons, 

 one night, after a long day's labor in this field of 

 research, he said, with evident elation, that in every 

 war in which for three centuries patriots of English 

 blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional gov- 

 ernment and human liberty, his family had been rep- 

 resented. They were at Marston Moor, at Naseby, 

 and at Preston ; they were at Bunker Hill, at Sara- 

 toga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had 

 battled for the same great cause in the war which pre- 

 served the Union of the States." 



EARLY AGE. 



" Losing his father before he was two years old, the 

 early life of Garfield was one of privation, but its pov- 

 erty has been made indelicately and unjustly promi- 

 nent. Thousands of readers have imagined him as the 

 ragged, starving child, whose reality too often greets 

 the eye in the squalid sections of our large cities. 

 General Garfield's infancy and youth had none of 

 their destitution, none of their pitiful features appeal- 

 ing to the tender heart and to the open hand of char- 

 ity. He was a poor boy in the same sense in which 

 Henry Clay was a poor boyj in which Andrew Jack- 

 son was a poor boy ; in which Daniel Webster was a 

 poor boy ; in the sense in which a large majority of 

 the eminent men of America in all generations have 

 been poor boys. Before a great multitude of men, in 

 a public speech, Mr. Webster bore this testimony : 



It did not happen to me to be born in a log-cabin, but my 

 elder brothers and sisters were born in a log-cabin raised amid 

 the snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that 

 when the smoke rose first from its rude chimney and curled 



over the frozen hills there was no similar evidence of a white 

 man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers 

 of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual 

 visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hardships 

 endured by the generations which have gone before them. I 

 love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred tics, 

 the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents 

 which mingle with all 1 know of this primitive family abode. 

 " With the requisite change of scene the same words 

 would aptly portray the early days of Garfield. The 

 poverty of the frontier, where all are engaged in a 

 common struggle and where a common sympathy and 

 hearty co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a 

 very different poverty, different in kind, different in 

 influence and effect from that conscious and humiliat- 

 ing indigence which is every day forced to contrast 

 itself with neighboring wealth on which it feels a 

 sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the 

 frontier is indeed no poverty. It is but the beginning 

 of wealth, and has the boundless possibilities of the 

 future always opening before it. No man ever grew 

 up in the agricultural regions of the West where a 

 house-raising, or even a corn-husking, is matter of 

 common interest and helpfulness, with any other 

 feeling than that of broad-minded, generous inde- 

 pendence. This honorable independence marked the 

 youth of Garfield as it marks the youth of millions of 

 the best blood and brain now training for the future 

 citizenship and future government of the republic. 

 Garfield was born heir to land, to the title of free- 

 holder, which has been the patent and passport of self- 

 respect with the Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist 

 and Horsa landed on the shores of England. His ad- 

 venture on the canal an alternative between that and 

 the deck of a Lake Erie schooner was a farmer's 

 boy's device for earning money, just as the New Eng- 



land lad begins a possibly great career by sailing 

 fore the mast on a coasting-vessel or on a merch 



be- 

 ant- 



man bound to the farther India or to the China seas. 



" No manly man feels anything of shame in look- 

 ing back to early struggles with adverse circumstances, 

 and no man feels a worthier pride than when he has 

 conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one 

 of noble mold desires to be looked upon as having oc- 

 cupied a menial position, as haying been repressed by 

 a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered the evils of 

 poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity. 

 General Garfield' s youth presented no hardships which 

 family love and family energy did not overcome, sub- 

 jected him to no privations which he did not cheer- 

 'fully accept, and left no memories save those which 

 were recalled with delight, and transmitted with 

 profit and with pride." 



EDUCATION. 



" Garfield's early opportunities for securing an edu- 

 cation were extremely limited, and yet were sufficient 

 to develop hi him an intense desire to learn. He could 

 read at three years of age, and each winter he had the 

 advantage of the district school. He read all the books 

 to be found within the circle of his acquaintance ; some 

 of them he got by heart. While yet in childhood he 

 was a constant student of the Bible, and became fa- 

 miliar with its literature. The dignity and earnest- 

 ness of his speech in his maturer life gave evidence of 

 this early training. At eighteen years of age he was 

 able to teach school, and thenceforward^ his ambition 

 was to obtain a college education. To this end he bent 

 all his efforts, working in the harvest-field, at the car- 

 penter's bench, and,"in the winter season, teaching 

 the common schools of the neighborhood. While 

 thus laboriously occupied he found time to prosecute 

 his studies, and was so successful that at twenty-two 

 vears of age he was able to enter the junior class at 

 Williams College, then under the presidency of the 

 venerable and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the 

 fullness of his powers, survives the eminent pupil to 

 whom he was of inestimable service. 



" The history of Garfield's life to this period pre- 

 sents no novel features. He had undoubtedly shown 

 perseverance, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and ambi- 

 tionqualities which, be it said for the honor of our 



