CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



131 



Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of Middle- 

 sex had chosen him, and installed Luttrell, in defiance 

 not merely of law, but of public decency. For an 

 achievement of that kind Garfield was disqualified 

 disqualified by the texture of his mind, by the honesty 

 of his heart, by his conscience, and by every instinct 

 and aspiration of his nature. 



" The three most distinguished parliamentary lead- 

 ers hitherto developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. 

 Douglas, and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. Each was a man 

 of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense 

 personality, differing widely each from the other, and 

 yet with a single trait in common the power to com- 

 mand. In the give-and-take of daily discussion, in the 

 art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and re- 

 fractory followers ; in the skill to overcome all forms 

 of opposition^ and to meet, with competency and cour- 

 age, the varying phases of unlooked-for assault or un- 

 suspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with 

 these a fourth name in all our congressional history. 

 But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, 

 perhaps, be impossible to find, in the parliamentary 

 annals of the world, a parallel to Mr. Clay in 1841, 

 when, at sixty-four years of age, he took the control 

 of the Whig "party from the President who had re- 

 ceived their suffrages, against the power of Webster 

 in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the 

 Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Gushing 

 and Henry A. Wise hi the House. In unshared leader- 

 ship, hi the pride and plenitude of power, he hurled 

 against John Tyler, with deepest scorn, the mass of 

 that conquering column which had swept over the 

 land in 1840, and drove his administration to seek 

 shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. 

 Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, 

 when in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong 

 administration, against the wise counsel of the older 

 chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the 

 moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Con- 



fress into a repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Mr. 

 haddeus Stevens, in his contests from 1865 to 1868, 

 actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until 

 Congress tied the hands of the President, and gov- 

 erned the country by its own will, leaving' only per- 

 functory duties to be discharged by the Executive. 

 With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands 

 at the opening of the contest, aided by the active force 

 of Seward hi the Cabinet, and the moral power of 

 Chase on the bench, Andrew Johnson could not 

 command the support of one third in either House 

 against the parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus 

 Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned 

 leader. 



" From these three great men Garfield differed radi- 

 callydiffered in the quality of his mind, in tempera- 

 ment, in the form and phase of ambition. He could 

 not do what they did, but he could do what they could 

 not ; and, in the breadth of his congressional work, 

 he left that which will longer exert a potential influ- 

 ence among men, and which, measured by the severe 

 test of posthumous criticism, will secure a more endur- 

 ing and more enviable fame. 



" Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, and ig- 

 norant of the details of his work, may, in some degree, 

 measure them by the annals of Congress. No one of 

 the generation of public men to which he belonged has 

 contributed so much that will be valuable for future 

 reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them 

 brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully phrased, 

 and exhaustive of the subject under consideration. 

 Collected from the scattered pages of ninety royal- 

 octavo volumes of congressional record, they would 

 present an invaluable compendium of the political 

 history of the most important era through which the 

 National Government has ever passed. When the 

 history of this period shall be impartially written, 

 when war legislation, measures of reconstruction, pro- 

 tection of human rights, amendments to the Constitu- 

 tion, maintenance of public credit, steps toward specie 

 resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed, 

 unsurrounded by prejudice, and disconnected from 



partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated 

 at their true value, and will be found to comprise a 

 vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear analysis 

 and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority 

 were accessible, his speeches in the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, from December, 1863, to June, 1880, would 

 give a well-connected history, and complete defense 

 of the important legislation of the seventeen eventful 

 years that constitute his parliamentary life. Far be- 

 yond that, his speeches would be found to forecast 

 many great measures yet to be completed measures 



which Tie knew were beyond the public opinion of the 

 but which he confidently believed would secure 



hour, 



popular approval within the period of his own life- 

 time, and by the aid of his own efforts. 



" Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant par- 

 liamentary leaders, it is not easy to find his counterpart 

 anywhere in the record of American public life. He, 

 perhaps, more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in his su- 

 preme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. 

 He had the love of learning, and the patient industry 

 of investigation, to which John Quincy Adams owes 

 his prominence and his presidency. He had some of 

 thoseponderous elements of mind which distinguished 

 Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in all our public life 

 have left the great Massachusetts Senator without an 

 intellectual peer. 



" In English parliamentary history, as in our own, 

 the leaders in the House of Commons present points 

 of essential difference from Garfield. But some of 

 his methods recall the best features in the strong, in- 

 dependent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking 

 resemblances are discernible in that most promising 

 of modern Conservatives, who died too early for his 

 country and his fame, the Lord George Bentinck. He 

 had all of Burke' s love for the sublime and the beau- 

 tiful, with, possibly, something of his superabun- 

 dance ; and in his faith and his magnanimity, in his 

 power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his 

 faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth 

 and world of illustration, one is reminded of that 

 great English statesman of to-day, who, confronted 

 with obstacles that would daunt any but the daunt- 

 less, reviled by those whom he would relieve as bitter- 

 ly as by those whose supposed rights he is forced to 

 invade, still labors with serene courage for the amel- 

 ioration of Ireland and for the honor of the English 

 name." 



NOMINATION FOB PRESIDENCY. 



u Garfield's nomination to the presidency, while 

 not predicted or anticipated, was not a surprise to 

 the country. His prominence in Congress, his solid 

 qualities, his wide reputation, strengthened by his 

 then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him 

 in the public eye as a man occupying the very high- 

 est rank among those entitled to be called states- 

 men. It was not mere chance that brought him this 

 high honor. ' We must,' says Mr. Emerson ; ' reckon 

 success a constitutional trait. If Eric is m robust 

 health and has slept well and is at the top of his con- 

 dition, and thirty years old at his departure from 

 Greenland, he will steer west and his ships will reach 

 Newfoundland. But take Eric out and put in a 

 stronger and bolder man and the ships will sail six 

 hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther 

 and reach Labrador and New England. There is no 

 chance in results.' 



" As a candidate, Garfield steadily grew in popular 

 favor. He was met with a storm of detraction at the 

 very hour of his nomination, and it continued with 

 increasing volume and momentum until the close of 

 his victorious campaign : 



' No might nor greatness in mortality 

 Can censure 'scape; backwounding calumny 

 The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong 

 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ? ' 



" Under it all he was calm, and strong, and confi- 

 dent ; never lost his self-possession, did no unwise 

 act, spoke no hasty or ill-considered word. Indeed, 

 nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more 



