Chapter IX: Great Questions and Great Answers (5)

“I called attention to the fact that under our form of government
the most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not
delegated to the nation, nor to the States, but are reserved to the
third estate—the people themselves. I called attention to the
interesting fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire
made the declaration that it was the chief object of the existence
of the German government to defend and maintain the religion of
Jesus Christ—an object in reference to which our Congress is
absolutely forbidden by the Constitution to legislate at all.
Congress can establish no religion; indeed, can make no law
respecting it, because in the view of our fathers—the founders of
our government—religion was too precious a right to intrust its
interests by delegation to any body. Its maintenance was left to the
voluntary action of the people themselves.

“In continuation of that thought, I wish now to speak of the
voluntary element inside our Government—a topic that I have not
often heard discussed, but one which appears to me of vital
importance in any comprehensive view of our institutions.

“Mr. Chairman, viewed from the stand-point of a foreigner, our
Government may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our
stand-point, and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why
would a foreigner call it the feeblest? He can point out a
half-dozen ways in which it can be destroyed without violence. Of
course, all governments may be overturned by the sword; but there
are several ways in which our Government may be annihilated without
the firing of a gun.

“For example, if the people of the United States should say we will
elect no Representatives to the House of Representatives. Of course,
this is a violent supposition; but suppose they do not, is there any
remedy? Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two
years there would be no House of Representatives; of course no
support of the Government, and no Government. Suppose, again, the
States should say, through their Legislatures, we will elect no
Senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this
Government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to
prevent it.

“Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order,
and a majority of one, in this body or in the Senate should firmly
band themselves together and say, we will vote to adjourn the moment
the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every
session during our two years of existence; the Government would
perish, and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it.
Or again, if a majority of one of either body should declare that
they would vote down, and did vote down, every bill to support the
Government by appropriations, can you find in the whole range of our
judicial or our executive authority any remedy whatever? A Senator,
or a member of this House is free, and may vote ‘no,’ on every
proposition. Nothing but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not
so with the executive and judicial officers. They have no power to
destroy this Government. Let them travel an inch beyond the line of
the law, and they fall within the power of impeachment. But, against
the people who create Representatives; against the Legislatures who
create Senators; against Senators and Representatives in these
Halls, there is no power of impeachment; there is no remedy, if, by
abstention or by adverse votes, they refuse to support the
Government.

“At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise
as our fathers were, should have left a whole side of their fabric
open to these deadly assaults; but on a closer view of the case
their wisdom will appear. What was their reliance? This: The
sovereign of this nation, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed
sovereign, in whom resides ‘the State’s collected will,’ and to whom
we all owe allegiance, is the people themselves. Inspired by love of
country and by a deep sense of obligation to perform every public
duty; being themselves the creators of all the agencies and forces
to execute their own will, and choosing from themselves their
representatives to express that will in the forms of law, it would
have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of these
voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the Government.
Public opinion—that great ocean of thought from whose level all
heights and depths are measured—was trusted as a power amply able,
and always willing, to guard all the approaches on that side of the
Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation.

“Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never
been such a refusal to exercise those primary functions of
sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple the Government; nor
have the majority of the representatives of that sovereign in either
House of Congress ever before announced their purpose to use their
voluntary powers for its destruction. And now, for the first time in
our history, and I will add for the first time for at least two
centuries in the history of any English speaking nation, it is
proposed and insisted upon that these voluntary powers shall be used
for the destruction of the Government. I want it distinctly
understood that the proposition which I read at the beginning of my
remarks, and which is the programme announced to the American people
to-day, is this: that if the House can not have its own way in
certain matters, not connected with appropriations, it will so use,
or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the
Government.

“Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the other side that when a
demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that
runs the risk of stopping and destroying the Government, is the one
that resists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor
to follow my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this
denial good.

FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS.

“Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation
of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this Republic can be law
without consent—the free consent of the House; the free consent of
the Senate; the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it,
the free consent of two-thirds of these bodies. Will any man deny
that? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free
consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions? And yet the
programme announced two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused to
consent to the demand of the House, the Government should stop. And
the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although
there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third
independent branch in the legislative power of the Government whose
consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this
Government; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty,
shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent
to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary
powers as to destroy the Government. This is the proposition which
we confront; and we denounce it as revolution.

“It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were
the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if
you demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall be adopted
against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every
fair-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though
his own life depended upon his resistance.

“Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of
the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of
legislation; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of
our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of
the fundamental element of American liberty, the free consent of all
the powers that unite to make laws.

“In opening this debate, I challenge all comers to show a single
instance in our history where this consent has been coerced. This is
the great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all others into
insignificance. Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle
of Waterloo, that the struggle of the two armies was like the
wrestling of two giants, when a chip under the heel of one might
determine the victory. It may be that this amendment is the chip
under your heel, or it may be that it is the chip on our shoulder.
As a chip it is of small account to you or to us; but when it
represents the integrity of the Constitution and is assailed by
revolution, we fight for it as if it were a Koh-i-noor of purest
water. [Applause.]

“The proposition now is, that after fourteen years have passed, and
not one petition from one American citizen has come to us asking
that this law be repealed; while not one memorial has found its way
to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have heard, the
Democratic House of Representatives now hold if they are not
permitted to force upon another House and upon the Executive against
their consent the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal
shall be considered a sufficient ground for starving this Government
to death. That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution.
[Applause on the Republican side.]

“And here I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the other side while
I offer a suggestion which I make with reluctance. They will bear me
witness that I have in many ways shown my desire that the wounds of
the war should be healed; that the grass that has grown green over
the graves of both armies might symbolize the returning spring of
friendship and peace between citizens who were lately in arms
against each other.

“But I am compelled by the necessities of the case to refer to a
chapter of our recent history. The last act of Democratic domination
in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic,
perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Republicans,
‘If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United
States we will shoot your Government to death;’ and the people of
this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted
as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln President of
the United States.

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of
Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling
down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we
recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all
the risks, and fight it out on the open field. Notwithstanding your
utmost efforts to destroy it, the Government was saved.

“To-day, after eighteen years’ defeat, the book of your domination
is again opened, and your first act awakens every bitter memory, and
threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of
patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that
recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized
your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page;
not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field,
but you say if all the legislative powers of the Government do not
consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you
will not shoot our Government to death as you tried to do in the
first chapter; but you declare that if we do not consent against our
will, if you can not coerce an independent branch of this Government
against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some
laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the
Government to death. [Great applause on the Republican side.]

“Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know
that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if
successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you
have it in your power to kill this Government; you have it in your
power by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of
our Constitution with the paralysis of death; and you have declared
your purpose to do this, if you can not break down that fundamental
element of free consent which, up to this hour, has always ruled in
the legislation of this Government.”

The question stated at the beginning of this chapter is: Was Garfield a Statesman? In view of what the reader has perused since that question was put, it must at this point be restated—Was Garfield _not_ a Statesman? The burden of proof has shifted. It is, of course, too soon to form a complete estimate of Garfield’s stature. We are too near to the man we loved. It will be for some future generation, farther removed from the spell of his name, and more able calmly to contemplate his life apart from the bloody death. This is the task for the historian of the future.

But what we say enters into the contemporary estimate of the dead President’s life and work. While the relative height of the mountain peak can only be told by viewing it from a long distance, where the entire range pictures its upper outline on the eye, the people who dwell at the foot of the mountain know it as the highest of their neighborhood. Moreover, some of the strongest objections to the contemporary estimates of a public man are entirely wanting in the present case. One of these is the popularity of his opinions or achievements. Men are apt to overestimate the abilities of a man who agrees with them. But time and again, on different questions, as in the currency and the enforcement act, the Wade-Davis manifesto, and the defense of Bowles and Milligan, we have seen General Garfield, not merely opposing, but openly defying the opinions of the people who elected him. When he thought a thing was true, no personal consideration could affect his public utterance. Such a spectacle is rare indeed in American politics.

Another reason why the present contemporary estimate of Garfield is more likely than usual to pass into history is that, in a sense, the vindication of his policy is already accomplished. When Cromwell died his work was incomplete. It was only one act in the great drama of the struggle against kings. The result was unknown at the time. Other fields were to run red with patriot blood, other monarchs to expire on the scaffold, before the solution of the deadly struggle should appear. It was uncertain whether any other government than monarchy was possible. No man was wise enough to tell, at Cromwell’s death, whether he had advanced or retarded civilization and progress. But this is a more rapid age. Events hurry on quickly. The questions growing out of the Civil War are very largely settled already. The historic genius which sits in judgment upon men and institutions is no longer in doubt as to those questions. Similarly, too, the stupendous problem of national finance, to which Garfield devoted such herculean labor, has reached its solution. It may be that all men are not willing to surrender yet, but beyond a doubt the return to a specie basis, and the wonderful improvement of the times following it, are a vindication of General Garfield’s statesmanship. It is the same with his position on the Force Bill and the Tariff. Some things, however, are still incomplete. The railway problem and the perpetuity of American institutions the future alone can pass upon; but these are the exceptions. The completeness of Mr. Lincoln’s work at the time of his assassination was not generally recognized, but we see it now. So with Garfield’s labors. They were in a sense complete. We may pass judgment upon them. The vindication of history is already at hand.

There is still another reason why the contemporary estimate of James A. Garfield is likely to become permanent. It is because the field of his principal achievements was not one of popular interest. It was not one which takes hold of the people’s hearts, and sweeps the popular judgment from its moorings. It lacked the glamour of military fame. The present age will hand down to posterity the fame of mighty soldiers, but their glory must be viewed with some reserve, some mistrust for the present.

Julius Cæsar, who was assassinated as a tyrant, now takes his place at the head of all secular history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mention of whose name has, for three quarters of a century, been enough to convulse Paris and fill every wall with placards and every street with barricades, is likely to become the most odious figure of modern times. Garfield’s chosen field of work, that where his fame must rest, was to the careless masses dull. Men grow excited over battles, but not a pulse beats higher over a computation of interest on the public debt. The stories of marches and sieges thrill the reader a thousand years after every combatant has been vanquished by the black battalions of Death. But the most eloquent orator in America finds it difficult to hold an audience with the discussion of the tariff list or of public expenditures or of the currency, even when every man in the audience knows that his pocket is touched. If such discussions are thrown into newspaper editorials they are but little read. No argument, however powerful, on the fallacy of fiat money ever drew a tear or roused a cheer. No table of the reduction of public expenditure is ever greeted with huzzas. When the news of a victory comes, every corner has a bonfire and every window an illumination. But the change of the balance of trade in our favor only awakens a quiet satisfaction in the merchant’s heart as he glances through the morning papers. A new kind of gun attracts world-wide attention; it is talked over at every breakfast-table and described in every paper, but a new theory of surplus and deficits in the public treasury is utterly unnoticed. We see no flushed assemblies straining to catch every word that falls from the orator’s lips as he discusses the tariff on sugar or quinine. But when Kearney shouts his hoarse note of defiance to capital, the street is packed with listening thousands.

Hence it is that the man who significantly whispers “Garfield is overestimated” is more likely to be wrong than right. There is no tide of popular excitement over his work. The calm conviction of his abilities is a different thing from the feverish hurrahs of a campaign. In 1859 his old neighbors in his county had this conviction when they sent him to the State Senate. From the county, this spread to his Congressional district; from the district to the State of Ohio; from Ohio to the Union. It was gradual, and sure.

Garfield’s speeches must be the foundation for his fame. To these history will turn as a basis for its estimate. The first thing which is to be said of them, is that they dealt _with the real problems of the epoch_. That he was a great orator is true; that he was much more than this is equally true. While other men busied themselves with political topics Garfield took hold of the great non-political problems of the time. He refused to view them from a partisan or a personal stand-point. He grappled with the leviathans of reconstruction, tariff, and currency in the spirit of the statesman. That he was always right, we are not prepared to say; that he was right in his views on the great questions above mentioned, that with regard to them he was a leader of leaders, seems hardly to admit of a doubt. He was so radical in opinion that on almost every question he was ahead of his party and the country. This was the case in his arguments on the status of the rebel States, and what ought to be done with them; in his arguments in favor of a reduction of the tariff as prices declined after the war, and in his discussion of the currency and banking problems. Yet so nearly right was he that in every one of these instances Congress and the country gradually moved up to and occupied the position which he had taken in advance of them.

On the other hand, he was so conservative in practice that on no question was he ever an extremist. While he was a strong believer in the nationality of the Republic, and its powers of self-preservation, he faced the entire North in his opposition to the provisions of the “Force Bill,” for the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_ and the declaration of martial law in a country bleeding at every wound from war, but in a state of peace. Let no reader omit his speech of April 4, 1871. We say it the more willingly because at the time we thought Garfield was wrong. While he was a protectionist, he believed in a tariff which avoided both extremes. While he was an original and unintermittent hard-money man, he believed in the necessity of an elastic volume of currency. As the end of resumption forbade inflation, he demanded that every part of the country should have its share of banks, and the drafts and checks which they threw into the circulation.

Of the variety as well as the quantity of his work, men will not soon cease to wonder. There were few who could equal him in the discussion of any one of the great topics of the day, much less all of them. His name and fame can never be identified with any single question or measure, for he displayed the same ability on every subject alike.

In other respects he also differed from the men around him. He was a scholar in the broadest sense. His speeches are absolutely unequaled anywhere for their scientific method. In their philosophical discussions they were the product of the ripest scholarship; in their practical suggestions and arguments, they were, they are the product of the highest statesmanship.

Finally, a man of more spotless honor and loftier integrity never trod the earth than James A. Garfield. He lived in an atmosphere of purity and unselfishness, which, to the average man, is an unknown realm. After all, there are men enough with intellect in politics, but too few with character. An estimate of Garfield would be incomplete which failed to include the inflexible honesty of the great orator and legislator, whether in affairs public or private. History shows that while no institutions ever decayed because of the intellectual weakness of the people among which they flourished, empire after empire has perished from the face of the earth through the decay of morals in its people and its public men. History repeats itself. What has been, will be. Name after name of the great men of the new Republic is stained with private immorality and public crime. The noblest part of Garfield, with all his genius, was his spotless character. There was, there is, no greater, purer, manlier man.

“His tongue was framed to music,
His hand was armed with skill,
His face was the mold of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will.”