Life and times of James Abram Garfield : twentieth President of the United States ...

Front matter

LIFE AND TIMES

OF

TWENTIETH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Table Of Contents

Genealogy and Birth 19-29

Historian's Value of Character— Study of Parent al Endowments— Everything has a History — Talisman of American Greatness— Birth — First Roots oi Garfield's Family— Welsh Warrior — Edward Garfield with Gov. John Winthrop— Family Coat of Arms- Descendants of Edward Garfield— The Garfields in Revolutionary Times — Ahram Garfield— Characteristics and Education — Eliza Ballon— Eliza Moves West, followed by Abrara — Their Marriage — Work on the Ohio Canal — Ancestry of Eliza Ballou — Law of Heredity — Early Life of Garfield's Parents— A Fire and its Results— Death of the Father— A Heart-Broken Mother and her Children.

Boyhood and Early Experiences 30-43

Chapter I. Genealogy And Birth

If honest fame awaits the truly good , if setting aside the ultimate success, excellence alone Is to be considered, then was his fortune as proud as any to be found in the records of our ancestry. — Lucan.

James Abram Garfield, Twentieth President op the United States, died September 19th, 1881, at Elberon, Long Branch. His demise was the result of a pistol shot, which he had received on the second of July previous, from the hand of an assassin. The hopes and prayers of his countrymen had gone out for his restoration, but death came at last, and triumphantly he met it. Garfield had repaired to the sea-shore, accompanied by members of his family, his friends, and ofiicers of state, hoping that the change from Washington air and surroundings would be beneficial to his wasted strength. But Providence, in his wise ministerings, called him from earth. His last hours comported well witli the calm dignity and the imposing grandeur of his character and his life. The summons of death was heard with the same serenity, and obeyed with the same prompt submission, with Avhich every call of duty during his life had been answered and met. When Garfield died, the most illustrious career, the most sublime character, which has ever yet graced the civil history of our republic, ended. Garfield was in every sense of that term a pure and Christian statesman. His life is one of which his countrymen may feel proud. He lived the embodiment of the highest principles of civilization. To trace the life of this illustrious American is the object of the following pages.

A good name is rather to be chosen than rubies ; and a good cliaracter is the best passport to win success and respect in society and the world. It arrests the gaze of our fellowmen, and by it we are made to stand or fall. As grand and imposing architecture finds admirers among all its beholders; as the mammoth pile in which grace and proportion are harmoniously blended, invariably attracts the passer-by; and as the huge mountain, lifting its snow-crested sunamit above the surrounding heights, piercing the very sky, is a delight to every lover. of the beautiful: so is dignity of character the delight of the historian as he sweeps his wand over the broad field of biography. The first siglit of St. Peter's at Rome is sufficient to fill every soul with admiration and delight. In this structure arch upon arch, pillar upon pillar, stand a monument of human

20 LIFE AND TIMES Oi'

greatness and cai>acity. But there was a time when St Peter's Cathedral existed only in crude and' unattractive material. Before the artisan's hammer and the artist's chisel gave shape, and carved statues all but animate, there was little to foretell the grand architectural wonder of to-day. In this respect man much resembles crude materials. The possibilities of a boy are greater than the man, because the boy is father to the man.

But little over fifty years ago the subject of this volume was an infant in the backwoods. There was nothing unusual in the appearance of the boy baby — nothing certainly to indicate the great man of the future; and yet a character grander than the architecture of St. Peter's stands out before the world to-day, the direct result of influences about him, as we shall see, and more than all, of his own well directed efforts in the line of improvement and success.

Wiien history first becomes acquainted with James Abraui Garfield he is scarcely more than an ordinary country lad, unusually attractive only because he was broad shouldered, sinewy and muscular. The history of Garfield is already indelibly written in the memory of his countrymen and the world. James A.. Garfield accomplished nothing that every American youth cannot accomplish,, for he did nothing more than polish, shape and beautify the talents and attain the possibilities within his reach. He may have reached a higher station, but liis greatness, like all true greatness, consists in having done good. At his birth he was endowed with several liard^ elements, which, ripened and augmented as manhood advanced, by culture, study, privations and lessons of hardship, secured for him a character than which none is more noble.

Individual history or biography is earliest interested in what elements of greatness are implanted in the individual at birth. What endowments of superiority the parents have bequeathed, becomes a most important and interesting investigation for every biographer. Everything has a beginning and a history. The smallest pebble by the roadside, the tree, the leaf, the firmament, and greatest of all, MAN, began existence at some time, was connected in some manner with the world's drama, and hence proved the existence of a purpose. Small beginnings should not be despised, for the diamond hidden in the most out-of-the-way place, when burnished, often becomes the most beautiful and valuable. Great men are seldom born with silver spoons in their mouths — more often surrounded by want and penury. Especially in America is this true. This is the talisman of our greatness ; for the greater part of those who are and have been great in our history, are thpse whose birth, if not in a manger, was at least in a log cabin surrounded by forest wilds. James Abram Garfield was born on the 19th day of November, 1831. His first outlook upon things was from a cabin door in Cuyahoga county, Ohio.

I have said that at birth James A. Garfield was endowed with several hardy elements of character; and these, like two principal sources of a mighty river, only needed the increase of other tributary streams to make a Mississippi or an Amazon. We shall see what these elements were. To. do this it will only be necessary to trace the genealogy of our subject and understand the race pecu liarities which assisted in giving him being. The name seems to be broadlj English enough in spite of the fact that it is a corruption of Garfelder or Gar* bef elder, of Anglo-Saxon origin.

JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 2l

The first root of tlie Garfield family of which there is any tangible knowledge was a James Garfield (or Gearieldt), who, iii 1587, was given a tract of land on the border of Wales, near Chester, England, through the influence of Kobert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. A natural inference would be that he had performed some military service on the continent under that celebrated favorite of royalty, or was of some special service to Robert at Kenilworth or London. The estate thus conferred is said to be situated near Osvestry, and not far from the most beautiful and celebrated vale of Tlangollen, on the border of Wales. What was the nationality of this James Garfield — whether Welsh or English, German or Dutch — does not appear. The most probable conjecture is that he was Welsh, and was a warrior of some note — perhaps a descendant of the old knights of Garrfili castle. The estate conferred upon him was either released by liim, or for some reason his children did not inherit it, and no mention of them appears, so far as is now known, in any record of the Garfield family until 1630, when Edward Garfield, of Chester, England, came to America in a company of colonists, liaving embarked with his family under the auspices of Governor John Winthro]). The name appears again at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1035, and is probably the same man. Of this individual quite full accounts are handed down, and curious investigators into the family history claim to have discovered his coat of arms, and, if the description of it is correct, it goes far to confirm the previous conclusion that the Garfields were a martial family of wealth and influence in the days of Queen Elizabeth, if not in the crusades.

It had three horizontal bars of red on a field, or background, of gold in the centre of the shield, and a red Maltese cross on an ermine canton or corner piece. The crest consisted of a helmet with the visor raised, and an uplifted arm holding a drawn sword. For a motto were the words: ^^ In cruce vinco" (I conquer by the cross). This Edward Garfield, from whom the present large Garfield family in America has descended, appears to have taken no great pride in his lineage or lordly titles, for he took a personal and laborious share in the manual labor connected with the clearing of his land in Watertown, and left but a meager trace of his armorial badge. His house was built on a beautiful spot in Watertown, overlooking the Charles river, and the site is still pointed out to visitors, near the railroad station of the Fitchburg railroad. In this house he lived but a few. years until he was able to purchase a much larger estate in the western part of Watertown, near the present location of the Waltham town line. On this land he erected a capacious mansion, and surrounded himself with all the comforts and elegance of the " gentleman " of that period, and the estate now known as the "Governor Gore place" still holds its position as one of the most beautiful and valuable estates in the vicinity of Boston. This Edward Garfield had a son, Edward, Jr., and he in turn had a son, Benjamin, who became a distinguished citizen of Watertown, and was given a captain's commission, by the governor, in the colonial militia. He held numerous town ofiices, and was elected nine times to the colonial legislature. He was a stout, broad shouldered man, with an open, cheerful countenance, and most affable and kind in his manners. His light complexion, and especially the light hair, appear to have descended to the present generation. The next ancestor in line was Lieutenant Thomas Garfield, who had offspring numbering an even dozen. Thomas, Jr., the third in order.

22 LIFl'; AND TIMES OV

was the one who should be written among the ancient grandfathers of the late President, and the next one down the scale was Solomon Garfield, the oldest sen of the junior Tlionias. lie was married in 1766 to Sarah Stimpson, a widow with children by her first husband, and went to live in the town of Weston, Massachusetts. Solomon's brother Abraham was an earnest devotee of American independence, and lived in the town of Lincoln when the Revolutionary war began. He was one of the first volunteers enlisted in the defense of the colonies, and was in the fight at Concord, and side by side with many illustrious Americans, including Judge E. Rockwood Hoar, whose descendant and namesake has become noted in the councils of the nation in later years. The signatures of Judge Hoar's great-grandfather, John Hoar, and Abraham Garfield are still preserved, and the curious document they signed was an important matter in its time. The afiidavits they sent to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia were to prove that the British were the aggressors in that aflair, and fired twice before the patriots replied. It seems that the skirmish was regarded somewhat as if it had been a case of assault and battery, and the patriots were desirous of justifying themselves by showing who were the aggressors. At the beginning of the Revolution, separation from England was not generally meditated; and it was deemed important to fix the responsibility for the beginning of tlie conflict, showing which side struck the first blow, in the event of a settlement of the troubles. Therefore the afiidavits of many persons concerned were secured and preserved.

Solomon's eldest son, Thomas Garfield, was born in 1775, and lived a farmer's life at Worcester, Otsego county, New York, and married Asenatte Hill, of Sharon, New York. Their children were Polly, Betsy, Abram and Thomas. When liis youngest son was but two years old, and he thirty-two, he died of small-pox, which he contracted while taking a load of j^roduce to Albany. Abram, named after his patriotic uncle, who fought at ConCoid, was tlie father of the late President. He was born December 28, 1799, at Worcester, New York. He was kept hard at work on a farm, with little opportunity for an education, being bound out to James Stone, a relative on his mother's side. Of his boyhood and early experiences there remain but meager accounts. He was a tal], robust young fellow, of very mucli the same type as his famous son, but a handsomer man, according to the verdict of his wife, lie had a sunny, genial temper, like most men of great physical strength. He was a great favorite with his associates, and was a natural leader and master of the rude characters witli whom he came in contact in his forest clearing work, and liis later labors in building the Ohio Canal. His education was confined to a few terms in tiie Worcester district school, and the only two specimens of his writing extant show that it was not thorough enough to give him much knowledge of the science of ortliography. He was fond of reading, but the hard life of a poor man in a new country gave hinj little time to read books, if he had had the money to buy them. The weekly newspapers and a few volume^ borrowed from neighbors formed his intellectual diet. As a boy, rugged and sun-tanned, he had made the acquaintance of a prim little girl, born in a New England town, Eliza Ballon by name, who interested him not a little, and who occupied such of his moments as were given over to heart hopes and heart troubles. But Eliza Ballon moved west, and left Abram Garfield alone in his eastern home. He was not long following where his heart prompted, and in the autumn of 1819, being eighteen years of age, he journeyed westward, to meet and win his bride. His leisure hours were agreeably filled in with the courtship of Eliza Ballou, whom he in due course married. His contractor work over, the canal built, with a fair profit in his pocket, he moved to Orange, Cuyahoga county, and bought a piece of land. He moved practically into the wilderness, for there was but one house within seven miles.

A wo id about the Avif e. At her marriage she was only eighteen years of age, and her husband not yet twenty-one. Eliza Ballou's father was a cousin of Hosea Ballou, the founder of Universalism in this country. Eliza was born in 1801. The Ballous are of Huguenot origin, and are directly descended from Maturin Ballou, who fled from France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and with other French Protestants joined Roger Williams' colony in Rhode Island, the only American colony founded on the basis of full religious liberty. Upon the principle, "In civil matters, law; in religious matters, liberty," he built a queer old church, from the pulpit of which he thundered forth his philippics against religious intolerance. The building still stands, and is a curiosity of architect ure. Not a nail was used in its construction. For generation after generation the descendants of this man were eloquent preachers, occupying the very pulpit of their ancestors. Their names are famous. They were men of powerful intellects, thorough culture and splendid characters. Many have been the distinguished legislators, orators, divines and soldiers which this family has given the country.. The Ballou family has always been a superior one, and its characteristics have ever been, sterling integrity, spotless demeanor, high bearing, and the burning, eloquent gifts of the orator. These facts are all important and suggestive. They prove whence some of the most important and salient elements of Garfield's power came.

We have, then, from this cursory review of the genealogy of Garfield's parentage, the hereditary preparations for a great man. " 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 submit to tyranny even from the Grand Monarque. General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and, during his only visit to England, he busied himself 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'^ 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 government and human liberty, his family had been represented. They were at Marston Moor, at Naseby and at Preston ; they were at Bunker

Hill, at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, aiul in his own person he had battled for the same great cause in the war which preserved the Union of the States."*

From his father's side came immense muscular development and a constitution of iron, which was destined, ere the sands of life had run, to be severely tried and taxed. From this source also came an immense brain, though crude and uncultured. Heroism and devotion to duty were also indelibly imprinted in all of the Garfield lineage. Courage to do and dare, to defend principle though death result, courage, the more highly developed because striving after liberty of conscience, liberty of thought, and liberty in matters of religion, was his patrimony. From the other channel of hereditary descent came culture, faculties of imagination, and fine development in general. The Ballou's were small of stature, of energetic temperaments, and of the finest grain both physically and mentally. They were, and have for centuries been scholars and thinkers. The faculty of imparting knowledge, and hence eloquence, was also distinctively characteristic. To his father Garfield owed his large brain and robust and manly frame; but to his mother he was indebted for the untiring energy, unyielding pluck and patient courage which enabled him to overcome obstacles that would have altogether daunted any common man. In the drawing-room of General Garfield's house in Washington hung an exquisite painting, which the casual observer would take for a portrait of Mary, the mother of Washington. It has the same fine, regular features ; the same high^ full forehead; and the same serene, spiritual eyes: but the firm lines about the mouth, and the intense look in the deep, clear eyes, reveal a depth and energy of nature that is not seen in the face of the revered mother of Washington. The face of this woman shows that she has hoped and feared and struggled; that life to her has been astern conflict; but that in the conflict she has at last come off" grandly victorious. This is written all over her features ; but is most clearly seen in the placid smile which encircles the firmly closed mouth, and irradiates the whole of the noble countenance. This is the mother of Garfield. She has made him what he is. Her personality and her principles have molded his character and shaped his whole career; and the deference which he always showed her is the same he felt for her when, a friendless boy, he was struggling in povertjj^ and privation to acquire the means for an education. And when we look into the private lives of great men, do we not see it to be true that all their real greatness is traceable to the influence of some such woman, who was either their wife or their mother? To the earnest solidity and love of liberty of the Welshman, Edward Garfield, mixed with the reflective thought of a fair-haired German wife, was added the characteristic charms and vivacity of the French mind. In Garfield's parentage these noble traits unite, and Garfield's future history is the history of the development of these gifts.

This is the law of heredity. Nor could the thoughtful and investigating student examine this part of our subject other than in this manner. The law is already well recognized that all creation produces after its kind. And just as truly as the oak tree produces an oak in every way like the parent, so are the characteristics and mental and physical powers of man bequeathed to his offspring.

*Blaine's Eulogy.

"Every American State has its own story of the brave and adventurous spirits who were its early settlers: the men* who build commonwealths, the men of whom commonwealths are builded. The history of the settlement of Massacliusetts, of central New York, and of Ohio, is the history of the Garfield race. They were, to borrow a felicitous phrase, 'hungry for the horizon.' They were natural frontiersmen. Of the seven generations born in America, including the late President, not one was born in other than a frontiersman's dwelling. Each of the six generations who dwelt in Massachusetts has left an honorable record, still preserved. Five in succession bore an honorable military title. Some were fighters in the Indian wars. At the breaking out of the Revolution the male representatives of the family were two young brothers; one, whose name descended to the President, was in arms at Concord Bridge at sunrise on the 19th of April; the other, the President's great-grandfather, dwelling thirty miles off, was on his way to the scene of action before noon. These men knew how to build themselves log-houses in the wilderness. They were more skilful still to build constitutions and statutes. Slow, cautious, conservative, sluggisli, unready in ordinary life, their brains move quick and sure as their rifles flash, when great controversies that determine the fate of states are to be decided, when great interests that brook no delay are at stake, and great battles that admit no indecision are to be fought. There never was a race of men on earth more capable of seeing clearly, of grasping, and of holding fast the great truths and great principles which are permanent, sure and safe for the government of the conduct of life, alike in private and in public concerns."*

It is not surprising then that Garfield's predominant characteristics were just such as we find them. That he should be eloquent, logical, studious, courageous and deeply religious are just the direction we should expect his mind and talents to take, once knowing his ancestry. But in finding these characteristics already a part of his nature at birth, we do not perceive anything that would subtract one iota from Garfield's greatness. While a man may be well endowed, yet the one who makes the best of his gifts is always the cyje who does the most good and becomes the greatest. It is a well known fact that of two boys, one, per- Jiaps, who is well endowed mentally, who grasps all subjects easily but is deficient in application ; and another who, while he has pluck, application and probity, but little quickness of thought, the latter, nine cases out of ten, will sur])ass the former. But whcM the happy combination of superior mental and physical en- ,dowments and intense application is secured, then the best and grandest results will be sure to follow. Such a one was Garfield. It was his own personal devotion to culture — the spirit of knowing everything — that made him su{)erior. There are hundreds of men fully as well endowed as was Garfield, who have never risen above mediocrity. No man knows what are his powers, whether he is capable of great or only of little thiilgs, till he has tested himself by actual trial. Let every one starting out in life put forth his whole strength, without troubling himself with the question whether he has genius or not; then, as Sir Joshua Reynolds says: "If he has great talents, industry will improve them; if he has but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency."

■•SSenator Hoar's eulogy.

LIFE AND TIMES OV

It was on the third of February, 1820, that Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou were married in the village of Zanesville. The newly married couple began life in a log-hut on a new farm of eighty acres, in Cuyahoga county, about fifteen miles south-east of Cleveland. Life here flowed quietly on, jrst as in many other Western log-cabins. The father managed his farm and added an acre or two of clearing to it every year. In January, 1821, their first child, Mehitabel, -was born. In October, 1822, Thomas was born, and Mary in October, 1824. In 1826 the family removed to New Philadelphia, Tuscarawas county. In 1827 the fourth child, James B., was born. This waa the only one of the children that the parents lost. He died in 1830, after the family returned to the lake country.

HOME OF GAKFIELD'S CHILDHOOD.

In January, 1830, Abram went to Orange township, Cuyahoga county, where lived Amos Boynton, his half-brother — the son of his mother by her second husband— and bought eighty acres of land at two dollars an acre. The country was nearly all wild, and the new farm had to be carved out of the forest. Boynton purchased at the same time a tract of the same size adjoining, and the two families lived together for a few weeks in a log-house built by the joint labors of the men. Soon a second cabin was reared near by. The dwelling of the Garfields was built after the standard pattern of the houses of poor Ohio farmers in that day. Its walls were of logs, its roof was of clapboards, and its floor of rude puncheons split out of tree-trunks with a wedge and maul. It had

JAMKo ABRAM GARFIP:i,D. 27

only a single room, at one end ot Avliich was the big, cavernous chimney, where the cooking was done, and at the other a bed. The younger children slept in a trundle-bed, which was pushed under the bedstead of their })arents in the dnytime to get it out of the way, for their was no room to spare; the older ones climbed a ladder to the loft and slept under the steep roof. In this house James A. Garfield was born. At the time of his birth his only brother wms nine years of age,, and his two sisters respectively seven and eleven years. The mother looked after the cabin comforts, and did what she could to make her children fit for the struggle of existence. The father prospered fairly. For two years after the birth of their youngest child, James, the lives of Abram and Eliza Garfield flowed on jjeacefully and hopefully enough. The children were growing; the little farm improving; new settlers Avere coming in daily. It was a happy family. Though poor, they were content, and the distance which divided them from the world, bound them more closely together, like different spires in a sheaf of wheat, with separate individualities, but with only one life. With this much of hope and encouragement before them they looked forward to the future with buoyant hearts. But in the midst of life we are in death. What a day or an hour may bring forth we know not. The sky clear and bright, now auguring continued sunshine, may darken and groAV threatening before an hour has passed; and from out the black folds, the lightning's flash and roaring thunder may be seen and heard. What before was bright and ho])cful is now dark' and foreboding.

Every fireside has its tragedy. In one short hour this happy, ])eaceful home of the Garfield's had gone, and darkness worse than the fabled Cimmerian, settled on the heads of themother and her family. Without warning and Avith the swiftness of the Avind, the fire-fiend and his destruction devotees coursed their Avay through the dry forests of north-AA^estern Ohio. In an instant, the evening sky was red with flame. It AA'as a moment of horror. Sweeping on through tlie blazing tree tops Avith the speed of the Avind came the tornado of fire. Laughing at the havoc and ruin, at the crying and wailings of those stung to the h"eartcore, rushed the fiends. Everything in the course must perish. Houses, fences, crops, everything that the self-sacrificing frontiersmen possessed, in one short hour, Avasted ! In this emergency the neighbors, for miles around, gathered under the lead of Abram Garfield to battle for all that Avas near and dear. A plan for operations Avas speedily formed. Hour after hour this little band struggled and fought, and fought with all the advantages against them — a foe more destructive than an armed host. Suffocated, blinded, bleeding, with scarx'ed hands and singed brows, they held their ground until the foe weakened and Avas turned aside. Abram Garfield, Avorn out with a night of bitter toil,, bead-drops of perspiration standing upon his forehead and coursing doAvn his heated, cinder-stained cheeks, Avalked to his home with a weary step. The trunks of unburnt trees stood out against the sky, blackened wdtnesses of destruction, and the Avind Avas scattering the ashes hither and thither, as the farmers, knoAving their scanty crops Avere saved, turned homcAvard.