Читать книгу The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield - E. E. Brown - Страница 16

Table of Contents

Law Studies.—Becomes Interested in Politics.—Delivers Oration at the Williams Commencement.—Elected State Senator.—His Courage and Eloquence.

Shortly after his marriage, Garfield entered his name in the law office of Riddle and Williamson, attorneys in Cleveland, Ohio, as a student of law. This formality was necessary in order to ensure admission to the bar. It was not here, however, that he studied, and for a long time his friends knew nothing of the step he had taken. After his hours of teaching, at odd moments through the day, and often far into the night, he pored over his law-books with the same intensity of purpose he had shown in all his other undertakings.

It was his patriotic interest in the measures which were then before the legislature of Ohio that first led him to take up a critical study of law. He always wanted to go to the bottom of things, and his college training under President Hopkins had developed a wonderful power of synopsizing. In entering upon a course of law studies, it was not so much with the thought of becoming a lawyer, as to make himself conversant with the principles of law. When, however, he was admitted to the bar, he was so thoroughly equipped for practice, that he could go into courts of any grade and try the most intricate cases.

In later years a friend said of him:—

"Had Garfield gone to the bar for a living, his gift of oratory, his strong analytical powers, and his ability to do hard work, would soon have made him eminent. In the few law cases he took during vacation seasons he held his own with some of the best lawyers of the country. In one of them his ability to grasp successfully with an unexpected situation was signally demonstrated. The case was tried in Mobile, and involved the ownership of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. Garfield had prepared himself upon an important and difficult question of law involved, and felt a comfortable sense of readiness for the trial; but after he reached Mobile the court ordered the consolidation of three suits concerning the road, and the question upon which he had prepared himself passed wholly out of sight; and, as he wrote to a friend, 'the whole entanglement of an insolvent railroad twenty-five years old, lying across four states and costing $20,000,000, came upon us at once.' He was assigned the duty of summing up the case for his side. During the trial he did five days and five nights of the hardest work he ever did in his life. Then he made his argument and won the case."

It will be remembered that when at college, Garfield always took an active part in political discussions, although he did not cast a vote until four years after his majority. At that time the new Republican party was formed on the anti-slavery platform, with Fremont and Dayton as their candidates. Garfield heartily sympathized with this party that "drew its first inspiration from that fire of liberty which God has lighted in every human heart," and from that time forward became its earnest and ready champion. During the campaign of 1856 he was constantly called upon for speeches and lectures. A pupil at Hiram at that time says:—

"He would attend to his duties at the Institute through the day, jump into a buggy at night, taking me or some other student to keep him company, put his arm around me, talk all the way to the place where the meeting was to be held, be it ten or twenty miles. It would not be conversation on politics, but on history, general literature, or some great principle. He was always welcomed upon the platform, and after speaking would return, taking up the theme we had dropped, getting home in the small hours in the morning.

"At nine o'clock the next day he would be in the school as fresh as ever. When Sunday came he would have a sermon as fresh and vigorous as if it had been the study of the week. All the while he was carrying on the study of law and attending to the duties incumbent on him as the president of the Institute, keeping up a course of general reading, and his acquaintance with the classics."

In 1859, only three years after his graduation, the faculty of Williams College honored Garfield with an invitation to deliver the master's oration at Commencement. The able, brilliant speaker was constantly in demand, and he won fresh laurels wherever he went.

Upon his return to Ohio, he found to his surprise that his name had been proposed in Portage county for the state senatorship. The unanimous support he received was very gratifying, yet his first thought was of the Institute.

"You will be away but a few weeks at a time," said the trustees; "your influence is greatly needed at the Capitol, and Hiram must be content to wait."

So, after much persuasion, Garfield accepted the nomination, and the Institute jealously kept his name, though deprived of his presence.

It was in January, 1860, that Garfield first took his seat in the state senate. Secession and a civil war seemed imminent, but the North continued strong and steadfast in its denunciations against slavery. Garfield, scarcely thirty years of age at this time, was the youngest member of the senate. Jacob D. Cox, another radical member, and Professor Monroe of Oberlin College, were his intimate friends, and zealous coadjutors. The 'radical triumvirate,' they were called by the opposite party, and when the constitutional amendment which would give the slave states the continuation of slavery, was submitted to the Ohio legislature, Garfield led the brave minority with marked ability and courage.

In less than ten years from the time he visited Columbus with his mother, he had become one of the most prominent members of the state senate!

The following extract from the Fourth of July oration he delivered that year at Ravenna gives us a passing glimpse of his patriotic eloquence—

"The granite hills are not so changeless and abiding as the restless sea. Quiet is no certain pledge of permanence and safety. Trees may flourish and flowers may bloom upon the quiet mountain side, while silently the trickling rain-drops are filling the deep cavern behind its rocky barriers, which, by-and-by, in a single moment, shall hurl to wild ruin its treacherous peace. It is true that in our land there is no such outer quiet, no such deceitful repose. Here society is a restless and surging sea. The roar of the billows, the dash of the wave, is forever in our ears. Even the angry hoarseness of breakers is not unheard. But there is an understratum of deep, calm sea, which the breath of the wildest tempest can never reach. There is, deep down in the hearts of the American people, a strong and abiding love of our country and its liberty, which no surface-storms of passion can ever shake. That kind of instability which arises from a free movement and interchange of position among the members of society, which brings one drop up to glisten for a time in the crest of the highest wave, and then gives place to another while it goes down to mingle again with the millions below, such instability is the surest pledge of permanence. On such instability the eternal fixedness of the universe is based. Each planet, in its circling orbit, returns to the god of its departure, and on the balance of these wildly rolling spheres God has planted the base of His mighty works. So the hope of our national perpetuity rests upon that perfect individual freedom, which shall forever keep up the circuit of perpetual change. God forbid that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death—the ocean grave of individual liberty."

Garfield was elected to a second term in the senate, and among the difficult questions he was obliged to discuss the following year that of "State Rights" was one of the most perplexing.