were at the front, and there was danger that the fountain of supplies in the Lower House of Congress would dry up.

In the midst of these doubts, two weeks after the battle of Chickamauga, he was summoned to Washington. The War Department demanded a full explanation of the battle which had cost so many thousand lives. Garfield was known at Washington, and they determined to have from him the complete history of the campaign, and an explanation of the necessities of the situation.

On his way to the Capital he, of course, went by the vinecovered cottage at Hiram. After the carnage and havoc of war, the peaceful fireside seemed a thousand times more dear than ever, worth all the blood and all the tears that were being shed for it. During his brief stay at home, his first born, "Little Trot," only three years of age, was seized with a fatal illness, and carried to the quiet village cemetery. Oppressed with the private as well as the public sorrow, he continued on his journey to Washington. In New York City he staid over night with an old college friend, Henry E. Knox. Again he talked over the Congressional question in all its bearings. The conversation lasted far into the night. The friend knew the feeling of the country; he knew the need for military men in Congress, and he was well acquainted with Garfield's ability. His advice to General Garfield was to accept the Congressional seat as a public duty.

But never was a man so unwilling to accept a place in Congress. General Garfield felt that he had a career before him if he re

mained in the army, and he wanted to do so. At last he agreed to submit the question to Mr. Lincoln. "I will lay it before him. when I reach Washington, and let his decision settle the matter," said he. Garfield felt that his mission to the Capital was to save Rosecrans. When he called on Secretary Stanton, he was notified of his promotion to the rank of major-general, "for gallant and meritorious services at Chickamauga." This added further complexity to the Congressional question. Every detail of the movements of the Army of the Cumberland was gone through with by him before the War Department. With the aid of maps he made

an elaborate presentation of the facts, from the long delay at Murfreesboro clear through the Tullahoma and Chattanooga campaigns. His exposé was masterly. Every thing he could do was done to save his chief. Montgomery Blair, one of the ablest men at the Capital, after listening to General Garfield's presentation of the facts, said to a friend, "Garfield is a great man." President Lincoln said: "I have never understood so fully and clearly the necessities, situation, and movements of any army in the field."

But it was in vain. Stanton was firm. Rosecrans had to go. His obstinate refusals to advance from Murfreesboro; his testy and almost insulting letters; his violent temper, and uncontrollable stubbornness had ruined him long before Chickamauga. He had broken with the Commander-in-chief as well as with Secretary Stanton. He had said that he regarded certain suggestions from the Department "as a profound, grievous, cruel, and ungenerous official and personal wrong." The powerful enemies which he thus made only waited for an opportunity to destroy him. That opportunity came with the fatal order at Chickamauga, the rout of the right wing, the loss of presence of mind, and the ride to the rear. This last stood in painful contrast with General Garfield's dangerous and heroic ride to the front. It was admitted that the strategy of the campaigns was splendid, Napoleonic. It could not be denied that the mistake as to the enemy's whereabouts after the evacuation of Chattanooga originated in the dispatches from Washington. No matter. Rosecrans was relieved, and the chief of staff, whom Stanton correctly believed to have been very largely the originator of the strategic advance, was promoted.

His immediate duty at Washington being discharged, General Garfield laid the question of the seat in Congress before the man who, perhaps, felt more sympathy and appreciation for and with him than any other, because, like himself, Garfield sprang from poverty, Abraham Lincoln. The great, grave President thought it over, and finally said:

"The Republican majority in Congress is very small, and it is often doubtful whether we can carry the necessary war measures; and, besides,

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we are greatly lacking in men of military experience in the House to regulate legislation about the army. It is your duty, therefore, to enter Congress, at any rate for the present."

This, for the time being, settled the matter. With the understanding that his rank would be restored if he desired to return to the army, General Garfield reluctantly resigned his new majorgeneralship, a position whose salary was double that of a Congressman, in order to enter on the following day the House of Repre

sentatives.

The greatest men seem often to have been those who were suddenly lifted out of the career of life which they had chosen, and to which they seemed to be preëminently adapted, and forced, as it were, by the exigencies of the times, into a new channel. Julius Cæsar, whose lofty character, unapproachable genius, and sorrowful death, are hardly equalled in the annals of any age or country, had chosen for himself the career of a civil and religious officer of state. His chosen field was in the stately sessions of the Roman Senate, or before the turbulent multitudes of the forum. It was said of him by his enemies, that in speaking he excelled those who practiced no other art. It was said that, had he continued in his chosen career, he would have outshone, in his eloquence, every orator whose name and fame has been transmitted by Rome to later generations. But from this career he was unexpectedly taken. The dangers to the state from the Gallic tribes, and the restless Roman appetite for conquest, required a military leader. Almost by accident Cæsar was drawn away from the senate and the forum to take up the profession of arms.

Unlike the great Roman, Garfield, under the stress of public necessity, was almost by accident withdrawn from the career of arms, in which it may be truly said of him that he, too, excelled those who practiced no other art, to enter upon the career of a legislator. Cæsar exchanged the assembly for the camp, while the great American left the camp for the assembly. Each did so at the call of the state, and each was to become, in his new field, the master spirit of his generation.

ON

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE ASCENDANT.

N the 5th day of December, 1863, General Garfield took his seat in the Thirty-Eighth Congress of the United States. The reader who has gone over the preceding chapter will know in part what brought him there, and will be prepared to judge what was expected of him. But in order to understand clearly and fully what actually was to be looked for from this Congressional neophyte, it will be of advantage to consider who sent Garfield to the House. For it is a safe rule to lay down, that many Congressmen truly represent their districts; and a people may not unfairly be judged by their average representation in Congress for any considerable period of time.

What kind of a constituency, then, was that which, for nine times the space that measures the term of a Congressman, and an equal number of times the space that measures the political life of many a Congressman, kept James A. Garfield in that place without a moment's intermission? We would probably make no mistake if we should describe them from our knowledge of him. But let us take the mathematician's method and verify our conclusion by a reverse process.

Twelve counties in the north-eastern corner of the State of Ohio are popularly grouped together and called the Western Reserve. They are the very Canaan of that great commonwealth; or, at least, come so near it that they can be described as a land flowing with wine and milk,-for grape culture is one of their important industries, and their dairies are famous. Of the nearly twenty-five million pounds of cheese annually produced in Ohio, ninety-five per cent. is made in the Western Reserve.

The Greeks had a story that their god Jupiter, when an infant,

was tumbled down from the heavens to a secluded place on earth, where he was carefully watched while he grew. It shall be our easy task to show that the Western Reserve is a good place for a public man to grow in and make preparation to rule in a higher sphere.

The Reserve is a place of great natural resources, and, under almost any conditions, would have a well-to-do population. But it is not advantages of this kind which make it an unusually good place for the growth of a great man. If we should presume to say so, all the facts of history would rise to protest its falsity. The arts and literature and eloquence and political glory of Athens and her sister states clung close to barren hill-sides. Switzerland rose to be the first free state of Europe among the wild fastnesses of her unfertile mountains. The American Revolution was fought out and the Union established by the finest generation of statesmen and warriors ever produced on the continent, before the extent or the wealth of our broad, level empire was dreamed of. New England and Virginia were not rich; but they were great, and they were free, and so were their statesmen in those days.

The Western Reserve was largely settled by people of New England. And, since it is not the character of the soil, but the composition of the people, which chiefly influences the man who grows there, it will be profitable to see of what sort these settlers and their descendants were.

One of the first things the first settlers of the Western Reserve did was to build a church. They brought the plan of their altars with them. Religion was the corner-stone of their new civilization. Religion was the solid rock on which they built a high morality and an earnest intelligence. Somehow or other they rested calmly on a God who made the forest his temple, and walked through it with them to the very end of the earth. They have their religion with them to this day, and it seems to round out their lives to a fuller completeness, and gives them solidity of character, and with its divinely sanctioned maxims creates such a standard of morality as a good man would aspire to to make his rule of life. This kind of community is a good place in which