2

This letter is the key to Garfield's record in the Ohio Senate. On the 24th of January he championed a bill to raise and equip 6,000 State militia. The timid, conservative and politically blind members of the legislature he worked with both day and night, both on and off the floor of the Senate, to prepare them for the crisis which his genius foresaw. But as his prophetic vision leaped from peak to peak of the mountain difficulties of the future, he saw not only armies in front, but traitors in the rear. He drew up and put through to its passage a bill defining treason-" providing that when Ohio's soldiers go forth to maintain the Union, there shall be no treacherous fire in the rear."

In the hour of darkness his trumpet gave no uncertain sound. He was for coercion, without delay or doubt.

He was the leader of what was known as the "Radical Triumvirate," composed of J. D. Cox, James Monroe, and himself—the three men who, by their exhaustless efforts, wheeled Ohio into line for the war. The Ohio legislature was as blind as a bat. Two days after Sumter had been fired on, the Ohio Senate, over the desperate protests of the man who had for months foreseen the war, passed the Corwin Constitutional Amendment, providing that Congress should have no power ever to legislate on the question of slavery! Notwithstanding this blindness, through the indomitable zeal of Garfield and his colleagues, Ohio was the first State in the North to reach a war footing. When Lincoln's call for 75,000 men reached the legislature, Senator Garfield was on his feet instantly, moving, amid tumultuous cheers, that 20,000 men and $3,000,000 be voted as Ohio's quota. In this ordeal, the militia formerly organized proved a valuable help.

The inner history of this time will probably never be fully written. Almost every Northern legislative hall, particularly in border States, was the scene of a coup d'etat. Without law or precedent, a few determined men broke down the obstacles with which treason hedged the path of patriotism. As we have said, the inner history of those high and gallant services, of the midnight counsels, the forced loans, the unauthorized proclamations, will never be written. All that will be known to history will be that,

when the storm of treason broke, every Northern State wheeled into line of battle; and it is enough.

Of Garfield it is known that he became at once Governor Dennison's valued adviser and aid. The story of one of his services to the Union has leaked out. After the attack on Sumter, the State capital was thronged with men ready to go to war, but there were no guns. Soldiers without guns were a mockery. In this extremity it was found out that at the Illinois arsenal was a large quantity of muskets. Instantly, Garfield started to Illinois with a requisition. By swift diplomacy he secured and shipped to Columbus five thousand stand of arms, a prize valued at the time more than so many recruits. But while the interior history of the times will never be fully known, the exterior scenes are still fresh in memory. The opening of the muster-rolls, the incessant music of martial bands, the waving of banners, the shouts of the drill-sergeant, the departure of crowded trains carrying the brave and true to awful fields of blood and glory,-all this we know and remember. The Civil War was upon us, and James A. Garfield, in the morning of his power, was to become a soldier of the Union.

CHAPTER IV.

A SOLDIER OF THE UNION.

ONOR to the West Point soldier! War is his business,

HON

and, wicked though wars be, the warrior shall still receive his honor due. By his study, by the devotion of his life to rugged discipline, the professional soldier preserves war as a science, so that armies may not be rabbles, but organizations. He divests himself of the full freedom of a citizen, and puts himself under orders for all time. Think of the experiences a man must go through before he can be a major-general in the regular line of military promotion!

One of our ablest leaders in the Civil War was General George H. Thomas. Of Thomas we learn, from an address of Garfield, that "in the army he never leaped a grade, either in rank or command. He did not command a company until after long service as a lieutenant. He commanded a regiment only at the end of many years of company and garrison duty. He did not command a brigade until after he had commanded his regiment three years on the Indian frontier. He did not command a division until after he had mustered in, organized, disciplined, and commanded a brigade. He did not command a corps until he had led his division in battle, and through many hundred miles of hostile country. He did not command the army until, in battle, at the head of his corps, he had saved it from ruin." This is apprenticeship with all its hardships, but with all its benefits.

In our popular praises of the wonders performed by the great armies of citizens which sprang up in a few days, let it never be forgotten that the regular army, with its discipline, was the "little leaven" which spread its martial virtues through the entire forces; that the West Point soldier was the man whose skill organized

these grand armies, and made it possible for them to gain their victories.

Honor to the volunteer soldier! He is history's greatest hero. What kind of apprenticeship for war has he served? To learn this, let us go back to the peaceful time of 1860, when the grimvisaged mon

ster's "wrinkled

front" was yet

smooth. Now, look through the great ironworking district of Pennsylvania, with its miles of red-mouthed furnaces, its thousand kinds of manufactures, and its ten thousands of skilled workmen. Number the civil engineers; count the miners; go into the various places where

crude metals and

other materials

are worked up into every shape known, to meet the necessities of the modern arts. These are the sources of military power. Here are the men who will build bridges, and equip railroads for army transportation, almost in the twinkling of an eye. Cast your mind's eye back into all the corners of the land, obscure or conspicuous, and in every place you shall see soldiers being trained. They are not yet in line, and it does not look like a military array; the farmer at his plow, the scholar and the professional man at

the desk, are all getting ready to be soldiers. No nation is better prepared for war than one which has been at peace; for war is a consumer of arts, of life, of physical resources. And we had a reserve of those very things accumulating, as we still have all the time.

Europe, with its standing armies, stores gunpowder in guarded magazines. America has the secret of gunpowder, and uses the saltpeter and other elements for civil purposes; believing that there is more explosive power in knowing how to make an ounce of powder than there is in the actual ownership of a thousand tons of the very stuff itself. The Federal army had not gone through years of discipline in camp, but it was no motley crowd. Its units were not machines; they were better than machines; they

were men.

James A. Garfield became a volunteer, a citizen soldier. The manner of his going into the army was as strikingly characteristic of him as any act of his life. In a letter written from Cleveland, on June 14, 1861, to his life-long friend, B. A. Hinsdale, he said:

"The Lientenant-Colonelcy of the Twenty-fourth Regiment has been tendered to me, and the Goveruor urges me to accept. I am greatly perplexed on the question of duty. I shall decide by Monday next."

But he did not then go. For such a man, capable of so many things, duty had many calls, in so many different directions, that he could not easily decide. How Garfield was affected by the temptation to go at once may be seen in a letter of July 12, 1861, written from Hiram, to Hinsdale, wherein he says: "I hardly knew myself, till the trial came, how much of a struggle it would cost me to give up going into the army. I found I had so fully interested myself in the war that I hardly felt it possible for me not to be a part of the movement. But there were so many who could fill the office tendered to me, and would covet the place, more than could do my work here, perhaps, that I could not but feel it would be to some extent a reckless disregard of the good of others to accept. If there had been a scarcity of volunteers I should have accepted. The time may yet come when I shall feel