But the private letter was only the preface to an expression of the same thing in public. When General Garfield came home his friends found that he was immovable on the financial question. A short time before the nominating convention he was about to return to Washington. Some friends at Jefferson arranged to give him a reception on the eve of his departure. There was to be some speech-making. His friends had urged him to let the financial question alone. The welcoming address contained some broad hints. The speaker hinted at the greenback platform, and delicately intimated that General Garfield’s return was conditioned upon his indorsement of the platform. Then the thunderer let fly. Garfield took up the question of finance, and, in the boldest terms, denounced the party platform as dishonest and despicable. He declared that if a life-time of office were offered him, with the understanding that he was to support the platform, he would refuse it at once. Then he took himself off to Washington. When the time for the convention came he was renominated, and a short time later elected. It is impossible to even sketch the varied activities of the man from this time on, in Congress. His voluminous reports, his comprehensive debates on every leading subject, his immense and varied committee work, comprise a vast field, the very outline of which would surpass the limits of this work. No subject of national importance escaped his attention. Reconstruction, pensions, navigation, tariff, internal improvements, the census, education, the Indian question, corporations, the currency, national banks, public expenditures, civil service reform, railways, civil rights, polygamy, the Chinese—these are only a few of the great subjects which he mastered. His speeches are incomparable for their profound learning, their exhaustive research, their glowing rhetoric. They might serve as text-books upon the great governmental problems of the age. In looking over the record of the proceedings in Congress at this period, one can but be impressed with the marked superiority of his efforts over those of the large majority of his compeers. However worthy the utterances of these latter may be viewed alone, they are dwarfed by the forced comparison with the productions of his majestic mind. These speeches mark the man as a carefully trained intellectual giant, perfectly at home and a terror in the field of debate. They are of inestimable value now, as giving his intellectual biography.