During his two years at Williams, a most important phase of Garfield’s intellectual development was his opinion upon questions of politics. It will be remembered that in 1855, the volcanic flames from the black and horrible crater of slavery began to burst through the crust of compromise, which for thirty years had hidden the smoldering fires. In Kansas, civil war was raging. Determined men from all parts of the country had gone there to help capture the State for their side, and in the struggle between the two legislatures, the slavery men resolved to drive the Free-soilers from the State. The sky was red with burning farm houses. The woods were full of corpses of antislavery men with knives sticking in their hearts. Yet the brave Free-soilers held their ground. One man who had gone there from Ohio, had two sons literally chopped to pieces. His name was John Brown. He also remained, living six weeks in a swamp, in order to live at all. The entire country was becoming aroused. Old political parties were breaking up, and the lines reformed upon the slavery question. Garfield, though twenty-three years old, had never voted. Nominally he was an antislavery Whig. But he took little interest in any party. So far, the struggle of his own life and the study of literature had monopolized his mind. In the fall of 1855, John Z. Goodrich, a member of Congress from the western district of Massachusetts, delivered a political address in Williamstown. Garfield and a classmate attended the speaking. The subject was the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, and the efforts of the antislavery minority in Congress to save Kansas for freedom. Says the classmate, Mr. Lavallette Wilson, of New York: “As Mr. Goodrich spoke, I sat at Garfield’s side, and saw him drink in every word. He said, as we passed out, ‘This subject is entirely new to me. I am going to know all about it.’” The following day he sent for documents on the subject. He made a profound and careful study of the history of slavery, and of the heroic resistance to its encroachments. At the end of that investigation, his mind was made up. Other questions of the day, the dangers from foreign immigration, and from the Roman Catholic Church, the Crimean war, the advantage of an elective judiciary, were all eagerly debated by him in his society, but the central feature of his political creed was opposition to slavery. His views were moderate and practical. The type of his mind gave his opinions a broad conservatism, rather than a theoretical radicalism. Accordingly, when on June 17, 1856, the new-born Republican party unfurled its young banner of opposition to slavery and protection for Kansas, Garfield was ready for the party as the party was ready for him.