He accordingly went to his mother, and received this reply: “James, I have had a hope and a desire, ever since you joined the church, that you would preach. I have been happy in your success as a preacher, and regarded it as an answer to my prayers. Of late, I had regarded the matter as settled. But I do not want my wishes to lead you into a life work that you do not prefer to all others—much less into the ministry, unless your heart is in it. If you can retain your manhood and religion in political life, and believe you can do the most good there, you have my full consent and prayers for your success. A mother’s prayers and blessing will be yours.” With this answer as his assurance, he accepted the nomination, and placed his foot on the first round in the aspiring ladder. From this time on, Garfield ceased forever to be a private citizen, and must thereafter be looked on as a public man. Twenty-eight year of age, a giant in body and mind, of spotless honor and tireless industry, it was inevitable that Garfield should become a leader of the Ohio Senate. During his first winter in the legislature, his powers of debate and his varied knowledge gave him conspicuous rank. A committee report, drawn by his hand, upon the Geological Survey of Ohio, is a State document of high order, revealing a scientific knowledge and a power to group statistics and render them effective, which would be looked at with wide-eyed wonder by the modern State legislator. Another report on the care of pauper children; and a third, on the legal regulation of weights and measures, presenting a succinct sketch of the attempts at the thing, both in Europe and America, are equally notable as completely out of the ordinary rut of such papers. During this and the following more exciting winter at Columbus, he, somehow, found time to gratify his passion for literature, spending many evenings in the State library, and carrying out an elaborate system of annotation. But Garfield’s chief activities in the Ohio legislature did not lie in the direction of peace. The times became electric. Men felt that a terrible crisis upon the slavery and States-rights questions was approaching. The campaign of 1860, in which Abraham Lincoln, the Great Unknown, was put forward as the representative of the antislavery party, was in progress. In the midst of the popular alarm, which was spreading like sheet lightning over the Republic, Garfield’s faith in the perpetuity of the nation was unshaken. His oration at Ravenna, Ohio, on July 4, 1860, contains the following passage: