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The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States: Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.Ridpath, John Clark

History

The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States: Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

Name: The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States: Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.
Author: Ridpath, John Clark

Ridpath, John Clark

Garfield, James A. (James Abram), 1831-1881

During this trial, Garfield became a warm friend of Major-General
Hunter, the presiding officer of the court, and in command of our forces
in South Carolina. After the adjournment, Hunter made an application to
Secretary Stanton to have Garfield assigned to the Army of South
Carolina. The appointment was made. It was gratifying to Garfield,
because Hunter was one of the strong antislavery generals, whom, at that
time, were few enough. Garfield felt that the war, though being fought
on the technical question of a State’s right to secede, was really a war
to destroy the hideous and bloody institution of slavery, and he wished
to see it carried on with that avowed purpose. As he afterwards
expressed it: “In the very crisis of our fate, God brought us face to
face with the alarming truth, that we must lose our own freedom or grant
it to the slave.”

In the same address from which the above is taken, which was delivered
before the war had actually closed, he declared that slavery was dead,
and the war had killed it:

  “We shall never know why slavery dies so hard in this Republic and
  in this hall till we know why sin has such longevity and Satan is
  immortal. With marvelous tenacity of existence, it has outlived the
  expectations of its friends and the hopes of its enemies. It has
  been declared here and elsewhere to be in all the several stages of
  mortality, wounded, moribund, dead. The question has been raised,
  whether it was indeed dead, or only in a troubled sleep. I know of
  no better illustration of its condition than is found in Sallust’s
  admirable history of the great conspirator Catiline, who, when his
  final battle was fought and lost, his army broken and scattered, was
  found far in advance of his own troops, lying among the dead enemies
  of Rome, yet breathing a little, but exhibiting in his countenance
  all that ferocity of spirit which had characterized his life. So,
  sir, this body of slavery lies before us among the dead enemies of
  the Republic, mortally wounded, impotent in its fiendish wickedness,
  but with its old ferocity of look, bearing the unmistakable marks of
  its infernal origin.”—_House of Representatives, January 13, 1865._

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