CHAPTER XVIII.

LABORS IN CONGRESS.

APPOINTMENT ON COMMITTEES.-VARIETY OF WORK. HIS LEADERSHIP. LIST OF SPEECHES. THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION. — A SPEECH IN WALL STREET. VIEWS ON FINANCES. RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS.

GENERAL GARFIELD's labors in Congress were of the most varied and arduous character. It seems incredible that one man could make so many speeches, write out so many bills, attend so many committee hearings, and appear so punctually in his seat as he has done. He carried the affairs of the Military committee as its practical head, until the chairmanship of the Ways and Means committee, which was given him, took him into a wider field. For many years he was the leader of the House in matters requiring hard work; and after the election of Mr. Blaine to the Senate, he was regarded by the Republican party as their leader and oracle, in all their debates and controversies with the other party. He studied, wrote and spoke about a vast variety of topics, concerning widely different themes, and, as all admit, with ability and good judgment. He delivered addresses in the House, which have often been quoted with respect by eminent scholars, upon public lands,

river navigation, contagious diseases, revenue, currency, duties, specie payments, Arctic explorations, science, schools, manufactories, commerce, agriculture, appropriations, law trials, Chinese immigration, diplomatic affairs, war claims, fisheries, polygamy, pensions, constitutional amendments, banks, slavery, treaties with foreign nations, trade with Canada, electoral count, reconstruction, State rights, and hundreds more; and, all the while, was assiduously at work as a member of the most important committees. His eminent legal knowledge pointed him out at once as the proper statesman for the examination of the Louisiana trouble, for drafting constitutional amendments and impeachment reports, and for a place on that most august of all our national tribunals, the electoral commission, for adjusting the contested election case between R. B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, the claimants for the presidential chair.

His study, at odd moments, of questions of science and education, made him a prominent member of the Board of regents of the Smithsonian Institute, and his love of literature secured the honorary membership in many of the leading literary societies in this country, and of the "Cobden Club," in London, on motion of John Bright.

During those years of restless activity, he wrote articles for magazines, and the many addresses which he delivered, at schools, colleges, celebrations, anniversaries and political meetings. Among his speeches, none seems to have given him greater celebrity, than the short exclamation which he made to the

crowd in Wall street, on the evening after the assassination of President Lincoln. The accounts in the public press gave it as follows:

An enormous crowd had gathered at the Wall street Exchange. The wrath of the workingmen was simply uncontrollable, and revolvers and knives. were in the hands of thousands of Lincoln's friends, ready to avenge the death of the martyred president, without being careful to consider who deserved penalty. Speeches from Butler and Dickinson had done nothing to appease the gathering wrath of the mob. Two men had been beaten — one lay dead, the other dangerously wounded — for declaring that Lincoln ought to have been hung long ago. Some had made a rude gallows out of scantling, with a looped halter hanging from it. Suddenly some one raised a shout, "The World! the World! the office of the World!" It was the signal for a surging movement which a moment later would have been a terrible march. Just then a man stepped forward, with a small flag in his hand, and beckoned to the crowd. Another telegram from Washington! And then, in the awful stillness of the crisis, taking advantage of the hesitation of the crowd, a right arm was lifted skyward, and a voice clear and steady, loud and distinct, spoke out: "Fellow citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of his throne! Mercy and truth shall go before his face! Fellow citizens! God

reigns, and the government at Washington still lives!" The effect was tremendous. The crowd stood riveted to the ground in awe, gazing at the motionless orator, and thinking of God and the security of the government in that hour. As the boiling wave subsides and settles to the sea, when

some strong wind beats it down, so the tumult of the people sank and became still. All took it as a divine omen. It was a triumph of eloquence, inspired by the moment, such as falls to but one man's lot, and that but once in a century.

His political speeches were made the texts of his party, and his services were eagerly sought for in every doubtful State. His published speeches are well worth preserving, and of being read again and again. Some of his addresses, including as large a variety as possible, in order to show the versatility of his talents, are included in this volume.

During his first session he declared his views upon the finances of the nation; and, as the consistency of his career on matters of finance may be of interest to all who study his life, extracts from two of his speeches are given here together. The first is a brief statement of his views in 1866; the second is a more elaborate discussion, made in Chicago in 1879. The remarks in Congress in 1866, were as follows:

Mr. Speaker, there is no leading financier, no leading statesman now living, or one who has lived within the last half century, in whose opinion the gentleman can find any support. They all declare, as the Secretary of the treasury declares, that the only honest basis of value is a currency, redeemable in specie, at the will of the holder. I am an advocate of paper money, but that paper money must represent what it professes on its face. I do not wish to hold in my hands the printed lies of the government I want its promises to pay, signed by the high officers of the government, sacredly kept in the exact meaning of the words of the promise.

Let us not continue this conjurer's art, by which sixty cents shall discharge a debt of one hundred cents. I do not want industry, everywhere, to be thus crippled and wounded, and its wounds plastered over with legally authorized lies.

An Extract from General Garfield's speech upon the suspension and resumption of Specie Payments, before the Honest Money League of Chicago, January 2, 1879, was printed as follows:

Successful Resumption will greatly aid in bringing into the murky sky of our politics, what the signal service people call "clearing weather." It puts an end to a score of controversies which have long vexed the public mind, and wrought mischief to business. It ends the angry contention over the difference between the money of the bond-holder and the money of the plow-holder. It relieves enterprising Congressmen of the necessity of introducing twenty-five or thirty bills a session to furnish the people with cheap money, to prevent gold-gambling, and to make custom duties payable in greenbacks. It will dismiss to the limbo of things forgotten, such Utopian schemes as a currency based upon the magic circle of interconvertibility of two different forms of irredeemable paper, and the schemes of a currency, "based on the public faith," and secured by "all the resources of the nation," in general, but upon no particular part of them. We shall still hear echoes of the old conflict, such as "the barbarism and cowardice of gold and silver," and the virtues of "fiat money;" but the theories which gave them birth will linger among us like belated ghosts, and soon find rest in the political grave of dead issues. All these will take their places in history alongside of the resolution of Varsittart, in 1811, that "British paper had not fallen, but gold