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 JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
 
 His Speeches at Home. 
 
 1880. 
 
 COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY C. S. CARPENTER 
 
 ONEONTA, N. Y.: 
 
 C. S. CARPENTER, PUBLISHER. 
 
 1880. 
 
Copyrighted, 
 1880, 
 
 Bv C. S.. CARPENTER. 
 
 E. M. Johnson, Printer. 
 Oneonta, N. Y. 
 
 . 'or 2.3 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Profoundly impressed with the true greatness of James 
 A. Garfield, and regarding his non-partizan speeches 
 between the date of his nomination and election for Presi- 
 dent, rare samples of thought, logic and composition, we 
 liave compiled all such public utterances, and hand them to 
 
 the public. 
 
 Old men will value these speeches for the evidence they 
 bear of the Nation's present greatness ; young men will 
 draw from them inspiration and courage for the future ; 
 soldiers will be reminded of their own valor and the 
 patriotism of a leader ; business men will find many good 
 
 suo-gestions ; mechanics will read feeling words from one 
 
 11 
 who knows all about the every-day labor of life ; scholars 
 
 will find a peer in all that pertains to learning and culture ; 
 
 foreigners will observe the liberality of America, and note 
 
 the sympathy of her twentieth President. 
 
 ^ ^ C. S. C. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Possibilities of Life. 
 
 The Teachings of a Soldiers' Monument 
 
 The Immortality of Ideas. 
 
 Commercial Travelers. 
 
 Army Comrades. 
 
 The Country and City. 
 
 German Citizens. 
 
 The" Future of "Colored Men. * 
 
 Colored Jubilee Singers. 
 
 First Voters. 
 
 Principles in Business. 
 
 Proud of his Congressional District. 
 
 The Friendship of Constituents. 
 
 Neighbors and Friends. 
 
 A Busy Day at Mentor. 
 
 Teachers and Students. 
 
 Acknowledgment of a Gift. 
 
 On the Eve of Election. 
 
 The Elpxtokal College. 
 
R 
 
 J 
 
 n 
 J. 
 
 THE POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 
 
 June 25th, General Garfield attended the commencement 
 exercises of Hiram (Ohio) College, of which institution he 
 was for many years President, and addressed the students 
 
 as follows : 
 
 Fellow Citizens, Neighbors and Friends of many 
 Years— It always gives me pleasure to come liere and look 
 upon these faces ; it has always given me new courage and 
 new friends. It has brought back a large share of that 
 richness that belongs to those things out of which come the 
 joys of life. While I have been sitting here this after- 
 noon, watching your faces and listening to the very inter- 
 esting address which has just been delivered, it has occurred 
 to me that the best thing you have that all men envy— I 
 mean all men who have reached the meridian of life— is 
 perhaps the tldng you care for least, and that is your leis- 
 ure : the leisure you have to think ; tlie leisure you have to 
 throw the plummet around the deptlis and find what is 
 below ; the leisure you have to work about the towers of 
 yourselves and find how strong they are or how weak they 
 are, and to determine what needs building up, and how to 
 shape it that you may be made the final being tliat you are 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE. 
 
 to be. Oh ! these hours of building ! If the superior 
 beings of the universe would look down upon the world to 
 find the most interesting olyject, it would be the unfinished, 
 unformed character of young men and young women. 
 
 Those behind me have probably in the main settled such 
 questions. Those who have passed into middle manhood 
 and middle womanhood are about what thev shall always 
 be, and there is little left of interest or curiosity as to our 
 development ; but to your young unformed natures no man 
 knows the possibilities that lay treasured up in your hearts 
 and intellects, and while you are working up those possi- 
 bilities with that splendid leisure, you are the most envied 
 of men and women in the world. I congratulate you on 
 your leisure ; I commend you to keep it as your gold, as 
 your wealth, as your means, out of which you can demand 
 all the possible treasures that God laid down when He 
 formed your nature and unveiled and developed the possi- 
 bility of vour future. 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF A SOLDIERS' 
 
 MONUMENT. 
 
 On the 3d of July, General Garfield spoke at Paines- 
 ville, Ohio, the occasion being the dedication of a soldiers' 
 monument. He said : 
 
 Fellow Citizens— I cannot fail to respond on such an 
 occasion, in sight of such a monument to such a cause, 
 sustained by such men. While I have listened to what m\ 
 friend has said, two questions have been sweeping through 
 my heart. One was, what does the monument mean ? and 
 the other, what will the monument teach ? ^ Let me try, and 
 ask you for a moment to help me to answer, " What does 
 the monument mean?" Oh, the monument means a world 
 of memories, a world of deeds, a world of tears, and a 
 world of glories. You know, thousands know, what it is 
 to offer up your life to the country, and that is no small 
 thing, as every soldier knows. Let me put the question to 
 you for a moment. Suppose your country, in the awful 
 embodied form of majestic Law, should stand before you 
 and say, " I want your life ; come up here on this platform 
 and offer it." How many would walk up before that ma- 
 jestic presence and say, " Here am I ; take this life and use 
 it for your great needs." And yet, almost two millions of 
 men made that answer. And a monument stands yonder 
 to commemorate their answer. That is one of its meanings. 
 But, my friends, let me try you a little further. To 
 give up life is much ; for it is to give up wife, and home, 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF A SOLDIERS' MONUMENT. 
 
 and child, and ambition, and all — almost all. But let me 
 test you a little further. Suppose that majestic form should 
 call out to you and say, "I ask you to give up health, and 
 drag yourself, not dead, but half alive, through a miserable 
 existence for long years, until you perish and die in your 
 crippled and hopeless condition. I ask you to volunteer 
 to do that." This calls for a higher reach of patriotism 
 and self-sacrifice. But hundreds of thousands of our sol- 
 diers did it. That is what the monument means also. 
 
 But let me ask you to go one step further. Suppose 
 your country should say, " Come here, upon this platform, 
 and in mv name and for my sake consent to become idiols ; 
 consent that your very brain and intellect should be broken 
 down into hopeless idiocy for my sake," how many could 
 be found to make that venture ? And yet thousands did it 
 with their eyes wide open to the horrible consequence. 
 And let me tell you how. One hundred and eighty thou- 
 sand of our soldiers were prisoners of war ; and auiong 
 them, when death was stalking, when famine was climlnng 
 up into their hearts, and when idiocy was threatening all 
 that was left of their intellects, the gates of their prisons 
 stood open every day if they would just desert their flag 
 and enlist under the flag of the enemy ; and out of one 
 hundred and eighty thousand not two per cent ever received 
 the liberation from death, starvation, idiocy, all that might 
 come to them ; but they endured all these horrors and all 
 these sufferings in preference to deserting the flag of their 
 country and the glory of its truth. Great God! Was 
 ever such measure of patriotism reached by any men upon 
 this earth before! That is what your monument means. 
 By the subtle chemistry that no man knows, all the blood 
 that was shed bv our brethren, all the lives that were thus 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF A SOLDIERS' MONUMENT. 
 
 devoted, all the grief and tears, at last crystalized itself 
 into granite and rendered immortal the great truths for 
 which they died. And it stands here to-day, and that is 
 what yonr monument means. 
 
 Now, what will it teach? What will it teach? Why, I 
 remember the story of one of the old conquerors of Greece, 
 who, when he had traveled in his boyhood over the battle- 
 fields where Miltiades had won victories and set up 
 trophies, returning, he said : " These trophies of Miltiades 
 will never let me sleep." Why? Something had taught 
 him from the chiseled stone a lesson that he could never 
 forget. And, fellow citizens, that silent sentinel that crowns 
 yon granite column will look down upon the boys who 
 shall walk these streets for generations to come, and he 
 will not let them sleep when the country calls. More than 
 the bugler on the field, from his granite lips will go out a 
 call thit the children of Lake County will hear after the 
 grave has covered us all and our immediate children. 
 That is the teaching of your monument ; that is its lesson. 
 It is the lesson of endurance for what we believe. It is 
 the lesson of sacrifice for what we love; the lesson of 
 heroism for what we mean to sustain; and that lesson 
 cannot be lost on a people like this. 
 
 It is not a lesson of revenge ; it is not a lesson of 
 wrath. It is the grand, sweet lesson of the immortality of 
 a truth that we hope will soon cover, like the Shechinah 
 of light and glory all parts of tliis Republic from the lakes 
 to the gulf. I once entered a house in old Massachusetts 
 where, over its door, were two crossed swords ; one was 
 the sword carried by the grandsire of its owner on the field 
 of Bunker Hill, and the other was a sword carried by the 
 Eno-lish grandsire of the wife on the same field and on the 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF A SOLDIERS' MONUMENT. 
 
 other side of the conflict. Under those crossed swords, in 
 the restored harmony of domestic peace, lived a family 
 happy, contented and free under the light of our Republi- 
 can liberties. I trust the time is not far distant when, 
 under the crossed swords and the locked shields of Ameri- 
 cans, North and South, our people shall sleep in peace and 
 rise in liberty, and love, and harmony, under our flag of 
 stars. 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF IDEAS. 
 
 August 6th, a soldiers' monument was dedicated at 
 Geneva, Ohio, with imposing ceremonies. General Gar- 
 field, after some introductory remarks, said : 
 
 Fellow CixiZENS^Ideas are the only things in this uni- ^ 
 verse that are immortal. \ Some people think the soldiers 
 are chief! ly renowned for courage ; that is one of the 
 cheapest and commonest qualities. We share it with the 
 brutes. I can find you dogs and bears and lions tliat will 
 fiarht, andfiofht to the death, and will tear each other. Do 
 you call that warfare ? They are as courageous as any of 
 our soldiers were, if brute courage is what you are after. 
 The difference between them and us is this : the tigers 
 never hold reunions to celebrate their victories when they 
 have eaten the creature they have killed. That is the only, 
 is the only reunion they ever hold. Wild beasts never 
 build monuments over their slain comrades. Why? Be- 
 cause there are no ideas behind their warfare. Ideas are 
 immortal if they be true. We build monuments to them. 
 We hold reunions not for the dead, for(there is nothing on 
 all the earth that you and I can do for the dead.^ They are 
 past our help and past our praise. We can add to them 
 no glory and we can give to them no immortality. They 
 do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them. 
 The glory that trailed in the clouds behind them after their 
 sun had set falls with its benediction upon us who are 
 living, and it is to commemorate the immortality of ideas 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF IDEAS. 
 
 for which they fought, that you assemble to-day and dedi- 
 cate your monument that points up toward God, who leads 
 them in glory of the great world beyond. And around 
 those ideas, under the leadership of the immortality of 
 those ideas, we assemble to-day, reverently to follow, rever- 
 ently to acknowledge the glory they achieved, and the ben- 
 ediction they left behind them. 
 
COMMERCIAL TRAVELERS. 
 
 On the 3d of September, fifty commercial travelers, 
 representing every leading mercantile interest, assembled 
 on the lawn in front of Gen. Garfield's residence. Tiie 
 gentlemen were accompanied by their wives. Gen. Garfield 
 addressed them as follows : 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen— -I can hardly 
 say that you have taken me by surprise, for I was informed, 
 some days ago, that a party of commercial gentlemen from 
 Indiana would call upon me to-day; but 1 am very pleas- 
 antly surprised at the large nund^er of ladies and gentle- 
 men who have honored me by this visit. I have listened 
 with deep interest to the address of your chairman, and I 
 give you, one and all, my thanks for the compliment which 
 
 this visit implies. 
 
 Your chairman informs me that you represent nearly 
 all the leading branches of commercial industry in the 
 State of Indiana, and some of the neighboring States. Few 
 of our people understand how vast are the enterprises rep- 
 resented by our internal trade. Almost every form of 
 human labor contributes its products to the trade that fills 
 our thoroughfares and supplies our communities with the 
 necessaries of life, and are all moved by the grand main- 
 spring—labor. Permit me to illustrate its magic powers. 
 Eighty-four years ago a company of forty-two surveyors 
 landed at the mouth of Conneaut Creek, a little stream 
 that marks the boundary between Pennsylvania and Ohio. 
 
COMMERCIAL TRAVELERS. 
 
 They landed on the 4th day of July, 1796, and begun 
 their work by celebrating our National Independence. 
 There are many now living who were boys in their teens 
 when this company of surveyors began their work. At 
 that time, from the Pennsylvania line to Detroit, hardly a 
 smoke ascended from a white man's cabin. The Western 
 Reserve was an unbroken wilderness. Three millions of 
 acres had just been purchased from the State of Connecti- 
 cut, for fortv cents an acre. To-day, the Western Reserve 
 furnishes happy and comfortable homes to more than three- 
 fourths of a million of intelligent people. Except a French 
 settlement, the State of Indiana was itself an unbroken 
 wilderness, but is now a great and prosperous community, 
 and thousands of miles beyond yon prairies the wilderness 
 and mountain slopes smile with peace, prosperity and the 
 attendant blessings of civilization. 
 
 What has wrought this wonderful transformation? The 
 magical power of human labor through manifold struggles 
 and dangers, through suffering and blood. These blessings 
 have been secured to us, and, I trust, will be continued to 
 our children's children. I venture to notice another fact. 
 Every stroke of the axe, every blow of the hammer, every 
 turn of a wheel, every purchase and sale, in short, every 
 effort of labor, is measured by the standard of value fixed 
 and declared by National law. I congratulate you, as 
 commercial men, that your Government has at last restored 
 to its people the ancient standard of value, and has made 
 it possible for our people everywhere to secure the blessing 
 which bountiful harvests and prosperous times have brought 
 them, by placing our National finances on the solid basis of 
 specie values. This fact forms no inconsiderable part of 
 the security with which the great business transactions 
 
COMMERCIAL TRAVELERS. 
 
 of the Nation are carried on, and you, as its representa- 
 tives, as well as the laborers of the land, are sharers of 
 these benefits, and this security. Ladies and gentlemen, 
 accept iny most cordial thanks for your visit. I welcome 
 you to my home, and to the kind greetings of my family. 
 
ARMY COMRADES. 
 
 On the 22iid day of September, the Association of the 
 Army of the Cumberland met in Toledo. General Garfield 
 was present, and in an address, among other things said: 
 
 Mr. President and Comrades — I am sure there is not 
 one of you here to-night that does not feel the inspira- 
 tion of the evening, does not recognize that you are better, 
 brighter, tenderer, and truer for having sat here the last 
 hour and heard these strong words of Union sentiment : the 
 glorious inspiration, the poetry and beautiful recitation 
 given us all. The best war is horrible, but to have known 
 what you have known, to have seen what you have seen, to 
 have felt the inspiration as you have felt, as part of your 
 service in the war, is a bitter moment in your life that you 
 can never fail to recognize. Glance around at the names 
 on this gallery. There is not one of them that does not 
 bring out with light and tire tlie old recollections. To have 
 known some of these men who are named here was a lib- 
 eral education in itself. To have known Phil. Sheridan's 
 horse yonder, was to make a great acquaiutance, of large 
 inspiration, l)ut to have known Phil, on his horse, was to 
 have an epitome from the glory of war, and the sublimity 
 of victory. These are some ot the meanings that this niglit 
 teaches me, and make me rejoice to be here wiili my old 
 comrades again. But then, as we glance around this circle 
 of names there comes down to us the information that one 
 by one they are dropping out from^the list of the living. 
 
ABMY COMRADES. 
 
 but yet are seen as stars in the firmament of national glory. 
 Less than a year ago the Army of the Caraberland and its 
 deliberations were presided over by one who is among the 
 dead — that brave and noble comrade of ours who presided 
 around the statue of Thomas, left us only a few weeks after 
 he gave us the hand of farewell. One by one, rapidly they 
 are going. It becomes us to gather these glories into our 
 hearts, to bind up into a small sheaf the glory and friend- 
 ship of those who live together, into the garland of our his- 
 tory, to the glory of those who are gone. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CITY. 
 
 Late in September, the Northern Ohio Fair was held at 
 Cleveland. General Garfield and Ex-Governor Bishop 
 were there ; also the Lieut.-Governor and several Repre- 
 sentatives in Congress. There were present about 40,000 
 people, and several able speeches were made. Mr. Garfield 
 
 said : 
 
 Mr. Prestdext and Gentlemen — While Gov. Bishop 
 was speaking of the exhiljition of thrift and prosperity rep- 
 resented on these grounds, I was thinking of the forces at 
 work in this country which are silently but powerfully af- 
 fecting the relations between two classes of our population. 
 All who have thoughtfully considered the reports of the 
 national census during the last thirty years, have observed 
 the great growth of our cities and the comparatively small 
 growth of population in our agricultural districts. The 
 tendency of civilization is toward the city and away from 
 the countrv. Let me ask vou to reflect whether this is a 
 ffood indication. I have time to notice but one feature of 
 the problem. A careful study of the men who have won 
 distinction in every field of activity, public and private, 
 professional and commercial, will show that a large major- 
 ity of them were born and bred in the country. 
 
 Examine the roster of all our professions, civil and mili- 
 tary ; recount the men who achieved distinction in the first 
 fields of manufacture and commerce, and you will find that 
 far the larger number were country born boys, whose early 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CITY. 
 
 manhood had touched the soil and drawn health and vigor 
 and inspiration from the forces of nature, which play with 
 freshness and freedom in the green fields of the country. 
 
 Gentlemen, would you willingly see the present brilliancy 
 continued until the majority of our people are inhabitants 
 of great cities ? If the tendency must prevail, there is one 
 way to mitigate its evils, and that is by bringing the city 
 and country into closer bonds of sympathy. 
 
 This brings me to the chief significance of this fact. 
 This great and growing city of the lake has opened her 
 arms to the country, and annually invites the people who 
 till our fields, dig in our mines, and work in the country 
 shops, to come among you and bring with them the fruits 
 of the land, and the products of their skill in return. You 
 show them the accumulation of city industry and culture. 
 This interchange is beneficial to both, and especially advan- 
 tageous to the residents of the city. 
 
 I am sure that the many leaders of the commerce and 
 trade of Cleveland, who were reared in the country, are 
 refreshed and invigorated by the reminder of their youth 
 which this fair gives them. They remember the rock from 
 which they were hewn, the soil on which they grew, and 
 are better and stronger for the remembrance. In this fair 
 the city and country shake hands in renewed friendships, 
 and recognize anew their dependence upon each other. 
 
GERMAN CITIZENS. 
 
 Ox the IGtli of October, 500 German residents of 
 Cleveland found Gen. Garfield " at home." After formal 
 ceremonies had been finished, the General spoke as 
 follows : 
 
 Gentlemex — I am very glad to see you here and re- 
 ceive your words of welcome and these words of earnest 
 patriotism. I have caught some of the inspiration of the 
 speaker's thought, though not all, but enough of it to make 
 me know the heartiness of your greeting, and be able to 
 thank you for it from a full and cordial heart. Your chair- 
 man has been pleased to refer to a remark I once made, 
 when speaking of the death of an eminent German mem- 
 ber of Congress, that it was a mistake in one sense to call 
 him a foreigner, because, as I said, all English-speaking 
 people drew their old traditions from and found their first 
 fatherland in the forests of Germany. And it was so when 
 two thousand vears ag:o that bodv of travelers and bold 
 pioneers crossed the German ocean to aid in the struggle 
 on the island of Britain. When the ruddy, strong, yellow- 
 liaired, the blue-eyed Saxon came, they planted the princi- 
 ples of Teutonic liberty in England — and an old writer, of 
 centuries ago, said that the constitution of Great Britain 
 came from the woods of Germany. Our branch of the 
 family is the earlier branch, the elder brother. You have 
 come later to join us — younger sons of modern Germany, 
 to meet your older brother in the ncAV world, because you 
 
GERMAN CITIZENS. 
 
 love larger liberties and opportunities and greater aspir- 
 ations. Not many generations ag9 our fathers were 
 foreio-ners. Prom the Teutonic races, from the Latin— 
 fronrall races of Europe, the best clement,* mingle here, 
 and like any other alloy of metals, it makes a stronger 
 result than any one of the parts alone. We are better for the 
 mixture. Your chairman quoted a line from your great 
 poet, Herder, in which he said that to go into a foreign 
 land' there could be no worse thing than to be a German. 
 It was never true on this continent. If even in American 
 madness it was true twenty-five years ago, it ceased long 
 ago to have anv truth in our modern America. You rep- 
 resent in your fatherland the old remarkable traditions ; 
 and I know your own hearts have been stirred by the event 
 that occurred, onlv a few days ago, on your own Rhine, 
 when the magnificent catliedral at Cologne, which has been 
 630 yeafs in building, the scaffolds hardly down for a day, 
 was just brought to its final con,plotion and dedicated ior 
 peace. It has lived through all dynasties-it has ived 
 throuo-li all religions, througli all reigns and througli all 
 vvar3,"to be dedicated at last by Kaiser William to peace 
 . and glorious memories of Germany. That is a wonderiul 
 thin"- for you to have a share in. But I trust, fellow 
 citizens, that vou have come here to help us build a gra^ider 
 temple-not a gothic building made from quarries of the 
 Rhine, but made out of the hearts and lives, aspirations 
 and hopes of all people who have come into this country 
 to make it their home, and build here institutions that shall 
 not, I trust, be finished in six hundred years from to-day, 
 but shall go on with its grand structure always rising, its 
 foundation always deepening, its dome always high and 
 always free for all people who come here to be Americans 
 
GERMAN CITIZENS. 
 
 and dwell with U8. To all such people the genius of 
 America speaks in the language of another German poet 
 — the great Norvalis : 
 
 "Gieb treulicli mir die Hande 
 
 Sei Bruder mir und wandle 
 
 Den Blick vor dinem Ange 
 
 Nicht weetes weg von mir 
 Im Tempel wo wir knieen 
 
 Ein Ort wohim wir ziehen, 
 Ein Zweck fm* das wir gelm 
 
 Ein Himmel mir und dir." 
 
 Such is the welcome that America gives to all people. 
 I thank you for this call to-day, fellow citizens ; thanks for 
 your kindness, and I conclude by saying, " Wilkommen 
 alle." 
 
THE FUTURE OF COLORED MEN. 
 
 October 25th a delegation of 250 colored men visited 
 General Garfield. In response to an address by their 
 chairman, the General said : 
 
 Gentlemen— I have listened carefully to what your 
 speakers have said ; 1 have noted your manifestations of 
 applause at the special points of their remarks. All the 
 time— not now while the speaking has been going on, but 
 the time since the great struggle for equal rights in this 
 countrv culminated in war-I have studied your problem 
 with no little solicitude. It was a difficult problem, not 
 for you only, but for us, and equally difficult for the men 
 who latelv held you in slavery. 
 
 Of all" the problems that any nation ever confronted, 
 none wa^ever more difficult than that of settling the great 
 race question which your existence upon this continent 
 brought to our people, and settling it on the basis of broad 
 justice and equal rights to all. It was a tremendous trial 
 of the faith of the American people, a tremendous trial ol 
 the strength of our institutions. It was not for your sake 
 alone that the thoughtful men of this country struck slavery 
 and said it must die. It was certainly a good reason wiiy 
 slaverv ought to die that it wronged your race ; but it was 
 an equally good reason why it should, die, because it was 
 dangerou^ to the peace and prosperity of the white race, 
 and to the stability of the Republic. We are always in- 
 clined to express too much sympathy with the man who 
 
THE FUTURE OF COLORED MEN. 
 
 suffers wrong ; that is right, but we ought also to express 
 anxious solicitude for the man who does the wrong, for in 
 one very important sense he is more to be pitied than the 
 victim. If a man murders you without provocation your 
 soul bears no burden of the wrongs, but all the angels of 
 the universe will weep for the misguided man who com- 
 mitted the murder. And so I say the men who enslaved 
 your race were wronging themselves as well as you. To 
 protect them from being wrong-doers, and shield your race 
 from suffering wrong, was the mighty problem which was 
 solved by the abolition of slavery. 
 
 Now, fellow-citizens, after the fierce struggle of ihe 
 war, after Lincoln had given utterance to the great thought 
 that the centuries of slavery had committed so great a sin 
 that without the shedding of blood there was no remission, 
 and that our war was the bloody -expiation for that sin, 
 even then, when you were free by the proclamation of 
 Lincoln and by the amended Constitution that gave you 
 citizenship, your problem was not solved. What is free- 
 dom without the intelligence to use it wisely ? What is 
 freedom without virtue and intelligence combined to make 
 it not a curse, but a blessing? You were not made free 
 merelv to be allowed to vote, but in order to enjoy an 
 equality of opportunity in the race of life, and to stand equal 
 before the law. Permit no man to praise you because you 
 are black, nor wrong you because you are black. Let it 
 be understood that you are ready and willing to work out 
 your own material salvation by your own energy, your own 
 worth, your own labor. All that liberty can do for you is 
 to give you a fair and equal chance within the limits of the 
 constitution, and by the exercise of its proper powers it is 
 
THE FUTURE OF COLORED MEN. 
 
 the purpose of the best men on this continent to give you 
 this equal chance and nothing more. 
 
 I congratulate you on the great advance which your 
 race has already made under liberty. I have seen your 
 representatives in Congress — one of them in the Senate — 
 and I have seen them behave with such self-restraint, good 
 sense, judgment, modesty, and patriotism, that it has given 
 me new hope that all their brethren will continue to climb 
 up toward the light with every new opportunity. I will 
 not affect to be any more your friend than thousands of 
 others. I do not even pretend to be particularly your 
 friend, but only your friend with all other just men. On 
 that basis and within those limitations, whatever can justly 
 or fairly be done to assure to you an equality of oppor- 
 tunity, it will always be my pleasure to do. So, gentlemen, 
 I thank you for coming here, and shall be glad to greet 
 everv one of you. 
 
COLORED JUBILEE SINGERS. 
 
 Early in the dav, October 1st, the Fisk University 
 Jiil)ilee Singers (colored), of Nashville, Tennessee, called 
 on General Garfield and his family. After a pleasant 
 interview, and when abont to depart, the singers turned 
 toward General Garfield and sang an impressive benedic- 
 tion, with these words : " The Lord be with you ; the Lord 
 guard and ; reserve you ; the Lord lift up His countenance 
 upon you. and give you peace." There was silence for a 
 time, as the music died away. Then General Garfield, 
 who had stood by the mantel with bowed head, spoke to 
 the band of singers very earnestly and solemnly, saying : 
 
 My friends, for my family and myself, I thank you for 
 this visit, and for the songs you have sung. While I have 
 listened, a thought has come to me which may encourage 
 
 you, 
 
 A voice has gone forth before every great good that was 
 ever achieved in this world. A voice in the wilderness 
 was the herald of our Saviour. In the war for the Union, 
 the thunder of our guns on a thousand l3attle-fields was the 
 voice that prepared the Avay for the liberty that came to 
 your race. 
 
 Now, friends, the earthly savior of your people must be 
 universal education ; and I believe that your voices are 
 preparing for the coming of that blessing. You have sung 
 a great university into being. You have sung before kings 
 and princes. You have sung to the meek and the lowly. 
 
COLORED JUBILEE SINGERS. 
 
 You liave sung to the hearts of your people ; and 1 hope 
 and believe that your voices are heralding the great liber- 
 ation which education will bring to your lately- enslaved 
 brethren. You are fighting for light and for the freedom 
 it brink's ; and in that contest I would rather be with you 
 and defeated, than against you and victorious. In the lan- 
 guage of the song you have just sung I say to you, " March 
 on, and you shall win the victory, you shall gain the day." 
 
FIRST VOTERS. 
 
 The First Voters' Garfield and Arthur Battalion, of 
 Cleveland, numbering about four hundred, found General 
 Garfield at home on the eighth of October. In answer to 
 an address, the General said : 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Young Gentlemen — This is no or- 
 dinary event in the historv of anv man — indeed, in the 
 history of any people — when, as I am told, there are 400 
 young men here who have made this journey, not for any 
 personal purpose, but to express that great, general, ear- 
 nest purpose that arises in the hearts of active, intelligent 
 young men, when they first grapple with the great questions 
 of their country. I know of notliing quite like this in our 
 history. With all the pleasure it brings, I am bound to 
 say it brings a little disenchantment to me in this. Always 
 to this time I have been accustomed to consider myself a 
 young man. If, before your arrival, anybody had raised 
 the question, I should have asserted, with a good deal of 
 indignation, if anybody had denied it, that I myself was a 
 young man. 
 
 But thev tell me vou are to cast your first National vote 
 at a Presidential election. If that is so, young man as I 
 am, I voted before any of you were born. If you are 
 young, and voters, borrowing the language of Rip Van 
 Winkle, when he awoke from that long sleep, '* Who in the 
 world am I?" I must have passed the very flush of youth, 
 at least. But, young gentlemen, I have not so far left the 
 
FIRST VOTERS. 
 
 coast of youth to travel inland, but that I can veiy well 
 remember the state of young manhood, from an experience 
 in it of some years, and there is nothing to me in this 
 world so inspiring as the possibilities that lie locked up in 
 the head and breast of a young man. The hopes that lie 
 before him, tlie great inspirations around him, the great 
 aspirations above him, all these things, Avith the untried 
 pathway of life opening up its difficulties and dangers, 
 inspire him to courage and force and work. It is a spec- 
 tacle that the very gods would look down upon in ancient 
 Roman days with more than ordinary interest. 
 
 Now, let me say a single word or two in answer to this 
 great kindness and compliment of your coming to my house, 
 about some of the thoughts that I know get into the hearts 
 of young men and inspire them, and some delusions that 
 are likely to get into their minds. Let me speak of one 
 delusion that I think, from the remarks of your chairman, 
 vou are not likelv to have. It is a delusion that affects all 
 men, more or less, particularly the young men — the delu- 
 sion that good things and great things are some way oif 
 yonder, away abroad. 
 
 As to our country, let us not get any such delusion into 
 our heads. I know all about abroad. I know what it 
 is to enlarge our minds by it. But I want you to feel, in 
 the depths of your heart, that there is no abroad in all this 
 world that is half equal to the glory of being an American 
 here at home and to-day. Right here, in this yard, is a 
 splendid specimen of American sovereignty, the roof and 
 crown of this world of sovereignty. Enlarge it into the 
 million of men who vote, and you have the grand, august 
 sovereign of this last and best born of time, the American 
 Republic. Now that the sovereign shall be unshackled 
 
FIRST VOTERS. 
 
 • 
 
 forever, that that sovereign shall be unpurchasable when 
 he stands at the ballot-box to order the supreme will of the 
 Nation, that that sovereign shall be unintimidated by mor- 
 tal man when he utters that final omnific word that com- 
 mands the continent — that is the great purpose that all 
 true Americans should keep in their minds. 
 
 When I see such a band of earnest vouno; men as meet 
 me here to-day I feel certain that if they could deploy them- 
 selves as a ballot-box guard to defend the purity of the 
 American ballot-box, to stand around it as around the 
 cradle of our heir-apparent of American sovereignty, such 
 guardians, such defenders, will keep the Republic pure and 
 keep it free. 
 
 Young gentlemen, your visit to me gives me a compli- 
 ment of the highest sort, and while it disenchants me, as I 
 said a little while ago, it still reaches the hand of youth out 
 to me, which I take with all cordiality and earnestness ; 
 and for your tendered support to me, which is not for my 
 sake, but for the sake of the cause of which I am now the 
 representative, I give you all the thanks of which my heart 
 is capable. The house is small, the farm is small, the town- 
 ship is small, the county is a small one, but all there is in 
 it to give of generosity, and hospitality and welcome — all 
 that is in my hands to give — is yours while you stay. I bid 
 you welcome to all there is of us, gentlemen. 
 
PRINCIPLES IN BUSINESS. 
 
 On the 14th of October, an excursion party filling thir- 
 teen cars went to Mentor, under the auspices of the Cleve- 
 land Republican Business Men's Club, to congratulate Gen- 
 eral Garfield on the result of the October elections. George 
 H. Ely, President of the club, made a speech, to which 
 General Garfield responded as follows : 
 
 Mr. Ely and Gentlemen of Cleveland — This is a 
 new situation, and new sensations and suggestions arise 
 with it. I should be altogether unworthy of this State and 
 of my native county if I did not feel deep sensibility at this 
 expression of your confidence in me, and at this greater, 
 more significant expression of your understanding of what 
 the great contest now pending in this country means in its 
 relation to our prosperity. You are business men of Cleve- 
 land, and that means a great deal ; you are citizens of Ohio, 
 and that means more ; you are citizens of the Republic, 
 and that means a great deal more, and in your three-fold 
 capacity I greet you and thank you for this demonstration 
 of your confidence. Let me speak a moment about these 
 three thoughts. You are business men ; suppose, not this 
 yard full alone, but all the business men of America were 
 assembled together, what would they do? Rather, what 
 would they not do, if they got from the eternal powers an 
 insurance policy that four years to come there siiould be 
 no disturbance in the great forces that play upon the busi- 
 ness prosperity of this people? The power that could 
 
PRINCIPLES IN BUSINESS. 
 
 underwrite such a policy to you would call from you more 
 sacrifice in a mere business sense than you ever made under 
 any circumstances. Now no such guarantee will be given 
 you by the supernatural powers, but while frosts, pestilence, 
 tempests, and all the great accidents that come to us with- 
 out our power to prevent it, are beyond our reach, yet 
 there is a great political organization in this country that 
 can give you a policy, underwritten by its faith and in its 
 own hand, ao-ainst all the evils that can come to you from 
 bad legislation and the reckless Avickedness of bad finance. 
 For such a business insurance the business men of Cleve- 
 land and the business men of America are manifestly will- 
 ing to make some effort and be at some sacrifice, and that, 
 I take it, is the business meaning of this assemblage here 
 to-day. 
 
 Now, the second thought I had was, you are citizens of 
 Ohio, and vou are livins; illustrations of the first children 
 of the pioneers who planted Ohio. When your fathers 
 were born Ohio was unknown, except as a trackless wil- 
 derness, and vet where the smoke from not a dozen white 
 men's cabins ascended to the sky in all this territory, now 
 three and a quarter millions of happy people, prosperous, 
 honorable, and successful, are living and guiding the des- 
 tinies of a people as great in numbers and wealth as all 
 who inhabited the thirteen colonies when our fathers won 
 their independence. What a spectacle is that ? And all 
 this prosperity was won by the simple, plain, straightfor- 
 ward process of downright hard work. That was what did 
 it. Labor first laid out the raw materials that God made^ 
 and then capital, which is only another name for crystal- 
 ized labor saved up, protected and saved by the strong 
 arms of equal and just and honest laws. Now that is Ohio. 
 
PRINCIPLES IN BUSINESS. 
 
 Well, now there is a third and a larger thought. Proud 
 as you are of what you have been and Avhat you have done 
 for Cleveland, for Ohio, yet your pride rises at a little 
 piece of bunting, a flag with stars and stripes upon it. 
 That speaks of a great continent with a Government that 
 covers it from sea to sea, from the lakes to the Gulf, and 
 that you as citizens of that Republic have a right to walk 
 on every foot of it as the equal of any man that lives any- 
 where, and that the score of black men that I see here and 
 there have just as good a right as the whitest of us all. 
 Now, these are the thoughts that come to me as I look upon 
 these Cuvahoo-a faces. You are in the midst of a great 
 
 %/ CD 
 
 contest, gentlemen. On that contest, on the struggle of it, 
 on the issue of it, on my relation to it, I say nothing. 
 For the time being I am out of politics, but I am with you. 
 And now, gentlemen, I thank you for coming here, I thank 
 you for these wise and earnest words of encouragement 
 which your Chairman has spoken, and I thank you for your 
 purpose of standing by your faith to the end, let it lead us 
 wherever it will, and finally, I hope to have the pleasure of 
 taking your hands. 
 
PROUD OF HIS CONGRESSIONAL 
 
 DISTRICT. 
 
 About two hundred people of Ashtabula, called on Gen- 
 eral Garfield, October 22nd. After an exchange of cour- 
 tesies, the General spoke as below : 
 
 Gextlemex — I believe you are nearly all, if not all, my 
 constituents — that this is a home gathering, a sort of har- 
 vest home just after the ordinary harvest, and just before the 
 other harvest that somebody will gather in a short time — 
 therefore, I feel the utmost freedom in meeting you and 
 greeting you. 
 
 We have been in the habit in the old nineteenth district 
 for about fifty years past of believing in the existence and 
 steadiness of the North star, and we have believed in it in 
 cloudy weather when nobody could see a star ; amidst 
 clouds and darkness tliis people kept on believing in it, 
 until nearly all the world saw the great constellation wheel- 
 ing amid its steady and unmovaljle centre. The North 
 star, the symbol of freedom, and the equal right of all men, 
 has been kept steadily in view by the better people of the , 
 Western Reserve these forty years, for a time long before 
 these first voters were born ; and these young men who 
 were born to believe in it will not be likely to forget it, 
 because it now shines plainly in the northern hemisphere. 
 To speak without figure, the people of this old nineteenth 
 district long ago learned to be content with being right, even 
 when they were in an apparently hopeless minority. Your 
 
PROUD OF HIS CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 
 
 speaker has just referred to Joshua R. Giddings. Think 
 of the long, hard struggle when he was ostracised by all 
 men excepting half a dozen at the National capitol. Denied 
 the common civility and friendship of social society ; but 
 he believed in the immortality of liberty, fought on and 
 fought on, till in his last days he saw them triumph. 
 
 I have never received a compliment that touched my 
 heart more deeply than when, after a speecli I made in 
 Congress for the same cause, there came from Jefferson, 
 the capitol of your county, a letter from the old patriot, 
 thanking me that I had taken up his work, and saying that 
 I was worthily wearing his mantle. I am glad to meet you, 
 young gentlemen, believing you are bound by universal ties 
 to be true to those great principles that the Western Re- 
 serve helped plant and cherish. 
 
 1 know what the old district has done and what it has 
 suffered for its convictions, and I am glad to know that in 
 rainy and tempestuous weather, in season and out of sea- 
 son, the Old Guard will be found where the banner of free- 
 dom points the way to battle. You are welcome here to- 
 day, gentlemen, thrice welcome. We are friends, Ave are 
 neighbors, we are companions in the common cause, and I 
 trust no young man who makes his iirst choice of party 
 associations to-dav, will be sorrv for it when he looks back 
 from the end of this century to the year 1880. I shall be 
 glad to take each of you by the hand before you leave. 
 
THE FRIENDSHIP OF CONSTITUENTS. 
 
 On the 26th of October, a company of six hundred 
 ladies and gentlemen, residents of Trumbull County, in 
 Greneral Garfield's Congressional district, waited upon the 
 General, and were addressed as foUoAvs : 
 
 Ladies and Gextlemex — You have no idea what it is 
 to me to look out upon this circle of faces. There have 
 been a good many strangers in this yard in the past two 
 weeks. There are some strangers, perhaps, here now ; but 
 in this circle, all along its line, there are faces that flash 
 back to me the memories of these twenty years past. Years 
 full of struggle, full of question, full of events, full of 
 friendship, full of victories, full of all that goes to make 
 up the life of public and private friendsliip on this Western 
 Reserve. You cannot know what strength it brings to me 
 to see these friends, who liave stood, not by me alone, but 
 by the cause that they believed I represent, and have stood 
 by it in a most unselfish, earnest, intelligent, forcible, effec- 
 tive manner during all these years. Why, I see men in this 
 circle who, in the whole of this long time, have never 
 betrayed to me, by any sign or any word, that they had the 
 least purpose of their own to serve, but only the purpose 
 to serve their country and its best interests, and that their 
 friendship for me was largely, if not altogether, because 
 they thought I was capable of rendering some service to 
 the cause they loved and the country they revered. A man 
 with such friendships around him, with such supports be- 
 
THE FRIENDSHIP OF CONSTITUENTS. 
 
 hind him, would be a very poor piece of timber indeed if 
 he did not amount to something. And let me say, out of 
 the soil of such hearts as these, out of the forces of such 
 people as these, there can grow all that is best in our civil- 
 ization and under our institutions. I know not what awaits 
 me in the future ; I never discount it so far as it relates to 
 myself. 1 never allow myself to be elated with what may 
 be, nor depressed with what may be ; l)ut I do say this, that 
 I cannot conceive that the time can ever come Avhen the 
 friendship of these men that are gathered in this yard to- 
 day can be anything but dear to me, and of the greatest 
 possible value in strengthening my heart and hope, what- 
 ever the field of my work may be. I thank you, gentlemen, 
 that on this inclement day, and with all the circumstances 
 apparently against it, you have made your way here to my 
 home ; that you have formed a circle about it that will not 
 disappear when you are gone. It will seem to me in all 
 time to come, as I stand upon this portal, that a band of 
 my old constituents and friends have left their guardianship 
 and love circling about my door. I welcome you as you 
 know I could welcome but few other groups of people in 
 the world, and I hope you will not go away until I have 
 had the pleasure of taking each of you by the hand. 
 
NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS. 
 
 October 28th, General Garfield addressed a company of 
 friends and neighbors, as follows : 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen — I once read of a man who 
 tried to wear the armor and wield the sword of some 
 ancient ancestor, bnt fonnd them too large for his stature 
 and strength. If I should try at this moment to wear and 
 sway the memories which your presence awakens, I should 
 be overwhelmed and wholly unable to marshal and muster 
 the quick-coming throng of memories which this semi-circle 
 of old friends and neighbors has brought to me. Here are 
 schoolfellows of twentv-eiorht vears ; here are men and 
 women who were my pupils a quarter of a century ago ; 
 here are venerable men, who, twenty-one years ago, in the 
 town of Kent, launched me upon the stormy sea of political 
 life. I see others who were soldiers in the old regiment 
 which I had the honor to command, and could I listen to 
 the touchino- and thouo'htful words of mv friend, the vener- 
 able late Chief-Justice of Ohio — who has just spoken, with- 
 out remembering that evening in 1861 of which he spoke 
 too modestly — when he and I stood together in the old 
 church at Hiram and called upon the young men to go forth 
 to battle for the Union and be enlisted before they slept, 
 and thus laid the foundation of the Forty-second regiment. 
 How can I forget all these things, and all that has followed ? 
 How can I forget that twenty-five years of my life were so 
 braided and intertwined with the lives of the people of 
 
NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS. 
 
 Portao-e county, when I see men and women from all its 
 townships standing at my door? I cannot forget these 
 thino'S while life and consciousness remain. No other 
 period of my life can be like that. The freshness of youth, 
 the yery springtide of life, the brightening on to\yard noon- 
 clay — all were with you and of you, my neighbors, my 
 cherished comrades. In all the relations of social, student, 
 military and political life and friendship, you are liere, so 
 close to my heart, that I cannot trust myself to an attempt 
 to recall these memories with anything like coherence. I 
 know that my neighbors and friends in Portage county 
 since the first day of my Cono-ressional life haye neyer sent 
 to any convention a del^iiate who was hostile to me ; that 
 through all the storms of detraction that roared around me 
 the members of the old guard of Portage county have never 
 wavered in tlieir faith and friendship, but have stood an 
 unbroken phalanx with their locked shields above my head 
 and have given me their hearts in every contest. If a man 
 can carry in his memory a jewel more precious than this, 
 I am sure Judge Day has never heard what it is. 
 
 Well, gentlemen, on the eve of great events, closing a 
 great campaign, I look into your faces and draw from you 
 such consolation as even you cannot understand. What- 
 ever the event may be, our past is secure, and whatever 
 may befall me hereafter, if I can succeed in keeping the 
 hearts of Portage county near to me, I shall know tluxt i 
 do not go far wrong in anything, for they are men who love 
 the truth for truth's sake, far more than they love any man. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, all the doors of my househohl are 
 open to you. The hand of every member of my family is 
 outstretched to you, our hearts greet you, and we ask you 
 to come in. 
 
A BUSY DAY AT MENTOR. 
 
 Thursday, the 30th of October, was a busy day at " Lawn- 
 field " and Mentor. The first to arrive were 150 iron- 
 w^orkers from Youngstown, Ohio, with a band, and wearing 
 badges, with "329" on their hats. General Garfield ad- 
 dressed them as follows : 
 
 Gentlemen — I am glad to meet you to-day. I remember 
 with pleasure the long line of events that have united us 
 during the eighteen years we have known each other. 
 While the last gentleman was speaking, on behalf of his 
 associate iron-workers of the Mahoning Valley, it brought 
 to my mind something which I read many years ago in a 
 A^erv interestinfr old book. The writer was enumerating 
 the points of contrast between man and the lower animals, 
 and among them was this : " Man," he said, " is the only 
 animal that makes tools for his own use." In following out 
 that thought, I think we mav fairlv sav that the tools which 
 a people use are probably as good an index of their intelli- 
 gence and civilization as any that can be found. We dig into 
 the mounds of forgotten tribes and nations and find their 
 tools and implements of stone ; later of copper, then of 
 bronze, of iron and of steel. If we had all the specimen 
 tools of all the tribes and nations of the earth arranged in 
 order before us, we could probably determine with great 
 accuracy the grade of civilization of each generation. 
 
 I do not say that it is the whole business of civilization 
 
A BUSY DAY AT MENTOR. 
 
 to make tools, but the tools of a people are the indexes of 
 the civilization of those who make and use them. The men 
 who stand before me are largely engaged in making tools 
 for America, or in manufacturing the materials out of which 
 these tools are made. Your daily work is, therefore, allied 
 to the civilization of your country. It was the purpose of 
 the founders of our government so to develop and educate 
 our people that they should be able to make their imple- 
 ments of peace and war, so that if we w^^re at war with 
 the rest of the world we could by our skill clothe and equip 
 ourselves, and make all the tools and machinery for our 
 own use, without drawing on other nations for a single 
 hammer stroke. Now, that is to me the significance of the 
 business that you are engaged in. I have never thought 
 it was a sufficient reason for asking the Legislature of the 
 Nation to make laws merely to let any one class of citizens 
 make more money, but when the industry which any of our 
 citizens are eno:a2:ed in is the one that the whole Nation 
 needs for its defence, and for the growth and development 
 of the people, then every man so employed is doing a great, 
 National, patriotic work, which the government should 
 protect and defend for the good of all. On that large Na- 
 tional ground every blow you strike is a blow in defence of 
 the inde})endence of your country and the well being of all 
 its people. 
 
 Gentlemen, I am glad to see this company of iron-workers 
 — my old constituents and friends. I welcome you here 
 and I appreciate your coming all the more because you 
 have come so far and in such an inclement season. You 
 are very welcome, and I shall be very glad to greet each 
 one of you. 
 
A BUSY BAY AT MENTOR. 
 
 Wayne and Ashland Counties sent about 500 people with 
 bands of music. There were many ladies present, and 
 Mrs. Garfield was very hospitable to them. In response 
 to a speech, General Garfield said : 
 
 ■ Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Citizens — To know 
 that this company comes in large part from so far away as 
 beyond the Western Reserve, on such a day as this, is a 
 significant expression of what you mean and feel. To 
 know that you come with songs, that you come with hearts 
 full of emotion, and minds full of ideas, and principles, and 
 purpose, is as much as any company of people anywhere 
 
 could well say. 
 
 I recollect that some writer said, long ago, " Let me make 
 the songs of a people, and I care not who makes their 
 laws." You are not, perhaps, making the songs of the. 
 people, but you are singing the songs of a very energetic, 
 intelligent and determined people, and the songs you sing 
 are sweeping through the hearts and lives and purposes of 
 thousands of people all over this broad land. To have 
 you come thus testifying your confidence, your hope and 
 your purpose, and singing your songs of rejoicing, would 
 be gratifying to any man, and is certainly gratifying to me. 
 
 This is my day of judgment. In a few days it will be 
 the day of judgment for all the people, and whatever that 
 judgment shall be, like good citizens, we will all bow to it 
 and do whatever duty comes to us. I thank you, ladies 
 and gentlemen, for this great compliment, and for this 
 splendid array which you make in my door yard. I hope 
 vou Avill find whatever of comfort and happiness it is pos- 
 sible to get out of such a day as this. I thank you and 
 welcome vou. 
 
A BUSY BAY AT MENTOR. 
 
 Afterward, 100 men from the Britton Iron and Steel 
 Works, of Cleveland, appeared, to whom General Garfield 
 said : 
 
 Gentlemen — I am very much obliged to you. I know 
 something about the iron works of Cleveland. It is said 
 that Prince Bismarck, one of the ablest men in Europe, had 
 for his motto, "Iron and Blood." That is pretty strong, 
 but we have for our motto, " Iron, together with all the 
 other industries, and liberty." I am glad to see this hardy, 
 forceful, earnest body of men. I hope that whatever you 
 do will tell in the direction of justice. 
 
TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. 
 
 On the afternoon of November 3d, the day succeeding 
 General Garfield's election as President of the United 
 States, seven hundred of the faculty and students of Ober- 
 lin College, went to Mentor, for the purpose of extending 
 their congratulations. In reply to the Chairman, General 
 Garfield said : 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen — This sponta- 
 neous visit is so much more agreeable than a prepared one. 
 It comes more directly from the heart of the people wiio 
 participate, and I receive it as a greater compliment for 
 that reason. I do not wish to be unduly impressible or super- 
 stitious, but, though we have outlived the days of the augurs, 
 I think we have a right to think of some events as omens, 
 and I greet this as a happy and auspicious omen, that the 
 first general greeting since the event of yesterday is ten- 
 dered to me by a venerable institution of learning. The 
 thought has been abroad in the world a good deal, and 
 with reason, that there is a divorce between scholarship 
 and politics. Oberlin, I believe, has never advocated that 
 divorce, but there has been a sort of cloistered scholarship 
 in the United States that has stood aloof from active par- 
 ticipation in public atfairs, and I am glad to be greeted 
 here to-day by the active, live scholarship of Ohio, and I 
 know of no place where scholarship has touched upon the 
 nerve-centre of public intelligence so eifectually as at 
 Oberlin. For this reason I am specially grateful for this 
 
TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. 
 
 greeting from the Faculty and students of Oberlin College 
 and its venerable President. I thank you, ladies and gen- 
 tlemen, for this visit. Whatever the significance of yester- 
 day's event may be, it will he all the more significant for 
 being immediately indorsed by the scholarship and culture 
 of Hiy State. I thank you ladies and gentlemen, and I 
 thank your President for coming with you. You are cor- 
 dially welcome. 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A GIFT. 
 
 A GOLD-HEADED caiie voted to General Garfield in a eon- 
 test at the Cleveland Cathedral Fair was formally pre- 
 sented to him at Mentor, November 4th, by Father Thorpe. 
 General Garfield's reply to the presentation speech was as 
 follows : 
 
 Father Thorpe — I receive this beautiful cane from the 
 people whom you represent, grateful, not merely that they 
 chose me as the recipient, but for the fact that the spirit 
 behind the choice was in line with the liberties of this 
 country. I receive it as a token of respect from tlie peo- 
 ple of my native connty, who have in many ways shown me 
 their confidence and regard. 
 
 You have offered it as a significant symbol. I accept it 
 with the meanino^ vou have aiven it. The head of gold 
 may not unfitly represent the true and solid basis of our 
 National specie ; and the strength and stability and beauty 
 of the wood that supports it, the strength and symmetry of 
 our institutions. I believe it is said that tlie patriarch 
 Jacob worshiped leaning on the top of his staff. Our in- 
 stitutions are safe so long as our people and Government 
 are found leaning upon the staff of solid worth and of pub- 
 lic and private virtue. I accept this all the more gladly 
 because it comes across one of the lines that divide us relig- 
 iously. For in our country a man may adopt whatever 
 religion he chooses, or no religion if he prefers. The 
 
ACKOWLEBOMENT OF A GIFT. 
 
 religion of our people is left to their voluntary choice and 
 not to the control of human law. 
 
 I thank you especially. Father Tliorpe, for the kind terms 
 in Avhich you have addressed me, and I ask you to bear 
 back my grateful thanks to the donors. 
 
ON THE EYE OF ELECTION. 
 
 On the evening l)ef()re election, General Garfield wrote 
 to a Washington friend, among other things : 
 
 Whatever may be the issues of to-morrow, I shall carry 
 with me through life most grateful memories of the enthu- 
 siastic and noble work my friends have done, and especially 
 mv college classmates. The campaign has been fruitful to 
 me in the discipline that comes from endurance and patience. 
 I hope defeat will not sour me, nor success disturb the poise 
 which I have sought to gain by the experiences of life. 
 
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. 
 
 On the 2nd of December the Electoral College of Ohio 
 waited upon General Garfield, at Mentor, and in reply 
 to an address by General Grosvenor, said : 
 
 I am deeply grateful to you for this call, and 
 for these personal and public congratulations. If I were 
 to look upon the late campaign and its results merely in 
 the light of a personal struggle and personal success, it 
 would probably be as gratifying as any thing could be in 
 the history of politics. If my own conduct during the 
 campaign has been in any way a help and strength, I am 
 glad. It is not always an easy thing to behave well. If, 
 nnder trying circumstances, my behavior as a candidate 
 has met your approval, I am greatly gratified ; but the 
 larger subject — your congratulations to the country on 
 the triumph of the Eepublican party — opens a theme 
 too vast for me to enter upon now. 
 
 I venture, however, to mention a refiection which has 
 occurred to me in reference to the election yesterday. I 
 suppose that no political event has happened in all the 
 course of the contest since early spring, which caused so 
 little excitement, and indeed so httle public observation, 
 as the Presidential election which was held yesterday at 
 midday. The American people paid but little attention 
 to the details of the real Presidential election, and for a 
 very significant reason. Although you and all the mem- 
 
TEE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. 
 
 bers of the Electoral College had the absolute constitn 
 tional and technical right to vote for anybody you chose, 
 and although no written law directed or suggested your 
 choice, yet every American knew that the august sover- 
 eign of this Republic, the 9,000,000 voters, on an early 
 day in November, pronounced the omnipotent fiat of 
 choice, and that the sovereign, assuming as done tliat 
 which he had ordei'ed to be done, entertained no doubt 
 but that his will would be implicitly obeyed by all the 
 colleges in all the States. 
 
 That is the reason why. the people were so serenely 
 quiet yesterday. They had never yet found an American 
 who failed to keep his trust as a Presidential elector. 
 From this thought I draw this lesson : That when that 
 omnipotent sovereign, the American people, speaks to any 
 one man, and orders him to do a duty, that man is under 
 the most solemn obligations of obedience which can be 
 conceived, excepting those which the God of the universe 
 might impose upon him. Yesterday, through your votes 
 and the votes of others in the various States, it is prob- 
 able the returns will show that our great political sovereign 
 has laid his commands upon me. If he has done so, I 
 am as much bound by his will and his great inspiration 
 and purpose as I could be bound by any consideration 
 that tills earth can impose upon any human being. In 
 that presence, therefore, I stand, and am awed by the 
 majesty and authority of such a command. In as far as 
 I can interpret the best aspirations and purposes of our 
 august sovereign, I shall seek to realize them. You and 
 I, and those who have acted with us in years past, believe 
 our sovereign loves liberty, and desires for all inhabitants 
 
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. 
 
 of the republic, peace and prosperity imder the sway of 
 just and equal laws. 
 
 Gentlemen, I thank you for this visit, for this welcome, 
 for the suggestions that your presence and your words 
 bring, and for the hope you have expressed that in 
 the arduous and great work before us, we may maintain 
 the standard of nationality and promote all that is good 
 and worthy in this country, that during tlie coming four 
 years we may raise just as large a crop of peace, pros- 
 perity, justice, liberty and culture as it is possible for 
 forty-nine millions of people to raise. 
 
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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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