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It is needless to refer in detail to the many speeches and addresses delivered by General Garfield during the above period of intense activity, although profitable and pertinent to touch upon some that illustrate his position upon leading themes, and his manner of stating his views. Upon the National currency question he was firm and unwavering from first to last. When the bill to strengthen the public credit, already referred to, was under consideration, he made a powerful speech on March 3, 1869, from which the following extended extract has been taken: "Now, sir, I favor the first section of this bill because it declares plainly what the law is. I affirm again what I have often declared in this hall, that the law does. now require the payment of these bonds in gold. I hope I may, without impropriety, refer to the fact that during the last session I proved from the record of the house, and in the presence of the author of the law by which these bonds were authorized, that five distinct times in his speech, which immediately preceded the passage of the law, he declared the fivetwenty bonds were payable, principal and interest, in gold; and that every member who spoke on the subject took the same ground. That law was passed with that declaration uncontradicted, and it went into effect stamped with that declaration by both houses of congress. That speech, made on the eve of a Presidential campaign, was widely circulated throughout the country as a campaign document, and those who held the contrary were repeatedly challenged to refute its statements. I affirm that its correctness was not successfully denied. Not only congress so understand and declare, but every secretary of the treasury from that day to this has declared that these bonds are payable in gold. The authorized agents of the gov ernment sold them, and the people bought them with this understanding.

"The government thus bound itself by every obligation of honor and good faith, and it was not until one year after the passage of the law that any man in congress raised even a doubt on the subject. The doubts since raised were raised mainly for electioneering purposes, and the question was referred to the people for arbitrament at the late Presidential election. After the fullest debate ever had on any great question of National politics in a contest in which the two parties fairly and squarely joined issue on the very point, it was solemnly decided by the great majority which elected General Grant, that repudiators should be repudiated and that the faith of the Nation should be preserved inviolate. We are, therefore, bound by the pledged faith of the Nation, by the spirit and meaning of the law, and finally by the voice of the people themselves, to resolve all doubts and settle the credit of the United States by this explicit declaration of the National will. The action of the house on this bill has already been hailed throughout the world as the dawn of better days for the finances of the Nation, and every market has shown a wonderful improvement of our credit. We could this day refund our debt on terms more advantageous

to the government by one hundred and twenty million dollars than we could have done the day before the passage of this bill by the house. Make it a law and a still greater improvement will result. I can in no better way indicate my views of the propriety of passing the second section of this bill than by reminding the house that I introduced this proposition. in a separate bill on the tenth of February, 1868, and its passage has been more generally demanded by the people and press of the country than any other financial measure before congress.

"The principle involved in this section is simply this: To make it possible for gold to come into this country, and to remain here. Gold and silver are lawful money of the United States, and yet the opponents would have us make it unlawful for a citizen to make and enforce contracts which he may hereafter make, to pay gold when he has received gold or its equivalent as the consideration of his contract. The very statement of this doctrine ought to be its sufficient refutation. But the minds of gentlemen are vexed with the fear that this section will be an engine of oppression in the hands of creditors. If any new safeguards can be devised that are not already in this section, I know not what they are. Whenever this law is carried out in its letter and spirit, no injustice can possibly result. The whole power of the law is in the hands of the creditor, and he alone is supposed to be in danger of suffering wrong. In the moment that remains to me I can do no more than to indicate the grounds on which the justice of this measure rests. It is a great and important step towards specie payments, because it removes the unwise and oppressive decree which almost expatriates American gold and silver from the country. It will not only allow our own coin to stay at home, but it will permit foreign coin to flow hither from Europe. More than seventy million dollars of our gold are going abroad every year in excess of what comes to us, and at the same time in eight kingdoms of Europe there are nearly five million dol lars of idle gold ready to be invested at less than three per cent. interest. In the Bank of England and Bank of France there has been for more than a year an average of more than three hundred million dollars of bullion, and most of that time the bank rate of interest has been less than two per Who can doubt that much of this gold will find its way here if it can be invested without committing the fortunes of its owners to the uncertain chances of uncontrovertible paper money? But the passage of this bill will enable citizens to transact their business on a fixed and certain basis. It will give stability and confidence to trade, and pave the way for specie payments. The supreme court has decided that this is now the law, but let us put it on the statute-book as a notice to the people and to prevent unnecessary litigation."

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Brief mention has been made in the foregoing to Garfield's position upon the tariff question—a point of more than ordinary interest in view of

the attempt made during his Presidential candidacy to prove that he was a free-trader in theory and at heart, standing upon protectionist grounds only as a matter of party policy, and therefore not in full accord with his party upon that great question of National policy. His repeated declarations upon that point, and his frank confession that in some ideal state of society free trade might be profitable and wise, although the United States had not yet reached that golden period, are in keeping with his whole course of public life in regard to the protection of American industries. One of his most notable appearances upon the floor of congress was because of his interest in that theme. When the Wood bill, a measure that has been well called an "attempt to shift the tariff laws from protective to free trade grounds," was introduced in congress and discussed in June, 1878, a strong speech in support of the measure was made by Honorable J. R. Tucker of Virginia. On June 4 General Garfield arose to a reply that has been considered one of the ablest of his public efforts. The ground had been taken by Mr. Tucker that the two powers given congress to levy duties and control commerce are distinct; "that the great mistake has been made of attempting, through the taxing power, to regulate commerce and protect manufacturers; that the power of taxation conferred by the Constitution had no reference to protecting industry; in short, all protection of domestic industry through the distribution of taxation was unconstitutional."

General Garfield replied to this speech, at some length. "A few days ago," said he, "the distinguished gentleman from Virginia who now occupies the chair, made a speech of rare ability and power, in which he placed in the front rank of his line of discussion a question that was never raised in American legislation until our present form of government was forty years old-the question of the constitutionality of a tariff for the encouragement and protection of manufacturers. He insists that the

two powers conferred upon congress, to levy duties and to regulate commerce, are entirely distinct from each other; that the one cannot by any fair construction be applied to the other; that the methods of the one are not the methods of the other; and that the capital mistake which has been made in legislation of the country for many years is, that the power to tax has been applied to the regulation of commerce, and through that to the protection of manufacturers. He holds that, if we were to adopt a proper construction of the Constitution, we should find that the regulation of commerce does not permit the protection of manufacturers, and that of the power to tax cannot be applied, directly or indirectly, to that object. I will not enter into any elaborate discussion of that question, but I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of the courage of the gentleman from Virginia, who in that part of his speech brought himself into point-blank range of the terrible artillery of James Madison, one

of the fathers of the Constitution and Virginia's great expounder of its provisions. More than a hundred pages of the collected works of Mr. Madison are devoted to an elaborate and exhaustive discussion of the very objections which the gentleman has urged."

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General Garfield then gave an extended and interesting history of the tariff legislation by the American government, after which he said: "I have given this brief historical sketch for the purpose of exhibiting the ideas out of which the tariff legislation of this country has sprung. It has received the support of the most renowned names in our early history; and, though the principle of protection has sometimes been carried to an unreasonable extreme, thus bringing reproach upon the system, it has nevertheless borne many of the fruits which were anticipated by those who planted the germ. .The gentleman from Virginia is too good a logician not to see that the theory he advocates can only be realized in a state of universal peace and brotherhood among the Nations. This, I admit, is a grand conception, a beautiful vision of the time when all the nations will dwell in peace; when all will be, as it were, one Nation, each furnishing to the others what they cannot profitably produce, and all working harmoniously together in the millenium of peace. If all the kingdoms of the world should become the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, then I admit that free trade ought to prevail. But that blessed era is yet too remote to be made the basis of the practical legislation of to-day. We are not yet members of the parliament of man, the federation of the world.' For the present, the world is divided into separate nationalities, and that other divine conmand still applies to our situation: He that provideth not for his own household has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel;' and, until that better era arrives, patriotism must supply the place of universal brotherhood."

In 1874 the Democrats, for the first time since the beginning of the war, gained control of the house, and Garfield, with the other Republican leaders, was called upon to defend and sustain the works they had been so long and laboriously building up. That majority had been gained by the support of the south, which had sent as its representatives a number of ex-Confederate soldiers, and naturally the first move was for a general amnesty. To the bill offered for that purpose, Mr. James G. Blaine offered an amendment excluding Jefferson Davis from the benefits of the proposed law. Then followed one of the most brilliant debates heard in modern congressional days, opened by a dashing attack from Mr. Blaine, and a response from Honorable Ben. Hill of the Democratic side, an ex-Confederate, who made the claim that rebel prisoners had been starved in northern prisons. Garfield followed in reply, and by a masterly stroke of strategy forced a Democrat to reply to the falsity of Hill's charges. He stated

that Elmira, New York, where the principal prison for captured rebels had been located during the war, was represented in the house by a Democrat, whom he did not personally know, but upon whose testimony he was willing to rest his entire case. He then turned to the gentleman referred to and asked him whether the people of his city had permitted the prisoners in their midst to suffer for the want of food. The appeal was promptly answered. The Elmira congressman arose in his seat and said that to his knowledge the prisoners had been served with exactly the same rations as had been furnished the Union soldiers who had them in charge. Just as this statement was made a dispatch was handed Garfield, who said, "The lightnings of heaven are aiding me in this controversy." The message was from General Elwell of Cleveland, who had been the quartermaster at the Elmira prison, and who telegraphed that the rations daily issued the prisoners had been the same as those allowed the guards. The speech was one of unusual force and strength even for the trained debater Garfield had now come to be, and its effect was immediately apparent upon the house. In conclusion he said: "Then let us thank God that in the fierce flames of war the institution of slavery has been consumed; and let us hope that out of its ashes a better than a fabled Phoenix will arise-a love of Union high and deep, 'as broad and general as the casing air,' enveloping us all, and that it shall not be counted shame for any man who is not still under political disabilities to say, with uplifted hand, I will be true to it, and take the proffered amnesty of the Nation.' But let us not tender it to be spurned. If it is worth having, it is worth asking for.

Let them be consecrated to the shall hail that consecration as a But there was a class of men re

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"And now, Mr. Speaker, I close as I began. Toward those men who gallantly fought us on the field I cherish the kindest feeling. I feel a sincere reverence for the soldierly qualities they displayed on many a wellfought battle-field. I hope the day will come when their swords and ours will be crossed over many a doorway of our children, who will remember with pride the glory of their ancestors. The high qualities displayed in that conflict now belong to the whole Nation. Union and its future peace and glory. pledge and symbol of our perpetuity. ferred to in the speech of the gentleman yesterday for whom I have never yet gained the Christian grace necessary to say the same thing. He said that amid the thunder of battle, through its dun smoke, and above its roar, they heard a voice from this side saying, 'Brothers, come back!' I do not know whether he meant the same voice, but I heard a voice behind us. I heard that voice, and I recollect that I sent one of those who uttered it through our lines-a voice owned by Vallandigham. General Scott said, in the early days of the war, 'When this war is over it will require all the physical and moral power of the government to restrain the rage and fury of the non-combatants.' It was that non-combatant voice

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