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The Model Republican President
The present decline of the United States of America prompts me to reconsider Republican President James Garfield, the 20th president of our Republic. I have been inclined to write about this great man from time to time, but each time I pick up my pencil, I soon lay it back down again, discouraged by the breadth and gravity of the task before me. In comparison to the life of President Garfield, my own life is trivial. His deeds serve to prove that I am a moral cripple by comparison - we do have in common our love for libraries and education. Given my debility and creeping experience, how can I possibly understand let alone represent this courageous man? And given what has already been written about him by accredited authors, what can I possibly say to add to his public stature?
Nonetheless, faced with the demoralization and dementation of this declining nation of ours, I am compelled to say something about President Garfield, no matter how slight it may be, perchance to jog the memories of those who know something of his greatness, and to prompt those who know very little or nothing at all about him to make further inquiry into the history books. This small beginning of mine may forever remain small, yet I presently hope to build a modest book on it. The endeavor would certainly be worthwhile for me if not for the editors who reject my strivings for liberty, for our past is indeed of value to each and every one of us, providing we approach it rightly, not to relive it, but to retrace our steps when we believe we have gone astray, that we may return to the crossroads and evaluate the forgotten paths we did not tread, then choose a better path with our experience in mind.
Since President Garfield was in office only four months, how dare I say he was one of our greatest presidents? Because of the promise of genuine liberty he offered the United States of America if only it would stay the course charted by republicans, a liberty we might still realize if we have the courage to pick up where President Garfield left off. And it is with liberty in mind that I recite from General Garfield's Andersonville Reunion speech at Toledo, Ohio, on October 3, 1879:
"All these men, and all their comrades went out inspired by two immortal ideas. First, that liberty shall be universal in America. And, second, that this old flag is the flag of a Nation, and not of a State; that the Nation is supreme over all people and all corporations. Call it a State; call it a section; call it a South; call it a North; call it anything you wish, and yet armed with the nationality that God gave us, this is a Nation against all State sovereignty and secession whatever: It is the immortality of that truth that makes these reunions, and that makes this one. You believed it on the battlefield, you believed it in the hell of Andersonville, and you believe it to-day, thank God; and you will believe it to the last gasp."
Liberty is certainly not a thing to be owned and conserved by a forceful or fortunate few who are relatively free from constraint, but is rather the power of life given to all human beings to exercise at will as they can. Liberty would endure forever if only she could, hence she struggles for the broadest exercise of her power in all people. All people are liberals, for everyone loves their own liberty as they love their life, and they would like to have a little bit more of it at least. But a few individuals would get the most of the mundane means of liberty at the expense of many others. They would accumulate and conserve the freedom of others for themselves and demand laborious interest on their hoard, enslaving them unto death. Against this the radical liberal struggles to more broadly and equally distribute basic political and civic freedoms, that no part of humanity may enslave the whole. In that outward struggle liberty is pursued but not won, for no mere monogamist may fully win liberty over all to themselves, yet all may have their fair share.
The most fortunate master discovers his own freedom in the revolt of his slave. In other words, the revolution of the slave teaches the master about the right exercise of liberty and frees not only the slave but the master as well. Civilization owes the spread of its liberty therefore its progress to revolution against those who would conserve liberty within a small circle, limiting it to a ruling class or power elite. The modern master or captain of his soul owes much of his liberty to slaves, serfs, proletariat, Communists - Communism should have been given a kinder funeral. Modern men have feminists to thank for many of their freedoms - the status of women is the measure of the height of a civilization.
The Union struggled heroically to expand the circle of liberty in the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln, General Garfield, the Radical Republicans and many other valiant persons led the political struggle. The Republican party, however, was betrayed by traitors to the principle of liberty, who were eager to virtually return to the status quo ante bellum. General Garfield spoke of this at the 25th Reunion of Western Republicans held at Madison, Wisconsin, in July 1879:
"... The Republican party, organized a quarter of a century ago, was made a necessity to carry out the pledges of the fathers that this should be a land of liberty. There was in the early days of the Republic, a Republican party that dedicated this very territory, and all our vast territory, to freedom; that promised much for schools; that abolished imprisonment for debt, and that instituted many wise reforms. But there were many conservatives in those days, whose measures degenerated into treason; and the Republican party of to-day was but the revival of the Republic party of seventy years ago, under new and broaders conditions of usefulness....
" It is well to remember and honor the greatest names of the Republican party. One of these is Joshua R. Giddings, who for twenty years was freedom's champion in Congress, and, from a feeble minority of two, lived ot see a Republican Speaker elected, and himself to conduct him ot the chair. Another is Abraham Lincoln, the man raised up by god for a great mission. No man ever had a truer appreciation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, that great charter which it was the mission of the Republican party to enforce....
"We are as a nation, emerging from difficulties, and the Republican party alone can probably claim that the brightest page of our country's history has been written by the true friends of freedom and progress. The Republican party has yet work to do. We are confronted to-day in Congress by nearly the same spirit that prevailed in the years before the war. They tell us that the National Government is but the servant of the States; that we shall not interpose, as a nation, to guard an honest election in a State....
"There are sentimentalists and optimists who may see no danger in this. There have been sentimentalists and optimists in the Republican party, but to-day all were stalwarts. President Hayes, when he came into office, was an optimists, but he saw all his hopes, conciliation frustrated, and all his advances met with scorn. We all now stand together on the issue as one."
The stalwart liberals as well as most Americans placed their high hopes in General Garfield, hence he was elected president. Alas, on July 2, 1881, he was shot while passing through the railroad depot at Washington, D.C., by one Charles J.Guiteau, a deranged office seeker. President Garfield eventually died on September 19, 1881 from the effects of his wounds -sepsis and internal bleeding. General Garfield delivered his inaugural address on the Capitol steps on March 4, 1881. These words ring true to this very day, hence I will end this beginning with them:
"The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. No thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people."
