William G. Rutherford

“ One of his own wise sayings was this: "Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but, nine times out of ten, the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard, and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance, I never knew a man to be drowned who was worth saving." No man illustrated his own words better than James Garfield. ”

“ Abram Garfield had successfully planted his second crop, which was nearly ready for the harvest, when he one day heard the terrible cry, "A fire in the forest." No one knew better than he did the meaning of those fearful words. Not a moment was to be lost, for he saw that it was coming in the direction of his little farm. He had no one to help him but his wife and his two eldest children, but they all set to work to save their home and the ripening crops. ”

“ And when, at the close of the war, a bill was brought before Congress to limit the rights of the freed slaves, Garfield indignantly and successfully opposed it.
On the 14th of April 1865, just after being elected to the Presidency for the second time, Abraham Lincoln was shot by a rebel sympathiser, named Booth. And the same night the life of the Secretary of State, Seward, was also attempted. These crimes roused the people of the North to madness. In every city the men assembled with ominous cries for vengeance. ”

“ The loving labours, the strong hand, and the wise counsels of her boy, now a man, would be sorely missed, yet she dried her tears, and asked the God in whom she had trusted to support her in this new trial, and, above all, to be with the lad. If God was with her son, she knew that all would be well, and that he would come unscathed from the world and its temptations. ”

“ But men who talked like this little understood the intense love of country which burned in Northern hearts. The moment Fort Sumter fell, Lincoln appealed to the country for seventy-five thousand soldiers, and within three days nearly a hundred thousand men had volunteered.
Then the war dragged slowly on for four long, weary years.
At first the tide of battle ran full against the Federals. Their first victory had encouraged the rebels. Then a battle of very much more importance was fought close to a stream known as Bull's Run, and here again the North was defeated. ”

“ Her eldest son, Thomas, was only eleven years old when his father died. Mehetabel, his sister, was twelve, a younger sister was seven, and James was not quite two. Thomas was a brave little fellow, and when his mother spoke to him about the work that would have to be done, he offered to undertake it all. Though a boy in years, he spoke and acted like a man.
That first winter, alone in the backwoods, was a terrible time. Snowstorms swept around the humble dwelling, and wolves howled in the forest during the long winter nights. ”

“ For the most part they are gone for ever, as they appeared to the eyes of the pioneers and pathfinders, who wandered for weeks through the wilderness, without hearing the sound of any human voice but their own. Now on forest and prairie land stand great cities, equal in population and wealth to many famous places, which were grey with age before the New World was discovered. ”

“ Sixty years ago, fifteen of the largest cities in the United States had no existence. They were not born. Living men remember when they were first staked out on the unbroken prairie, and the woodsman's axe was busy clearing the ground for the log huts of the first settlers who founded the cities of to-day. ”

“ In the school there was a fatherless boy like himself, who had no older brother to stand up for him. When James saw the bigger boys teasing the little fellow, he took the boy's part, and compelled his tormentors to leave him in peace.
The seasons followed each other in rapid succession, and with each came the tasks which gave James the employment he so much enjoyed. The farm, the carpenter's shop, and the school kept him busy, and at fifteen he could do a day's work with any man in the district. ”

“ It is sometimes said that education spoils lads for hard work. As a teacher in after years, Garfield had often to argue this point with the fathers of his pupils, who feared lest the college should unfit their boys for the farm and the forest. But better than any argument was his own example.
His first duty on returning home from school was to build his mother a new barn. "It spoils some boys to go to school," said his brother Thomas at the beginning of the first vacation, but it had not spoiled James Garfield. ”

“ Again and again the best troops of the Confederate army dashed up the slope of the low hill, only to break against the stubborn bands of men who could die but would not be defeated. And when at length the rebels made one more terrible rush, they were met, hurled back, broken, beaten, and scattered, and the battle was over. ”

“ It may with truth be said that in America cities rise up almost in a night-time. The forest and the prairie are one day out of the reach of civilisation, and the next they are one with the throbbing centres of life and progress. The railway, the means of communication, changes all as by a wizard's touch.
One day the news spread through a certain district, that two lines of railway were to cross at a certain point in the wilderness. Settlers at once crowded to the place, and next day the land was staked out in town lots, with all the details of streets, squares, and market-place. ”

“ The position of teacher in a high school, at the handsome salary of two hundred and fifty pounds, was offered him at this time. The offer, however, was declined, for the reason that it would prevent him taking his degree, and thus interfere with his plans in life.
His ambition was a very noble one. He wished, he said, to take a degree, to win, if possible, a name for scholarship; and then to go back to the modest salary and the limited sphere of the Hiram Institute, and thus help the humble college which had done so much for him. ”

“ A rough wooden box was made to contain the remains of the brave husband and loving father, and a grave was dug in a corner of the wheatfield. Four or five neighbours, all who lived within a radius of ten miles, attended the funeral, and tried to cheer the hearts of the widow and orphans by sympathetic words and kind and thoughtful actions. Tenderly they bore the body of Abram Garfield to its last resting-place and committed it to the earth, without a prayer except the silent ones which no ear but God's heard. ”

“ The memory of his own early struggles made him especially mindful of the poorer scholars, and his keen eye was always on the look-out for young men of promise. Perfectly free in his intercourse with the students, the young principal maintained his influence by the nobility of his character and the steadiness of his aim. His only wish was to help his pupils. And they believed in him with a faith that in the years to come transformed his classes into battalions on the field of battle.
The slavery question was still exercising the minds of all parties when Garfield returned to Hiram. ”

“ When he heard the object of the lad's mission, he at once said—
"I shall be glad to give you a job. I like boys who want to help their mothers. I don't like lazy boys, and I know there is not a lazy bone in your body."
James agreed to begin on the following day, and the carpenter gave him a pile of boards to plane. He was to receive a halfpenny for each board; and to his own delight, and the carpenter's astonishment, he planed one hundred the first day, and received four shillings and twopence. Once more was Mrs. Garfield struck dumb. ”

“ To the younger men especially was the system hateful, and it was plain that in the free States a new generation had risen up which was prepared to wash its hands of the curse of slavery. Some of the Southern States, afterwards known as the Confederates, formed themselves into an association, and threatened to withdraw from the Federal Union; and civil war between the slave States and the free was by the more thoughtful and far-seeing deemed inevitable.
The young Senator Garfield was one of the first to realise the true position of affairs. ”

“ When war broke out, Ulysses S. Grant recruited a regiment of Illinois men, of which he was made commander, and then entered upon that military career which at length ranked him among the two or three greatest soldiers of the age, and finally placed him in the presidential chair.
To General Grant more than to any man belongs the honour of the triumph of the Federal armies. But Grant was strong because of the innate nobleness of the men he commanded, and the magnificent steadfastness of the people who supported him. ”

“ From that moment when he awoke to a true sense of his responsibilities as a servant of God, he began to fit himself for all the duties of man. For whatever duty claimed his service he was found prepared; and when the call came suddenly to the kingly seat, and then yet more swiftly to the martyr's crown, he was still found ready. Dividing his time between Congress at Washington and his little home farm at Mentor, he served his nation as a statesman, and ruled his happy household as a citizen.
His noble mother, by whose godly counsel he had walked, spent some happy years in his home ”

“ No wonder the American people are proud of "the Queen City of the West." It stands far inland, a thousand miles from the ocean, and yet it is an important port on the shores of Lake Michigan, and steamers from London can land their cargoes at its quays. More than twenty thousand vessels enter and leave the port in one year. It is the greatest grain and provision market in the world. ”

“ The sturdy pioneers, who had turned their backs on towns and cities to make their homes in the wilderness, did not wish their children to grow up in ignorance. The little settlement soon became a village, and the opening of a school was an event of the greatest importance.
Mrs. Garfield heard the news with thankfulness. A school only a mile and a half away was a boon to her and her children. Now they would get the education required to fit them for a useful life. More than this she did not dare to look forward to.
Jimmy was only three years old when the welcome news reached the log cabin. ”

“ The happy boy had therefore the pleasure of watching the shoemaker at work. He saw the leather cut into shape, and then formed into shoes to fit his feet. Then there came the joy of wearing them, and the satisfaction of being able to run about without fear of treading on a sharp stone or thorn.
Mrs. Garfield was busy with her needle for days before the school opened, preparing the necessary clothing, that her children might appear neat and tidy. And when the day came round, Mehetabel set out with Jimmy on her back, and her younger sister by her side. ”

“ The ease with which Fort Sumter had fallen into their hands encouraged them to believe that they could easily snap the bonds which held the Union together. In the South the white population was supposed to be far superior to their Northern neighbours in all the arts of war.
Their position as slave-masters had bred in them an arrogant temper and a reckless spirit. They were more practised at the rifle, better used to horsemanship, and more familiar with field sports, than the men of the North. ”

“ The highest honour that men could claim was to serve in the ranks of the army; and rich and poor alike shouldered the musket and slept side by side upon the field of battle.
On one occasion the money which was needed for the pay of a New England regiment was delayed, and it was feared that the families of the soldiers, as well as the soldiers themselves, might in consequence be placed in distress. ”

“ Garfield often spoke to James about his future, and he agreed with his mother, that if God saved his life on that night, He must have saved him for something. Then she brought her son under the influence of the teacher of their school, who was preparing to be a minister, and he soon showed James that the difference between a scholar and a sailor is the difference between somebody and nobody. ”

“ Garfield sent for Harry Brown, who had been acting as scout. The two sprang into a skiff, and succeeded in descending the river. At Catletsburg, on the mouth of the Big Sandy, they found a little old-fashioned steamer belonging to a Confederate, and of this vessel they took possession. The steamer was loaded with provisions, and Garfield assumed command. It was in vain that the rebel captain protested, and explained the terrors of the passage. He had to do with a man whose spirit of duty completely lifted him above the sense of fear. ”

“ Garfield answered as well as she was able. Why men were wicked, and what hindered them from being good, puzzled James. To him it was a great mystery that any one could continue to do wrong when God was always willing to help them to do right.
At this time a great wave of temperance passed over that part of the country, and James at once questioned his mother about the movement. Living so far away from the centres of population, the lad had no opportunity of seeing for himself the terrible evils of drunkenness. ”

“ No one could have entered college with a more homely appearance than Garfield. His rustic manners and still more rustic dress invited criticism among the smart young men of his college, yet because he was by nature a gentleman, he was treated from the first as such, by both teachers and students alike. ”

“ Yet the school was but a log cabin, like the one in which the Garfield family lived. The teacher was a young man, who taught school one part of the year to earn money to pay for his education in the other part. The teacher received a certain sum of money for his work, and the parents of the children took him by turns to board in their houses. James was an apt scholar, and at once began to question the teacher, to the no small amusement of the scholars. ”