The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1880-10-05

JERE BLACK ON GARFIELD.
Judge Black not being able to attend
the grand jubilee at New York wrote
letter, of which the following is the clos
ing part
The impulses of personal friendship and
the duties of fair political opposition alike
require me to speak of General Garfield.
Intellectually he is first among the politi-
Clans of his party-not the sharpest or
strongest, but the most gifted and best
cultivated. His private life is stainless,
and in everything unconnected with poll
tics bis behavior is regulated by principles
of the soundest morality. But in public
affairs he does not act upon his convictions;
when he passes into the domain of politics
his conscience loses its grip; and for his
party he is willing to do any wrong which
will promote their interests, or play any
card, how false soever, which will win
them power. This surrender of his moral
and mental integrity is the condition upon
which he holds his place in the affections
of the party he belongs to. Treachery to
his country is fidelity to his faction. If
at any time in the last fifteen years he had
given way to his own sense of right, sup
ported the Constitution and laws in a
spirit OF pure justice, reused TO denie
himself with election frauds, withheld his
countenance from Executive corruption
or denounced the forcible instalment of
thieves in State Offices, he would have con-
verted himself into Democrat and been
expelled from the communion of the anti
constitutional party.
The moral prostitution to bad political
purposes is far from being uncommon
Men naturally good have yielded to it in
all times and in all countries where there
is party unprincipled enough to demand
it and strong enough to reward it. But
General Gsrfeld's public career furnishes
more striking examples of it than the his
tory of any individual have known. Let
me give you a case: After the war, at
time of perfect peace, in the State of In
diana, where no war had ever been, certain
military officers, being instructed from
Washington that they were above the
civil authorities, had Kidnapped and were
about to XIII three citizens, for no offence
defined by any law and without the pre-
tence of trial by court or jury. If this
could be done there was manifestly no
security left for life or property. Plainly
it could not be done without fat viola
ton of the Constitution, which in express
terms forbade it. But the men who then
ruled MS with rod of iron insisted upon it
and we could not be certain that the Judges,
State and national, might not be subdued
by their influence The hearing of the
cause before the Supreme Court was a
Ia IL of
our country. There was q place in the
argument which nobody could I'll so well
as General Garfield, and / besought him
to help rs in this desperate extremity to
rescue American liberty from the utter
destruction with which 1t was threatened.
He responded with noble alacrity and
made 3 great argument, In which he
proved not only the continued existence,
but the inestimable value of the Constitu-
tion. He demonstrated that the right Of
trial by jury at all times and places was
indestructible, and that any officer, civil
or military, would violate his oath if he
attempted to put the military above the
civil authority. He affirmed the whole
Democratic doctrine on the subject, and
showed it to be incontestibly right. His
sincerity was undoubted, for, like the rest
of ms, he engaged IN the cause as . labor
of love, without fee or any reward except
the thanks Of true men.
Such were his true convictions. But
when he came to deal with the same sub
ject IN his political capacity he surrender
ed everything to his party. He voted
for . military despotism and . regular
system of kidnapping and murder in all