Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-05-22
Fiue Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents

BY N MORGAN.

last oS the Presidents born and bred
in log cabins. Notwithstanding that
humble start, he was one Of the half
dozen scholarly men who have sat in
the Presidential chair.
Both the paternal Garfelds and the
maternal Ballous, the forbears of this
Ohio President, were New Englanders
and among the best types of Yankee
yeomanry. His struggling. laborious
youth and young manhood made Gar
field also a representative of that
greater New England which spread it.
West.
When the boy was only 2, his pio-
neer father died fighting a forest fire,
leaving four young saplings.'' as he
called them, to the care of his wife.
VIC had to carry on the frontier farm
alone and face the problems of bring
Ing up her two boys and two girls.
with the help of her older son in the
held and of her older daughter in the
cabin, she raised the food for her little
brood, and grew and wove and sewed
the wool that clothed them. More than
that, she was their teacher, too. cul-
~tivating their young minds and train
ing up their characters. Among all
the widows sons in the Presidency.
none owed more to his mother than
the son of Eliza Ballou Garfield, and
none began earlier to pay his debt, nor
Kept on paying it more faithfully and
gracefully.
A big. strong. hardy boy, Jim" Gar
field had to work his way in the world
from the & of 10 or IL. Chopping
wood at rs cents q cord and his board:
driving mules on the towpath of a
canal or serving as deckhand on the
boat itself at $40 a month and keep:
haylng, harvesting, carpentering and
teaching school, he put himself
through the academies and through
college.
He also won a wife along the way.
In a coeducational academy. which he
attended, he met and wooed Lucretia
rudolph. After his college gradual
ton at Williams, he faithfully returned
to claim his Crete" and their
marriage is the first-doubtless it will
not be the last-romance of goods.
N the matrimonial story of the Presi-
dency.
In his preparatory school which
afterwards became Hiram College,
Garfield was ~janitor at first, until it
was discovered that he could teach
the other pupils English literature
Just as well as he could tend the fires,
draw the water. sweep the floors. wash
the windows and ring the bell. Pow
erty is a good grindstone for putin
a sharp edge on the few who happen
to have the tempered steel in them;
but it sadly dulls the many.
Garfield's way was a long, rough
road to an education. But II insured
him a keen thirst at the end, and when
at last he arrived at Williams College
back In his ancestral Massachusetts,, a
big, blonde. bearded man of 20. he was
ready to drink dry that fountain of
learning. He used to say that his ideal
of a university was a pine log, with
Mark Hopkins, the president of Will
Hams, sitting on one end of it and him
self at the other end.
If he had stayed in New England,
Garfield would have been a professor
or a preacher. He became both after
returning home. but every man In
Ohio Is, or at least used to be, a poll
tician also.
He was principal of his old academy
at Hiram and doing more or less lay
preaching in the pulpit of the Chris
tian or "Campbellite" church. when he
was elected to the State Senate. And
he was still serving in those varied
capacities when he led a regiment to
the front at the outbreak of the Civil
War.
With his lifelong habit of study, the
green colonel went to war with a
sword in n hand and a book on III
military art in the other. Soon he
knew something of the principles of
~ 49," JOpf oiAa thAo dDl Hill
to rise more rapidly than the other
political colonies.
Before he came in sight of the
enemy or smelled powder he was
placed In command of a brigade and
ordered to chase the Confederates out
of the Kentucky mountains. Al 80 he
was the youngest brigadier I'm the
Army. After Shiloh he became chief
of staff to General Rosecrans, and for
a bold expedition that he led through
the enemy's country after the battle
of Chickamauga he was made Major
General.
Entering Congress at the end of
1858, he became in due time chief of
staff to James G.. Blaine, the Repub-
lican leader of the House. He proved
himself a brilliant lieutenant in peace
as in war. but he did not develop the
qualities of independent leadership.
He was too fair. too moderate a parti-
san and rather too amiable, too soft
or too considerate to be able to plan
that part in those swashbuckling days
at Washington. Nor did he have the
strength to keep himself wholly clear
of shadow of suspicion that fell
upon so many public men in a period
when fine. moral scruples were blunt
ed in the rough combats of politics.
While he was q member of Congress
and on a visit to New York, Lincoln
was o'od1oAiidiNbs IN luc eNenl III
spired n of Garfield's most memoir
able and eloquent speeches. The great
city was dazed and trembling from
the shock, when a meeting was held
in Wall Street for the purpose OF
claiming and steadying the people
Standing on the granite steps of the
lSub-Treasury where George Wash
! ington had taken the oath of office
the tall, broadshouldered. yellow hair
ed, yellow bearded Congressman from
Ohio lifted up the spirits Of the angry
and the despairing in the bewilderet
multitude that surged at his feet b.
lappealing to their faith in a 'grea
overruling power.
Clouds and darkness are arount
Him; His pavilion is dark waters an,
, thick clouds; justice and judgmen
are the habitation of His throne
mercy and truth shall go before hi
Facet Fellow citizens. God reigns ant
the Government at Washington still
, lives.