them paraded as independent, sovereign States, the creators of the Union and the dictators of its powers. How inherently 'sovereign' must be that State west of the Mississippi, which the nation bought and paid for with the public money, and permitted to come into the Union a half century after the Constitution was adopted! And yet we are told that States are inherently sovereign, and create the national government. Half a century ago, this heresy threatened the stability of the nation. The eloquence of Webster and his compeers, and the patriotism and high courage of Andrew Jackson, resisted and for a time destroyed its powers; but it continued to live as the evil genius, the incarnate devil, of America; and, in 1861, it was the fatal phantom that lured eleven millions of our people into rebellion against their Government. Hundreds of thousands of those who took up arms against the Union, stubbornly resisted all inducements to that fatal step until they were summoned by the authority of their States."

A single bold passage (were it possible, we would give in full,) from his speech on counting the electoral vote must find a place here:

66 'When you tell me that civil war is threatened by any party or State in this Republic, you have given me a supreme reason why an American Congress should refuse, with unutterable scorn, to listen to those who@hreaten, or do any act whatever under the coercion of threats by any power on earth. With all my soul, I despise your threat of civil war, come it from what quarter or what it may. Brave men, certainly a brave nation, will do nothing under such compulsion. We are intrusted with the work of obeying and defending the Constitution. I will not be deterred from obeying it, because somebody threatens to destroy it. I dismiss all that class of motives as unworthy of Americans.

"What, then, are the grounds on which we should con

sider a bill like this? It would be unbecoming in me or in any member of this Congress to oppose this bill on mere technical or trifling grounds. It should be opposed, if at all, for reasons so broad, so weighty as to overcome all that has been said in its favor, and all the advantages which I have here admitted, may follow from its passage. I do not wish to diminish the stature of my antagonist; I do not wish to undervalue the points of strength in a measure, before I question its propriety. It is not enough that this bill will tide us over a present danger, however great. Let us for a moment forget Hayes and Tilden, Republicans and Democrats; let us forget our own epoch and our own generations; and, entering a broader field, inquire how this thing which we are about to do will affect the great future of our Republic; and, in what condition, if we pass this bill, we shall transmit our institutions to those who shall come after us. The present good which we shall achieve by it may be very great; yet if the evils that will flow from it in the future must be greater, it would be base in us to flinch from trouble by entailing remediless evils upon our children.”

General Garfield's position on the Chinese Question, is not stated in any speech of his, and only lightly touched upon in his letter of acceptance. The Wheeling (West Virginia) Intelligencer, printed, December 5th, 1877, an account of an interview with the great Republican, which more fully elaborates his views. Alluding to the idea quite strongly held by many writers, that the Chinese intend a conquest of Europe, General Garfield said:

"The Mongolian race is capable of great personal prowBeing fatalists, they dare everything for the end they have in view. Their food is simple, easily supplied and

ess.

easily transported. Their endurance of fatigue is proverbial. Once organized and in motion they could swarm into Russia as irresistibly as the locusts of Egypt, and upon the Pacific coast of this continent as numerous and destructive as the grasshoppers. Once started, where would they stop? Civilization would retire before them as from a plague. Look at the plague spots in San Francisco to-day. Nobody lives in them but Chinese. Nobody else can live in them. I have seen in a space no greater than the length and height in this sleeping-car berth, in a Chinese tenement quarter in San Francisco, the home of twelve Chinaman. In that space they actually lived-yes, actually lived most of their time. There they crouched (all doubled up), and there they cooked, ate, slept, and, in a word, lived. They cooked with a little lamp a mess of stuff that they import from China, which, like their rice food, is very cheap, and a mere pittance in the way of earnings on the street, will supply them food and clothes for an indefinite time. A few cents per day is more to them than a dollar to the commonest American laborer. Hence the lowest grade of poor paid labor retires before them as it would before a pestilence.

"This is not all. They have no assimilation whatever to Caucasian civilization. The negro assimilates with the Caucasian. He wants all that we want. He adopts our civilization-professes our religion-works for our wages, and is a customer for everything that civilization produces. Hence (using a figure of physiology) we can take him up in the circulation of the body politic and assimilate him—make a man and a brother of him, as the phrase goes; but not so in the least degree with the Chinaman.

"And this brings me to say that one of the great questions that now press upon Congress and the country for immediate attention and solution, is what shall we do with reference to Chinese immigration? We have always refused to citizenize them. Shall we continue the treaty under which they are immigrating to our shores ?"

A single word concerning the policy of his party and we have done-for one cannot follow him through his many spirited pleas for education, the rights of woman, and hundreds of other questions to which he has given his attention and influence. In a speech, at Flint, Ohio, some years ago, he gave, as it were, the secret of Republican successes, and a sentiment very pertinent to the present year: "Wherever the Republican party has stood up with its head in the light, and appealed to principles, it has won; wherever it has been cowardly and truckled and let down, it has lost, and it deserved to lose. Now then we say in this fight, we will climb to the masthead, and on the very top we will nail our flag; and if go down we must, the flag shall take the wave last."

CHAPTER XXIII.

A VISIT TO LAWNFIELD.

"M

ENTOR! Mentor! All out for Mentor!" called out the conductor, and satchel in hand I descended from the cars.

A scream from the locomotive, a puff of dust, and the rushing and rumbling cars went out of sight up the road, leaving me alone at a stupidlooking depot on the Lake Shore Railroad, twenty-six miles from Cleveland.*

"Any hotel here?" I inquired of a man who seemed to be ticket agent, expressman and telegraph operator combined.

"Yes, over the road there," he replied, pointing with his hand to a little building with the sign of "Store" on its front.

I looked at it and then at the place around. Crossing the road was a rude board arch bearing the motto: "For President, Our Townsman, James A. Garfield." I looked about, but could see no sign of a town, though there were a good many straggling buildings in sight and a church spire in the distance.

*The purpose of my visit, the reader has already divined. And in relating it, the author makes no apology for abandoning the impersonal style hitherto employed, believing that the reader will relish his description all the better if the impressions are more minutely related through the agency of the personal pronoun.