"General Garfield proceeded to the Front." -General Rosecrans's official report of the battle of Chickamauga. CHAPTER IX. THE STORM BURSTS. O write the career of James A. Garfield during the trying hours of the Rebellion T& is to write at once a history of intrepid bravery, exquisite coolness in danger, and sure success in action. His career has been rarely equaled by any American, who entered the war as a civilian and laid down his sword with the rank of a major-general. His record, while bearing testimony to the marvelous spirit, that always pervades a great people in a great crisis, and brings to the front a leader for every emergency, is a strangely complete illustration of how perfectly a man of brains and determination may succeed in some difficult walk in life, for which special and particular training have been always considered necessary. When the South chose to inaugurate the budding of the leaves and the return of the flowers, in 1861, by tearing from the old flag some of its sacred stars, the country paused a moment, waiting, as it were, for actors in the coming tragedy, leaders for the now inevitable armies. The guns, that had opened upon Sumter on the memorable 12th of April, had not merely crumbled the walls (141) 12* of that Southern fortress. They had also shat. tered all hopes of a peaceful solution of the problems then before the country. Civil war had become a sad necessity, a bitter fact to write upon the pages of a nation's history, which had begun so gloriously in 1776. The President's proclamation of the 15th called forth the militia for objects entirely lawful and constitutional, and it was responded to with a patriotic fervor, which melted down all previously existing party lines. This "uprising of a great people," as it was well termed by a foreign writer, was a kindling and noble spectacle. The hearts of a whole land throbbed as one. But we cannot now, without a feeling of sadness, recall the brilliant and burning enthusiasm, that lighted our beloved country like a torch, because there was mingled with it so much ignorance, not merely of the magnitude of the contest before us, but of the nature of war itself. The high-spirited young men, who swelled the ranks of the volunteer force at the call of duty, marched off as gayly, as if they were participants in a holiday turnout-a party of pic-nickers rather than devoted patriots, upon very many of whom the death seal was already set. The Rebellion was to be put down at once, and by little more than the mere show of the preponderating force of the loyal States; and the task of putting it down was to be attended with no more danger than was sufficient to give OPENING OF THE WAR. 143 the enterprise a due flavor of excitement. War was unknown to us except by report; the men of the Revolution were but spectres of a jeweled past; the veterans of 1812 were some of them still alive, but even they were gray with years and the memories of events. We had read of battles; we had seen something of the pomp of holiday-soldiers; but of the grim realities of war we were absolutely ignorant. Indeed, not a few had come to the conclusion, that war was a relic of barbarism, and that civilization had forever dispensed with the soldier and his sword. It need hardly be said, that the call to conflict found us totally unprepared for the great storm about to break. Our regular army was insignificant in numbers and scattered over our vast territory or along our Western frontier, so that it was impossible to collect any considerable force at any point. Our militia-system had everywhere fallen into neglect, and in some States had almost ceased to have any existence whatever. The wits laughed at it, it was a common subject of newspaper criticism; it was christened "the cornstalk militia;" platform orators declaimed against it. Indeed, so low had it fallen in public estimation, that it required some moral courage to march through the streets at the head of a company. The South had been wiser, or at least, more provident in this respect. The military spirit had K |