Part 2 (2/2)

Despite the building's architectural message of rock-solid American harmony, it concealed a fault line beneath its foundation that winter. Ohio, no less than the nation as a whole, seemed to be coming apart at the seams. As in most other states across the North, political leaders were locked in mortal combat over how-or even whether-to keep the South from leaving the Union. In Albany, New York's state legislators wrangled over a statement branding the South's seizure of federal forts and a.r.s.enals as ”treasonable.” In Springfield, Illinoisans traded volleys over a resolution to support the Crittenden Compromise. And in Columbus, Ohioans were arguing over almost everything.

The state was, in some respects, a microcosm of the nation. On its southern border, Cincinnati faced the slave plantations of Kentucky across the Ohio River. On the northern edge, Cleveland gave onto the Great Lakes and was the last stop for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. And the upper and lower halves of Ohio viewed each other with suspicion. Many in southern Ohio-where large numbers of Virginians and Kentuckians had settled-thought northern Ohioans were all wild-eyed abolitionists. Many in the north-themselves pioneers or the children of pioneers from New England and the mid-Atlantic states-thought southern Ohioans were all lackeys of their slaveholding neighbors. Occasionally the two sides came together. In January 1860, the state legislature invited those of Kentucky and Tennessee to visit Columbus as a gesture of trust and goodwill between the free states and the slave states. A local newspaper rejoiced at the sight of Southerners, many of whom had brought their black body servants along for the trip, joining Northerners in champagne toasts ”to the Union and the equality and fraternity of the States” with no fear that anyone would try to meddle with their slave property during the banquet. ”Sambo has become an obsolete idea,” another article exulted.14 A year later, no one was proposing champagne toasts or declaring ”Sambo” a dead letter. Rather, Democratic legislators were proposing a battery of laws that would make it illegal for Ohioans to aid fugitive slaves and even for free Negroes to immigrate into the state. ”Are we to ruin our glorious Republic for an inferior race?” one supporter asked his colleagues. Republican hard-liners-Garfield was in the vanguard-answered with a bill to recruit and arm fifteen regiments of militia, ostensibly to defend against invasion: after all, in the event of war, a Southern force occupying Ohio could cut the Union in two. Democrats howled that this would just antagonize Southerners, who in any case would never invade the North. One quipped caustically that the only part of Ohio really in need of soldiers was the far northeast, where the troops could be employed to enforce fugitive slave laws.15 The Peace Conference, too, sparked a fierce debate. The more radical legislators opposed sending an Ohio delegation to Was.h.i.+ngton; most vocal among them was Garfield's Columbus roommate, Jacob c.o.x, another young Republican. ”There is is no no compromise compromise possible in the nature of things,” c.o.x wrote in a private letter. ”For us to do it after our [electoral] victory would be to confess ourselves dastards unworthy of the name of freemen.” possible in the nature of things,” c.o.x wrote in a private letter. ”For us to do it after our [electoral] victory would be to confess ourselves dastards unworthy of the name of freemen.”16 The Republicans' militia bill languished in legislative deadlock. So did the Democrats' fugitive-slave proposals. Meanwhile, Garfield bought handbooks of military science and began reading them by lamplight in his rented bedroom after each day's session ended. A week or two before Lincoln's visit, the professor and his roommate began staging their own two-man drills with light muskets on the east portico of the statehouse.17 FROM THE DIRECTION of the station, a mile or so off, cannon blasts rattled the windowpanes: a thirty-four-gun salute. Gradually, the blare of bra.s.s bands mingled with cheers grew closer. After what seemed an interminable wait, the carved oak doors of the chamber finally swung open, the clerk announced the arrival of the president-elect, and the legislators rose from their seats. Escorted by Governor William Dennison, Lincoln sloped up the aisle toward the speaker's stand, his deeply furrowed face and scraggly new beard unmistakable as he loomed above the crowd. The Rail-Splitter was less ugly than the papers had made him out to be, many spectators would later remark. Yet only three days out of Springfield-and three weeks before the start of his presidency-he already looked anxious and careworn. ”His whole appearance indicates excessive weariness, listlessness, or indifference,” wrote even the sympathetic of the station, a mile or so off, cannon blasts rattled the windowpanes: a thirty-four-gun salute. Gradually, the blare of bra.s.s bands mingled with cheers grew closer. After what seemed an interminable wait, the carved oak doors of the chamber finally swung open, the clerk announced the arrival of the president-elect, and the legislators rose from their seats. Escorted by Governor William Dennison, Lincoln sloped up the aisle toward the speaker's stand, his deeply furrowed face and scraggly new beard unmistakable as he loomed above the crowd. The Rail-Splitter was less ugly than the papers had made him out to be, many spectators would later remark. Yet only three days out of Springfield-and three weeks before the start of his presidency-he already looked anxious and careworn. ”His whole appearance indicates excessive weariness, listlessness, or indifference,” wrote even the sympathetic New York Times New York Times correspondent. correspondent.18 After a brief welcome from the senate president, Lincoln started to speak, his incongruously high, flat tenor unusually nasal, for the president-elect was suffering from a cold. He held no notes, and was clearly extemporizing. Lincoln started by observing portentously that the responsibilities facing him were even weightier than those George Was.h.i.+ngton had borne in the Revolution, an observation he had also made upon departing from Springfield, and for which he had been widely ridiculed. (How dare this political arriviste compare himself to the father of his country?) Next he tried to explain his pa.s.sivity for so many months: ”I have received from some a degree of credit for having kept silence, and from others some deprecation. I still think that I was right.” (Not exactly a ringing self-vindication.) He continued: ”In the varying and repeatedly s.h.i.+fting scenes of the present, and without a precedent which could enable me to judge by the past, it has seemed fitting that before speaking upon the difficulties of the country, I should have gathered a view of the whole field”-odd words from a man who had barely ventured out of his own front parlor for the past year!-”to be sure, after all, being at liberty to modify or change the course of policy as future events may make a change necessary. I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety.” (All this seemed to be a fancy way of confessing that he had little confidence and no real plan.) Then the speech grew even more nonsensical: ”It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety, for there is nothing going wrong. It is a consoling circ.u.mstance that when we look out there is nothing that really hurts anybody. We entertain different views upon political questions, but n.o.body is suffering anything.”19 This seemed idiotic at best, insane at worst. n.o.body suffering anything, n.o.body suffering anything, while the North was on the brink of financial catastrophe! while the North was on the brink of financial catastrophe! Nothing that really hurts anybody, Nothing that really hurts anybody, while a hostile army prepared for civil war! while a hostile army prepared for civil war! Nothing going wrong, Nothing going wrong, while the Union itself was collapsing! while the Union itself was collapsing!

The president-elect's address in Columbus was mocked in Democratic newspapers all across the country. The Baltimore Sun Baltimore Sun called Lincoln a clown, observing that it was impossible to read his remarks aloud without succ.u.mbing to ”irresistible bursts of laughter.” ”Old Abe is a failure as a President,” declared the called Lincoln a clown, observing that it was impossible to read his remarks aloud without succ.u.mbing to ”irresistible bursts of laughter.” ”Old Abe is a failure as a President,” declared the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer. Cincinnati Daily Enquirer. ”By the time he gets through his tour his friends will wish they had boxed him up and sent him home.” Even the Republican papers found the speech hard to defend: it satisfied neither wing of the party. The ”By the time he gets through his tour his friends will wish they had boxed him up and sent him home.” Even the Republican papers found the speech hard to defend: it satisfied neither wing of the party. The Philadelphia Press Philadelphia Press explained lamely that when Lincoln said no one seemed to be suffering, he must have been thinking of the lush Ohio farm country that he had pa.s.sed through that morning. The best that the explained lamely that when Lincoln said no one seemed to be suffering, he must have been thinking of the lush Ohio farm country that he had pa.s.sed through that morning. The best that the Cincinnati Daily Commercial Cincinnati Daily Commercial could manage was to laud his sincerity: ”He is not guilty of any diplomacy, and does not understand why he should not in his own plain way tell the plain truth as it appears to him”-qualities that contrasted favorably with ”the courtly graces and diplomacy of the whited sepulchre who is the present occupant of the White House.” Even so, the president-elect's naivete and lack of what we would call media savvy were astonis.h.i.+ng: ”Mr. Lincoln talks as if without the fear of the telegraph in front of his eyes.” could manage was to laud his sincerity: ”He is not guilty of any diplomacy, and does not understand why he should not in his own plain way tell the plain truth as it appears to him”-qualities that contrasted favorably with ”the courtly graces and diplomacy of the whited sepulchre who is the present occupant of the White House.” Even so, the president-elect's naivete and lack of what we would call media savvy were astonis.h.i.+ng: ”Mr. Lincoln talks as if without the fear of the telegraph in front of his eyes.”20 Garfield, pus.h.i.+ng his way out of the statehouse through the densely packed rotunda, felt similar pangs of disappointment. Nearby, Lincoln was backed up awkwardly against the foot of a stone stairway as the throng surged around him. ”The scene,” a local paper reported, ”presented all the animating features of a free fight.” Pus.h.i.+ng, pulling, and jostling, hundreds of ordinary Ohioans-who had not heard the speech, and in any case cared less about the niceties of political rhetoric than for accomplis.h.i.+ng something to brag about back home-struggled to clasp for an instant the hand of the president-elect. Both of the Rail-Splitter's spindly arms were now flailing wildly left and right as he tried his best to satisfy one and all. ”The physical exertion must have been tremendous,” the newspaper continued: People plunged at his arms with frantic enthusiasm, and all the infinite variety of shakes from the wild and irrepressible pump-handled movement, to the dead grip, was executed upon the sinister and dexter of the President. Some glanced into his face as they grasped his hand; others invoked the blessings of heaven upon him; others affectionately gave him their last gasping a.s.surance of devotion; others, bewildered and furious, with hats crushed over their eyes, seized his hand in a convulsive grasp, and pa.s.sed on as if they had not the remotest idea who, what, or where they were, nor what anything at all was about.21 Could this amiable, guileless, well-intentioned man possibly measure up against the challenges ahead? Could his charisma hold even the North together? Could he save the Union? Could he-if it came to blows-win a war? And was he even remotely equipped to win the epochal, cosmic struggle that Garfield had described so glibly in his speeches last summer?

That evening, Governor Dennison hosted a private reception at his mansion near the statehouse. Gaslights flickered above richly set buffet tables; a butler guided visitors upstairs to deposit their hats and coats before coming back down to meet the guests of honor. In one of the two main parlors, Garfield was introduced to the future first lady, holding court in a dark silk gown. He was not impressed with Mrs. Lincoln: ”a stocky, sallow, pugnosed plain lady,” he wrote to his wife.22 In the room across the hall, with Governor Dennison hovering close by, stood Lincoln. Dressed for the occasion in full white tie, gloves, and a black tailcoat-giving him the appearance of a country b.u.mpkin on his wedding day-he was cracking jokes with the men around him as though he'd known them for years. The governor introduced the young senator, and Garfield clasped Lincoln's white-gloved hand, which was surprisingly muscular and firm. Afterward, he would not recall much of their brief conversation-just social pleasantries, no mention of politics-but the president-elect's face made a profound impression on the younger man all the same. ”Through all his awkward homeliness,” Garfield wrote afterward, ”there is a look of transparent, genuine goodness, which at once reaches your heart and makes you love and trust him.” In a letter to a friend, he ventured further: ”His remarkable good sense-simple and condensed style of expression-and evident marks of indomitable will-give me great hopes for the country.”23 The next morning dawned dreary under gathering clouds. Lincoln pa.s.sed on again eastward, toward Was.h.i.+ngton and his presidency. Rain began to fall, then came in torrents as the train rushed through more junctions, more villages: Newark, Frazeysburg, Dresden, Coshocton. Newcomerstown, Uhrichsville, Cadiz Junction. No bands to play now, no cannons to fire in salute, but at every station, small knots of people huddled beneath umbrellas to wave, to cheer, to watch-and to wonder what lay ahead.24 THE W WESTERN R RESERVE E ECLECTIC I INSt.i.tUTE sat on the crest of a small hill in northeastern Ohio, one of so many colleges that had recently sprung up on so many Ohio hills. Professor Garfield was the lone instructor in cla.s.sical languages, English literature, philosophy, natural sciences, American history, geography, geometry, and religion: such a disparate array of subjects semester after semester that they all became jumbled up inside his head in one glorious mess. A typical set of lecture notes, scribbled on a torn and blotted sheet of cheap notepaper: ”Engine-Professions-Divinity. Bunker Hill. sat on the crest of a small hill in northeastern Ohio, one of so many colleges that had recently sprung up on so many Ohio hills. Professor Garfield was the lone instructor in cla.s.sical languages, English literature, philosophy, natural sciences, American history, geography, geometry, and religion: such a disparate array of subjects semester after semester that they all became jumbled up inside his head in one glorious mess. A typical set of lecture notes, scribbled on a torn and blotted sheet of cheap notepaper: ”Engine-Professions-Divinity. Bunker Hill. Suspension Bridge. Suspension Bridge. Manners-Henry Clay.... To awaken-Conflict. Challenge the Soul.” Manners-Henry Clay.... To awaken-Conflict. Challenge the Soul.”25 A jumble, perhaps. But the students, by and large, adored him. When you enrolled in a cla.s.s taught by James A. Garfield, one said, it was like making contact with ”a vast elemental force.” Even Professor Garfield's course in arithmetic had been brilliant, unforgettable. Campus legends proliferated: it was said he could simultaneously write Latin on the chalkboard with his left hand and Greek with his right while lecturing in English.* Yet the professor seemed less a wise adult than an elder brother. Still in his late twenties, he was only a few years his students' senior and, like many of those children of farmers or itinerant preachers, had come from backwoods and stony fields into the grove of academe. He joined their s...o...b..ll fights on the campus green, and in springtime led them on tramps along the creek bed at the foot of the hill, seeking out specimens of rocks or tadpoles. Rumpled, bearish, and warmhearted, he looked like an overgrown boy, and his tousle of dark-blond hair, luxuriant new beard, and startlingly blue eyes lent him particular appeal among the female students: ”a Sir Galahad, our knight without stain and reproach,” one sighed. Even more deeply important, the students felt, his voice was the voice of their own generation, and his life a model for theirs. Yet the professor seemed less a wise adult than an elder brother. Still in his late twenties, he was only a few years his students' senior and, like many of those children of farmers or itinerant preachers, had come from backwoods and stony fields into the grove of academe. He joined their s...o...b..ll fights on the campus green, and in springtime led them on tramps along the creek bed at the foot of the hill, seeking out specimens of rocks or tadpoles. Rumpled, bearish, and warmhearted, he looked like an overgrown boy, and his tousle of dark-blond hair, luxuriant new beard, and startlingly blue eyes lent him particular appeal among the female students: ”a Sir Galahad, our knight without stain and reproach,” one sighed. Even more deeply important, the students felt, his voice was the voice of their own generation, and his life a model for theirs.26 Some might even have seen Garfield as a junior version of the famous Rail-Splitter himself. Indeed, Lincoln's attraction was based less on his exceptional qualities-as they might seem to us today-than on his ordinariness, his formative experiences resembling those of so many nineteenth-century Americans. Though a full generation younger than Lincoln, Garfield, too, had been born in a log cabin, the last American president who could claim that distinction.27 His parents, Abram and Eliza, had crossed over from western New York in the 1820s, during the great migration from the seaboard states into the area known as the Western Reserve, the northeast corner of Ohio. His parents, Abram and Eliza, had crossed over from western New York in the 1820s, during the great migration from the seaboard states into the area known as the Western Reserve, the northeast corner of Ohio.28 Ohio...a name still resonant with romance in those distant days; a deep-drawn breath of open air.

Across the steep Alleghenies, the land flattened and spread, as though the hand of G.o.d had generously smoothed a hollow there, between the sh.o.r.es of the south-flowing river and Erie's inland sea. Revolutionary War veterans and their families drove in Conestoga wagons to claim their bounties: 160 acres for each man who had helped his country win its freedom. This was federal land, ceded to the national government by the states in the earliest years of union. It was free land: in 1787, Congress had outlawed slavery in perpetuity across the whole of the Northwest Territory, from the Virginia border to the uppermost reaches of Lake Superior. The Northwest was a fresh start. One early settler, a Virginia planter of distinction, journeyed there with all his slaves and, as they drifted together on a raft of flatboats down the Ohio River, gathered them to announce that they were in a new land now, and slaves no more.29 True, many Easterners mocked the emigrants as dupes, bound only for ruin, famine, and Indian ma.s.sacres on what seemed then like a remote frontier. (One widely circulated woodcut showed a prosperous farmer on a sleek horse, with the caption ”I am going to Ohio”-and, next to that, a skeletal man on a broken-down nag, with the caption ”I have been to Ohio.”) Many did suffer, including Abram and Eliza, who settled along a stagnant and malarial bend of the Cuyahoga River, not far from a village of six hundred souls called Cleveland. Unable to afford their own land to farm, the Garfields soon moved on and then moved again, with Abram working sometimes as a fieldhand, sometimes as a laborer helping to dig ca.n.a.ls. Bad luck and failure seemed to follow the family.30 James lost his father to disease while barely out of infancy, although this was not unusual enough to merit much comment, let alone sympathy. Fathers disappeared often: borne away by nameless fevers, crushed and broken in freak accidents, or simply absconding without a word, going off one day in pursuit of a business chance or a new woman or just the hope of a fresh and unenc.u.mbered start in a place still farther west. James lost his father to disease while barely out of infancy, although this was not unusual enough to merit much comment, let alone sympathy. Fathers disappeared often: borne away by nameless fevers, crushed and broken in freak accidents, or simply absconding without a word, going off one day in pursuit of a business chance or a new woman or just the hope of a fresh and unenc.u.mbered start in a place still farther west.31 In the end, however, the hards.h.i.+ps of those early years seemed only to confirm G.o.d's ultimate beneficence. The settlers-even, to a modest degree, the Garfields-eventually prospered. By the time James reached adulthood, the village of Cleveland was an exemplary New World metropolis: ”the city of broad streets and stately avenues, of charming drives and romantic scenery, of rural taste and architectural beauty,” wrote one local booster on the eve of the Civil War. Some visitors were still unimpressed with Ohio-or, perhaps worse, bored by it. A New Englander complained about its ”soulless utilitarianism”: ”No visions here-no poetry here...all stern realities.”32 He could not have been more wrong. Beneath the bland exteriors of middle-cla.s.s Ohioans beat idealistic-even poetic-hearts. They scribbled diaries and romantic verses; painted watercolors; relentlessly sought self-improvement by reading books and attending public lectures on every subject.33 The very barns that they built seemed almost Athenian in their n.o.ble proportions, diminutive Parthenons among the cow pastures. They schemed hard at making money, but they also schemed to remake the world-and turned to G.o.d for a.s.sistance. The very barns that they built seemed almost Athenian in their n.o.ble proportions, diminutive Parthenons among the cow pastures. They schemed hard at making money, but they also schemed to remake the world-and turned to G.o.d for a.s.sistance.

The hard-living early settlers had spared little time for religion at first. Then, in the 1820s and 1830s, the Protestant revival sweeping much of the United States descended on Ohio with particular intensity. Such intensity, in fact, that one devout Methodist extolled the state as an ”American Canaan” with ”no red Sea in the way...& as for our Jordon (I mean the Ohio) it is easy to cross and (what's better) when once planted here our children are saved from the harmful practice of trading [in] their fellow creatures.”

The Garfields and many of their neighbors in the Western Reserve joined a religious group known variously as the Campbellites, the Brethren, or the Disciples. Its adherents professed a radical, almost primitive version of Christianity. Unlike their New England Puritan ancestors, they turned away from the brutal majesty of the Old Testament toward what they esteemed the unadorned teachings of the Gospels: faith, repentance, and the imitation of Christ's virtues. Each member of the church was encouraged to study the Bible for himself or herself with the ”fullest liberty of discourse and investigation,” an extreme form of sola scriptura. sola scriptura. Disciples renounced all hierarchies; church elders wore plain clothes and preached in simple wooden meetinghouses without steeple or pulpit; and followers addressed one another as Brother and Sister. Women played important roles in congregations, and at least a few integrated and all-black churches sprang up. The sect's founder, Alexander Campbell, was equivocal on the slavery question: he disapproved personally of human bondage, yet also felt that Christians had no business interfering in the relations.h.i.+p between master and servant and that politics had no place in the church. He wanted his religious message to attract both Northerners and Southerners. (Brother Campbell and other elders preached under a huge canvas canopy known as the Big Tent. Later, during the Civil War, it was cut up into strips of cloth to make bandages for wounded Union soldiers.) Disciples renounced all hierarchies; church elders wore plain clothes and preached in simple wooden meetinghouses without steeple or pulpit; and followers addressed one another as Brother and Sister. Women played important roles in congregations, and at least a few integrated and all-black churches sprang up. The sect's founder, Alexander Campbell, was equivocal on the slavery question: he disapproved personally of human bondage, yet also felt that Christians had no business interfering in the relations.h.i.+p between master and servant and that politics had no place in the church. He wanted his religious message to attract both Northerners and Southerners. (Brother Campbell and other elders preached under a huge canvas canopy known as the Big Tent. Later, during the Civil War, it was cut up into strips of cloth to make bandages for wounded Union soldiers.)34 So quickly did the movement spread across the Western Reserve that Brother Campbell and his fellow Disciples fully expected it just as quickly to convert the entire planet, sweeping aside old sects and heresies and bringing about the return of Christ in very short order. They were disappointed when the world continued going on, messiah-less, more or less as before. But they did not lose hope: Campbell began to prophesy that the year 1866 would usher in a new epoch in human and divine affairs.35 After a time, these millenniarian dreams began hardening into militancy among some Disciples. In 1832, a group of Mormons-led by Prophet Joseph Smith himself-settled in Hiram and began converting townsfolk. Local Disciples hastened forth into battle. They seized the prophet from his bed in the middle of the night, stripped off his clothes, threatened to castrate him, and finally poured hot tar over his naked body, sending him fleeing into the darkness to seek a more hospitable haven farther west. After a time, these millenniarian dreams began hardening into militancy among some Disciples. In 1832, a group of Mormons-led by Prophet Joseph Smith himself-settled in Hiram and began converting townsfolk. Local Disciples hastened forth into battle. They seized the prophet from his bed in the middle of the night, stripped off his clothes, threatened to castrate him, and finally poured hot tar over his naked body, sending him fleeing into the darkness to seek a more hospitable haven farther west.36 James Garfield was born again into that austere faith at the age of eighteen, baptized one March morning in the bone-chilling waters of the Chagrin River.37 Like millions of other Americans, especially in the North, swept up in the nation's Second Great Awakening, he embraced a form of Protestantism focused not just on the distant promise of Heaven but also on the obligations of the here and now. Conversion as a Disciple was not supposed to be an emotional or mystical experience but rather an intellectual one by which a man or woman became rationally convinced to accept Christ. (Perhaps Joseph Smith would have disputed this.) Brother Campbell and other elders held public debates on equal terms with prominent ”nonbelievers,” including the famous British socialist Robert Owen. Campbell also frequently preached a sermon called ”The Progress of Revealed Thought,” in which he traced the ever-growing human understanding of religion from pre-Mosaic times up through the ”Modern age” or ”Sunlight age” ushered in by Christ. Like millions of other Americans, especially in the North, swept up in the nation's Second Great Awakening, he embraced a form of Protestantism focused not just on the distant promise of Heaven but also on the obligations of the here and now. Conversion as a Disciple was not supposed to be an emotional or mystical experience but rather an intellectual one by which a man or woman became rationally convinced to accept Christ. (Perhaps Joseph Smith would have disputed this.) Brother Campbell and other elders held public debates on equal terms with prominent ”nonbelievers,” including the famous British socialist Robert Owen. Campbell also frequently preached a sermon called ”The Progress of Revealed Thought,” in which he traced the ever-growing human understanding of religion from pre-Mosaic times up through the ”Modern age” or ”Sunlight age” ushered in by Christ.38 Such intellectualism-and faith in progress-appealed to the scholarly young Garfield, so much so that he soon took to the circuit himself as a preacher. In Disciple meetinghouses throughout the Western Reserve, he gave sermons on Christian ethics and morality and on the relations.h.i.+p of science to religion. Reason and morality, he preached, ”are alike the work of a perfect Creator who is himself the union of perfect intelligence and infinite goodness.”

G.o.d's hand was visible in the scientific laws that governed nature-and also throughout the affairs of mankind. ”In every nation,” Garfield told his students in November 1860, ”there is a political and a religious history.... Prophecy [is] the dim side of the tapestry-history the bright side.” The discovery of the New World and the birth of ”Republicanism” in America fulfilled G.o.d's promise to Isaiah: ”For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.”

This history seemed to Garfield to be drawing toward some sort of grand culmination, one that could be fully reached only by a mighty human effort. ”He was a firm believer in the swift-coming millennium,” one of his students recalled. ”He cited authorities to prove that it was surely coming; proved its desirability, and quoted some very good poetry; but wound up with, 'Let us, therefore, do all that we can to hasten the millennium.'”39 The Disciples were just one of dozens, even hundreds, of new religious creeds in antebellum America. Doctrine and practices varied enormously from place to place and church to church, running the gamut from cool rationalism to ecstatic mysticism; antislavery moralizing to justification of bondage. What those movements taught in common, though-even to those who remained outside them-was that individual men and women had the power to choose their own versions of Christian, or non-Christian, faith. Everyone was a free agent, and morally responsible for individual decisions. There was no obligation to blindly follow the beliefs of one's parents: each new generation of Americans had the power to, quite literally, rewrite the universe in its own terms.40 As the new sects jockeyed for power and for new converts, they became more aggressive. Many, moreover, shared the Disciple vision of an impending, apocalyptic battle between good and evil to precede a new golden era of G.o.dliness: a battle that only true Christian warriors could win. Garfield became popular among the Disciples not just for his intellectual gifts but also for his combative prowess. Theological debates on the Reserve were knockdown, drag-out, no-holds-barred brawls. In 1858, the young preacher went ten grueling rounds-two four-hour debates a day for five consecutive days-against a scientific theorist named William Denton, who claimed that life on earth had developed by ”spontaneous generation.” But rather than insisting on the literal truth of Genesis as his reb.u.t.tal, Garfield delved deep into the works of the greatest scientific thinkers of the time-Humboldt, Aga.s.siz, Lyell, Comte-to show that nature's laws were themselves proof of G.o.d's role as Creator. As many as a thousand people attended each debate, and at the end, they hailed Garfield as the victor and showered him with invitations to give lectures on ”Geology and Religion.”41 Sometimes the combat was less rhetorical. Once, at a tent meeting, a ”big two-fisted rowdy” tried to disrupt Garfield's sermon about the patience of Job. The powerfully built professor-as local lore maintained-stepped toward the bully and, remarking that even Job's patience would have worn thin under the circ.u.mstances, knocked off the man's cap and then ”grasping him by the hair, hoisted him at arm's length from the ground, as easily as if he had been an infant.” This was muscular Christianity at its best. The congregation loved it.42 At the same time that Garfield was being born again as a Christian warrior, he was awakening to another no less potent, no less muscular, if secular, faith-one drawing as many millions of young Northerners to its banner as the Gospel: the creed of the self-made man.

Many years later, a famous author who was almost Garfield's exact contemporary-they were born less than two months apart-would pen a highly embellished account of the late president's rise from obscurity to the White House. Horatio Alger t.i.tled his book From Ca.n.a.l Boy to President, From Ca.n.a.l Boy to President, and in it he turned Garfield into a version of one of his fictional heroes. (The biography's t.i.tle page reminded readers, in capital letters, that Alger himself was already famous as the and in it he turned Garfield into a version of one of his fictional heroes. (The biography's t.i.tle page reminded readers, in capital letters, that Alger himself was already famous as the AUTHOR OF RAGGED d.i.c.k; LUCK AND PLUCK; TATTERED TOM, ETC. AUTHOR OF RAGGED d.i.c.k; LUCK AND PLUCK; TATTERED TOM, ETC.)43 Even without embellishment, though, Garfield's swift rise in the world was indeed a novel-worthy tale of luck and pluck. Born into true poverty, he climbed up by dint of perseverance, intellectual accomplishment, and hard manual labor. He worked his way through a local academy, then the Eclectic Inst.i.tute, and then Williams College, where he distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar. On the strength of his Williams degree he was invited back to teach at the Eclectic, and ultimately to run the school. By the time he turned thirty, in November 1861, he could boast of having worked as a carpenter, ca.n.a.l boat driver, janitor, schoolteacher, farm laborer, preacher, college professor, college president, lawyer, state senator, and U.S. Army colonel. He was truly the author of his own destiny. ”The world talks about self-made men,” Garfield wrote to a friend in 1857. ”Every man that is made at all is self made.” Even without embellishment, though, Garfield's swift rise in the world was indeed a novel-worthy tale of luck and pluck. Born into true poverty, he climbed up by dint of perseverance, intellectual accomplishment, and hard manual labor. He worked his way through a local academy, then the Eclectic Inst.i.tute, and then Williams College, where he distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar. On the strength of his Williams degree he was invited back to teach at the Eclectic, and ultimately to run the school. By the time he turned thirty, in November 1861, he could boast of having worked as a carpenter, ca.n.a.l boat driver, janitor, schoolteacher, farm laborer, preacher, college professor, college president, lawyer, state senator, and U.S. Army colonel. He was truly the author of his own destiny. ”The world talks about self-made men,” Garfield wrote to a friend in 1857. ”Every man that is made at all is self made.”44 The idea that every American was what he made of himself had already become a kind of civic religion in the antebellum North. Ralph Waldo Emerson's most famous lecture and essay, ”Self-Reliance,” seemed to capture the spirit of the age. ”Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” the sage proclaimed. And truly great men possessed a faith in themselves that transcended individuality: ”To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,-that is genius.” Yet, Emerson said, men must also surrender themselves fully to the times in which they lived, and exist ”not [as] cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.”

The Sage of Concord's message was complex, even cryptic-and, as even he admitted, seemingly self-contradictory-but this scarcely mattered to the millions of young Americans who heard or read his words and took from them the idea that they were independent spirits in a revolutionary age. To them, Emerson was as much performer as philosopher, more rhythmist than rhetorician; his public appearances were emotional events like the rock concerts of a later generation. Garfield first saw him lecture in 1854 and confided afterward to his diary: ”He is the most startlingly original thinker I ever heard. The bolt which he hurls against error, like Goethe's cannonball goes 'fearful and straight shattering that it may reach and shattering what it reaches.' I could not sleep that night after hearing his thunderstorm of eloquent thoughts.” Emersonian ideas became an important part of Garfield's own thought. In September 1860, he lectured his students at the Eclectic Inst.i.tute: ”We build our own character & make our own world.” Each of us has innate ”powers,” and ”our use of them decides our lives and destinies.”45 This was an ideology particularly resonant in the fast-changing Midwest, a place of projected dreams-imaginary ca.n.a.ls and railroads, conjectural towns, utopian communes-that might vanish in a puff or, more remarkably, take shape out of nothing, just as the glorious statehouse arose on what had recently been a manure-covered pasture. Such a world required every person in it to be nimble, ambitious, adaptable, and free.46 The only thing lacking, it often seemed, was the ”Almighty effort” that Emerson also hailed, the revolutionary mission that would enlist Americans as ”guides, redeemers, and benefactors...advancing on Chaos and the Dark.” Where would it be found? For a while, almost nothing seemed too far-fetched. In 1852, the Hungarian revolutionary Louis Kossuth, whose independence movement had been routed by the forces of despotic Russia, visited Columbus on a tour through the United States. ”My heart has always heaved with interest at the name of Ohio,” he told the legislature at a special session. The governor vowed to lend him weapons and an army of young Buckeyes. Somehow, that local brigade never did end up marching off to liberate the distant Carpathians. But the heroic impulse remained.47 The idea of the brotherhood of man was more than an abstraction. Not only did Garfield and his friends address one another as ”Brother” in the Disciple tradition, they also felt intense emotional-at times also physical-bonds with one another, clearly stronger than any James felt with his wife, Lucretia, to whom his letters were often brusque and businesslike. Young men in the midnineteenth century could be pa.s.sionate in ways that some readers today find disorienting, driving modern scholars into endless-and probably irresolvable-debates over exactly where comrades.h.i.+p ended and s.e.xuality began. They found nothing unorthodox in strolling arm in arm, addressing letters to ”my dearest” or ”lovely boy,” and sharing fond embraces in a common bed. In 1858, when his old college friend Harry Rhodes was away from Hiram, Garfield wrote to him: ”Harry Dear, do you know how much I miss you? In the school-the church, at home, in labor or leisure-sleeping or waking, the want of your presence is felt. I knew I loved you, but you have left a larger void than I ever knew you filled.”

A few months later, he addressed the younger man even more pa.s.sionately, quoting Longfellow: ”I would that we might lie awake in each others arms for one long wakeful night and talk not in the thoughts or words 'Of the grand old masters / Nor from the Bards sublime,' but in that language 'whose tone gushes from the heart.'” Four years later, while Garfield was a general in the Union army, Rhodes would write wistfully to him, recalling the ”real physical delight-an acute pleasure almost” when the two roughhoused together (presumably naked) in the creek at Hiram.48 Far from being disparaged as a sign of effeminacy, such attachments were prized as evidence of what the antebellum generation called ”manliness”: a quality that embraced strength, authenticity, independence, and a kind of romantic (or Romantic) intensity. To embody this quality fully was young men's highest ambition, they often professed to one another. Indeed, scarcely could Garfield lift his pen to address any topic, whether personal or political, without referring to manliness or manhood. An 1859 letter he wrote to a college senior is a good example: You are now about to conclude upon a profession in life and I hope you will take one in which your highest manhood will find scope, and I hope you will make it a rule that the rush of the world's work shall not crowd out those pursuits which enlarge and enrich the soul. We see too many instances of those who have degenerated into mints to coin money in, and the fine medallion work of whose souls was defaced.... I know that you will always keep a fresh strong heart quick to the touch of friends.h.i.+p, whose portals fly open at a friend's approach like the gates of Peter's prison at the angel's touch.49 When Garfield derided procompromise Republicans as ”emasculates,” he also averred that the proper mission of the party was to ”sustain...independent and manly truth.” Nor was he alone in this sentiment. Countless newspaper editorials from the period praised Lincoln's (or other politicians') ”manly independence and honest, st.u.r.dy firmness” and the ”firm and manly tramp” of the Wide Awakes. At the height of the secession crisis, a Republican paper in Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.sailed the compromisers: ”We need, at the North, to inculcate the principle of manly, personal independence, a principle that will enable a man to avow his real sentiments, and maintain them too, by his vote, his acts and his voice.”50 Like later generations, the men of the 1850s and 1860s expressed their ideals of masculinity through their physical appearance. Most noticeable, and revealing, was the astonis.h.i.+ng profusion of facial hair that sprouted forth during those years, including on the previously smooth faces of Garfield and his friends. For a century and a half, American men (and most Europeans) had, nearly without exception, gone clean-shaven: it was a sign of gentility, civility, and restraint. (In th

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