James A. Garfield,[1] while
president of Hiram College, was outlining the courses
to the father of a prospective student.
The intensive and extensive range of the work amazed the parent. “Why, my boy can’t compass all that!” he
exclaimed. “He wants to finish much more
quickly. Can’t you arrange that for
him?” Mr. Garfield reflected for a few moments. “Yes,” he said finally, slowly. “Yes, your boy could take a shorter
course. It all depends on what he wants
to make of himself. When God wants to
make an oak, he takes a hundred years.
He takes three months to make a squash!”
It is a law as immutable as
ever were the laws of the Medes and Persians, a law
as unchangeable as sunrise and sunset, that the fruits and the things best
worth having ripen most slowly. To
attain a worth-while plant or a worth-while ambition you have to get deep down
into the ground, deep down into the foundations. You have to get busy with the roots. And while the plant may not show off so well
for the first few seasons, after a while it will make shade and bear fruit. The inexpert or the foolish planter who wants
shade and fruit with as little delay and as little effort as possible, tries to
force the tree to bearing, and it dies like the hothouse plant which has been
forced for an Easter flower market. When
the plant shoots, the roots rot. What is
worth getting is worth while waiting for.
What is worth doing is worth while taking the time for.
One of the most powerful and
popular pulpit orators preached his best sermon on “The Government of
God.” “About how long did it take you to
prepare the sermon?” he was asked later by one of his church members. “Oh, about forty years,” he answered.
[1] James Abram Garfield was born in a log cabin near
Cleveland, Ohio, in 1831, the youngest of five children of Abram and Eliza
Ballou Garfield. Raised by his mother, who was widowed in 1833, James grew up
in poverty. Though bright and anxious to learn, he turned 17 with but little
schooling. In 1848 he struck out on his own and worked on a canal boat, but
about six weeks later he returned home seriously ill. While convalescing he
decided to get an education.
For the next decade religion
and academic life occupied Garfield. He attended a seminary, taught in district
schools, and from 1851 to 1854 studied and taught at the Western Reserve
Eclectic Institute, now Hiram College. Through these years Garfield was an
introspective person with narrow views and a small circle of friends. Deeply
religious, he zealously embraced and preached the doctrines of the Disciples of
Christ. From the Eclectic, a Disciple school, he entered Williams College. He
graduated with honors in 1856.
Garfield returned to Hiram,
became principal of the Eclectic in 1858, and instilled new life into the
school. He preached, officiated at marriages and funerals, and lectured. During
these years Garfield turned against slavery and became interested in politics.
In 1859 he was elected as a Republican to the Ohio Senate, where he denounced
slavery and secession, advocating force, if needed, to preserve the Union. He
studied law and was admitted to the bar. In 1858 he married Lucretia Rudolph, a
former classmate.
In the Civil War Garfield rose
from lieutenant colonel to major general. He provided superb military
leadership, demonstrating a sound understanding of tactics, strategy, and the
relationship between war and politics. From the outset he favored emancipation
of the slaves and conquest of the South. After the Battle of Chickamauga, in
which he performed heroically, Garfield resigned his commission to enter the U.S.
House of Representatives, to which he had been elected in 1862.
Garfield served in the House
from 1863 to 1880. He was broadly intelligent, national in outlook, and
generally moderate in his views. He tempered idealism with practicality. He
worked hard and spoke and wrote well. From 1871 to 1875 he was chairman of the
committee on appropriations. During Reconstruction, Garfield sided with the
Radical Republicans, supporting black suffrage, congressional Reconstruction,
and the impeachment of President Johnson. Gradually events convinced him that
progress in the South would come only with education, business enterprise, and
time.
An articulate defender of a
conservative monetary policy, Garfield urged the resumption of specie payments
and the payment of government debts in coin. He opposed the coinage of
overvalued silver but became interested in the possibility of a sound
bimetallic standard. A moderate protectionist, he looked to the time when U.S.
industry would be competitive without tariff supports. His record enabled his
party to make protection for home industry a leading issue in 1880.
Garfield helped elect
Rutherford B. Hayes president, serving on the electoral commission formed to
settle the disputed election of 1876. During the Hayes administration he was
minority leader of the House. In January 1880 he was elected to the U.S.
Senate, but he never took his Senate seat; instead, he was nominated for
president, and won. Garfield’s months in the White House, though few, were busy
and dramatic. Developments seemed to foreshadow a vigorous and able
administration. Then, on July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot in a Washington
railroad station. The assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, was a mentally unbalanced
man who had unsuccessfully sought a federal appointment. The president died in
Elberon, N.J., on September 19. (Source:
jamesgarfield.org)
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