United States Presidential Candidates 1880

"It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work, sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown. Let our people find a new meaning in the divine oracle which declares that "a little child shall lead them," for our own little children will soon control the destinies of the Republic."

"My countrymen, we do not now differ in our judgment concerning the controversies of past generations, and fifty years hence our children will not be divided in their opinions concerning our controversies. They will surely bless their fathers and their fathers' God that the Union was preserved, that slavery was overthrown, and that both races were made equal before the law. We may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation."

"Enterprises of the highest importance to our moral and material well-being unite us and offer ample employment of our best powers. Let all our people, leaving behind them the battlefields of dead issues, move forward and in their strength of liberty and the restored Union win the grander victories of peace."

"The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Departments and prescribe the grounds upon which removals shall be made during the terms for which incumbents have been appointed."

"I am about to assume the great trust which you have committed to my hands. I appeal to you for that earnest and thoughtful support which makes this Government in fact, as it is in law, a government of the people. I shall greatly rely upon the wisdom and patriotism of Congress and of those who may share with me the responsibilities and duties of administration, and, above all, upon our efforts to promote the welfare of this great people and their Government I reverently invoke the support and blessings of Almighty God."

"If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man — it is a man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil."

"I am glad to have the opportunity of standing up against a rabble of men who hasten to make weathercocks of themselves."

"I have always said that my whole public life was an experiment to determine whether an intelligent people would sustain a man in acting sensibly on each proposition that arose, and in doing nothing for mere show or demagogical effect."

"It is not manly to lie even about Satan."

"I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion."

"The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions."

"The great Carlyle has said that the best gift God ever gave to man was an eye that could really see; I venture to add that an equally rare and not less important gift is the courage to tell what one sees."

"I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil."

"Fellow-citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow-citizens! God reigns and the Government at Washington still lives!"

"History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology."

"I would rather be beaten in Right than succeed in Wrong."

"Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification. They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed."

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.... And when you realize the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."

"The truth will set you free — but first it will make you miserable."

"I take it that the question of employees is only a question of private and corporate economy, and individuals or companies have the right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest. We have a treaty with the Chinese government which should be religiously kept until its provisions are abrogated by the action of the general Government, and I am not prepared to say that it should be abrogated until our great manufacturing and corporate interests are conserved in the matter of labor."

"Now we'll use a freemen's right, as thinking freemen should. Shouting the battle cry of Garfield, and we'll place our ballots where they'll do the toiling millions good. Shouting the battle cry for Garfield. Hurrah, boys for Garfield!"

"He rushes into a fight with the horns of a bull and the skin of a rabbit."

"James A. Garfield must be our president. I know. Colored man, he is right on our questions, take my word for it. He is a typical American all over. He has shown us how man in the humblest circumstances can grapple with man, rise, and win. He has come from obscurity to fame, and we'll make him more famous. Has burst up through the incrustations that surround the poor, and has shown us how it is possible for an American to rise. He has built the road over which he traveled. He has buffeted the billows of adversity, and tonight, he swims in safety where Hancock, in despair, is going down."

"Here he was leader and master, not by combination of scheming, not by chicanery or caucus, but by the force of his cultivated mind, his keen and farseeing judgment, his unanswerable logic, his strength and power of speech, his thorough comprehension of the subjects of legislation. Always strong, he was strongest on his feet addressing the House or from the rostrum the assembled people. Who of us having heard him here or elsewhere speaking upon a question of great national concern can forget the might and majesty, the force and directness, the grace and beauty of his utterances? He was always just to his adversary, an open and manly opponent, and free from invective. He convinced the judgment with his searching logic, while he swayed his listeners with brilliant periods and glowing eloquence. He was always an educator of people. His thoughts were fresh, vigorous, and instructive."

"Although elected, General Garfield never took his seat in the Senate of the United States. His legislative career ended here, where it had practically begun eighteen years before. His nomination for the Presidency occurred soon after the Legislature of Ohio had chosen him Senator, and came to him, as did all of his honors, because deserved. Although unsought, no mere chance brought him this rare distinction. His solid reputation rendered it not improbable at any time. He had the qualities which attached his great party to him and the equipment which filled the fullest measure of public and party requirements. From the stirring scenes at Chicago to the succeeding election he bore himself like a statesman and patriot fit for the highest trust. He advanced in public confidence, and whenever he met with or addressed the people, he enlarged the circle of his admiring followers and friends. … He was twenty-three years of age when he confronted the practical duties and the wider problems of life. All before had been training and preparation, the best of both, and his marvelous career ended before he was fifty. Few have crowded such great results and acquired such lasting fame in so short a life. Few have done so much for country and for civilization as he whom we honor to-day, stricken down as he was when scarce at the meridian of his powers. He did not flash forth as a meteor; he rose with measured and stately step over rough paths and through years of rugged work. He earned his passage to every preferment. He was tried and tested at every step in his pathway of progress. He produced his passport at every gateway to opportunity and glory. His broad and benevolent nature made him the friend of all mankind."

"James A. Garfield, who may have been the best president we never had, or hardly had. Garfield was fatally wounded only months into his presidency by a deranged office seeker with a handgun, and the memorials to him, statuary, parks, streets, schools here in Washington and elsewhere, reflect not just the nation's grief over his martyrdom but also a genuine admiration felt across a great part of the country and especially among its most downtrodden. Garfield was a poor boy, last of the log cabin presidents, who lost his father early, worked his way through school, and went on to become a professor, Civil War general, businessman and congressman. He was chosen for the 1880 Republican presidential nomination even though he didn't seek it and tried to dissuade the delegates at the deadlocked convention from stampeding to him. Talk about a story-line that would test the credulity of modern American audiences; and he took office reluctantly, sensing that he would never see his Ohio farm again. Garfield was an upright man but human, and he made mistakes and enemies here and there. But he was a forceful and widely respected advocate for what he believed in, inspired trust among many and felt strongly on the great issue of his day. The future of newly-emancipated Americans. He was also a powerful orator, and in his inaugural address he delivered an impassioned defense of civil rights, the likes of which was not to be made by another American president for nearly a century."

"Garfield appointed four black men, among them Frederick Douglass, to posts in his administration. We are left to wonder today what a president of conviction and conscience such as Garfield might have done to rouse the country and lead it against the vicious new institutions of repression and virtual re-enslavement that were taking hold in the American South, with the silent acquiescence of the north. We will never know, of course, what the limits of his leadership might have been, but it would seem, from the grief at his passing and the memorials that remain, that he was a president who left more of a mark on the people’s consciousness in a few months than some others have in four years and more."

"Ideas control the world."

"Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself,— that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it."

"Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself."

"The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others."

"I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands."