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GARFIELD AS A STATESMAN.

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Statesmanship consists rather in removing causes than in

punishing or evading results.

-Garfield's Speech on the Ninth Census

CHAPTER XVII.

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HE APPEARS IN CONGRESS.

ENERAL GARFIELD, after resigning from the army, entered a wider field of

usefulness, than that permitted him at the front. But he still remained one of the nation's defenders. His election to Congress was the result of the popular idea in the North during the summer of 1862, that the war would end in a few months, at least by Christmas. It was but rational, that the people, believing this, should reward with Congressional honors, those who had won distinc

tion in arms.

The Congressional district, in which he lived, is generally called the Ashtabula district, and has been more faithful to its representatives than any in the North, having had but four in half a century. It now consists of the counties of Ashtabula, Lake, Granger, Trumbull and Mahoney. Portage, which was a part of it when Garfield was first elected, was detached in 1880. The district is the Nineteenth, situated in the Western Reserve-the New England of the North-west-in North-eastern Ohio. It was originally settled by New Englanders; and its population has the thrift, the keen intelligence, the habits of local self-government, the poli(257)

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tical instincts, and the morals of New England. No population of equal numbers, on the long line reaching from New York to Chicago, writes so many letters and receives through the mails so much reading-matter. There is less illiteracy in proportion to the population, than in any other district in the United States. This district, the eastern portion of the Reserve, is essentially a rural one, with the exception of some iron-working portions in the southern end. It early became deeply interested in the anti-slavery movement, which greatly quickened the interest of its people in public affairs. This intelligent interest in the national welfare made the district accessible to General Garfield's earnest, straight-forward exposition of solid political doctrines, to his high bearing, to the influence of his mental and moral power upon intelligent and honest minds, rather than to any demagogic measures.

This district was the one, that was long made famous by Joshua R. Giddings, the anti-slavery champion. Having become careless of the arts of politics he came to look upon a nomination and re-election as matters of course. An ambitious lawyer, named Hutchins, taking advantage of this over-confidence, carried the convention of 1858. The friends of Giddings never forgave Hutchins, and cast about for a means of defeating him. The old man himself, comfortably quartered in his consulate at Montreal, did not care to fight for a re

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