VIEW OF WASHINGTON FROM THE SIGNAL CAMP, GEORGETOWN HEIGHTS. From a sketch made at tlie time.
governors and legislatures of the loyal States responsibilities of a kind wholly unprecedented. A long period of profound peace had made every military organization seem almost farcical. A few independent companies formed the merest shadow of an army, and the State militia proper was only a nominal thing. It happened, however, that I held a commission as brigadier in this State militia, and my intimacy with Governor Dennison led him to call upon me for such assistance as I could render in the first enrollment and organization of the Ohio quota. Arranging to be called to the Senate chamber when my vote might be needed, I gave my time chiefly to such military matters as the governor appointed. Although, as I have said, my military commission had been a nominal thing, and in fact I had. never worn a uniform, I had not wholly neglected theoretic preparation for such work. For some years, the possibility of a war of secession had been one of the things which were forced upon the thoughts of reflecting people, and I had given some careful study to such books of tactics and of strategy as were within easy reach. I had especially been led to read military history with critical care, and had carried away many valuable ideas from that most useful means of military education. I had, therefore, some notion of the work before us, and could approach its problems with less loss of time, at least, than if I had been wholly ignorant.
My commission as brigadier-general in the Ohio quota in national service was dated the 23d of April. . . .
paign in which he served, and led to his retiring from the army at the close of 1863. My own health, on the other hand, was strengthened by outdoor life and exposure, and I served to the end with growing physical vigor.
When Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for troops, the existing laws made it necessary that these should be fully organized and officered by the several States. Then, the treasury was in no condition to bear the burden of war expenditures, and, till Congress could assemble, the President was forced to rely on the States for means to equip and transport their own men. This threw upon the
ful for his friend than for himself, urged upon me his doubts whether my physical strength was equal to the strain that would be put upon it. “I,” said he, “ambig and strong, and if my relations to the church and the college can be loosened, I shall have no excuse for not enlisting; but you are slender and will break down.” It is true I then looked slender for a man six feet high; yet I had confidence in the elasticity of my constitution, and the result justified me, while it also showed how liable one is to mistake in such things. Garfield found that he had a tendency to weakness of the alimentary system, which broke him down on every cam-
think we greatly cheered him,—it was, rather, a deep Amen that went up from the crowd. We went home breathing more freely in the assurance we now felt that, for a time at least, no organized opposition to the Federal Government and its policy of coercion could be formidable in the North.
Tet the situation hung upon us like a nightmare. Garfield and I were lodging together at the time, our wives being kept at home by family cares, and when we reached our sitting-room, after an evening session of the Senate, we often found ourselves involuntarily groaning, “ Civil war in our land! ” The shame, the folly, the outrage, seemed too great to believe, and we half hoped to awake from it as from a dream. Among the painful remembrances of those days is the ever-present weight at the heart which never left me till I found relief in the active duties of camp life at the close of the month. I went about my duties (and I am sure most of those with whom I associated did the same) with the half-choking sense of a grief I dared not think of; like one who is dragging himself to the ordinary labors of life from some terrible and recent bereavement.
We talked of our personal duty, and though both Garfield and myself had young families, we were agreed that our activity in the organization and support of the Republican party made the duty of supporting the Government by military service come peculiarly home to us. He was, for the moment, somewhat trammeled by his half-clerical position, but he very soon cut the knot. My own path seemed unmistakably plain. He, more care-
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, IN 1861. Prom a sketch.
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