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Speech, sculpture reflect on greatness

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer Updated 7:40 AM Monday, November 16, 2009

On May 12, 1887, former Speaker of the House J. Warren Keifer told President Grover Cleveland and others gathered at unveiling of the Garfield Memorial that the assassinated president’s individual accomplishments didn’t account for the whole of the man.

His fellow Ohioan had been more than an eminent scholar, more than a general in the Union Army — more than a statesman or magistrate, Keifer said.

Garfield’s outstanding attribute, the Springfielder argued, was that he had “combined within himself all these various characters and illustrated all these qualities in a single life.”

In a speech that followed the form of the bronze statue created by Urbana’s John Quincy Adams Ward, Keifer focused on three figures at the base of the work depicting Garfield as a student, warrior and statesman.

Garfield the student appears in “the figure of a youth in primitive dress and in a thoughtful, studious attitude poring over some problem written on a piece of bark,” Keifer said.

Garfield the soldier is “the muscular figure of a warrior in ancient German costume, who, roused by the trumpet’s call, grasps his sword for action.”

“The third figure on the base represents him as a statesman in repose, suggestive of the ‘calm majesty of the law’ ... This figure is draped in costume, more refined and classic, indicating an intellectual domination,” Keifer said.

Pointing to the president’s Ohio roots, Keifer argued that Garfield “had the supreme advantage of being reared by a pious mother in the seclusion and quiet of the country,” free from what he called “the enfeebling conditions of city life.

Said Keifer, “The frequent solitude of the country boy compels him to think, and if of fair natural aptitude, to become an independent and accurate thinker.”

Had he grown up in a different era, Keifer added, Garfield “would have contented himself with permanently devoting his life to education, literature and the pulpit.”

But when the slavery controversy boiled over, “he promptly took a stand among the anti-slavery men,” Keifer said.

“This led him into politics early in life,” then the Army.

“Gen. Garfield, with no military education or training ... now found himself impelled by zeal for his country’s safety to take up the science and art of war,” Keifer said.

And he succeeded.

“For distinguished and gallant services in the Battle of Chickamauga,” Keifer said, “he was by President Lincoln made a major general, to rank from Sept. 19, 1863.”

Battlefield education

In Keifer’s view, such battlefield experiences shaped the nation and its people.

“A nation without battle fields would be devoid of patriotism — and a nation without patriotism in the people’s breasts is a feeble one, and is doomed to a short life.

“The history of the empires of the world, that have risen and passed away, affords many examples where national decay, precursor to ultimate overthrow, dates from the time when painting, music, sculpture and fine arts and letters were preferred to the pursuits of war.”

After leaving the army for Congress, Garfield considered a return to the battlefields, Keifer said, but President Abraham Lincoln told him: “I can make another major general, but I cannot make another representative, and at this juncture the government stands in need of heroic statesmen as well as brave soldiers.”

Life after the Army

On that bright dedication day in 1887, Keifer put the statue near the U.S. Capitol in historical context.

“Within the limit of the sound of my voice, was to be seen, when the war began, the slave auctioneer’s pen and block,” Keifer said “Here on this consecrated ground where now only notes of freedom are heard, there was then heard the agonizing wail of the slave mother weeping for her children.”

“With Lincoln, Stevens and others ... Garfield witnessed the death of slavery,” Keifer said.

To witnesses looking at the main section of the statue, which shows Garfield delivering his inaugural address, Keifer offered another observation.

“Garfield was by nature left-handed and sometimes on great occasions when he rose to speak, he at first seemed awkward. This all disappeared as his genius flashed out in his fervid, masterly treatment of the subject. He then appeared an oratorical giant — a superb human machine in action.”

But on July 2, 1881 — less than two months after the inauguration — an assassin’s bullet “laid him low,” Keifer said.

“During 80 days of uncomplaining heroism he suffered ... and with the soundless waves of eternity before him, his noble life went out, and his immortal spirit winged its way to join his twin presidential martyr (Lincoln).”

“Enduring as this bronze statue may be,” Keifer said, “the ruthless vandal or iconoclast may demolish it, or time, that destroyer of all things not fashioned by omnipotence, will crumble it to dust. ... But the sun of (Garfield’s) glory has risen, full orbed, high in the firmament of eternal truth and justice, there to shine on and on through the ages.”

The speaker concluded with the kind of orchestral flourish typical of the speeches of the day.

“My comrades: Inspired by the example of our dead friend; conscious of having performed a duty, which, in the providence of God, became ours to perform; and knowing that we shall soon have to answer the final roll call on earth and awake to the reveille call in another world, let us here consecrate ourselves anew to the unfinished duties of life and try to be worthy and prepared to meet him and our dead comrades beyond the grave.”

In 1887, former Speaker of the House J. Warren Keifer gave a speech at the dedication of the Garfield Memorial. The Springfielder’s words — much like the statue created to honor the slain president — were a testament to Garfield’s legacy.

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