The Story of Garfield Part 1

The Story of Garfield.

by William G. Rutherford.

CHAPTER I.

THE FAR WEST.

The United States Sixty Years ago--The "Queen City" of the West--The Rush for New Lands--Marvellous Growth of American Cities.

Go to Liverpool or Glasgow, and embark on one of the great ocean steamers, which are constantly crossing the Atlantic. Sail westwards for about a week, and you will reach the eastern sh.o.r.es of the New World.

If you land at New York, you will find yourself in one of the largest cities on the face of the globe. You will also find the country largely peopled by the same race as yourself, and everywhere you will be addressed in your own language. You may travel for weeks from town to town, and from city to city, until you are lost in wonder at the vast and populous empire which English-speaking people have founded and built up on the other side of the Atlantic.

Where is the New World of fancy and fiction so graphically described in Indian stories and tales of backwoods life? And where are the vast prairies and almost boundless forests of sober fact, where the bear, the wolf, and the buffalo roamed at will--the famous hunting-grounds of the Red Indians and the trappers of the Old World?

Where is the "Far West" of song and story? Where are the scenes of Fenimore Cooper's charming descriptions, which have thrown a halo of romance over the homes of the early settlers who first explored those unknown regions?

For the most part they are gone for ever, as they appeared to the eyes of the pioneers and pathfinders, who wandered for weeks through the wilderness, without hearing the sound of any human voice but their own.

Now on forest and prairie land stand great cities, equal in population and wealth to many famous places, which were grey with age before the New World was discovered. The trading posts, once scattered over a wide region, where Indians and white hunters met to barter the skins of animals for fire-water and gunpowder, have disappeared before the advances of civilisation, and the uninhabited wilderness of fifty years ago has become the centre of busy industries of world-wide fame and importance.

Sixty years ago, fifteen of the largest cities in the United States had no existence. They were not born. Living men remember when they were first staked out on the unbroken prairie, and the woodsman's axe was busy clearing the ground for the log huts of the first settlers who founded the cities of to-day.

At that period, Chicago, now a "Millionaire city," and the second in America, consisted of a little fort and a few log huts. There was scarcely a white woman in the settlement, and no roads had been constructed. The ground on which the great city now stands could have been bought for the sum now demanded for a few square feet in one of its busy streets.

No wonder the American people are proud of "the Queen City of the West." It stands far inland, a thousand miles from the ocean, and yet it is an important port on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan, and steamers from London can land their cargoes at its quays. More than twenty thousand vessels enter and leave the port in one year. It is the greatest grain and provision market in the world.

It may with truth be said that in America cities rise up almost in a night-time. The forest and the prairie are one day out of the reach of civilisation, and the next they are one with the throbbing centres of life and progress. The railway, the means of communication, changes all as by a wizard's touch.

One day the news spread through a certain district, that two lines of railway were to cross at a certain point in the wilderness. Settlers at once crowded to the place, and next day the land was staked out in town lots, with all the details of streets, squares, and market-place.

Soon afterwards, shanties were seen on the prairies, moving with all speed, on rollers, towards the new town. On the second day a number of houses were under construction, while the owners camped near by in tents. In a few months hundreds of dwellings had been erected, and a newspaper established to chronicle the doings of the inhabitants.

"The old nations of the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span of a man's few days upon earth."

This marvellous growth and rapid change from wilderness to cultivation must be known and understood by readers on this side of the Atlantic, they can appreciate the story of a Lincoln or a Garfield who began life in a log hut in a backwoods settlement in the Far West, and made their way to the White House, the residence of the ruler of an empire as large as the whole of Europe.

CHAPTER II.

THE PIONEERS.

A New England Village--Hardships of Emigrants--The Widow Ballou and her Daughter Eliza--The Humble Dwelling of Abram Garfield--The Garfields and the Boyntons--The Removal to a New Home--The Wonderful Baby-Boy.

The early settlers from the Old World first peopled the eastern sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic, and founded the New England States, New York State, and the whole seaboard from Maine to Florida.

A New England village was a collection of log houses on the edge of a deep forest. Snow drifted into the room through the cracks in the walls, and the howling of wolves made night hideous around them. The children were taught in log schoolhouses, and the people worshipped in log churches.

Savage Indians kept the settlers in a state of continual fear.

Sometimes they would suddenly surround a solitary house, kill all the inmates, and set fire to the dwelling. Again and again have the children been aroused from their sleep by the fearful Indian war-whoop, which was more dreaded than the howling of the wolves. Even women learned to use guns and other weapons, that they might be able to defend their homes from these savage a.s.saults.

The log house villages grew into populous places, and the descendants of the "Pilgrims" were not always satisfied to remain in the cities founded by their forefathers. Wonderful stories were told in the towns of the amazing fruitfulness of the forest and prairie land out West, which induced large numbers to sell their property and set out on the tedious and adventurous journey.

Before the great lines of railway were constructed, which now stretch across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there was a constant stream of emigration from the East to the West.

Large waggons carried the women and children, and the stores of necessary articles, which must be conveyed at all cost, for they could not be obtained in the localities to which the pioneers bent their steps.

Slowly the emigrant trains made their way through roadless regions.

They had to ford rivers, wade through swamps, and cut paths through thick forests. Weeks, and even months, were spent on journeys which are now accomplished in less than twenty-four hours.

Numerous difficulties and manifold dangers beset the wanderers' path; yet, regardless of both, they pushed on with infinite courage and patience. Nor was the journey through the wilds without a tinge of romance to the younger and more adventurous spirits, who enjoyed the freedom they could not have in the towns and cities.

About eighty years ago, a widow and her family--a son and a daughter--packed up all their worldly possessions in an emigrant waggon, and started for the West. Widow Ballou made her home in the State of Ohio, which at that time was only peopled by a few scattered settlers. Five years afterwards, a young man named Abram Garfield started on the same journey. It is said that he was more anxious to renew his acquaintance with the Ballou family than to make his fortune.

The widow's daughter Eliza was the attraction that drew him into the Western wilds.

On the third of February 1821, Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou became man and wife, and their first home was a log cabin, which the young husband erected at Newburg, near Cleveland. It was an isolated spot, for Cleveland, the larger place, then consisted of a few log cabins, containing a population of about one hundred persons.

The humble dwelling of Abram Garfield and his young wife had but one large room. The three windows were of greased paper, a subst.i.tute for gla.s.s, and the furniture was home made and of the rudest description.

Wood was the chief material used. There were wooden stools, a wooden bed, and wooden plates and dishes. A frying-pan, an iron pot, and a kettle, made up the list of utensils which were absolutely necessary.

Nine years pa.s.sed away, during which the young couple were very happy in each other's love, and three children were added to their little family circle. Abram worked on the land, and was for a time employed in the construction of the Ohio and Pennsylvanian Ca.n.a.l. To provide for his growing family, the young husband then bought fifty acres of land, a few miles away from his first home. At the same time, Amos Boynton, who had married Mrs. Garfield's sister, also bought a tract of land in the same locality.

The two families removed to the new scene of their labours at the same time, and lived together in one log cabin, until they had erected a second dwelling. When this was done, the Garfields and the Boyntons settled down to reclaim the wilderness. They had to depend on each other for society, as their nearest neighbour lived seven miles away.

Garfield's new home was built of unhewn logs, notched and laid one upon another, to the height of twelve feet in front and eight feet behind.

The s.p.a.ces between the logs were filled with clay and mud, to keep out the wind and the rain. The roof was covered with boards, and the floor was made of logs, each split into two parts and laid the flat side up.

A plank door and three small windows completed the primitive dwelling.

There was but one large room on the ground floor, twenty by thirty feet, and a loft above, to which access was obtained by a ladder. In the loft were the straw beds on which the children slept.

The land which the pioneers had bought was part of the forest, and was therefore covered with timber. This had to be cleared away before the land could be brought into cultivation. Much hard work and steady application were needed to accomplish this purpose. Abram Garfield was a strong, well-made man, who shrank from no labour, however hard, and boldly faced every difficulty with a stout heart and a determined will.

Early and late he toiled on his farm, cheered by the presence of his wife and children, who were all the world to him. The trees fell before his axe, and ere long he had room to sow his first crop. With a thankful heart he saw the grain ripen, and his first harvest was safely gathered in before the winter storms came on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The trees fell before his axe.]

In January 1830 he removed to his new home, and in November 1831 his fourth child was born. This baby boy received the name of James Abram Garfield. Little did the humble backwoodsman dream that the name he lovingly gave his child would one day be on the lips of millions of his fellow-countrymen; that it would rank with those of princes, kings, and emperors; and that it would be linked for ever with the history of the United States of America.

CHAPTER III.

A FIRE IN THE FOREST.

The Effects of Prairie Fires--How Abram Garfield saved his Crops--The sudden Illness and Death of Abram Garfield--The Grave to the corner of the Wheatfield.

One of General Sherman's veteran soldiers was once describing a prairie fire. When he had finished his story, he raised himself to his full six feet height, and with flashing eyes said, "If I should ever catch a man firing a prairie or a forest, as G.o.d helps me, I would shoot him down in his deed."