‘For Love of Country They Accepted Death’

James Garfield’s 1868 speech at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Before the Civil War, James Garfield had no military experience. In fact, the man who would become our 20th president was serving in Congress as a representative from Ohio when war broke out. But when Congress adjourned he returned home to drive enlistments and was commissioned as a colonel in August 1861. He served with distinction, played a key role in several battles, and was promoted to major general in 1863. That combination of public and military service made him the ideal person to deliver the first “Decoration Day” address at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868. Decoration Day later became known as Memorial Day, and also became a day for us to honor those who died in all of our wars.

Garfield’s words resonate today, especially as America endures a period of intense polarization. Just months after our own David French published Divided We Fall, warning that secession threats should be taken seriously, we watched as hundreds of Americans stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop a peaceful transfer of power. Garfield noted in his speech how quickly American became wartorn, and he praised the sacrifices of those who died to preserve our nation. 

I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept; plighted faith may be broken; and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. For the noblest man that lives, there still remains a conflict. He must still withstand the assaults of time and fortune, must still be assailed with temptations, before which lofty natures have fallen; but with these the conflict ended, the victory was won, when death stamped on them the great seal of heroic character, and closed a record which years can never blot.

I know of nothing more appropriate on this occasion than to inquire what brought these men here; what high motive led them to condense life into an hour, and to crown that hour by joyfully welcoming death? Let us consider.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Thank you for printing this! I confess I did not know much about President Garfield other than the circumstances of his death. This speech increased my respect for him.

    One thing I noted was that he said that 8 years earlier America had gone from the most peaceful/peace loving nation to the most war torn. While from a modern perspective the 1850s can hardly be called peaceful (in my opinion it was pretty violently sectionalist), it did make me think about today. That statement about peace loving could be made today. It seems hard to imagine America racked by civil war again, but I did get chills reading that. A reminder about human nature and how we are never as far as we think from violence. And that nobody truly know their own virtue until tested.

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  2. Larry Legg

    This speech is beautiful, recalling a time of dignity, honor and sacrifice. So sad that we have come to our current state.

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  3. Andrew Ratts

    Mr. Steagall’s argument is that since the Constitution recognized slavery, it could never be restricted, anywhere, I.e., he agrees with Justice Taney in Dred Scott. An elective republic does not exist if the losers reserve the right to take their ball and go home when they lose. What is left is anarchy. Lincoln understood this and that in order to save what was then the world’s only democracy, required fighting that terrible war, without equivocation

    The country appeased the South 20 years after the war, removing the federal troops that enforced individual rights and letting home create the myth that it was about “Northern aggression” and that treason was “defending their homeland”, as if the federal government had no authority under the Constitution, and to slander heroes like General Grant — in order to move on.

    But after 150 years, enough is enough. It is time to tell the truth. The confederate cause, and it’s symbols, should be reviled.

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    1. Jim Stegall

      I don't know this "Mr. Steagall" to whom you refer, and I'm sure I've never argued that "since the Constitution recognized slavery, it could never be restricted..." I think you've confused me with someone else.

      The rest of your comments aren't informed enough to merit further discussion.

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      1. Andrew Ratts

        Apologies for misspelling your name (as you might guess, mine is often misspelled). You assert that since the confederate states disagreed with the result they could "accept it or leave". Explain to me how leaving the Union "accepts" the result of the federal election held by that Union, or how slavery could ever be restricted if any effort to do results in such "acceptance" of that effort. Your ad hominem statement indicates you have run out of arguments -- or you can tell me which of my statements are historically incorrect.

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        1. Jim Stegall

          As you say, I wrote that states could "accept it or leave." Note the word "or." I assume you know what that means. If you do, the error in your query ("Explain to me how...") should be obvious.

          I realize that most people have grown up with a badly skewed understanding of the Civil War era and have settled on 'positions' regarding the North and the South, and so I try to exercise patience in discussions such as these. Your original comments are indicative of one such species of dug-in opinion, and experience has taught me that any effort to educate you on the topic will be both time-consuming and fruitless. I'm sorry if that strikes you as an ad hominem attack. It was not intended so.


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          1. Andrew Ratts

            Since you have resorted to condescending remarks, I will educate you by breaking it down for you— the threat that if I do not get the election result I want, I will not accept the result means there is no election. Your views would be at home in the mouths of Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens— perhaps those people are your heroes. They are not mine, and they should not be anyone’s.

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  4. Nickson

    A society in which 40% of the population believes that John McCain *wasn’t* a national hero is a sick society indeed. But that’s where we are. Happy Memorial Day!

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    Victor Clairmont

    Wonderful speech.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    Helen Jackson died in January this year, the last surviving civil war bride. He was 93, she was 17 when they married in 1936.

    My great-grandfather was born prior to the civil war, my oldest two sisters remember him.

    It wasn't that long ago, in so many ways.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Cornelius O’Brien

      Good stuff. Not that long ago.

      https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/29/president-john-tyler-grandson-harrison/%3foutputType=amp

      The grandson of His Accidency, John Tyler, was still alive a year ago. Tyler died shortly after war erupted among the States, a former President was a representative of Virginia in the Confederate congress

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      1. Avatar photo
        Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

        A fun side note. My ancestor John Janney tied on the initial VP ballot, because he voted for John Tyler. Tyler won on the 2nd ballot or so.

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    2. DJ

      On a podcast a while back I heard someone say that the country is only a bit more than three Joe Bidens old (79 x 3).

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      1. Avatar photo
        Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

        And that's No Malarkey!

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  7. Mary Stine

    Thank you Dispatchers! After watching two documentaries on the Greenwood OK massacre last night, this speech restores my hope. I wonder how many Americans realize that our Civil War is remembered and celebrated around the world? I wonder how many of us know that the surviving soldiers used to meet, both sides together, to share remembrances and celebrate their shared struggle? This speech honors that struggle. Our brothers and sisters who are lost in their hate groups have forgotten this and somehow they need to be helped to recover that memory.

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  8. Susan Virgilio

    This was a beautiful, poignant speech. That we once had leaders who served, and wrote and spoke this way...wow.

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  9. Richard Zakin

    Thank you. A speech I had never read or knew about. What eloquence!

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  10. Andrew Ratts

    What a great reminder of what the civil war was about — a free government requires that the losers of an election accept the result — it is time to stop indulging those who insist it was about something else other than the confederacy was formed because they would not accept Lincoln’s election and the writing on the wall that slavery was on the path to extinction. It was treason, pure and simple.

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    1. Jim Stegall

      A free government requires that the losers of an election accept the result--or leave. Seven states chose the later course, and while it was a very bad decision on practical grounds, there was nothing treasonous about it. There is no moral, humane, or ethical principle that binds a society, or part of it (the South has always been a separate society) permanently to one particular government. As the Founders agreed in 1776, the purpose of government is to secure man's natural rights, and that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Though it was for very bad reasons, this is what the original seceding states did.

      The Southern states joined a Union that recognized and protected the right of property in slaves. When that right was threatened--when the rules were being changed in such a way as to destroy what they thought of as a vital economic, political, and social interest--they took the decision to leave. Nothing in the Constitution prevented them from doing so, and the Tenth Amendment clearly protected the power of a state to do so. The decision was taken by the most democratic methods used at the time; most states held referendums on the issue, a far more democratic method of making authoritative decisions than was used to declare independence from Great Britain, or to join the Union in the first place.

      The charge of treason is and always has been nothing more than war-time rhetoric and goes against the most basic American foundational principles. One doesn't have to be a Confederate sympathizer to understand that. Seven states seceded--legally--when the basic contract which bound them to the Union was threatened with a change so profound that their people could no longer consent to be governed by it. It was a foolish decision made more in passion than in reason, and driven by a desire to protect an insidious institution. But it was their decision to make, and as a purely legal matter it should have been respected. Of course, the purely legal course of action is not always the wisest one, or even a possible one, and in this case the Lincoln administration had no choice but to resist it with force, regardless of the legalities. Not because, as the Northern myth goes, secession would "destroy" the Union or democracy itself (the United States would have gotten along fine with the same Constitution intact, without the seven gulf states had it simply recognized the CSA, as the Confederate government asked), but because the cotton region was simply too economically important to lose, as was control of the Mississippi River and New Orleans (then the Midwest's most important outlet to the sea).

      Few Americans nowadays care enough about the truth of that time to wade through the dusty facts, and each side has constructed over the years simple, comfortable myths to justify what they or their ancestors did. The truth is (as usual) far more complicated and morally ambiguous, and no one comes out looking very good in its harsh glare. The war was the inevitable consequence of the evolution of a society steeped in racism and bound, as all societies are, to vital economic interests that can't be ignored.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Smitty

        "Nothing in the Constitution prevented them from doing so, and the Tenth Amendment clearly protected the power of a state to do so."

        The quote is erroneous. Article 1 Section 10 would mean that any succession would have to be approved by Congress e.g. West Virginia. If Congress did not approve succession, the southern states could have sued under Article 3 Section 2. Instead they chose to wage war on the United States at Fort Sumter.

        "The charge of treason is and always has been nothing more than war-time rhetoric and goes against the most basic American foundational principles."

        This quote is also in error. Article 3 Section 3 Clause 1 states, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." So attacking the United States is treason and giving aid and comfort to those who attack the United States is treason.

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        1. Jim Stegall

          Besides learning how to spell "secession," you really need to study the Constitution a bit more. You seem to be referring to Article IV, Section 3, which requires the consent of Congress before states carve new states out of their own territory, or combine with other states to form new states. Nothing in that section has anything to do with states leaving the Union.

          Treason is a charge which can only apply to citizens of the United States. At the time the Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter they were no longer citizens of the United States, but citizens of the Confederate States. I agree with others here who have called that an act of war, but it was one that, from the Confederate point of view was fully justified, since US forces were occupying what they considered to be Confederate national territory--which, by the way, is also an act of war, and one that preceded the Confederate bombardment.

          Like it or not, the US Civil War wasn't really a civil war at all. It was a war between two states, one of which was trying to establish its independence while the other sought to prevent it. Those who fought for the South were no more guilty of treason against the US than the soldiers of any other nation the US has ever fought against.

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      2. Avatar photo
        DougAz

        Ridiculous argument

        The worst mistake ever made by America was not hanging Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, Forrest and a thousand Generals and Colonels of the traitors of the Confederacy.

        America let these murderers go without accountability.

        No accountability..look where that got America

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        1. Jim Stegall

          That's a modern fantasy, but no such policy could have been carried out. Any attempt to do so would have simply turned the entire South into a generations-long guerrilla war along the lines of Northern Ireland during the troubles. And the end result would have been an eventual division into two states, as that is the only way the US could have extricated itself from such a mess.

          The goal of the war, from the US point of view, was reunification--making one country out of two different peoples. That is rarely done successfully by force alone. In the end the dominant side MUST accept and accommodate the people over which it wishes to rule. That is the only way they will ever accept integration into the dominant society, and the only way the country will ever really be 'one country.'

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          1. Avatar photo
            DougAz

            Well.. clearly that is and was a complete failure for our fellow Black Americans.

            The Lost Cause..is the Cause of our division today

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        2. Avatar photo
          Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

          Yeah, not hanging lee and davis got us 78 million+ Americans voting for Biden, you may have a point.

          Although 2020 will go down in history as the year the political choices sucked worse than the pandemic.

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          1. Jim Stegall

            ???

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        3. Avatar photo
          Phil H

          The biggest mistake during Reconstruction was not in not haning the Confederates.

          The worst mistake was in not finishing the job of integrating the freed slaves into society. The Radical Republicans started the job, arguably with a heavy hand, but after ten years, their ardor cooled and that effort was given up as a bargaining chip to settle the disputed 1876 election.

          Net result: the South reasserted dominance over its freed slaves, instituted Jim Crow and reduced the 14th and 15th Amendments to pieces of paper for a hundred years. We are living with the results.

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          1. Jim Stegall

            In the end, both sides got something close to what they wanted. The North got reunification (and the economic benefits that came with it). The South got a new version of slavery--the 'Jim Crow' laws that, in effect, re-established the social, political, and (to a large degree) economic control over African Americans that slavery had previously provided. The US won the conventional phase of the war but proved--as it has so often in its history--incapable of capitalizing on the unconventional 'war' that followed.

            The problem was that Northern resolve to 'do something' for the African American was never very strong. It was one thing to think that slavery should be abolished; it was quite another to think that African Americans should be considered as equals, allowed to vote, run a business, get an education, live in your neighborhood, etc. The people of the North were (and still are) in general no less racist than their Southern counterparts, and when the occupation became just another drain on the treasury it lost what little popular support it had.

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      3. Avatar photo
        Phil H

        There are several flaws in Jim's analysis:

        - There is no right to secession. The Declaration of Independence had one legal affect -- to declare independence. Its justification of that action was not itself a legal provision. The Constitution itself is the relevant legal document. And on secession, it is silent. If there is an argument to make from that silence, it would be that unilateral secession, which would tend to disrupt the Union, would not be permissible, unless specifically granted.

        - There was no explicit recognition of "the right of property in slaves". There was a tacit recognition that slaves existed, and a specific right to have runaway "persons" to be returned to "those whom service is due," which is far more limited, and makes chattel slaves sound more like bound servants. (Plus, if you look to the Declaration to have legal affect, there is the little phrase "all men are created equal" which says nothing about race).

        - Slavery was not about to be abolished just because a Republican President was elected. The Republican party platform called for slavery to be limited from any new territories. There was no attempt to abolish slavery in existing slave states.

        I appreciate that you are trying to rehabilitate the South's role in starting the Civil War. It might well be true that firing on Fort Sumter disrupted what might have been a peaceful separation. But we will never know.

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        1. Jim Stegall

          Let's accept for the sake of argument that the DoI doesn't establish an explicit "legal provision." What did it do then? I (and I think most scholars) have always read the document as an explanation of the moral and/or philosophical principles upon which the new country was to be founded, principles such as legitimacy springing exclusively from the consent of the governed. If that was true then (and I certainly hope it's still what we all believe, else our whole framework of democratic government is based on sand), it must have been true as well in 1860.

          As for the argument that absent explicit authority to secede granted to the states in the Constitution it must be considered illegal, I think you have to examine the history and structure of the Constitution for the answer. The Constitution created a federal government with limited powers, and the addition of the Tenth Amendment explicitly clarified that any powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution were retained by the states. Now, if the states had the power to join the Union via ratification by their legislatures, how could they not also have the power to rescind that ratification? When and how (by what act) did they give that power up? What document shows that they did that? I think the clear implication is the reverse of the one you've posited--that silence on the matter must be interpreted as leaving the matter in the hands of the states.

          The Fugitive Slave Clause clearly establishes the right to property in slaves. The Founders were famously squeamish about using the word 'slave' in the Constitution and managed, by circumlocution, to avoid it. But Madison's notes of the convention make it pretty clear that they knew what they were doing. You don't return property to its owners without first conceding that the property is, in fact, property. Awful as that is to modern sensibilities, that is one of those uncomfortable facts that reflect badly on all concerned but should be faced up to honestly.

          I agree wholeheartedly that the institution of slavery was not in nearly as great a danger from the incoming Republican administration as cotton state leaders made it out to be. Their decision to bail on the Union was foolhardy and the consequences horrific. Modern day populists should take a lesson from their mistake.

          I have no sympathy for those whose foolishness triggered the war, but my years of study have convinced me that the conflict was in fact inevitable. Given the depth to which slavery had become institutionalized in the economic, political, and social fabric of the cotton states I can't imagine any other means by which slavery could have been ended, at least over the next 100 years. And I don't believe that there was ever any real prospect of a "peaceful separation." If the South Carolina authorities had not fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln would have found another way to provoke the conflict. Acceding to secession was never an option for his administration. The cost to the US economy and treasury would have been catastrophic. That's why to the degree I have any 'sympathy' for either side, I have as much for Lincoln as anyone else involved--he really had no choice.

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        2. Avatar photo
          Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

          Slavery was a very tricky issue back then--I am aware of roughly a dozen different political views on slavery. My own family was a member of the underground railroad, but there were splits over the legality of doing it. There was a lot of compromise going on about it.

          A good analogy today is to abortion. It really isn't "pro-choice vs. Pro-life", there are many nuanced positions within both. Both sides fear the other side is encroaching on gains they made. Look at the headlines over the recent case SCOTUS is taking.

          Understanding the context of the times is never easy, and is often biased through the lenses of our current context. I see that happen often. It's a challenge.

          The irony of the Lincoln Douglas debates on slavery is both largely argued the same position, but using different analogies. The Eastern crowd preferred Douglass' "trojan horse" analogy, while the flyover country types preferred Lincoln's "copperheads" analogy.

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        3. John A

          Great points Phil. Also under Jim’s logic, no “moral , humane or ethical principle” nor anything in the Constitution would prohibit any southern state from seceding from the Confederacy, prevent any county from seceding from a state or prevent any person from seceding from his county , state or the United States. It’s an absurd argument. Lincoln knew this. There is no evidence as Jim says that the war was fought by the North to keep cotton. Read original source materials like the Lincoln Douglas debates to see that the argument was over slavery.

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          1. Old Dragoon

            However, counties may not secede from states because they are legally created by the state. On the other hand, states arguably had the right to secede because they were the creators of the federal government, not vice versa. To this, one may advance that the federal government was a product of popular sovereignty, not state legislative action. However, why could not a state secede through an exercise of popular sovereignty, e.g., a popular convention, as many did? As in all wars, the victor exercised control over the history.

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          2. Jim Stegall

            To extrapolate the rationale for secession to the county, city, or individual level would indeed have been absurd, but to my knowledge no one ever made that argument. But Southern states DID threaten to secede from the Confederacy. And it may surprise you to learn that for much or our early history, state secession was not considered an absurd or outlandish act at all. During the War of 1812, for example, leaders in the New England states met to consider the option since the war was devastating their economy (which was based on trading, which the British Navy was strangling). Again in the 1840s the lower chamber of the Massachusetts legislature voted to secede over the admission of Texas--twice!

            I'm open to any reasonable argument that would explain on terms other than the economics of cotton WHY the United States waged a four-year war costing what were then astronomical sums and the lives of about 600,000 people. It's a question I've pondered all my adult life, and having lived long enough now to understand in some small part, at least, how the world really works, my conclusion is that it was economic and political necessity, rather than principle, that drove both sides to war.

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      4. Avatar photo
        Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

        I have no problem with the idea that secession is not treason. But where I disagree is when the south fired on Ft. Sumpter. To me, that crossed the line into an act of Treason. I recognize there was a dispute about whether forts in the CSA needed to be evacuated, etc. I get that. But I think it could have been worked out without war.

        An ancestor of mine (John Janney) was elected president of the VA commission that explored secession. He opposed secession, and the first vote on secession was voted down. But after Ft. Sumpter, rash romanticists voted for secession, creating a heavy majority for it. On a subsequent ballot John Janney changed his vote so it would be unanimous. He was also the person who gave the VA Commonwealth command to Robert E Lee.

        How greatly would our past have changed if Ft Sumpter had not been fired upon.

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        1. Mack

          A sincere question, not a “gotcha” question...because I have no dog in this hunt:

          If you “have no problem with the idea that secession is not treason,” then how can you consider the bombardment of Fort Sumter a treasonous act? South Carolina had already seceded from the Union on 20 December 1860. The troops firing on the fort were members of the South Carolina militia, acting on the authority of a state government which had left the United States almost four months before, and joined the Confederate States over two months before.

          You really can’t have it both ways here. For the bombardment of Fort Sumter to be treasonous, South Carolina would still have to be an American state, and its soldiers American citizens — which is what the U.S. government always claimed, and why Garfield claimed it here. If their secession was legitimate, by contrast, then the bombardment would clearly be an act of war, but not an act of treason.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

            You raise a good point. Calling it an act of war is clearly fair. I felt the act of secession was not treasonous. But the South crossed a line when it fired on Ft. Sumpter. That was the key point I originally tried to make, that the act of firing was problematic.

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        2. Hansford

          I understand Mr. Ratts opinion but I cannot fully agree with it. Nothing much pure and simple about the Civil War.
          Mr. Janney makes a valid point but I don’t agree that war could be avoided.
          Mr. Stegall frames the difficulties causing the Civil War very well. This quote sums it up for me.
          “The truth is (as usual) far more complicated and morally ambiguous, and no one comes out looking very good in its harsh glare.”

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          1. Avatar photo
            Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

            I dunno if war could have been avoided, but I think it would have looked very differently if Virginia remained in the Union. The site of battles would have been very different, as the Confederates would have had to fight through Virginia to get to DC. I suspect the fight would have been taken elsewhere. I think Tennessee might have stayed Union as well.

            Virginia had a strong military tradition, and a good number of those officers sided with the confederacy. I suspect most would have stayed with the Union if Virginia didn't secede.

            It's all idle speculation, other than seeing the secession vote swing from heavily "stay" to heavily "leave" after the Ft. Sumpter firing commented.

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