Garfield’s 1881 Inaugural Address: Union, the Vote, Schools and Sound Money

James A. Garfield took the oath as the twentieth President of the United States on March 4, 1881, in Washington, D.C. His inaugural address looked back on a century of national life and then argued that the great fight over the Union was over. What lay ahead, he said, was making the ballot free and educating the coming generation of voters. The National Park Service's James A. Garfield National Historic Site published the full text.

James Abram Garfield, twentieth President of the United States. Library of Congress.

A century of national life

Garfield opened by saying the nation stood on a height overlooking a hundred years crowded with perils and crowned with the triumphs of liberty and law. It was three days more than a hundred years since the Articles of Confederation, the first written constitution. The new republic had then not yet won a place among nations, and the world did not believe government could safely be trusted to the people. When the confederacy proved too weak, the founders set it aside for a National Union founded directly on the will of the people. Under the Constitution, Garfield noted, twenty-five States had been added, its jurisdiction now covered an area fifty times greater than the original thirteen States and a population twenty times greater than in 1780, and the Union had come out of the Civil War stronger.

The Garfield inauguration at the U.S. Capitol, March 4, 1881. Library of Congress.

The Union and the freed

The question of the nation's supremacy, which for half a century threatened the Union, had been closed by the war, he said: the Constitution and the laws made under it are the supreme law, binding on States and people alike, without disturbing the States' local self-government. Garfield called the rise of Black Americans from slavery to full citizenship the most important political change since the Constitution was adopted in 1787. It had freed the country from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution, he said, and had liberated master as well as slave. It had opened a career of freedom to more than 5,000,000 people. Those who resisted the change, he said, should remember that there was no middle ground between slavery and equal citizenship and that there can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

He said the freed people had made remarkable progress and deserved encouragement, and that, so far as his authority extended, they would have the full and equal protection of the Constitution and the laws.

President Garfield on the reviewing stand during his inaugural parade on March 4, 1881, with First Lady Lucretia Rudolph Garfield to his right and outgoing President and Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes to his left. Library of Congress.

The ballot and the schools

Garfield said the free enjoyment of equal suffrage was still in question. He addressed the claim that honest local government is impossible if uneducated Black citizens vote, and replied that bad local government is an evil, but violating the freedom of the suffrage is a crime which, if persisted in, would destroy the government itself. The ballot, he said, must be kept free and pure by the strong sanctions of law in each State.

He then turned to a wider danger: ignorance in the voter, in every state. The voters can pass their authority only to the coming generation, and if that generation comes to its inheritance blinded by ignorance and corrupted by vice, the fall of the Republic would be certain. The census, he said, had sounded the alarm in its figures on illiteracy. The responsibility belonged to North and South alike, and the one remedy was universal education, with sections, races and partisanship forgotten. He closed this part by asking the country to make "a truce with time," accepting now the verdict future generations would give, that the Union was preserved, slavery overthrown and both races made equal before the law.

Money, farms and trade

• Currency. Gold and silver, Garfield said, are the only safe foundation for a monetary system. He hoped the leading commercial nations could agree on using both, and urged Congress to stop the compulsory coinage of silver from disturbing the monetary system. United States notes, he said, are promises to pay money, and the promise should be kept when holders demand it. He also wanted the national debt refunded at a lower interest rate without withdrawing national-bank notes.
• Agriculture and industry. Farms, which gave homes and work to more than half the people and furnished by far the largest part of exports, deserved more attention from the government. Manufacturing was making the country industrially independent, and harbors, waterways and ocean tonnage should be improved.
• A canal. He said no plan for a canal or railway across the isthmus was mature enough for federal money, but the government would give the subject attention and, quoting his predecessor, maintain supervision and authority over any such route to protect national interests.

The interior of the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building, decorated for the Garfield-Arthur Inaugural Ball. Smithsonian.

Religion, territories and civil service

Garfield noted that the Constitution guarantees religious freedom and that the Territories are under Congress's direct authority. He said it was a reproach that in the most populous Territory the guarantee was not enjoyed and Congress's authority was ignored, and he named the Mormon Church for sanctioning polygamy and obstructing the ordinary administration of justice. He called on Congress to prohibit criminal practices, especially those that destroy family relations, while respecting every citizen's religious convictions, and said no ecclesiastical organization should take over any function of the national government.

On the civil service, he said it could never be put on a satisfactory footing until regulated by law, and that he would ask Congress to fix the tenure of minor offices and set the grounds for removals.

He ended by promising to maintain national authority, enforce the laws, demand rigid economy and require honest service from executive officers, since offices exist for the service of the government and not their holders. He appealed for the people's support and invoked the blessing of Almighty God.

Sources

• National Park Service, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, "President James A. Garfield's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1881": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/president-james-a-garfield-s-inaugural-address-march-4-1881.htm; rewritten in hubnx's own words.