Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/643

Rh Grant to General Garfield. The one might arrest the reaction and stay the hand of violence and bloodshed at the South; the other held out little promise of such a result. I had once seen the mettle of Mr. Garfield tried when it seemed to me he did not exhibit the pure gold of moral courage; when, in fact, he quailed under the fierce glance of Randolph Tucker, a returned slave-holding rebel. I can never forget the scene. Mr. Garfield had used the phrase "perjured traitors" as descriptive of those who had been educated by the Government and sworn to support and defend the Constitution and yet had betaken themselves to the battlefield and fought to destroy it. Mr. Tucker had resented these terms as thus applied, and the only defense Mr. Garfield made to this brazen insolence of Mr. Tucker was that he did not make the dictionary. This was perhaps the soft answer that turneth away wrath, but it is not the answer with which to rebuke effrontery, haughtiness and presumption. It is not the answer that Charles Sumner or Benjamin F. Wade or Owen Lovejoy would have given. Neither of these brave men would in such a case have sheltered himself behind the dictionary. In nature exuberant, readily responsive in sympathy, shrinking from conflict with his immediate surroundings, abounding in love of approbation, Mr. Garfield himself admitted that he had made promises that he could not fulfill. His amiable disposition to make himself agreeable to those with whom he came in contact made him weak and led him to create false hopes in those who approached him for favors. This was shown in a case to which I was a party. Prior to his inauguration he solemnly promised Senator Roscoe Conkling that he would appoint me United States Marshal for the District of Columbia. He not only promised, but did so with emphasis. He slapped the table