President Garfield’s 1881 inaugural address

A few weeks ago I saw a tweet about President Garfield’s inaugural address in 1881. I knew nothing about Garfield other than his name.

The tweet said it was the first inaugural since Lincoln to address slavery, and it would take 30 years before it appeared again in an inaugural.

141 years later, three themes Garfield spoke of are still intertwined: voting rights, racism, and public education.

On one hand, I’m heartened: these aren’t products of some modern “woke” culture, but issues our nation has long faced.

OTOH, I’m sick. So long for justice to come.

Garfield: “The elevation…from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution.”

“It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both.”

The slave trade, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, mass incarceration, etc. are not Black issues for Black history month.

These actions, these systems, these beliefs have harmed us all.

Garfield: “Those who resisted the change should remember…there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disenfranchised peasantry in the United States.”

Reconstruction had ended; he saw the move to end voting rights and to economically destroy freed slaves.

In 2022, voting rights are again at risk. And we haven’t grappled fully with how many government programs favored Whites over Blacks with the intent toward peasantry.

Garfield: “Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any…citizen.”

This is the common sense explanation that underlies racial justice, anti-racism, and yes, CRT. Remove obstacles!

Garfield: “It is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations.”

Garfield: “Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of suffrage is more than an evil. It is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself.”

Early in the address, Garfield highlights the American experiment of trusting government and putting power in ALL the people. He sees the right to vote for everyone as necessary, as essentially American.

Royal elites in 1776 didn’t trust that “common people” had the education to govern; Garfield condemns this old argument, and rightly sees it was being used to deny voting rights to Blacks.

With devastating consequences to us all.

Then he moves to public education.

Garfield: “But the danger which arises from ignorance in the voter can not be denied…We have no standard by which to measure the disaster that may be brought upon us by ignorance and vice in the citizens when joined to corruption and fraud in the suffrage.”

Brilliant observation. There is great gain to be found when those in power intentionally destroy public education, because then voters are more easily swayed by those in power who are corrupt.

Garfield: “The responsibility for the existence of slavery did not rest upon the South alone.”

Look at that! He sees that the whole nation benefitted from and perpetuated slavery. He refuses, only 16 years after the end of the Civil War, to see the Union as White Saviors.

Garfield: “There is but one remedy. All the constitutional power of the nation and of the States and all the volunteer forces of the people should be surrendered to meet this danger by the savory influence of universal education.”

Current attacks on CRT & anti-racism, on voting rights, and on public education are not coincidental or unintentional. It is a combined effort against the truth that Garfield outlined clearly 141 years ago.

It goes against the American experiment, and is detrimental to us all.

(Disclaimer: I’m an untrained armchair historian. Really, I just like to analyze texts. I’m more than willing to have trained historians weigh in.)

Here’s the link to the whole address:

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1881-inaugural-address