Garfield knew that this action would be unpopular in his district.  It might defeat his re-election; but that mattered not.  The President had been assailed by the same argument, and had answered, “Gentlemen, it is not necessary that I should be reelected, but it is necessary that I should put down this rebellion.”  With this declaration the young Congressman heartily sympathized.

Remonstrances did come from his district.  Several of his prominent supporters addressed him a letter, demanding his resignation.  He wrote them that he had acted according to his views of the needs of the country; that he was sorry his judgment did not agree with theirs, but that he must follow his own.  He expected to live long enough to have them all confess that he was right.

It was about this time that he made his celebrated reply to Mr. Alexander Long, of Ohio, a fellow Congressman, who proposed to yield everything and to recognize the Southern Confederacy.

The excitement was intense.  In the midst of it Garfield rose and made the following speech: 

“MR. CHAIRMAN,” he said, “I am reminded by the occurrences of this afternoon of two characters in the war of the Revolution as compared with two others in the war of to-day.

“The first was Lord Fairfax, who dwelt near the Potomac, a few miles from us.  When the great contest was opened between the mother country and the colonies, Lord Fairfax, after a protracted struggle with his own heart, decided he must go with the mother country.  He gathered his mantle about him and went over grandly and solemnly.

“There was another man, who cast in his lot with the struggling colonists, and continued with them till the war was well-nigh ended.  In an hour of darkness that just preceded the glory of the morning, he hatched the treason to surrender forever all that had been gained to the enemies of his country.  Benedict Arnold was that man!

“Fairfax and Arnold find their parallels of to-day.

“When this war began many good men stood hesitating and doubting what they ought to do.  Robert E. Lee sat in his house across the river here, doubting and delaying, and going off at last almost tearfully to join the army of his State.  He reminds one in some respects of Lord Fairfax, the stately Royalist of the Revolution.

“But now when tens of thousands of brave souls have gone up to God under the shadow of the flag; when thousands more, maimed and shattered in the contest, are sadly awaiting the deliverance of death; now, when three years of terrific warfare have raged over us; when our armies have pushed the Rebellion back over mountains and rivers, and crowded it into narrow limits, until a wall of fire girds it; now when the uplifted hand of a majestic people is about to hurl the bolts of its conquering power upon the Rebellion; now, in the quiet of this hall, hatched in the lowest depths of a similar dark treason, there rises a Benedict Arnold, and proposes to surrender all up, body and spirit, the nation and the flag, its genius and its honor, now and forever, to the accursed traitors to our country!  And that proposition comes—­God forgive and pity our beloved State—­it comes from a citizen of the time-honored and loyal commonwealth of Ohio!