of political reconstruction, had practically assumed that the
negro was the equal of the white man and was so to be treated. There was
a third view of the matter,--that the negro was at an inferior stage of
manhood, and the necessary task was to develop him. He is a man, but an
imperfect man,--make him a whole man. To that end some of the finest
forces of the nation were now directed. But the invigorating and
commanding spirit, who conceived the saving idea, put it into practice,
and gave guidance and inspiration to both races,--the man who found the
way out was Samuel Chapman Armstrong.

He came of Scotch-Irish blood, and of sturdy farming stock, bred in the
fertile fields of Pennsylvania and in the best traditions of
Christianity. His father and mother gave themselves to the missionary
work, in that lofty enthusiasm whose wave swept through the country
early in the nineteenth century. The boy was born in 1839 in the
Hawaiian Islands, and grew up in the joy-giving climate, with a happy
boy-life, swimming the sea and climbing the mountains; trained firmly
and kindly in obedience and service; impressed by the constant presence
in the home of unselfish and consecrated lives. As he grew older, his
bright eyes studied the native character, emotional, genial, unstable;
he saw the wholesale conversions to Christianity, speedy, happy, and
well-nigh barren of fruit. Going to America for his education, he
completed it at Williams College under the presidency of Mark Hopkins.
Garfield said that his conception of a university was a pine bench with
Mark Hopkins at one end and a student at the other. He gave a stimulus
alike intellectual and moral; his special teaching was in philosophy,
broadly reasoned, nobly aimed, closely applied to the daily need.
Armstrong spoke of him in later years as his spiritual father.
Graduating in 1862, he enlisted in the Union army, took his share in
Gettysburg and other fights, became an officer of negro troops, and rose
to a brigadier-generalship. He said that to him, born abroad, the cause
of Union made no strong appeal,--what he was fighting for was the
freedom of the slaves. The war finished, he left the army, entered the
service of the Freedmen's Bureau under General Oliver O. Howard, and was
assigned to the Jamestown peninsula in Virginia. There were huddled
together thousands of the freedmen,--the unconscious cause of the war,
the problem of the future,--simple, half-dazed, a mixture of good an