Patriot Speech Portrayal in "American Experience: The Era of James Garfield," 2012
President Garfield, in his authorizing of Secretary Blaine to head the Inter-American endeavor, allocated the appropriate time to consider his options on the domestic front. Via newspaper observations, personal correspondence, and contemporaneous accounts, James Garfield kept vigilance over Senate and House proceedings. Drawing from the administration's reluctance to release a statement on the exclusionary bill in its introductory stage, historians have come to assume that the president likely underestimated its stock as a 'pet' or regional issue. With its prompt passage, however, this aroma of a laissez faire approach fast perished.
The bill's likelihood for success in the Senate had been slim. The senators representing the U.S. West Coast, pressured by their constituency, was guaranteed to vote in the affirmative. Southern Democrats appeared split on the measure, and the bulk of Republicans appeared to stand against it. Once the House had approved the measure, coinciding with a stark, controversial rise in anti-Chinese xenophobia and scapegoating of Asian-born workers, fear above all held the advantage and may have drove a re-evaluation amongst select senators in this 47th Congress.
Prospective Nay votes began trending in the other direction. Much of the South now leaned in favor of passing the legislation and several prominent GOP senators voiced their indecision on the measure. The influential Senator David Davis (D-IL), former Supreme Court justice, announced his intention to vote in favor of the measure, rocking the once-solid "No" Midwest. Senators Pendleton (D-OH) and Angus Cameron (R-WI) followed suit. Nevada and Nebraska flipped, along with the state of Colorado. Horace Page's bill passed, 32-15. 29 members of the U.S. Senate abstained from the final vote.
President Garfield wavered. The White House persisted in its silence to the end of April, raising eyebrows throughout the halls of Congress. The president's views on immigration were somewhat mysterious, only once hinted with the derided and deemed-fraudulent pro-immigration Morey Letter during the election. 'Nay Republicans', inter-party factions aside, chiefly accepted the results of the vote and looked beyond this failure to future legislation. Californian representatives lauded the bill's passage and excitedly awaited their electoral rewards come November. Representative Page himself declared victory on the 28th and spoke to a crowd of supporters that same evening, congratulating the efforts of his proponents.
Page, therefore, surely experienced quite a shock to read of President Garfield's veto on May 4th. Alongside this contentious move, the president bestowed to the public an appeal. From a White House podium, he revealed the novel, metamorphic course for the United States distinctly named, "Patriots for the Global Sphere". In this address, Garfield intrinsically illustrated a scene of international cooperation and peaceful arbitration, with the U.S. leading such a harmonious charge. Echoing the general themes of the Congress of American States, he exclaimed that the continental powers of the Earth must find with one another mutual respect and the betterment of all. "In all the interests of man," the president proclaimed, "Be it social, commercial or spiritual, in turn, America shall be obliged to seek general accord."
This vision, in the terms put forth by James Garfield, depended on the United States representing itself as a force worthy of such a call. Connecting the theme of the speech with the exclusion bill and referring to existing treaties with China, the president established, "Our signature is our word." Page's bill indeed would have nullified specific immigration provisions in an 1880 treaty with China. Garfield lent several lines to the other draconian stipulations, condemning all those who have seen fit to make matters worse, "on the industrious poor." Hearkening back to his inaugural pose on civil rights, the president once more asserted that equal protection under the Constitution shall preside above all else.
The address met with a diverse reaction. Republicans in the vein of James Blaine applauded the outright internationalism set in the tone of the speech and prepared to defend this such cause in upcoming political bouts. Nay voters in Congress largely sat in relief over the veto and sent correspondence to the White House expressing gratitude. Those representing the West Coast, and too the rural West, were supremely outraged, fully comprehending the exceptionally unlikely scenario of a Senate override. Much of the goodwill gained by the administration in this area since Garfield's hospitalization now seemed to vanish. A despondent article printed in the "San Francisco Chronicle" on May 8th reported that all flags along the coast had been raised at half-mast in honor of their somber defeat. In simultaneity, the publication polled its readership on the matter, and several weeks following the veto discovered above 90% strongly rejected the president's perspective, with 65% indicating an intention to vote for the Democratic candidate in 1884.