After his first day at the exposition, back in the Philadelphia home he and his family had rented, Garfield sat down to write in his diary, just as he had done nearly every night of his life for the past twenty-eight years. With characteristic seriousness of purpose, he wrote that the fair would be a “great success in the way of education.” In Garfield’s experience, education was salvation. It had freed him from grinding poverty. It had shaped his mind, forged paths, created opportunities where once there had been none. Education, he knew, led to progress, and progress was his country’s only
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