LOGY 
 
 BRAM Garfield 
 
 S Lj. 
 
 Blaine 
 
 lARY «/ 1882 
 
 ' AMES R. Osgood Sr Co, 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
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EULOGY 
 
 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD 
 
 JAMES G. BLAINE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE SENATE AND HOUSE 
 
 OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 February 27, 1882 
 
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 BOSTON - ^ "^ op v' ' ^? ^^ ^ 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 
 1882 
 
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 13 Ld 
 
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 Copyright, 1882, 
 By JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights resfrved. 
 
 Jranklin ^teas: 
 
 RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 
 BOSTON. 
 
Published by authorization of Hon. James G. 
 Blaine, from copy fkrnished by him. 
 
EULOGY. 
 
 Mr. President, — For the second time 
 in this generation the great departments of 
 the Government of the United States are 
 assembled in the Hall of Representatives 
 to do honor to the memory of a murdered 
 President. Lincoln fell at the close of a 
 mighty struggle in which the passions of 
 men had been deeply stirred. The tragical 
 termination of his great life added but an- 
 other to the lengthened succession of hor- 
 rors which had marked so many lintels with 
 the blood of the first-born. Garfield was 
 slain in a day of peace, when brother had 
 been reconciled to brother, and when anger 
 and hate had been banished from the land. 
 "Whosoever shall hereafter draw the por- 
 
 5 
 
6 EULOGY ON 
 
 trait of Murder, if he will show it as it has 
 been exhibited where such example was last 
 to have been looked for, let him not give it 
 the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted 
 by revenge, the face black with settled hate. 
 Let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth- 
 faced, bloodless demon ; not so much an 
 example of human nature in its depravity 
 and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal 
 being, a fiend in the ordinary display and 
 development of his character." 
 
 From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plym- 
 outh till the uprising against Charles I., 
 about twenty thousand emigrants came from 
 Old England to New England. As they 
 came in pursuit of intellectual freedom and 
 ecclesiastical independence rather than for 
 worldly honor and profit, the emigration 
 naturally ceased when the contest for reli- 
 gious liberty began in earnest at home. 
 The man who struck his most effective blow 
 for freedom of conscience by sailing for the 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. / 
 
 Colonies in 1620 would have been accounted 
 a deserter to leave after 1640. The opportu- 
 nity had then come on the soil of England 
 for that great contest which established the 
 authority of Parliament, gave religious free- 
 dom to the people, sent Charles to the 
 block, and committed to the hands of Oliver 
 Cromwell the supreme executive authority 
 of England. The English emigration was 
 never renewed ; and from these twenty thou- 
 sand men, with a small emigration from Scot- 
 land and from France, are descended the 
 vast numbers who have New England blood 
 in their veins. 
 
 In 1685 the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes by Louis XIV. scattered to other 
 countries four hundred thousand Protes- 
 tants, who were among the most intelligent 
 and enterprising of French subjects, — mer- 
 chants of capital, skilled manufacturers, and 
 handicraftsmen superior at the time to all 
 others in Europe. A considerable number 
 of these Huguenot French came to Amer- 
 
8 EULOGY ON 
 
 ica; a few landed in New England, and 
 became honorably prominent in its history. 
 Their names have in large part become 
 anglicized, or have disappeared ; but their 
 blood is traceable in many of the most 
 reputable families, and their fame is perpet- 
 uated in honorable memorials and useful 
 institutions. 
 
 From these two sources, the English-Puri- 
 tan and the French-Huguenot, came the late 
 President ; his father, Abram Garfield, being 
 descended from the one, and his mother, 
 Eliza Ballou, from the other. 
 
 It was good stock on both sides — none 
 better, none braver, none truer. There was 
 in it an inheritance of courage, of manliness, 
 of imperishable love of liberty, of undying 
 adherence to principle. Garfield was proud 
 of his blood ; and, with as much satisfaction 
 as if he were a British nobleman reading his 
 stately ancestral record in Burke's Peerage, 
 he spoke of himself as ninth in descent from 
 those who would not endure the oppression 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 9 
 
 of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from 
 the brave French Protestants who refused to 
 submit to tyranny even from the Grand 
 Monarque. 
 
 Gen. Garfield delighted to dwell on these 
 traits ; and, during his only visit to England, 
 he busied himself in discovering every trace 
 of his forefathers in parish registries and 
 on ancient army rolls. Sitting with a 
 friend in the gallery of the House of Com- 
 mons one night, after a long day's labor in 
 this field of research, he said with evident 
 elation that in every war in which for three 
 centuries patriots of English blood had 
 struck sturdy blows for constitutional gov- 
 ernment and human liberty, his family had 
 been represented. They were at Marston 
 Moor, at Naseby, and at Preston ; they were 
 at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga, and at Mon- 
 mouth ; and in his own person had battled 
 for the same great cause in the war which 
 preserved the Union of the States. 
 
 Losing his father before he was two years 
 
10 EULOGY ON 
 
 old, the early life of Garfield was one of pri- 
 vation ; but its poverty has been made indeli- 
 cately and unjustly prominent. Thousands 
 of readers have imagined him as the ragged, 
 starving child, whose reality too often greets 
 the eye in the squalid sections of our large 
 cities. Gen. Garfield's infancy and youth 
 had none of their destitution, none of their 
 pitiful features, appealing to the tender heart 
 and to the open hand of charity. He was a 
 poor boy in the same sense in which Henry 
 Clay was a poor boy ; in which Andrew Jack- 
 son was a poor boy ; in which Daniel Web- 
 ster was a poor boy ; in the sense in which a 
 large majority of the eminent men of Amer- 
 ica in all generations have been poor boys. 
 Before a great multitude of men, in a public 
 speech, Mr. Webster bore this testimony : — 
 
 "It did not happen to me to be born in a log 
 cabin ; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in 
 a log cabin raised amid the snow-drifts of New^ Hamp- 
 shire, at a period so early that when the smoke rose 
 first from its rude chimney, and curled over the frozen 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, II 
 
 hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's 
 habitation between it and the settlements on the 
 rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make 
 to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to 
 teach them the hardships endured by the generations 
 which have gone before them. I love to dwell on 
 the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early 
 affections, and the touching narratives and incidents 
 which mingle with all I know of this primitive family 
 abode." 
 
 With the requisite change of scene the 
 same words would aptly portray the early 
 days of Garfield. The poverty of the fron- 
 tier, where all are engaged in a common 
 struggle, and where a common sympathy 
 and hearty co-operation lighten the burdens 
 of each, is a very different poverty — differ- 
 ent in kind, different in influence and effect 
 — from that conscious and humiliating indi- 
 gence which is every day forced to contrast 
 itself with neighboring wealth on which it 
 feels a sense of grinding dependence. The 
 poverty of the frontier is, indeed, no poverty. 
 It is but the beginning of wealth, and has 
 
12 EULOGY ON 
 
 the boundless possibilities of the future 
 always opening before it. No man ever 
 grew up in the agricultural regions of the 
 West where a house-raising, or even a corn- 
 husking, is matter of common interest and 
 helpfulness, with any other feeling than 
 that of broad-minded, generous independ- 
 ence. This honorable independence marked 
 the youth of Garfield as it marks the youth 
 of millions of the best blood and brain now 
 training for the future citizenship and future 
 government of the Republic. Garfield was 
 born heir to land, to the title of freeholder 
 which has been the patent and passport of 
 self-respect with the Anglo-Saxon race ever 
 since Hengist and Horsa landed on the 
 shores of England. His adventure on the 
 canal — an alternative between that and 
 the deck of a Lake Erie schooner — was a 
 farmer-boy's device for earning money, just 
 as the New England lad begins a possibly 
 great career by sailing before the mast 
 on a coastin^r-vessel or on a merchantman 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 1 3 
 
 bound to the Farther India or to the China 
 Seas. 
 
 No manly man feels any thing of shame 
 in looking back to early struggles with ad- 
 verse circumstances, and no man feels a 
 worthier pride than when he has conquered 
 the obstacles to his progress. But no one 
 of noble mould desires to be looked upon as 
 having occupied a menial position, as having 
 been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or 
 as having suffered the evils of poverty until 
 relief was found at the hand of charity. 
 Gen. Garfield's youth presented no hard- 
 ships which family love and family energy 
 did not overcome, subjected him to no priva- 
 tions which he did not cheerfully accept, and 
 left no memories save those which were 
 recalled with delight, and transmitted with 
 profit and with pride. 
 
 Garfield's early opportunities for securing 
 an education were extremely limited, and 
 yet were sufficient to develop in him an 
 intense desire to learn. He could read at 
 
14 EULOGY ON 
 
 three years of age, and each winter he had 
 the advantage of the district school. He 
 read all the books to^be found within the 
 circle of his acquaintance : some of them he 
 got by heart. While yet in childhood he 
 was a constant student of the Bible, and 
 became familiar with its literature. The 
 dignity and earnestness of his speech in his 
 maturer life gave evidence of this early 
 training. At eighteen years of age he was 
 able to teach school, and thenceforward his 
 ambition was to obtain a college education. 
 To this end he bent all his efforts, working 
 in the harvest-field, at the carpenter's bench, 
 and, in the winter season, teaching the com- 
 mon schools of the neighborhood. While 
 thus laboriously occupied he found time to 
 prosecute his studies, and was so successful 
 that at twenty-two years of age he was able 
 to enter the junior class at Williams College, 
 then under the presidency of the venerable 
 and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the 
 fulness of his powers, survives the emi- 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 1 5 
 
 nent pupil to whom he was of inestimable 
 service. 
 
 The history of Garfield's life to this 
 period presents no novel features. He had 
 undoubtedly shown perseverance, self-reli- 
 ance, self-sacrifice, and ambition, — qualities 
 which, be it said for the honor of our 
 country, are everywhere to be found among 
 the young men of America. But from his 
 graduation at Williams onward, to the hour 
 of his tragical death, Garfield's career was 
 eminent and exceptional. Slowly working 
 through his educational period, receiving his 
 diploma when twenty-four years of age, he 
 seemed at one bound to spring into con- 
 spicuous and brilliant success. Within six 
 years he was successively president of a 
 college, State senator of Ohio, major-general 
 of the Army of the United States, and 
 representative elect to the National Con- 
 gress. A combination of honors so varied, 
 so elevated, within a period so brief and to a 
 man so young, is without precedent or paral- 
 lel in the history of the country. 
 
l6 EULOGY ON 
 
 Garfield's army life was begun with no 
 other military knowledge than such as he 
 had hastily gained from books in the few 
 months preceding his march to the field. 
 Stepping from civil life to the head of a 
 regiment, the first order he received when 
 ready to cross the Ohio was to assume com- 
 mand of a brigade, and to operate as an 
 independent force in Eastern Kentucky. 
 His immediate duty was to check the ad- 
 vance of Humphrey Marshall, who was 
 marching down the Big Sandy with the 
 intention of occupying in connection with 
 other Confederate forces the entire territory 
 of Kentucky, and of precipitating the State 
 into secession. This was at the close of the 
 year 1861. Seldom, if ever, has a young 
 college professor been thrown into a more 
 embarrassing and discouraging position. He 
 knew just enough of military science, as he 
 expressed it himself, to measure the extent 
 of his ignorance ; and with a handful of men 
 he was marching, in rough winter weather, 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 1 7 
 
 into a strange country, among a hostile pop- 
 ulation, to confront a largely superior force 
 under the command of a distinguished grad- 
 uate of West Point, who had seen active and 
 important service in two preceding wars. 
 
 The result of the campaign is matter of 
 history. The skill, the endurance, the ex- 
 traordinary energy, shown by Garfield, the 
 courage he imparted to his men, raw and 
 untried as himself, the measures he adopted 
 to increase his force and to create in the 
 enemy's mind exaggerated estimates of his 
 numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of 
 Marshall, the capture of his camp, the dis- 
 persion of his force, and the emancipation 
 of an important territory from the control 
 of the rebellion. Coming at the close of a 
 long series of disasters to the Union arms, 
 Garfield's victory had an unusual and extra- 
 neous importance, and in the popular judg- 
 ment elevated the young commander to the 
 rank of a military hero. With less than two 
 thousand men in his entire command, with 
 
l8 EULOGY ON 
 
 a mobilized force of only eleven hundred, 
 without cannon, he had met an army of five 
 thousand and defeated them, — driving Mar- 
 shall's forces successively from two strong- 
 holds of their own selection, fortified with 
 abundant artillery. Major-Gen. Buell, com- 
 manding the Department of the Ohio, an 
 experienced and able soldier of the regular 
 army, published an order of thanks and con- 
 gratulation on the brilliant result of the Big 
 Sandy campaign, which would have turned 
 the head of a less cool and sensible man 
 than Garfield. Buell declared that his ser- 
 vices had called into action the highest 
 qualities of a soldier ; and President Lincoln 
 •supplemented these words of praise by the 
 •more substantial reward of a brigadier-gen- 
 eral's commission, to bear date from the 
 day of his decisive victory over Marshall. 
 
 The subsequent military career of Gar- 
 field fully sustained its brilliant beginning. 
 With his new commission he was assigned 
 to the command of a brigade in the Army of 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 1 9 
 
 the Ohio, and took part in the second and 
 decisive day's fight in the great battle of 
 Shiloh. The remainder of the year 1862 was 
 not especially eventful to Garfield, as it was 
 not to the armies with which he was serving. 
 His practical sense was called into exercise 
 in completing the task, assigned him by 
 Gen. Buell, of reconstructing bridges, and 
 re-establishing lines of railway communica- 
 tion for the army. His occupation in this 
 useful but not brilliant field was varied by 
 service on courts-martial of importance, in 
 which department of duty he won a valuable 
 reputation, attracting the notice and securing 
 the approval of the able and eminent Judge 
 Advocate-General of the army. That of it- 
 self was warrant to honorable fame; for 
 among the great men who in those trying 
 days gave themselves, with entire devotion, 
 to the service of their country, one who 
 brought to that service the ripest learning, 
 the most fervid eloquence, the most varied 
 attainments, who labored with modesty, and 
 
20 EULOGY ON 
 
 shunned applause, who in the day of triumph 
 sat reserved and silent and grateful, — as 
 Francis Deak in the hour of Hungary's de- 
 liverance, — was Joseph Holt of Kentucky, 
 who in his honorable retirement enjoys the 
 respect and veneration of all who love the 
 Union of the States. 
 
 Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the 
 highly important and responsible post of 
 chief-of-sta£f to Gen. Rosecrans, then at the 
 head of the Army of the Cumberland. Per- 
 haps in a great military campaign no sub- 
 ordinate officer requires sounder judgment 
 and a quicker knowledge of men than the 
 chief-of-staff to the commanding general. An 
 indiscreet man in such a position can sow 
 more discord, breed more jealousy, and dis- 
 seminate more strife, than any other officer 
 in the entire organization. When Gen. Gar- 
 field assumed his new duties, he found vari- 
 ous troubles already well developed and 
 seriously affecting the value and efficiency 
 of the Army of the Cumberland. The en- 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 21 
 
 ergy, the impartiality, and the tact with 
 which he sought to allay these dissensions, 
 and to discharge the duties of his new and 
 trying position, will always remain one of 
 the most striking proofs of his great versatil- 
 ity. His military duties closed on the mem- 
 orable field of Chickamauga, a field which, 
 however disastrous to the Union arms, gave 
 to him the occasion of winning imperishable 
 laurels. The very rare distinction was ac- 
 corded him of a great promotion for his 
 bravery on a field that was lost. President 
 Lincoln appointed him a major-general in 
 the Army of the United States, for gallant 
 and meritorious conduct in the battle of 
 Chickamauga. 
 
 The Army of the Cumberland was re-or- 
 ganized under the command of Gen. Thomas, 
 who promptly offered Garfield one of its 
 divisions. He was extremely desirous to 
 accept the position, but was embarrassed by 
 the fact that he had, a year before, been 
 elected to Congress, and the time when he 
 
22 EULOGY ON 
 
 must take his seat was drawing near. He 
 preferred to remain in the mihtary service, 
 and had within his own breast the largest 
 confidence o£ success in the wider field 
 which his new rank opened to him. Balan- 
 cing the arguments on the one side and the 
 other, anxious to determine what was for the 
 best, desirous above all things to do his 
 patriotic duty, he was decisively influenced 
 by the advice of President Lincoln and Sec- 
 retary Stanton, both of whom assured him 
 that he could at that time be of especial 
 value in the House of Representatives. He 
 resigned his commission of major-general on 
 the fifth day of December, 1863, and took 
 his seat in the House of Representatives on 
 the seventh. He had served two years and 
 four months in the army, and had just com- 
 pleted his thirty-second year. 
 
 The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-emi- 
 nently entitled in history to the designation 
 of the War Congress. It was elected while 
 the war was flagrant, and every member was 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 23 
 
 chosen upon the issues involved in the con- 
 tinuance of the struggle. The Thirty-seventh 
 Congress had, indeed, legislated to a large 
 extent on war measures ; but it was chosen 
 before any one believed that secession of the 
 States would be actually attempted. The 
 magnitude of the work which fell upon its 
 successor was unprecedented, both in respect 
 to the vast sums of money raised for the 
 support of the Army and Navy, and of the 
 new and extraordinary powers of legislation 
 which it was forced to exercise. Only twen- 
 ty-four States were represented, and one 
 hundred and eighty-two members were upon 
 its roll. Among these were many distin- 
 guished party leaders on both sides, veterans 
 in the public service, with established repu- 
 tations for ability, and with that skill which 
 comes only from parliamentary experience. 
 Into this assemblage of men Garfield entered 
 without special preparation, and it might 
 almost be said unexpectedly. The question 
 of taking command of a division of troops 
 
24 EULOGY ON 
 
 under Gen. Thomas, or taking his seat in 
 Congress, was kept open till the last moment, 
 — so late, indeed, that the resignation of his 
 military commission and his appearance in 
 the House were almost contemporaneous. 
 He wore the uniform of a major-general of 
 the United States Army on Saturday ; and 
 on Monday, in civilian's dress, he answered 
 to the roll-call as a Representative in Con- 
 gress from the State of Ohio. 
 
 He was especially fortunate in the con- 
 stituency which elected him. Descended 
 almost entirely from New-England stock, the 
 men of the Ashtabula district were intensely 
 radical on all questions relating to human 
 rights. Well educated, thrifty, thoroughly 
 intelligent in affairs, acutely discerning of 
 character, not quick to bestow confidence, 
 and slow to withdraw it, they were at once 
 the most helpful and most exacting of sup- 
 porters. Their tenacious trust in men in 
 whom they have once confided is illustrated 
 by the unparalleled fact that Elisha Whittle- 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 2$ 
 
 sey, Joshua R. Giddings, and James A. Gar- 
 field represented the district for fifty-four 
 years. 
 
 There is no test of a man's ability in any 
 department of public life more severe than 
 service in the House of Representatives; 
 there is no place where so little deference is 
 paid to reputation previously acquired, or to 
 eminence won outside ; no place where so 
 little consideration is shown for the feelings 
 or the failures of beginners. What a man 
 gains in the House he gains by sheer force 
 of his own character ; and if he loses and 
 falls back he must expect no mercy, and will 
 receive no sympathy. It is a field in which 
 survival of the strongest is the recognized 
 rule, and where no pretence can deceive, 
 and no glamour can mislead. The real 
 man is discovered, his worth is impartially 
 weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed. 
 
 With possibly a single exception, Garfield 
 was the youngest member in the House 
 when he entered, and was but seven years 
 
26 EULOGY ON 
 
 from his college graduation. But he had 
 not been in his seat sixty days before his 
 ability was recognized and his place con- 
 ceded. He stepped to the front with the 
 confidence of one who belonged there. The 
 House was crowded with strong men of both 
 parties : nineteen of them have since been 
 transferred to the Senate, and many of them 
 have served with distinction in the guber- 
 natorial chairs of their respective States, 
 and on foreign missions of great conse- 
 quence ; but among them all none grew so 
 rapidly, none so firmly, as Garfield. As is 
 said by Trevelyan of his parliamentary hero, 
 Garfield succeeded " because all the world in 
 concert could not have kept him in the back- 
 ground, and because when once in the front 
 he played his part with a prompt intrepidity 
 and a commanding ease that were but the 
 outward symptoms of the immense reserves 
 of energy, on which it was in his power to 
 draw." Indeed, the apparently reserved 
 force which Garfield possessed was one of 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 2/ 
 
 his great characteristics. He never did so 
 well but that it seemed he could easily have 
 done better. He never expended so much 
 strength but that he seemed to be holding 
 additional power at call. This is one of the 
 happiest and rarest distinctions of an effec- 
 tive debater, and often counts for as much 
 in persuading an assembly as the eloquent 
 and elaborate argument. 
 
 The great measure of Garfield's fame was 
 filled by his service in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. His military life, illustrated by 
 honorable performance, and rich in promise, 
 was, as he himself felt, prematurely termi- 
 nated, and necessarily incomplete. Specula- 
 tion as to what he might have done, in a field 
 where the great prizes are so few, cannot be 
 profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a 
 soldier he did his duty bravely, he did it in- 
 telligently, he won an enviable fame, and he 
 retired from the service without blot or 
 breath against him. As a lawyer, though 
 admirably equipped for the profession, he can 
 
28 EULOGY ON 
 
 scarcely be said to have entered on its prac- 
 tice. The few efforts he made at the bar 
 were distinguished by the same high order 
 of talent which he exhibited on every field 
 where he was put to the test ; and, if a man 
 may be accepted as a competent judge of his 
 own capacities and adaptations, the law was 
 the profession to which Garfield should have 
 devoted himself. But fate ordained other- 
 wise, and his reputation in history will rest 
 largely upon his service in the House of Rep- 
 resentatives. That service was exception- 
 ally long. He was nine times consecutively 
 chosen to the House, an honor enjoyed by 
 not more than six other Representatives of 
 the more than five thousand who have been 
 elected from the organization of the govern- 
 ment to this hour. 
 
 As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on 
 an issue squarely joined, where the position 
 had been chosen and the ground laid out, 
 Garfield must be assigned a very high rank. 
 More, perhaps, than any man with whom he 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 29 
 
 was associated in public life, he gave careful 
 and systematic study to public questions, and 
 he came to every discussion in which he 
 took part with elaborate and complete prepa- 
 ration. He was a steady and indefatigable 
 worker. Those who imagine that talent or 
 genius can supply the place or achieve the 
 results of labor will find no encouragement 
 in Garfield's life. In preliminary work he 
 was apt, rapid, and skilful. He possessed 
 in a high degree the power of readily absorb- 
 ing ideas and facts, and, like Dr. Johnson, 
 had the art of getting from a book all that 
 was of value in it by a reading apparently so 
 quick and cursory that it seemed like a mere 
 glance at the table of contents. He was a 
 pre-eminently fair and candid man in debate, 
 took no petty advantage, stooped to no un- 
 worthy methods, avoided personal allusions, 
 rarely appealed to prejudice, did not seek to 
 inflame passion. He had a quicker eye for 
 the strong point of his adversary than for his 
 weak point, and on his own side he so mar- 
 
30 EULOGY ON 
 
 shalled his weighty arguments as to make his 
 hearers forget any possible lack in the com- 
 plete strength of his position. He had a 
 habit of stating his opponent's side with such 
 amplitude of fairness and such liberality of 
 concession that his followers often com- 
 plained that he was giving his case away. 
 But never in his prolonged participation in 
 the proceedings of the House did he give his 
 case away, or fail, in the judgment of com- 
 petent and impartial listeners, to gain the 
 mastery. 
 
 These characteristics, which marked Gar- 
 field as a great debater, did not, however, 
 make him a great parliamentary leader. A 
 parliamentary leader, as that term is under- 
 stood wherever free representative govern- 
 ment exists, is necessarily and very strictly 
 the organ of his party. An ardent Ameri- 
 can defined the instinctive warmth of patriot- 
 ism when he offered the toast, " Our coun- 
 try, always right, but, right or wrong, our 
 country." The parliamentary leader who 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 3 1 
 
 has a body of followers that will do and 
 dare and die for the cause, is one who 
 believes his party always right, but, right or 
 wrong, is for his party. No more important 
 or exacting duty devolves upon him than 
 the selection of the field and the time for 
 contest. He must know not merely how 
 to strike, but where to strike and when 
 to strike. He often skilfully avoids the 
 strength of his opponent's position, and scat- 
 ters confusion in his ranks, by attacking an 
 exposed point when really the righteousness 
 of the cause and the strength of logical 
 intrenchment are against him. He conquers 
 often, both against the right and the heavy 
 battalions ; as when young Charles Fox, in 
 the days of his Toryism, carried the House of 
 Commons against justice, against its imme- 
 morial rights, against his own convictions (if, 
 indeed, at that period Fox had convictions), 
 and, in the interest of a corrupt administra- 
 tion, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, 
 drove Wilkes from the seat to which the 
 
32 EULOGY ON 
 
 electors of Middlesex had chosen him, and 
 installed Luttrell in defiance not merely of 
 law but of public decency. For an achieve- 
 ment of that kind Garfield was disqualified, 
 — disqualified by the texture of his mind, by 
 the honesty of his heart, by his conscience, 
 and by every instinct and aspiration of his 
 nature. 
 
 The three most distinguished parliament- 
 ary leaders hitherto developed in this country 
 are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Thad- 
 deus Stevens. Each was a man of consum- 
 mate ability, of great earnestness, of intense 
 personality, differing widely each from the 
 others, and yet with a signal trait in com- 
 mon, — the power to command. In the give 
 and take of daily discussion ; in the art of 
 controlling and consolidating reluctant and 
 refractory followers ; in the skill to overcome 
 all forms of opposition, and to meet with 
 competency and courage the varying phases 
 of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defec- 
 tion, — it would be difficult to rank with these 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 33 
 
 a fourth name in all our Congressional his- 
 tory. But of these Mr. Clay was the great- 
 est. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find 
 in the parliamentary annals of the world a 
 parallel to Mr. Clay in 1841, when at sixty- 
 four years of age he took the control of the 
 Whig party from the President who had re- 
 ceived their suffrages, against the power of 
 Webster in the Cabinet, against the elo- 
 quence of Choate in the Senate, against the 
 herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and 
 Henry A. Wise in the House. In unshared 
 leadership, in the pride and plenitude of 
 power, he hurled against John Tyler with 
 deepest scorn the mass of that conquering 
 column which had swept over the land in 
 1840, and drove his administration to seek 
 shelter behind the lines of his political foes. 
 Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely 
 less wonderful, when in 1854, against the 
 secret desires of a strong administration, 
 a^^ainst the wise counsel of the older chiefs, 
 against the conservative instincts and even 
 
34 EULOGY ON 
 
 the moral sense of the country, he forced a 
 reluctant Congress into a repeal of the Mis- 
 souri Compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, 
 in his contests from 1865 to 1868, actually 
 advanced his parliamentary leadership until 
 Congress tied the hands of the President, 
 and governed the country by its own will, 
 leaving only perfunctory duties to be dis- 
 charged by the Executive. With two hun- 
 dred millions of patronage in his hands at 
 the opening of the contest, aided by the 
 active force of Seward in the Cabinet and 
 the moral power of Chase on the bench, 
 Andrew Johnson could not command the 
 support of one-third in either House against 
 the parliamentary uprising of which Thad- 
 deus Stevens was the animating spirit and 
 the unquestioned leader. 
 
 From these three great men Garfield 
 differed radically, — differed in the quality of 
 his mind, in temperament, in the form and 
 phase of ambition. He could not do what 
 they did, but he could do what they could 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 35 
 
 not ; and in the breadth of his Congressional 
 work he left that which will longer exert a 
 potential influence among men, and which, 
 measured by the severe test of posthumous 
 criticism, will secure a more enduring and 
 more enviable fame. 
 
 Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, 
 and ignorant of the details of his work, may, 
 in some degree, measure them by the annals 
 of Congress. No one of the generation of 
 public men to which he belonged has con- 
 tributed so much that will be valuable for 
 future reference. His speeches are numer- 
 ous, many of them brilliant, all of them well 
 studied, carefully phrased, and exhaustive of 
 the subject under consideration. Collected 
 from the scattered pages of ninety royal 
 octavo volumes of Congressional Record, 
 they would present an invaluable compend- 
 ium of the political history of the most 
 important era through which the National 
 Government has ever passed. When the 
 history of this period shall be impartially 
 
36 FMLOGY ON 
 
 written, when war legislation, measures of 
 reconstruction, protection of human rights, 
 amendments to the Constitution, mainte- 
 nance of public credit, steps towards specie 
 resumption, true theories of revenue, may 
 be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and 
 disconnected from partisanism, the speeches 
 of Garfield will be estimated at their true 
 value, and will be found to comprise a vast 
 magazine of fact and argument, of clear 
 analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if 
 no other authority were accessible, his 
 speeches in the House of Representatives 
 from December, 1863, to June, 1880, would 
 give a well-connected history and complete 
 defence of the important legislation of the 
 seventeen eventful years that constitute his 
 parliamentary life. Far beyond that, his 
 speeches would be found to forecast many 
 great measures yet to be completed, — meas- 
 ures which he knew were beyond the public 
 opinion of the hour, but which he confi- 
 dently believed would secure popular ap- 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 3/ 
 
 proval within the period of his own lifetime, 
 and by the aid of his own efforts. 
 
 Differing, as Garfield does, from the bril- 
 liant parliamentary leaders, it is not easy to 
 find his counterpart anywhere in the record 
 of American public life. He perhaps more 
 nearly resembles Mr. Seward in his supreme 
 faith in the all-conquering power of a princi- 
 ple. He had the love of learning, and the 
 patient industry of investigation, to which 
 John Ouincy Adams owes his prominence 
 and his Presidency. He had some of those 
 ponderous elements of mind which distin- 
 guished Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in 
 all our public life have left the great Mas- 
 sachusetts senator without an intellectual 
 peer. 
 
 In English parliamentary history, as in 
 our own, the leaders in the House of Com- 
 mons present points of essential difference 
 from Garfield. But some of his methods 
 recall the best features in the strong, in- 
 dependent course of Sir Robert Peel ; and 
 
38 EULOGY ON 
 
 striking resemblances are discernible in that 
 most promising of modern conservatives, 
 who died too early for his country and his 
 fame, the Lord George Bentinck. He had 
 all of Burke's love for the sublime and the 
 beautiful, with, possibly, something of his 
 superabundance; and in his faith and his 
 magnanimity, in his power of statement, in 
 his subtle analysis, in his faultless logic, in 
 his love of literature, in his wealth and 
 world of illustration, one is reminded of that 
 great English statesman of to-day, who, con- 
 fronted with obstacles that would daunt any 
 but the dauntless, reviled by those whom he 
 would relieve as bitterly as by those whose 
 supposed rights he is forced to invade, still 
 labors with serene courage for the ameliora- 
 tion of Ireland, and for the honor of the 
 English name. 
 
 Garfield's nomination to the Presidency, 
 while not predicted or anticipated, was not a 
 surprise to the country. His prominence in 
 Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputa- 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 39 
 
 tion, Strengthened by his then recent elec- 
 tion as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the 
 public eye as a man occupying the very 
 highest rank among those entitled to be 
 called statesmen. It was not mere chance 
 that brought him this high honor. ''We 
 must," says Mr. Emerson, "reckon success a 
 constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust 
 health, and has slept well, and is at the top 
 of his condition, and thirty years old at his 
 departure from Greenland, he will steer 
 west, and his ships will reach Newfoundland. 
 But take Eric out, and put in a stronger and 
 bolder man, and the ships will sail six hun- 
 dred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles 
 farther, and reach Labrador and New Eng- 
 land. There is no chance in results." 
 
 As a candidate Garfield steadily grew in 
 popular favor. He was met with a storm of 
 detraction at the very hour of his nomina- 
 tion, and it continued with increasing volume 
 and momentum until the close of his victo- 
 rious campaign. 
 
40 EULOGY ON 
 
 " No might nor greatness in mortality 
 Can censure 'scape ; back-wounding calumny 
 The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong 
 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ? " 
 
 Under it all he was calm and strong and 
 confident ; never lost his self-possession, did 
 no unwise act, spoke no hasty or ill-consid- 
 ered word. Indeed, nothing in his whole 
 life is more remarkable or more creditable 
 than his bearing through those five full 
 months of vituperation, — a prolonged agony 
 of trial to a sensitive man, a constant and 
 cruel draft upon the powers of moral endur- 
 ance. The great mass of these unjust im- 
 putations passed unnoticed, and with the 
 general debris of the campaign fell into 
 oblivion. But in a few instances the iron 
 entered his soul, and he died with the injury 
 unforgotten if not unforgiven. 
 
 One aspect of Garfield's candidacy was 
 unprecedented. Never before, in the his- 
 tory of partisan contests in this country, 
 had a successful Presidential candidate 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 41 
 
 spoken freely on passing events and current 
 issues. To attempt any thing of the kind 
 ■seemed novel, rash, and even desperate. 
 The older class of voters recalled the unfor- 
 tunate Alabama letter, in which Mr. Clay 
 was supposed to have signed his political 
 death-warrant. They remembered also the 
 hot-tempered effusion by which Gen. Scott 
 lost a large share of his popularity before 
 his nomination, and the unfortunate speeches 
 which rapidly consumed the remainder. 
 The younger voters had seen Mr. Greeley, in 
 a series of vigorous and original addresses, 
 preparing the pathway for his own defeat. 
 Unmindful of these warnings, unheeding 
 the advice of friends, Garfield spoke to large 
 crowds as he journeyed to and from New 
 York in August, to a great multitude in that 
 city, to delegations and deputations of every 
 kind that called at Mentor during the sum- 
 mer and autumn. With innumerable critics, 
 watchful and eager to catch a phrase that 
 might be turned into odium or ridicule, or a 
 
42 EULOGY ON 
 
 sentence that might be distorted to his own 
 or his party's injury, Garfield did not trip or 
 halt in any one of his seventy speeches. 
 This seems all the more remarkable when it 
 is remembered that he did not write what he 
 said, and yet spoke with such logical con- 
 secutiveness of thought and such admirable 
 precision of phrase as to defy the accident 
 of misreport and the malignity of misrepre- 
 sentation. 
 
 In the beginning of his presidential life 
 Garfield's experience did not yield him 
 pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that 
 engross so large a portion of the Presi- 
 dent's time were distasteful to him, and were 
 unfavorably contrasted with his legislative 
 work. ** I have been dealing all these years 
 with ideas," he impatiently exclaimed one 
 day, '' and here I am dealing only with 
 persons. I have been heretofore treating of 
 the fundamental principles of government, 
 and here I am considering all day whether 
 A or B shall be appointed to this or that 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 43 
 
 office." He was earnestly seeking some 
 practical way of correcting the evils arising 
 from the distribution of overgrown and 
 unwieldy patronage, — evils always appre- 
 ciated and often discussed by him, but whose 
 magnitude had been more deeply impressed 
 upon his mind since his accession to the 
 Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive 
 improvement in the mode of appointment 
 and in the tenure of office would have been 
 proposed by him, and with the aid of Con- 
 gress no doubt perfected. 
 
 But, while many of the executive duties 
 were not grateful to him, he was assiduous 
 and conscientious in their discharge. From 
 the very outset he exhibited administrative 
 talent of a high order. He grasped the helm 
 of office with the hand of a master. In this 
 respect, indeed, he constantly surprised many 
 who were most intimately associated with 
 him in the government, and especially those 
 who had feared that he might be lacking in 
 the execative faculty. His disposition of 
 
44 EULOGY ON 
 
 business was orderly and rapid. His power 
 of analysis, and his skill in classification, 
 enabled him to despatch a vast mass of de- 
 tail with singular promptness and ease. His 
 Cabinet meetings were admirably conducted. 
 His clear presentation of official subjects, 
 his well-considered suggestion of topics on 
 which discussion was invited, his quick de- 
 cision when all had been heard, combined to 
 show a thoroughness of mental training as 
 rare as his natural ability and his facile 
 adaptation to a new and enlarged field of 
 labor. 
 
 With a perfect comprehension of all the 
 inheritances of the war, with a cool calcula- 
 tion of the obstacles in his way, impelled 
 always by a generous enthusiasm, Garfield 
 conceived that much might be done by his 
 administration towards restoring harmony 
 between the different sections of the Union. 
 He was anxious to go South, and speak to 
 the people. As early as April he had in- 
 effectually endeavored to arrange for a trip 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 45 
 
 to Nashville, whither he had been cordially 
 invited, and he was again disappointed a few 
 weeks later to find that he could not go to 
 South Carolina to attend the centennial cele- 
 bration of the victory of the Cowpens. But 
 for the autumn, he definitely counted on 
 being present at three memorable assemblies 
 in the South, — the celebration at Yorktown, 
 the opening of the Cotton Exposition at 
 Atlanta, and the meeting of the Army of 
 the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was 
 already turning over in his mind his address 
 for each occasion ; and the three taken 
 together, he said to a friend, gave him the 
 exact scope and verge which he needed. At 
 Yorktown he would have before him the as- 
 sociations of a hundred years that bound the 
 South and the North in the sacred memory 
 of a common danger and a common victory. 
 At Atlanta he would present the material 
 interests and the industrial development 
 which appealed to the thrift and independence 
 of every household, and which should unite 
 
46 EULOGY ON 
 
 the two sections by the instinct of self- 
 interest and self-defence. At Chattanooga 
 he would revive memories of the war only 
 to show that after all its disaster, and all 
 its suffering, the country was stronger and 
 greater, the Union rendered indissoluble, 
 and the future, through the agony and blood 
 of one generation, made brighter and better 
 for all. 
 
 Garfield's ambition for the success of his 
 administration was high. With strong cau- 
 tion and conservatism in his nature, he was 
 in no danger of attempting rash experiments 
 or of resorting to the empiricism of states- 
 manship. But he believed that renewed and 
 closer attention should be given to questions 
 affecting the material interests and commer- 
 cial prospects of fifty millions of people. 
 He believed that our continental relations, 
 extensive and undeveloped as they are, in- 
 volved responsibility, and could be cultivated 
 into profitable friendship or be abandoned to 
 harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 47 
 
 believed with equal confidence that an essen- 
 tial forerunner to a new era of national prog- 
 ress must be a feeling of contentment in 
 every section of the Union, and a generous 
 belief that the benefits and burdens of gov- 
 ernment would be common to all. Himself 
 a conspicuous illustration of what ability and 
 ambition may do under republican institu- 
 tions, he loved his country with a passion of 
 patriotic devotion, and every waking thought 
 was given to her advancement. He was an 
 American in all his aspirations, and he looked 
 to the destiny and influence of the United 
 States with the philosophic composure of 
 Jefferson and the demonstrative confidence 
 of John Adams. 
 
 The political events which disturbed the 
 President's serenity for many weeks before 
 that fateful day in July form an important 
 chapter in his career, and, in his own judg- 
 ment, involved questions of principle and of 
 right which are vitally essential to the con- 
 stitutional administration of the Federal 
 
48 EULOGY ON 
 
 Government. It would be out of place here, 
 and now, to speak the language of contro- 
 versy ; but the events referred to, however 
 they may continue to be source of conten- 
 tion with others, have become, so far as 
 Garfield is concerned, as much a matter of 
 history as his heroism at Chickamauga or 
 his illustrious service in the House. Detail 
 is not needful, and personal antagonism shall 
 not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. 
 The motives of those opposing him are not 
 to be here adversely interpreted, nor their 
 course harshly characterized. But of the 
 dead President this is to be said, and said 
 because his own speech is forever silenced, 
 and he can be no more heard except through 
 the fidelity and the love of surviving friends : 
 From the beginning to the end of the con- 
 troversy he so much deplored, the President 
 was never for one moment actuated by any 
 motive of gain to himself or of loss to others. 
 Least of all men did he harbor revenge, 
 rarely did he even show resentment, and 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 49 
 
 malice was not in his nature. He was con- 
 genially employed only in the exchange of 
 good offices and the doing of kindly deeds. 
 
 There was not an hour, from the begin- 
 ning of the trouble till the fatal shot entered 
 his body, when the President would not 
 gladly, for the sake of restoring harmony, 
 have retraced any step he had taken if such 
 retracing had merely involved consequences 
 personal to himself. The pride of consist- 
 ency, or any supposed sense of humiliation 
 that might result from surrendering his posi- 
 tion, had not a feather's weight with him. 
 No man was ever less subject to such influ- 
 ences from within or from without. But 
 after most anxious deliberation and the cool- 
 est survey of all the circumstances, he sol- 
 emnly believed that the true prerogatives of 
 the Executive were involved in the issue 
 which had been raised, and that he would be 
 unfaithful to his supreme obligation if he 
 failed to maintain, in all their vigor, the con- 
 stitutional rights and dignities of his great 
 
50 EULOGY ON 
 
 office. He believed this in all the convic- 
 tions of conscience when in sound and vigor- 
 ous health, and he believed it in his suffering 
 and prostration in the last conscious thought 
 which his wearied mind bestowed on the 
 transitory struggles of life. 
 
 More than this need not be said. Less 
 than this could not be said. Justice to the 
 dead, the highest obligation that devolves 
 upon the living, demands the declaration 
 that in all the bearings of the subject, actual 
 or possible, the President was content in his 
 mind, justified in his conscience, immovable 
 in his conclusions. 
 
 The religious element in Garfield's charac- 
 ter was deep and earnest. In his early 
 youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, 
 a sect of that great Baptist communion, 
 which in different ecclesiastical establish- 
 ments is so numerous and so influential 
 throughout all parts of the United States. 
 But the broadening tendency of his mind 
 and his active spirit of inquiry were early 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 51 
 
 apparent, and carried him beyond the dogmas 
 of sect and the restraints of association. In 
 selecting a college in which to continue his 
 education, he rejected Bethany, though pre- 
 sided over by Alexander Campbell, the 
 greatest preacher of his Church. His rea- 
 sons were characteristic : first, that Bethany 
 leaned too heavily toward slavery ; and, sec- 
 ond, that being himself a Disciple, and the 
 son of Disciple parents, he had little ac- 
 quaintance with people of other beliefs, and 
 he thought it would make him more liberal, 
 — quoting his own words, — both in his reli- 
 gious and general views, to go into a new 
 circle, and be under new influences. 
 
 The liberal tendency which he anticipated 
 as the result of wider culture was fully real- 
 ized. He was emancipated from mere sec- 
 tarian belief, and with eager interest pushed 
 his investigations in the direction of mod- 
 ern progressive thought. He followed with 
 quickening step in the paths of exploration 
 and speculation so fearlessly trodden by 
 
52 EULOGY ON- 
 
 Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall, and by 
 other living scientists of the radical and 
 advanced type. His own church, binding 
 its disciples by no formulated creed, but 
 accepting the Old and New Testaments as 
 the word of God, with unbiased liberty of 
 private interpretation, favored, if it did not 
 stimulate, the spirit of investigation. Its 
 members profess with sincerity, and profess 
 only, to be of one mind and one faith with 
 those who immediately followed the Master, 
 and who were first called Christians at An- 
 tioch. 
 
 But however high Garfield reasoned of 
 " fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge abso- 
 lute," he was never separated from the 
 Church of the Disciples in his affections 
 and in his associations. For him it held 
 the ark of the covenant. To him it was the 
 gate of heaven. The world of religious be- 
 lief is full of solecisms and contradictions. 
 A philosophic observer declares that men 
 by the thousand will die in defence of a 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 53 
 
 creed whose doctrines they do not compre- 
 hend, and whose tenets they habitually vio- 
 late. It is equally true that men by the 
 thousand will cling to church organizations 
 with instinctive and undying fidelity when 
 their belief in maturer years is radically dif- 
 ferent from that which inspired them as 
 neophytes. 
 
 But after this range of speculation, and 
 this latitude of doubt, Garfield came back 
 always with freshness and delight to the 
 simpler instincts of religious faith, which, 
 earliest implanted, longest survive. Not 
 many weeks before his assassination, walk- 
 ing on the banks of the Potomac with a 
 friend, and conversing on those topics of 
 personal religion concerning which noble 
 natures have an unconquerable reserve, he 
 said that he found the Lord's Prayer and 
 the simple petitions learned in infancy infi- 
 nitely restful to him, not merely in their 
 stated repetition, but in their casual and fre- 
 quent recall as he went about the daily 
 
54 EULOGY ON 
 
 duties of life. Certain texts of scripture 
 had a very strong hold on his memory and 
 his heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh 
 some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher 
 who prefaced his sermon with reading the 
 eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Ro- 
 mans, which book had been the subject of 
 careful study with Garfield during all his 
 religious life. He was greatly impressed by 
 the elocution of the preacher, and declared 
 that it had imparted a new and deeper mean- 
 ing to the majestic utterances of St. Paul. 
 He referred often in after-years to that 
 memorable service, and dwelt with exaltation 
 of feeling upon the radiant promise and the 
 assured hope with which the great Apostle 
 of the Gentiles was " persuaded that neither 
 death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
 nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
 to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
 other creature, shall be able to separate us 
 from the love of God, which is in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord." 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 55 
 
 The crowning characteristic of Gen. Gar- 
 field's religious opinions, as, indeed, of all his 
 opinions, was his liberality. In all things 
 he had charity. Tolerance was of his 
 nature. He respected in others the quali- 
 ties which he possessed himself, — sincerity 
 of conviction, and frankness of expression. 
 With him the inquiry was not so much what 
 a man believes, but, does he believe it ? The 
 lines of his friendship and his confidence 
 encircled men of every creed, and men of no 
 creed ; and to the end of his life, on his ever- 
 lengthening list of friends, were to be found 
 the names of a pious Catholic priest and of 
 an honest-minded and generous-hearted free- 
 thinker. 
 
 On the morning of Saturday, July 2, the 
 President was a contented and happy man — 
 not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, 
 almost boyishly happy. On his way to the 
 railroad-station to which he drove slowly, in 
 conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morn- 
 ing, with an unwonted sense of leisure and 
 
56 EULOGY ON 
 
 a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was 
 all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He 
 felt that after four months of trial his admin- 
 istration was strong in its grasp of affairs, 
 strong in popular favor and destined to grow 
 stronger ; that grave difficulties confronting 
 him at his inauguration had been safely 
 passed ; that trouble lay behind him and not 
 before him ; that he was soon to meet the 
 wife whom he loved, now recovering from an 
 illness which had but lately disquieted and 
 at times almost unnerved him ; that he was 
 going to his Alma Mater to renew the most 
 cherished associations of his young man- 
 hood, and to exchange greetings with those 
 whose deepening interest had followed every 
 step of his upward progress from the day 
 he entered upon his college course until he 
 had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift 
 of his countrymen. 
 
 Surely, if happiness can ever come from 
 the honors or triumphs of this world, on that 
 quiet July morning James A. Garfield may 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 57 
 
 well have been a happy man. No forebod- 
 ing of evil haunted him ; no slightest pre- 
 monition of danger clouded his sky. His 
 terrible fate was upon him in an instant. 
 One moment he stood erect, strong, confi- 
 dent in the years stretching peacefully out 
 before him. The next he lay wounded, 
 bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks 
 of torture, to silence, and the grave. 
 
 Great in life, he was surpassingly great in 
 death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of 
 wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand 
 of murder, he was thrust from the full tide 
 of this world's interest, from its hopes, its 
 aspirations, its victories, into the visible 
 presence of death — and he did not quail. 
 Not alone for the one short moment in 
 which, stunned and dazed, he could give up 
 life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but 
 through days of deadly languor, through 
 weeks of agony, that was not less agony 
 because silently borne, with clear sight and 
 calm courage, he looked into his open grave. 
 
58 EULOGY ON 
 
 What blight and ruin met his anguished 
 eyes, whose lips may tell ! — what brilliant 
 broken plans, what baffled high ambitions, 
 what sundering of strong warm manhood's 
 friendships, what bitter rending of sweet 
 household ties ! Behind him a proud, ex- 
 pectant nation, a great host of sustaining 
 friends; a cherished and happy mother, wear- 
 ing the full, rich honors of her early toil and 
 tears ; the wife of his youth, whose whole 
 life lay in his; the little boys not yet 
 emerged from childhood's day of frolic ; the 
 fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just 
 springing into closest companionship, claim- 
 ing every day and every day rewarding a 
 father's love and care ; and in his heart the 
 eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. 
 Before him, desolation and great darkness ! 
 And his soul was not shaken. His country- 
 men were thrilled with instant, profound, 
 and universal sympathy. Masterful in his 
 mortal weakness, he became the centre of a 
 nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a 
 
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 59 
 
 world. But all the love and all the sympa- 
 thy could not share with him his suffering. 
 He trod the wine-press alone. With unfal- 
 tering front he faced death. With unfailing 
 tenderness he took leave of life. Above the 
 demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he 
 heard the voice of God. With simple resig- 
 nation he bowed to the divine decree. 
 
 As the end drew near, his early craving 
 for the sea returned. The stately mansion 
 of power had been to him the wearisome 
 hospital of pain ; and he begged to be taken 
 from its prison walls, from its oppressive, 
 stifling air, from its homelessness and its 
 hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of 
 a great people bore the pale sufferer to the 
 longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to 
 die, as God should will, within sight of its 
 heaving billows, within sound of its manifold 
 voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly 
 lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out 
 wistfully upon the ocean's changing won- 
 ders, — on its far sails, whitening in the 
 
60 EULOGY ON JAMES ABRAM GAREIELD. 
 
 morning light ; on its restless waves, rolling 
 shoreward to break and die beneath the 
 noonday sun ; on the red clouds of evening, 
 arching low to the horizon ; on the serene 
 and shining pathway of the stars. Let us 
 think that his dying eyes read a mystic 
 meaning which only the rapt and parting 
 soul may know. Let us believe that in the 
 silence of the receding world he heard the 
 great waves breaking on a farther shore, and 
 felt already upon his wasted brow the breath 
 of the eternal morning. 
 
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