Decatur Democrat, Volume 25, Number 48, Decatur, Adams County, 3 March 1882 — Page 3

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S SUPPLEMENT.

BLAINE.

tli« Hngiiiticent Oration Delivered Before Roth Houm‘m of Congress

On the Lite and Character of the I.ate James Ahram Garfield.

Him Lowly Beginning and Rapid Advancement •<» Fame.

Hi" NeivicrM in the Field as a Soldier of the War For tiie i n ion.

Washington, February 27.—Prior to 10 o’clock this morning admission to the capitol was refused to all ex cept members of both houses of congress and their employes, but at that hour the doors were thrown open to persons holding tickets to the memorial services of the late James A Garfield, and soon the galleries were tilled to their utmost capacity. A large majority of the spectators were ladies who, out of repect to the occasion, had for the most part discarded their bright colors and a sombre black was the prevailing hue. There were no signs of mourning in the hall.

Among the distinguished guests first to arrive were Judge Bancroft,’ Cyrus VV. Field and Admiral Worden, who took seats directly in front of the clerk’s desk. Among the guests who, at an early hour, occupied seats upon the tioor, were General Schenck and Governors Hoyt, of Pennsylvania; Foster, of Ohio; Hamilton, of Maryland, and Bigelow, of Connecticut. At 10:30 Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Hancock, Howard and Meigs, and Admirals Ammen, Rogers and Rodgers entered and were assigned seats to the left of the speaker’s desk, and a few moments later the members of the diplomatic corps in full regalia, were ushered in, headed by tbe Hawaiian minister, as dean of tiie corps. Their brilliant costumes only served to throw into stronger relief the dark attire of the members of congress who sat immediately behind them. Tbe supreme court of the district, headed by Marshal Henry, were the next arrivals. Dr Bliss was also in attendance. Mrs. Blaine occupied a front seat in the gallery reserved for friends of the president. At precisely 12 o’clock the house was called to order by Speaker Keifer and prayer offered by the chaplain. The speaker then said: “This day has been dedicated, by action of the two houses of congress, to hold services in conmemoration of the life and death of James Abram Garfield, late president of the United States. This house is now assembled and ready to perform its part.” The resolutions setting apart to-day for the memorial services were then read by Clerk McPherson. At 12:10 the senate was announced, and all rose as the senators headed by the officers entered and took the seats assigned them. They were followed by the chief justice and associate justices of the supreme court dressed in their robes of office.

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Again theassembed multitude arose as the president of the United States and his cabinet were announced. They were accompanied by Senator Sherman and Representative McKinley, chairman of the committee of arrangements. The president took a front seat on the right of the presiding officer’s chair.

At 12:30 the orator of the day, James G. Blaine, was announced. The ceremonies were then opened •by a short prayer by Chaplain Power, of the house, after which President Davis said: “This day is dedicated by congress for the memorial services on the late president of the United States, James A. Garfield. I present you Hon. Jas. G. Blaine, who has been fitly chosen orator for this historical occasion.”

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 elose of a mighty struggle in which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of hie great life added but another to the lengthened succession of horror 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 wh-n anger and hate had been banished from the lanti. “Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it has been exhibited, where such example was least to have been looked for, let him not give 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 * u 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 Plymouth till the uprising against Charles 1., about 20,00) emigrants came from Old England to New Eng land. 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 religious liberty began in earnest at home. The man who struck his most effective blow for freedom of conscience by sailing for the colonies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to leave after 1640. The opportunities had then come on tbe soil of Eng and for that great contest which established'the authority of parliament, gave religious freedom to the people, sent Charles to the ‘-ck, and committed

THE ADDRESS.

to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the supreme executive authority of Em never r2 e *®Ution was men wtr eWP ‘ ’ *1? froni lhes « -°’ oou ?, e “l "‘tha Sinali emigration from Scotland and from France, are defended the vast numbers who have DcTJ'-'!? Blld l,] ° o,i *" their vei ™>- in 1860 the revocation of the Edict of an tew by Louis XIV, scattered other countries 400,u00 Protestants who were among the most intelligent and enterprising of French s übjwts. Merchants of capital, skilled manufacturers and handicrafts—men superior at the time to all others in Europe. A considerable uumber of these Huguenot French came to America A few landed in New England and became honorably prominent tn its history.

Ihe nallies have in large part become anglicized or have disappeared I but their blood is traceable in many lor the most reputable families, and | their fame is perpetuated in honorable : memorials and useful institutions. I From these two sources, the English Puritan and the French Huguenot, came the late president, the father Abram Garfield, being descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other. It was good sto kon i both sides—none better, none braver I none truer. There was in it an Inhet ! itance of courage, of manliness, of Imperishable love of liberty, of undying ,I adherence to principle. Garfield was I proud of his blood, and with as much ■ satisfaction as if be were a British no- | blemau reading his stately ancestial record in Bur ke’s Peerage he spoke of himself as ninth in descent from those who would not endure the oppression. I of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the brave French Protestants who refused to submit to tyranny even from the grand monarqe. Gen. Garfield delighted to dwell on these I traits, and during his only visit to | England he busied himself in discovI ering every trace of his forefathers in I parish registries and on ancient : army roles. Sitting with a friend in the gallery of tae house iof commons 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 bloed had I struck sturdy blows for constitutional government and human liberty his family had been represented. They were at Marston Moor, at Naseby and Preston; they were at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and his own person bad battled for the same great cause in the war which preserved the union of states. Losing his father before he was two years old, ■ the early life of Garfield was one of privation, but its poverty has been made indelicately and unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers have imagined him as the ragged, starving child, wlr.se reality too often greets , the eye in the squalid sections of our large cities. General Garfield’s in- , fancy 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 Jackson was a poor boy; in which Daniel Webster was a poor boy; in the same sense in which a large majority of the eminent men of America 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 snowdrifts of New Hampshire at a period so early that when the smoke rose first from its crude chimney and curled over the frozen hills there was no similar evidence of a white man’s habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. It remains still. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hardships endured by tbe 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 requisit change of scene, the same words would aptly nortray the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where all are engaged in a common struggle, and where a common sympathy and hearty cooperation lighten tbe burbens of each, is a very different pov-erty-different in kind, different in influence and effect from that conscious and humiliating indigence 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 the boundless possibilities of tne future always opening before it. No man ever grew up in the agricultural regions of the west, where a house-raising or even a cornhusking is matter of common interest and helpfulness, with another feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independence. 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 tbe Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of England. His adventure on the canal, and alternative between that and the deck of a Lake Erie schooner, was a farmer boy’s device for earning money’, just as tbe New England lad begins a possibly great career by sailing before the mast on a merchantman bound to the-farther India or to the China seas. No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back to early struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when he conquers the obstacles in his progress. But no one of noble mold desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position, as 1 having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, or as having suffered the evils of poverty until relief was found at the band of charity. General Garfield’s vouth presented no hardships which family love and family energy 1 did not overcome, subjected him to no < privations w'hich he did not cheerfully accept, and left no memories save those which were recalled with de« 1

The story was gathered in Df vue

light and transmitted |w ith profit and with pride. Garfield’s early opportunities for securing au education were extremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to learn. He could read at three years ol age, and each winter he had the advantage of the district school. He read all the books he found within the circle of his acquaintance. Some ofthrtn begot by heart. While yet in childhood lie 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 traning. At eighteen years of age he was able to teach school,and thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college educa ion. To this end be bent all hie efforts, working in the harvest field, at the carpenter’s bench,and in the winter season teaching the common schools of the mighborhood.

The history of Garfield’s life to this period presents no novel features. He has undoubtedly shown perseverence, self-reliance, self-sacrifice and ambi-tion-qualities which, oe 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 bis educational period, receiving his diploma when 24 years of age, he seemed at one bound to spring into conspicuous 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 to the national congress—a combination of honors so varied, so elevated,within a period so brief, and to a man so young is without precedent or parallel in the history of the country. Garfield's army life was begun with no other military knowledge than such as he had hastily gained from books in tbe 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 command of a brigade and to operate as an independent force in eastern Kentucky. His immediate duty was to check the advance of Humphrey Marshall, who was marching down the Big Sandy with the intention of occupying, in connection wjth other Confederate forces, the entire territory of Kentucky, and of precipitating the State into secession. This was at the close of the year 18(11. 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 into a strange c >untry, among a hostile population, to confront a largely superior force under thecommand of a distinguished graduate of West Point, who had seen active and important service in two preceding wars. The result of the campaign is a matter of history. The skill, the endurance, the extraordinary energy shown by Garfield, the courage he imparted to his men, raw and untried as himself; the measures he adopted to increase his orce and to increase in the enemy’s mind exaggerated estimates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of Marshall, the capture of his camp, the disposition of his force, and the emancipation of an important territory from the control of the rebels. Coming at the close of the long series of disasters to the Union arms, Garfield’s victory had an unusual and extraneous importance, and in the popular judgment elevated the young commander to the rank of a military hero. Witii less than 2,000 men in his entire command, with a mobilized force of only 1,050, without cannon, he had met an army of 5,000 and defeated them, driving Marshall’s forces successfully from two strongholds of their own selection, fortified with abundant artillery. Maj.-Gen. Buell, commanding the department of the Ohio, an experienced and able soldier of the regular army, published an order of thanks and congratulations on the brilliant result of the Big Sandy campaign, which would have turned the head of a less cool amj sensible man than Garfield. Buell declared that his services had calleo into action the highest qualities of a soldier, and President Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the more substantial reward of a brigadier-general’s commission, to bear date from the day of his decisive victory over Marshall. The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its brilliant beginning. With his new commis sion he was assigned to the command of a brigade in lhe army of the Ohio, and took part in the second and decisive day’s fight in the great battle ot Shiloh.

The remainder of the year 1862 was not especially eventful Io Garfield, as it was not to the armies with which he was serving. His practical sense was called into exercise in contemplating the task assigned him by Gen. Buell of reconstructing bridges and re-establishing lines of railway communication for the army. His occupation in this useful but not brilliant field was varied by service on courtsmartial 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 itself was w arrant 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 respect, learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied attainments, who in the day of triumph sat reserved, and silent, and grateful “as Francis Deak in the hour of Hungary’s deliverance,” was Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, and in his honorable retirement enjoys the respect and veneration of all who loye the union of the stAtcs. Eariy in 1863 Garfieid was assigned to the highly important and responsible post of chief of staff to General Rosecrans, then at the head of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military campaign no subordinate officer requires sounder judgment and quicker knowledge of men than the chief of staff to the commanding general. An indiscreet man

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near tne anterior ulterior j ■ * ing upwards and backwards, crossing 1841 he came with his parents to De- . • . _ —-v I where he has since resided.

in such a position can sow’ more discord, breed more jealousy, and disseminate more strife than any other officer in the entire organization. When General Garfield assumed his new duties he found various troubles already well developed and seriously affecting the value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumberland. The energy, the impartiality, arm the tael with which besought 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 versatility. His military duties dosed on the memorable field of Chickamauga, a field w’hich, however disastrous to the Union arms, gave to him the occasion of winning imperishable laurels. The very rare distinction was accorded 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 lionduct in the battle of Chickamauga.”

The army cf the Cumberland was reorganized under the command of General Thomas, who promptly offered Garfield one of its divisions. He w’as 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 w’hen he must take his seat was drawing mear. He preferred to remain in the military service, and had within his own breast the largest confidence of success in the wider field which his new rank opened to him. Balancing 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 Secretary 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 majorgeneral on the sth clay of December, 1863, and took his seat in the house of representatives on the 7th. He had served two years and four months in the army, and had just completed his 32d year.

The thirty-eighth congress is prominently entitled in history to the designation of the war congress. It was elected while the war was flagrant, and every member was chosen upon the issues involved in the continuance of the struggle. The thirtyseventh 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 sum of mone v 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 twenty-four states were represented, and 182 members were upon its rolls. Among these were many distinguished party leaders on both sides—veterans in the public service, with established reputations for ability, and w’ith that skill that comes from parliamentary experience. Into this assemblage of men Garfield entered without special preparation, and it might almost be said, unexpected'y. The question of taking command of a division of troops under General Thomas or taking his seat in congress was kept open until the last momen —so late, indeed, that the resignation of his military commission and his appearance In ths 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 congress from tne state of Ohio. He was especially fortunate in the constituency 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 in ■ telligent 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 supporters. Their tenacious trust in men in whom they have once confided is illustrated by the unparalleled fact that Elisha Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings, and James A. Gai field represented the district for fifty-fotr 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 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 the survival of the strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretense can be derived and no glamour can mislead. The real man is discovered, his worth is impartially weighed, his rank is irrevocably decided. With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the youngest member in the house when he entered, and was but seven years from hie college graduation; but he had not been in his seat sixty days before his abilitv was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there; tbe 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 gubernatorial chairs of their respective states and on foreign missions of great consequence. But among all none grew so rapidly, none so firmly, as Garfield. As is said by Teyeian of his parliamentary hero, Garfield succeeded because all the world in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because, when once in the front, he played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the outward symtoms 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 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.

tears, of those who remembered the

This is one of the happiest and rarest distinctions of an effective leader, and often counts for as much in persuading an assembly as eloquent and’ elaborate argument, His military life, illustrated by honorable performance and rich in promise, was, as he himself felt, prematurely terminated and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might have dune 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 intelligently, 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 scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts made at the bar were distinguished by the sume high order of talent which he exhibited on every field where he was put to the test, and, ifa 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 tate ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will rest largely upon his service in the house of representatives. The service was exceptionally long. He was nine times consecutively congressman to the house, an honor enjoyed by not more than six other representatives of the more than 1,000 who have been elected from the organization of the goveinment to this hour.

As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined, where the position has been chosen and the ground laid out, Garfield must be assigned a very high rank—more perhaps than any man with whom he was associated in public life. He gave careful and systematic study to public questions, he came to every discuss! >u in which he took part with elaborate and complete preparations. He was a steady and indefatigable worker. Those who imagine that talent of 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 skillful. He possessed in high degree the power of readily absorbing ideas aud facts, and, like Dr. Johnson, bad the art of getting from a book all that wa» 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 pre-eminently a fair and candid man; in debate he took no petty advantage, stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal allusion, 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 marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his hearers forget any possible lack in the complete 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 complained that he was giving his case away. But never in his prolonged participation in the proceedings in the house did he give his case away or fail, in the judgment of competent and impartial list ners, to gain the mastery. These characteristics which marked Garfield as a great debater did not, however, make him a gr at parliamentary leader. A parliamentary leader, as that term is understood wherever free representative government exists, is necessarily’ aud very strictly tbe organ of his party. An ardent American defined the instinctive warmth of patriotism when he offered the toast, “Our country, always right, but right or wrong, our country.” The parliamentary leader who has a body of followers that will do, and dare, and die for the cause s one w’ho believed his party always rigiit, but, right or wrong, is for his party. No more important or exacting duty devolved 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 skillfully avoids the strength of his opponent’s position and scatters confusion in his ranks by attacking an exposed point, when really the righteousness of the cause aud the strength of the logical intreuchment are against him. He conquers often both against the right and the heavy battalions, as when young Charles Fox, in the days of his tory sm, carried the house of commons against justice, against immemorial rights, against his own convictions—if, indeed, at that period Fox had convictions, and in the interests of a corrupt administration, in obedience to a tyrannical sovereign, drove Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of Middlesex had chosen him, and installed Luttrell in defiance not merely of law but of public decency. For an achievement of that kind Garfield was disqualified—disqualified by the texture of his mind, by’ the honesty cf his heart, by his con cience, and by every instinct and aspiration of his nature. The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas, and Thaddeus Stevens. Each was a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, differingjwidely each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common—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 unlocked for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in the parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay in 1841, when at 64 years of age he took the control of the Whig party from the president w’ho had received their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the cabinet, against the eloquence 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 plentitude of power, he hurled against John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, «nd drove his administration to seek shelter behind the

Eugene Xorrow,of Buena V ista, was

Notice is hereby given that the under-

lines of his political foes. Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant congress into a repeal of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens in his contest 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 discharged by the executive. With two hundreds 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 command the support of one-third in either house against the parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus 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 not. and in the breadth of his congressional work he left that which will long exert a potential influence among men, aud which, measured by- the severe test of posthumous criticism, will secure a mere enduring and more enviable fame. Those unfamiliar with Garfield’s industry aud 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 contributed so much that will be valuable for future reference. His speeches are numerous, 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 records, they would present an invaluable compendium of the political history of the most important era through which the national government has ever pa.-sed. When the history of this peiiod shall be impartially written, when war, legislation, measures of reconstruction, protection of human rights, amendments to the constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps towards specie resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed uusurrounded by prejudice and disconnected from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will beestimated 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 1803, to June, 1880, would give a well connected history aud complete defense 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—measures which he knew were beyond the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently believed would secure popular approval within the period of his own lifetime, and the aid of his voice to have signed his political death-warrant. They' remembered also the hot-tempered effusion by which General Scott lost a large share of his popularity before his nomination, and the unfortunate speeches which rapidly consumed the remainder. I’he 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 hejourneyed to and fro 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 summer and autumn. With innumerable critics watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might be turned into odium or ridicule, or a sentence that might be distorted to his own or his party’s injury, Garfield did not trip or halt in anyone of his seventyspeeches. This seems all the more remarkable when it is remembered that he did not write what he said and yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such admirable precision of phrase as to defy the accident of misreport and the malignity of misrepresentation. 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 president's time were distasteful to him, and were unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. He was earnestly seeking some practical way of correcting the evils aiising from the distribution of overgrown and anviedy patronage—evils always appreciated and often discussea 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 modes of appointment and in the tenure of office would have been proposed by him, and, with the aid of congress, 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 not most Ultimately associated with him in the government, and especially those who feared he might be lacking in the executive faculty. His disposition of business was orderly and rapid; his power of analysis and his skill in classification enabled him to dispatch a vast mass of detail with singular promptness and ease; his cabinet meetings were admirably conducted; his clear presentation of official subjects, his well-considered suggestions of topics on which discussion was invitea, his quick decision when all had 1 heard, combined to show a thoroughness of mental training as rare as his I natural ability and his facile adaptai tion to a new and enlarged field of labor.

The eulogy- was concluded at 1:50 p. m. On motion of Mr. McKinley, the house, as a further mark of respect, adjourned.

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