and carrying in his heart the memory of its glorious deeds, looks forward prepared to meet the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle. The Republican party offers to our brethren of the South the olive branch of peace, and invites them to renewed brotherhood on this supreme condition that it shall be admitted forever, that in the war for the Union we were right and they were wrong. On that supreme condition we meet them as brethren, and ask them to share with us the blessings and honors of this great republic. Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to present a name for your consideration - the name of one who was the comrade, associate, and friend of nearly all the noble dead, whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago, who courageously confronted the slave power in the days of peril on the plains of Kansas,' when first began to fall the red drops of that bloody shower which finally swelled into a deluge of gore in the late Rebellion. He bravely stood by young Kansas, and, returning to his seat in the national legislature, his pathway through all the subsequent years has been marked by labors worthily performed in every department of legislation.

You ask for his monument. I point you to twentyfive years of national statutes. Not one great, beneficent law has been placed on our statute books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided in formulating the laws to raise the great armies and navies

1 Referring to the critical period which determined the destiny of Kansas as a "free" state.

which carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back "the unity and married calm of States." His hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency, and in all the still greater work that redeemed the promises of the government and made the currency equal to gold.

When at last he passed from the halls of legislation into a high executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness, and poise of character which have carried us through a stormy period of three years, with one half the public press crying, "Crucify him!" 1 and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success. In all this he remained unmoved until victory crowned him. The great fiscal affairs of the nation, and the vast business interest of the country, he guarded and preserved while executing the law of resumption, and effected its object without a jar and against the false prophecies of one half of the press and of all the Democratic party.

He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the government. For twenty-five years he has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of "that fierce light that beats against the throne"; but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain upon his shield. I do not present him as a better Republican or a better man than thousands of others that we honor; but I present him for your deliberate and favorable consideration. I nominate John Sherman of Ohio.

1 Cf. John xix. 6.

THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD 1

JAMES G. BLAINE

(1882)

JAMES G. BLAINE (1830-1893) was born at West Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Washington College. After a period of teaching school, he removed to Augusta, Maine, bought the Kennebec Journal, and as its editor soon made himself felt in the politics of the state. He was for several years a member of the Maine legislature, and later was elected to Congress. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency. He served as Secretary of State in the Cabinets of Presidents Garfield and Harrison. His "Twenty Years in Congress" gives a valuable résumé of the earlier political history of the country, and an accurate account of the political period from President Lincoln to President Garfield.

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 visible presence of death; and he did not quail. Not alone for 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

1 This is the peroration of a speech delivered by James G. Blaine, in 1882, at the Garfield memorial exercises of Congress in the House of Representatives. By permission of John D. Morris & Company.

not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. 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 friendship, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him, a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing 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, claiming every day, and every day rewarding a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demands. And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine press alone.1 With unfaltering 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 resignation 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 his prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness.

1 Cf. Isaiah lxiii. 3. í

Gently and 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 the heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With a wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its far sails; 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 eternal morning.