ASSASSINATION OF GARFIELD.
In this fair republic of ours, a fabric of government strong in structure, superb and imposing, chaste and grand; a temple whose real devotees are true-hearted patriots, there has not been one who has more perfectly exemplified the possibilities of American youth than James Abram Garfield, child of penury, farmer boy, canal-boat lad, student, teacher, statesman, soldier, President, martyr. In all, true and brave, endowed with the royalty of right manhood, that was becoming as a sovereign citizen, a pattern and a patriot.
He won his way, almost from babyhood to the most exalted place in the nation, by conscientious and industrious work, purity of purpose, carefulness of character, guided, at every moment, by simple rules of truth and honor.
His heritage was that of every healthy boy in the United States, stronger than money, fairer than influence, better than brilliancy, more potent than genius.
Determination to rise, steadfastness of purpose, well-directed commonsense, commendable ambition. These were the factors that made the man, whose unsullied name is graven high in the history of the republic, and whose life was a satisfaction to himself, his associates and his people. Exalted without ostentation, great without conceit, helpful to his family, his friends, his race, his country and himself, blessed of God, the beginning and end of a benediction.
His death was an accident of fate.
Saturday, July 2, 1881, was a fair, hot midsummer day. The inmates of the White House were astir early. The President was going to Massachusetts to attend the commencement exercises at his old college at Williamstown, and afterward to take a holiday jaunt through New England, accompanied by several members of the Cabinet and other friends. His wife, who was at Long Branch, New Jersey, just recovering from a severe attack of malarial fever, was to join him at New York. He had looked forward with almost boyish delight to his trip, and was in high spirits as he and Secretary Blaine drove off to the railway station.
There was no crowd about. Most of those who were to take the train had already gone on board. Among the few persons in the waiting-room was a slender, middle-aged man, who walked up and down rather nervously, occasionally looking out of the door as if expecting some one. There was nothing about him to attract special notice, and no one paid much attention to him. When President Garfield and Mr. Blaine entered, he drew back, took a heavy revolver from his pocket, and, taking deliberate aim, fired. The ball struck the President on the shoulder. He turned, surprised, to see who had shot him. The assassin recocked his revolver and fired again, and then turned to flee. The President fell to the floor, the blood gushing from a wound in his side.
In a moment all was confusion and horror. Secretary Blaine sprang after the assassin, but, seeing that he was caught, turned again to the President. The shock had been great, and he was very pale. A mattress was brought, his tall form was lifted tenderly into an ambulance, and he was swiftly borne to the Executive Mansion. His first thought was for his wife—the beloved wife of his youth, just recovering from sickness, expecting in a few hours to meet him. How would she bear the tidings of this blow?
“Rockwell,” he said, faintly, to a friend, “I want you to send a message to ‘Crete’” (the pet name for his wife, Lucretia). “Tell her I am seriously hurt—how seriously I cannot yet say. I am myself, and hope she will come to me soon. I send my love to her.” During the dictation of the dispatch, Dr. Bliss and several other physicians arrived. A hasty inspection demonstrated that the President was terribly wounded.
A swift train brought Mrs. Garfield to her husband’s side that evening. The persons present in the sick-room retired to allow Mrs. Garfield to meet her husband alone, as he had requested. They remained together only five minutes; but the effect of this brief interview was soon seen in the rallying of the almost dying man. At the end of that time the doctors were again admitted, and then began the long struggle for life, with its fluctuations between hope and dread, which lasted for almost three months. Just after Mrs. Garfield’s arrival there was a sudden collapse which seemed to be the end, and the family of the President were hastily summoned to his bedside; but, to the surprise of every one, the crisis passed, and for three weeks he seemed to improve. Then came a turn for the worse, and from that time the President lost ground. The hot summer days, hard to bear even for those in full health, wasted and weakened him terribly. He sank steadily; and it was seen that unless relief from the intense heat could be had, he would inevitably die within a few days. It was decided to remove him to Elberon, on the ocean shore, near Long Branch, New Jersey; and on September 7th, accompanied by his family and the members of the Cabinet, he was borne by a swift special train northward to the seaside. A summer cottage had been offered for his use, and there for two anxious weeks lay the man who, it may be truly said, had become
“The pillar of a people’s hope,
The center of a world’s desire.”
The cooling breezes of the seaside brought some relief, and the change no doubt prolonged his life; but it could not be saved. In the night of September 19th, almost without warning, the end came; the feeble flame of life, so anxiously watched and cherished, flickered a moment, and then went out in the darkness.
During the long, sultry days of that anxious summer, for many hours of the day and night, throughout all the land, wherever there was a newspaper or a telegraph office, about such places stood groups of people, measured in numbers by the degree of population, waiting and watching eagerly for the slips of paper which from time to time were posted in a conspicuous place on the front of the building. In the intervals they would gather in little knots and talk together in low tones. To one who did not know what had happened on July 2d, it would have been hard to guess what gathered these waiting crowds, day after day, throughout the land. With intense, foreboding suspense fifty millions of people were watching for the news from the bedside of the President of the United States, who had been stricken down by the bullet of the assassin. Who that lived through that long summer can forget those anxious days and nights? And when at last the brave struggle for life was ended, and the silent form was borne from the seaside to rest on the shores of Lake Erie, who can forget the solemn hush which seemed to prevail everywhere as the tomb opened to receive all that was mortal of the beloved President, James A. Garfield?
The President’s body was borne back to Washington, where it lay in state, viewed by great throngs of mourning people; then it was taken westward to Cleveland, and laid in the tomb by the shores of Lake Erie, almost in sight of his old home. The journey was one long funeral pageant. For almost the entire distance the railway tracks were lined with crowds of people, who, with uncovered heads, stood in reverent silence as the train passed. Not since the day when that other dead President, the great Lincoln, was borne to his last resting place, had such an assembly been gathered; and the love and grief which followed Garfield to his grave are the best tribute to the worth of his character.
Five months later, in the hall of the House of Representatives at Washington, amid such a throng as that chamber has seldom seen, Secretary Blaine delivered his eulogy of the dead President; and from that splendid and pathetic address we take the concluding words, which will fitly close this brief sketch:
“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 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 wonders; on its fair sails, whitening in the 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 further shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.”