But the nation seems to commemorate most fittingly the friendship of those two men, when in the person of its representatives and senators it selects to deliver the eulogy of the dead president. Not any of his colleagues in the House from his native state, however long or well they may have known him; nor his colleague in the senate; no governor of his honored state; his loved and cultured pastor, nor any other man than Blaine,—his chosen counsellor in the great affairs of state; he who was with him when, on that quiet, happy morning in July, they rode slowly to the depot, and “his fate was on him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching out peacefully before him;—the next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave.”
And now, as the hand of Mr. Blaine draws aside the curtain, let us look in upon the final scene in the life and death of his great friend, and see, as he saw, the man so deeply, truly loved by the great nation he had just begun to rule so well.
“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. 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, 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 hour the reward of a father’s love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demands. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken.
“His countrymen 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 world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. 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 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 hearing 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 far 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 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.”
XVII.
SECRETARY OF STATE.
MR. BLAINE was a member of the cabinets of President Garfield and of President Arthur for ten months, retiring at his own request, in January, 1881.
The Foreign Policy of the Garfield administration, as conducted by Mr. Blaine, was emphatically a Peace Policy. It was without the motive or disposition of war in any form. It was one of dignity and uprightness, as a work of twelve hundred and fifty pages, entitled “Foreign Relations of the United States for 1881,” and another book entitled “War in South America, and attempt to bring about Peace, 1880-81,” a book of about eight hundred pages, both printed by the United States Government, and now before us, amply testify.