History of the United States

by John Clark Ridpath

15. In the spring of 1885 it became known that General Ulysses S. Grant was stricken with a fatal malady. The announcement at once drew to the General and ex-President the interest and sympathies of the whole American people. The hero of Vicksburg and Appomattox sank under the ravages of a malignant cancer, which had fixed itself in his throat. On the 23d of July, 1885, he expired at a summer cottage on Mount McGregor, New York. His last days were hallowed by the love of the nation which he had so gloriously defended. No funeral west of the Atlantic—not even that of Lincoln—was more universally observed. The procession in New York City was perhaps as imposing a pageant as was ever exhibited in honor of the dead. On the 8th of August the body of General Grant was laid to rest in Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson. There, on the summit from which may be seen the great river and the metropolis of the nation, is the tomb of him whose courage and magnanimity in war will forever give him rank with the few master spirits who have honored the human race and changed the course of history.

16. Within scarcely more than a year from the funeral of Grant several other distinguished Union Generals fell. On the 29th of October General George B. McClellan died at his home at St. Cloud, New Jersey. After another brief interval General Winfield S. Hancock, senior Major-General of the American Army, breathed his last. In the mean time, within a brief period, Generals Irwin McDowell, Ambrose E. Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and George G. Meade, each of whom, in a critical period of the war, had commanded the Army of the Potomac, passed away. Before the close of 1886 Major-General John A. Logan, greatest of the volunteer commanders, who, without previous military education, won for themselves distinguished honors in the War for the Union, fell sick and died at his home, called Calumet Place, in Washington City.

Thomas A. Hendricks.

Death of Prominent Civilians.

17. In the mean time, several distinguished civilians had passed away. On the 25th of November, 1885, Vice-president Thomas A. Hendricks, after an illness of a single day, died suddenly at his home in Indianapolis. The life of Mr. Hendricks had been one of singular purity as well as of greatness. His character had been noted for its mildness and serenity in the stormy arena of politics. The goodness of the man in private life, combined with his distinction as governor, senator, and Vice-president of the United States, drew from the people every evidence of public and private respect for his memory. The body of the dead statesman was buried in Crown Hill cemetery, near Indianapolis. The funeral pageant surpassed in grandeur any other display of the kind ever witnessed in the Western States, except the funeral of Lincoln. Shortly after his death, the funds were easily subscribed by the people, for the erection of the magnificent bronze monument and statue standing at one of the entrances to the Capitol of Indiana.

18. The death of Hendricks was soon followed by that of Horatio Seymour, of New York. On the 12th of February, 1886, this distinguished citizen, who had been governor of the Empire State, and a candidate for the Presidency against General Grant, died at his home in Utica. Still more distinguished in reputation and ability was Samuel J. Tilden, also of New York, who died at his home, called Greystone, at Yonkers, near New York City, on the 4th of August, 1886.

19. To this list of deaths must be added the illustrious name of Henry Ward Beecher. To him, with little reservation, must be assigned the first place among our orators and philanthropists. He had the happy fortune to retain his faculties unimpaired to the close of his career. On the evening of the 5th of March, 1887, at his home in Brooklyn, he sank down under a stroke of apoplexy. He was nearing the close of his seventy-fourth year. He lived until the morning of the 8th, and quietly entered the shadows. He was followed to the grave by the common eulogium of mankind, and every circumstance of his passing away showed that he had occupied the supreme place among men of his class in America.

20. On the 23d of March, 1888, Morrison R. Waite, Chief-Justice of the United States, died at his home in Washington City. The death of this able jurist imposed on President Cleveland the duty of naming his successor. Judge Melville W. Fuller, of Chicago, was appointed, and confirmed on the 30th of April, 1888.

21. During the whole of Cleveland's administration, the public mind was swayed and excited by the movements of politics. The universality of partisan newspapers, the combination in their columns of all the news of the world with the invectives and misrepresentations of party leaders, kept political questions constantly uppermost to the detriment of social progress and industrial interests. Scarcely had President Cleveland entered upon his office as chief magistrate when the question of the succession to the Presidency was agitated.