Senator Sherman and Representative McKinley (Ohio) occupied seats at the desk on the right and left of the orator of the day. Mr. West, the British Minister, was the only member of the Diplomatic Corps who did not wear the court uniform.
A delegation of gentlemen from the Society of the Army of the Cumberland acted as ushers at the main entrance to the Rotunda and in the various corridors leading to the galleries.
At 12.30 the orator of the day was announced, and after a short prayer by the Chaplain of the House, F. D. Power, president Davis said: “This day is dedicated by Congress for memorial services of the late President of the United States, James A. Garfield. I present to you the Hon. James G. Blaine, who has been fitly chosen as the orator for this historical occasion.”
Mr. Blaine then rose, and standing at the clerk’s desk, immediately in front of the two presiding officers, proceeded, with impressiveness of manner and clearness of tone, to deliver his eulogy from manuscript, as follows:
Mr. Blaine’s Oration.
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 close of a mighty struggle in which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of his great life added but another to the lengthened succession of horrors 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 when anger and hate had been banished from the land. “Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited where such example was last to have been looked for, let him not give it 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 in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character.”
GARFIELD’S ANCESTORS.
From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the uprising against Charles First, about twenty thousand emigrants came from old England to New England. 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 opportunity had then come on the soil of England for that great contest which established the authority of Parliament, gave religious freedom to the people, sent Charles to the block, and committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the Supreme Executive authority of England. The English emigration was never renewed, and from these twenty thousand men with a small emigration from Scotland and from France are descended the vast numbers who have New England blood in their veins.
In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. scattered to other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, who were among the most intelligent and enterprising of French subjects—merchants of capital, skilled manufacturers, and handicraftsmen superior at the time to all others in Europe. A considerable number of these Huguenot French came to America; a few landed in New England and became honorably prominent in its history. Their names have in large part become anglicised, or have disappeared, but their blood is traceable in many of the most reputable families, and their fame is perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful institutions.
From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Huguenot, came the late President—his father, Abram Garfield, being descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other.