CHAPTER XLII.
Removal of the President's Remains.--Monument Fund Committee.--Garfield Memorial in Boston.--Extracts from Address by Hon. N. P. Banks.
On the 22d of October, Garfield's remains were removed from the public vault in Lakeview Cemetery to a private vault on the grounds, there to remain until the completion of the crypt, where they will permanently repose.
A Garfield Monument Fund Committee was organized at Cleveland immediately after the funeral, and contributions have been received by it from all sections of the country.
Upon Thursday, the 20th day of October, Memorial services were held in Boston at Tremont Temple. From the address delivered by Hon. N. P. Banks we give the following extracts:--
"The history of the Plymouth colony of 1620, which preceded the embarkation of the Massachusetts colony, was blistered with the results of a bitter and apparently relentless destiny, against which it would have been scarcely possible for any people but the Massachusetts Puritans and Pilgrims to have secured a triumph like that which the Deity they worshipped vouchsafed to them.
"Its founders were fugitives from England and exiles from Holland. They gladly accepted the chances of suffering and death in the New World, to gain liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God. For the first ten years of its existence population increased slowly, and numbered but three hundred souls in 1630.
"The Massachusetts colony, with which Plymouth was united, left the Old World under happier auspices. It started with concessions and congratulations from the Crown. The best men in England were ambitious to share its fortunes. Winthrop, Saltonstall and Sir Harry Vane--'the sad and starry Vane'--were among its leaders; and such men as John Hampden, Pym, Oliver Cromwell, and many others of that heroic type, were restrained from emigration at the moment of embarkation by the order of the king. Four thousand families--twenty thousand souls--people of culture, capacity and character, no decayed courtiers or adventurers, but merchants, seamen, husbandmen and others devoted to the highest interests of man, had landed in Boston in ten years from the foundation of the city.
"Among them came, in 1630, Edward Garfield, the paternal ancestor of the late President of the United States. He was a man of gentle blood, of military instincts and training, possessing some property, and a thoughtful and vigorous habit of mind and body. The earliest record of his name in the annals of the colony indicated an origin from some one of the great German families of Europe, and his alliance by marriage with a lady of that blood and birth confirmed the original impression of the people with whom he identified his fortunes. His emigration suggested a purpose consistent with his capacity and character, and with the higher aspirations of the colony. He coveted possession of land, and for that reason probably, among others, settled in Watertown, where territory was abundant, and boundary lines yet delicate and dim, especially toward the west, where they were mainly defined by the receding and vanishing forms of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. In the realm they had abandoned it was a maxim among men that home was where the heart was. But in the New World the colonists had discovered that both home and heart were where there were liberty and land.
"He chose a residence near Charles River, a stream unsurpassed in beauty by any water that flows, since honored by the residence and immortalized by the verse of Longfellow, and the original and marvellous industries that enrich its peaceful and prosperous people.
"Edward Garfield, the founder of this new American family, did not long linger near the boundaries of Boston. His first share in the distribution of land to the freemen, by the town, was a small lot or homestall of six acres, on the line of territory afterwards incorporated as the town of Waltham. Another general grant of land by the town, in 1636, 'to the freemen and all the townsmen then inhabiting,' one hundred and twenty in number, called the Great Dividends, gave to Garfield a tract of thirty acres, the whole of which was within the territory set off to Waltham. In 1650 the land allotted to Mr. Phillips, the first minister of Watertown (about forty acres, in the same locality), was sold by his heirs to Garfield and his sons. A portion of this estate was purchased from the heirs of Garfield by Governor Gore, who constructed upon it, from imported plans and materials, on his return from England, a country seat, still admired as one of the most elegant and stately residences in America. The first distinctive title ever given to the territory now embraced within the limits of Waltham was that of 'The Precinct of Captain Garfield's Company.' It is said that, after the incorporation of that town, this name rarely appears on the records of Watertown.
"While citizens of Watertown, Garfield and his descendants were assigned to responsible military commands by the governors of the colony, and frequently chosen for the board of selectmen and other town offices. Captain Benjamin Garfield held a captain's commission from the governor, was nine times elected representative of the town, and appointed to many other offices. Others were honored in a similar manner in Watertown, in Waltham, and wherever they planted themselves.
"They did not hive in the settled and safe centres of the colony, but struck out boldly for the frontier, where danger was to be encountered and duty performed. They adhered zealously to the principles of the colony, and the controversies that arose from considerations of that nature, at the very outset of its history, settled upon an unchangeable basis the character of its government.
"An important and instructive illustration of this free spirit of the people occurred in the second year of its settlement. Without previous consultation of the several towns, the governor and assistants levied, in 1632, an assessment of eight pounds sterling upon them for construction of military defences in what is now Cambridge. This order was declared to be subversive of their rights, and the people of Watertown, the most populous and influential inland town, met in church, with their pastor and elders, according to their custom, and after much debate deliberately refused to pay the money, on the ground, they said, 'that it was not safe to pay monies after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and their posterity into bondage.'
"When summoned before the governor they were obliged to retract the declaration and submit; but they set on foot such an agitation through the colony as to secure, within three months of their original debate, an order for the appointment of two persons from each town to advise with the governor and assistants as to the best method of raising public moneys. This order ripened, in 1634, into the creation of a representative body of deputies elected by the people, having full power to act for all freemen, except in elections. This was the origin of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. After ten years' contest the body of assistants to the governor was separated from the body of deputies, and, sitting as a Senate, left to the deputies chosen by the towns an absolute negative upon the legislation of the colony. Thus was established, substantially as it now exists, the Legislature of Massachusetts.
"As the people began to be represented in the government of the colony, so the direction of civil affairs in the towns came to be entrusted to a municipal body of freemen, peculiar to New England, chosen for that purpose, and known as the board of selectmen. It is a pleasure to know that, during the violent contest for this right of representation in State and local governments, Edward Garfield, the earliest American ancestor of the martyr President whose loss we mourn, as a selectman of Watertown, in the very crisis of that contest, did a freeman's duty with a freeman's will, in securing to the people of Massachusetts the right of representation they now enjoy.
"The Massachusetts family of Garfields, in the male line at least, were churchmen, freemen, fighting men, thoughtful and thrifty men, and working men. They were enterprising, active, and brave, fond of adventure, distinguished for endurance and strength, athletic feats, sallies of wit, cheerful dispositions, and, like their eminent successor so recently passed away, noted always for a manly spirit and a commanding person and presence. It was a prolific and long-lived race. Marriages were at a premium, and families were large and numerous. Among the people of the Massachusetts colony who made their way quickly to the frontier when new towns were to be planted, the Garfields were well represented. The foundation of a new municipality was then a solemn affair, usually preceded by 'a day of humiliation, and a sermon by Mr. Cotton.' When the territory of Massachusetts was overstocked, they passed to other States in New England, and ultimately to the great West. Wherever they were they asserted and defended the principles they inherited from the founders of Massachusetts.
"Abram Garfield, of the fifth generation, a minute-man from Lincoln, engaged in the fight with the British at Concord, and was one of the signers of a certificate, with some of the principal citizens of that town, declaring that the British began that fight. We should not feel so much solicitude about that matter now.
"Abram Garfield, a nephew of the soldier at Concord, whose name he bore, and who represented the seventh generation of the family, settled later in Otsego County, N. Y., where he received the first fruits of toil as a laborer on the Erie Canal. The construction of canals by the Government of Ohio drew him, with other relatives, to that State, where his previous experience gained for him a contract on the Ohio Canal. The young men and women who left the earlier settlements for the frontier States sometimes consecrated the friendships of their youth by a contract of marriage when they met again in the great West. Abram Garfield in this way met and married (Feb. 3, 1821) Eliza Ballou, a New Hampshire maiden, whom he had known in earlier years. It was a long wait, but a solid union. They were nearly twenty years of age when married. A log cabin, with one room, was their home. His vocation was that of an excavator of canals in the depths of the primeval forests of Ohio. There was not much of hope or joy in the life before them; but still it was all there was for them of hope or joy. They could not expect the crown of life until they had paid its forfeit. They adhered to the religious customs of childhood. Their labor prospered. Amid their suffering and toil in the construction of the arteries of civilization and the foundation of States and empires that will hereafter rule the world, four children came to bless them. The last of the four was James Abram Garfield (Nov. 19, 1831), destined, in the providence of God, to be and to die President of the Republic.
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"Garfield had pre-eminent skill in directing and applying the labor and attainments of others to the success of his own work. This is a somewhat rare, but a most invaluable capacity. No one man can do everything. In labor, as in war, to divide is to conquer. There have been men who knew everything, and could do everything,--whose incomparable capacities would have been sufficient, under wise direction, to have given the highest rank among the few men that have changed the destiny of the world; but who could not succeed in government, because they never saw men until they ran against them.
"Such admirable qualities, united to such strength and love for active service, gave him reputation and rank, and opened the way to the campaigns in Kentucky against Marshall, at Prestonburg and Middle Creek,--the last a cause of other victories elsewhere,--and at Tullahoma and Chickamauga.
"His knowledge of law opened a new field of activity and service, of great benefit to him and to the Government. But little attention had been given by professors of legal science, at the opening of the war, to the study of military law. In the field where it was to be administered, great difficulties were encountered in determining what the law was and who was to execute it. A distinguished jurist, Dr. Francis Lieber, was appointed by the Government to codify and digest the principles and precedents of this abstruse department of the science of law. But it opened to Garfield, long before the digest was completed, a peculiar field for tireless research and labor in new fields of inquiry. Once installed as an officer of courts-martial, his services were found to be indispensable. From the West he was called to Washington, was in confidential communication with President Lincoln in regard to the military situation in the West, was a member of the most important military tribunals, became a favorite and protege of the Secretary of War, and, upon the express wish of the President and Secretary, accepted his seat in the House of Representatives, to which he had been chosen in 1862.
"His career in Congress is the important record of his life. For that he was best fitted; with it he was best satisfied; in it he continued longest, and from it rose to the great destiny which has given him a deathless name and page in the annals of the world.
"The House of Representatives in the age of Clay, Calhoun and Webster was an institution quite unlike that of our own time. Its numbers then were small; its leading men comparatively few; but few subjects were debated, and members of the House rarely or never introduced bills for legislative action. Its work was prepared by committees, upon official information, and gentlemen prepared to speak upon its business could always find an opportunity. Now its numbers have been doubled. More than ten thousand bills for legislative consideration are introduced in every Congress. The increase of appropriations, patronage and legislation is enormous, and the pressure for action often disorderly and violent. Little courtesy is wasted on such occasions, when one or two hundred members are shouting for the floor, and when one is named by the Speaker it must be a strong man, ready, able, eloquent, to gain or hold the ear of the House. Garfield never failed in this. His look drew audience and attention. He was never unprepared, never tedious; always began with his subject, and took his seat when he had finished. He had few controversies, and was never called 'to order' for any cause. He was a debater rather than an orator; always courteous, intelligent, intelligible, and honorable. The House listened to him with rapt attention, and he spoke with decisive effect upon its judgment. He liked it to be understood that he was abreast of the best thought of the time, had a great regard for the authority of scientific leaders, and walked with reverential respect in the tracks of the best thinkers of the age. It is a pleasant thing, this method of settling all problems by demonstration of exact science. Hudibras must have been in error when he spoke so lightly of these scholastic methods, saying, or rather singing,--
'That all a rhetorician's rules Teach him but to name his tools.'
"The people watched with great interest his long and terrible struggle for life, and their hearts trembled with alternations of hope and fear, as they studied with close attention the morning and the evening bulletins giving the ebb and flow of life's dark tide with the precision of exact science; but they read with infinite relief, if not always with satisfaction, the telegrams of the Secretary of State to the American minister at London, stating, in the language of common life, the changes that had occurred in the condition of the President from day to day.
"As chairman or prominent member of the principal business committees of the House, Garfield had always access to the floor, and an eager assembly as his audience. His topics were generally of a national character, connected with the organization and maintenance of the government; but there is scarcely any subject brought before Congress to which he has not, at some time, given a thorough and able exposition of his views. The best known and most influential of his speeches have been in relation to the war, financial affairs, the currency, and the tariff. These all involved national interests, and exhibit on his part a profound study of every subject necessary to their support. He was from the first, and constantly, a hard-money man, a leader in discussion, and a supporter by his votes of every proposition necessary to maintain a sound currency. On the subject of the tariff, while he did not deny that, as an abstract question, the doctrine of free trade presented an aspect of truth, yet he always declared that under a government like ours protection of national industries was indispensable. He advocated duties high enough to enable the home manufacturer to make a wholesome competition with foreigners, but not so high as to subject consumers to a monopoly of product or supply. A moderate and permanent protection was the doctrine he always ably sustained. It would be instructive to recall the expression of his views embodied in his speeches upon these subjects, which he photographed upon the minds of those to whom they were addressed, but it is inappropriate on the present occasion. Few men in the history of the House of Representatives have acquired a higher reputation, and none will be more kindly and permanently remembered.
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"There was much force in a declaration made by the Pastor of the Disciples' Church, at the funeral of President Garfield, in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. The gigantic proportions of this apartment excite a strange sensation in every visitor. One familiar with the scene, recalls at his entrance an ancient tradition, often repeated before the war, that this majestic central apartment of the Capitol would, some day, witness the coronation of a king. Apart from the unusual solemnity of this occasion, the scene was of an extraordinary character. The light that fell from the dome above gave a solemn aspect to the apartment. Distinguished personages moved silently and slowly to the positions assigned them. Two ex-Presidents, immediate predecessors of the deceased, the only occupants of the presidential office that have attended at such a time, sat in front of the eastern entrance of the rotunda. The diplomatic corps, in full court costume, were placed in rear of the ex-Presidents. Senators, judicial officers in their robes, officers of the army and navy, in brilliant uniforms, were on the right. Members and ex-members of the House, in large numbers, attended by the Speaker, were massed upon the left, and the space around them was crowded by citizens from every part of the country. The vast assembly rose as the President, with the Cabinet officers and the stricken family of mourners, passed to their seats near the casket of the deceased Chief Magistrate,--which lay upon the same bier that bore the body of President Lincoln, just beneath the centre of the canopy that from the dome overhangs the rotunda,--guarded by veterans of the Army of the Cumberland. The walls were hung with representations of important events in American history;--the Landing of Columbus, De Soto's Discovery of the Mississippi, the Baptism of Pocahontas, the Embarkation of the Pilgrims, the Declaration of Independence, the Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and the Resignation of Washington. On the belt of the rotunda above were seen Cortez entering the Temple of the Sun in Mexico, the Battle of Lexington, and other studies of varied and memorable scenes in the history of the Republic.
"Simple, brief, and impressive ceremonies heightened the deep and general interest of the occasion. The funeral discourse was of a purely religious character, with scarcely more than a brief allusion to the career of the deceased President, and no mention, I think, of his title or his name. But these omissions intensified the general interest in his brief personal allusions. 'I do believe,' he said, 'that the strength and beauty of this man's character will be found in his discipleship of Christ.'
"It is not my province to speak of the spiritual character of this connection, but in another relation I believe it is true.
"The Church of the Disciples, to which he belonged, is one of the most primitive of Christian communions, excluding every thought of distrust, competition, or advantage. It gave him a position and mission unique and generic, like and unlike that of other men. While he rarely or never referred to it himself, and wished at times, perhaps, to forget it, he was strengthened and protected by it. It was buckler and spear to him. It brought him into an immediate communion--a relation made sacred by a common faith, barren of engagements and responsibilities--with multitudes of other organizations and congregations, adherents and opponents, able and willing to assist and strengthen him, present or absent, at home or abroad, who dismissed aspersions upon his conduct and character as accusations of Pharisees against a son of faith, and gave him at all times a friendly greeting and welcome, whenever and wherever he felt inspired to give the world his thought and word. All great migrations and revolutions of men and nations are born of this spirit and power.
"In another direction he possessed extraordinary capacities. He was animated by an intense and sleepless spirit of acquisition. It was not, apparently, a common thirst for wealth, precedence, or power which stimulates many men in our time. His ambition was for the acquisition of knowledge. From early youth to the day of his last illness it was a consuming passion. He gave to it days and nights, the strength of youth and the vigor of middle age. When in the forests of New York, he made the rocks and trees to personate the heroes of his early reading. When engaged in the duties of his professorship, he found time for other studies than those prescribed by the faculty, and for lectures, addresses, and many other intellectual pursuits. He studied law while at college without the knowledge of his intimate friends, until he was admitted to the bar. When in Congress, he would occupy a whole night in examination of questions to be considered the next day, and debate them as if nothing unusual had occurred.
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"It was said by one of the wisest of the ancient Greeks that it was 'impossible to penetrate the secret thoughts, quality and judgment of man till he is put to proof by high office and administration of the laws.' Whatever we may think of the splendid record of the late President in every walk of life he followed, it does not enable us to anticipate the character and success of the Administration upon which he so happily entered. In other positions of public life, the concurrence of so many different influences is required to accomplish even slight results, that individual credit or responsibility therefor is but slight and intangible. In the administration of government, the highest secular duty to which men are ever called, responsibility is indivisible and unchangeable; and the final results, whether for good or evil, are indelibly stamped on the woof and warp of the web of time, and will so remain forever. Good intentions are of no account, and a plea of confession and avoidance,--admitting failure and disclaiming error,--so advantageous in other cases, never governs the world in judging men who fail rightly to administer government. We are happy in being absolved from the responsibility of judgment where decision is impossible.
"Undoubtedly, the open assertion in some parts of the world of the right of assassination as a method of reform in administration and government may have intensified the general interest in this calamitous event. But the courage and composure with which the presidential martyr bore his affliction; the firmness and constancy of his aged mother; the serenity and saint-like resignation of the heroic wife, administering consolation and courage to the husband and father, in a voice sweet as the zephyrs of the south, with a spirit as gentle as love, and a soul as dauntless as the hearts of the women of Israel,--were not unobserved or unhonored. It melted hearts in the four quarters of the globe, and drew from the sons of men, in every land and clime, such an attestation and confession of the faith that all created beings are the children of one Father, as never before fell from human lips. We should be dead to sensibility and honor did we not feel such unwonted tests of the universal scope and sweep of human sympathy vouchsafed to us by the appointed leaders of churches, empires and democracies, and by that august lady the Queen of England and Empress of India, who presides over the councils of the empire whence we derive our ideas of Christian faith, language, liberty and law, who gave to the afflicted children of revolted and republican America the emblems of mourning, reserved by the customs of her court to the best beloved and bravest of her realm, and sent, over her own hand, to the wife, mother and orphans, swift and touching evidence of the strength of her sympathy and the depths of her sorrow--the grandest of sovereigns and noblest of women!
"We turn from this record of active and honorable service to a brief consideration, such as the occasion permits, of the elements of character which distinguished President Garfield. After all, character is the only enduring form of wealth. It is the power by which the world is ruled, and the only legacy of true value that can be transmitted to posterity.
"We cannot forget what occurred during the administration of Mr. Lincoln, or of his successor, Mr. Johnson. We have witnessed no such political convulsions in our day. No one ever justified the assassination of Mr. Lincoln on such grounds, or would now counsel such violence against the chiefs of earlier administrations. Neither can it now be done with truth or justice. Those who enlisted in the opposition to past administrations were men whose intellectual and moral natures restrained them from the execution of purposes dictated by passion. To those whose feeble intellects deprive them of moral restraint we should give support, and never justify, by thought or act, conduct that, under other circumstances, might have endangered the lives of every President of the Republic! There is no cause or incitement to crime in the political controversies of this year, that might not have occurred under any other administration; and no cause or justification, of any kind whatever, for such an ineffable and inexpiable crime as the murder of the mild, generous, warm-hearted, forgiving, and Christian Chief Magistrate whose loss we mourn.
"Political assassination is not insanity. It proceeds from infection and distemper of the mind. It is not necessarily limited to the reform administrations and governments, nor to any special form of government. It can as well be applied to the settlement of a grocery bill, if an excitation be created, as to the overthrow of a dynasty.
"It is another form of the doctrine of annihilation, and the remedy for its evil is to avoid convulsions, private and public, restrain passion, avoid injustice, practise moderation in all things, and do no evil that good may come.
"The year 1881 is the complement of the full half-century since the first open movement was organized for the control or destruction of our government. The lesson of this half-century, with all its trials, sacrifices and triumphs, is that it is good to maintain and defend the government of our country and its lawfully constituted authorities, whether or not we created them or like them. In the contemplation of this half-century, can we find cause to wish the government had been destroyed? Or can we now wish it destroyed?
"The lesson of Garfield's life is an admonition to protect and defend the government. His birth marks the period when it was first assailed by enemies domestic; and at the close of his life he gave his last hours of health and strength to improve and protect it. His last friend should give his last sigh to maintain it, not for his honor, which is untarnished, nor his glory, which is immaculate, but for his country, which still has perils to encounter, and liberties to defend, for the benefit of mankind."