Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MRS. JAMES A. GARFIELD.
Engd by H B Hall & Sons New York.
THE
Life and Work
OF
JAMES A. GARFIELD,
TWENTIETH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
EMBRACING
AN ACCOUNT OF THE SCENES AND INCIDENTS OF HIS BOYHOOD; THE STRUGGLES OF HIS YOUTH; THE MIGHT OF HIS EARLY MANHOOD; HIS VALOR AS A SOLDIER; HIS CAREER AS A STATESMAN; HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY;
AND
THE TRAGIC STORY OF HIS DEATH.
PREFACE.
Dean Swift describes the tomb as a place where savage enmity canrend the heart no more. Here, in the ominous shadow of the cypress,the faults and foibles of life are forgotten, and the imagination builds ashining pathway to the stars. Ascending this with rapid flight, thegreat dead is transfigured as he rises; the clouds close around him, and,in the twinkling of an eye, he is set afar on the heights with Miltiadesand Alexander.
The tendency to the deification of men is strongest when a suddeneclipse falls athwart the disk of a great life at noontide. The pall ofgloom sweeps swiftly across the landscape, and the beholder, feeling thechill of the darkness, mistakes it for the death of nature. So it wasthree hundred years ago when the silent Prince of Orange, the founderof Dutch independence, was smitten down in Delft. So it was when thepeerless Lincoln fell. So it is when Garfield dies by the bullet of anassassin.
No doubt this man is glorified by his shameful and causeless death.The contrast between his life and his death is indeed the very irony offate. On the popular imagination he is borne away to Washington andLincoln. He is canonized—the American people will have it so.
In due season fervor will subside. The keen indignation and poignantsorrow of this great and sensitive citizenship will at length giveplace to other emotions. The murdered Garfield will then pass throughan ordeal more trying than any of his life. He will be coolly measuredand