Southern Feeling.--Memorial Services at Jefferson,
Kentucky.--Extracts from Address by Henry
Watterson.--Senator Bayard.--Ex-Speaker Randall.--Senator
Hill.--Extracts from some of the Southern Journals.
At the United States military post at Jefferson, Kentucky, memorial
services were held in the presence of fifteen thousand people.
Henry Watterson, the Democratic ex-Congressman, gave an eloquent
address, from which we quote the following:--
"I knew him well, and know now that I loved him. He was a man of ample
soul, with the strength of a giant, the courage of a lion, and the heart
of a dove. There never lived a man who yearned for the approval of his
fellow-men, who felt their anger more. There never lived a man who
struggled harder to realize Paul's idea, and to be all things to all
men. Did ever the character sketched by Paul find a nobler example, for
he was blameless, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, apt to teach, not
given to filthy lucre. No one without the little family circle of
relatives and friends in which he lived will ever know how a certain
dismal, though in truth trivial, episode in his career cut him to the
soul. Born a poor man's son, to live and die a poor man, with
opportunities unbounded for public pillage, with licensed robbery going
on all around him, and he pinched for the bare means to maintain
himself, his wife and his little ones with decency and comfort, to be
held up to the scorn of men as one not honest! He is gone now, and
before he went he had outlived the wounds which party friends alike with
party foes had sought to put upon his honor and manhood, and maybe
to-day somewhere among the stars he looks down upon the world and sees
at last how selfish and unreal were the assaults of those in whose way
he stood. It is a pleasure to me to reflect amid these gloomy scenes
that some friendly words of mine gratified him at a moment when he
suffered most. Not in the last campaign, for it would have been a crime
in me to have hesitated then, but away back when no vision of the
presidency had crossed the disc of his ambition, and when the cruelest
blows were struck from behind. It is also a pleasure for me to remember
the last time I saw him. It was during an all-night session of the
House, when in company with Joseph Hawley of Connecticut, Randall Gibson
of Louisiana, and Randolph Tucker, we took possession of the committee
rooms of Proctor Knott, who joined us later, and turned all bickerings
and jars into happy forgetfulness of section and party. I do well
remember how buoyant he was that night in spirit and how robust in
thought, full of suggestion, and in repartee, unaffected and genial
ever; how delighted to lay aside the statesman and the partisan and be a
boy again, and how loth he was, with the rest, to recross the narrow
confines which separate the real and ideal, and to descend into the hot
abyss below. I could not have gone thence to blacken that man's
character any more than to do another deed of shame; and Republican
though he was, and party chief, he had no truer friends than the
brilliant Virginian whom he loved like a brother, and the eminent
Louisianian whose counsels he habitually sought. I refer to an incident
unimportant in itself to illustrate a character which unfolded to the
knowledge of the world through affliction, and whose death has awakened
the love and admiration of mankind.
"All know that he was a man of spotless integrity who might have been
rich by a single deflection, but who died poor, who broadened and rose
in height with each rise in fortune, who was not less a scholar because
he had wanted early advantages, and who, not yet fifty, leaves as a
priceless heritage to his countrymen the example of how God-given
virtues of the head and heart may be employed to the glory of God and
the uses of men, by one who makes all things subordinate to the
development of the good within him. On all these points we think
together; there are not two opinions. We stand upon common ground; we
shall separate and go hence, and each shall take his way. Interests
shall clash, beliefs shall jar, party spirit shall lift its horned head
and interpose to chill and cloud our better natures. That is but a
condition of our being. We are mortal and we live in a free land. Out of
discussion and dissension ends are shapened; we rough-hewing in spite of
us. However, occasions come which remind us that we have a country and
are countrymen; which tell us we are a people bound together by many
kindred ties. No matter for our quarrels, they will pass away. No matter
for our mistakes, they shall be mended. But yesterday we were at war one
with the other. The war is over. But yesterday we were arrayed in the
anger of party conflict; behold how its passions sleep in the grave with
Garfield. I am here to-day to talk to you of him, and through him and in
his memory and honor to talk of our country. He was its chief
magistrate, our President, representative of things common to us all;
stricken down in the fulness of life and hope by wanton and aimless
assassination. He fell like a martyr; he suffered like a hero; he died
like a saint. Be his grave forever and aye a resting place for the
people, and for the seeds that burst thereon to let the violets bring
spring flowers of peace and love for all the people. Citizens, the flag
which waves over us was his flag and it is our flag. Soldiers, standing
beneath that flag and this armed fortress of the Republic, I salute your
flag and his flag reverently. It is my flag. I thank God, and I shall
teach my children to thank God, that it did not go down amid the
fragments of a divided country, but that it floats to-day, though at
half mast, as a symbol of union and liberty, assuring and reassuring us,
that though the heart that conceived the words be cold, and the lips
that uttered them be dumb, 'God reigns and the government at Washington
still lives.'"
The tributes paid to the memory of Garfield by his political opponents
show strikingly how widely he was honored and beloved by those who knew
him as a friend as well as the leader of a party.
Senator Bayard always treated the President with affectionate respect,
and mourns him deeply. Ex-Speaker Randall "knew him intimately and
respected him greatly." Senator Hill is much affected by the death.
"Poor Garfield," he says, "was a big-hearted and a big-brained man. I
shall never forget the last time I saw him. He was so cheerful and
apparently happy. I never saw him fuller of mental and physical vigor
and of hope for the future than then. I want to always remember him as
he appeared to me then--a perfect man."
The _Courier-Journal_ of Louisville, Kentucky, said: "The President is
dead, and all the nations responding to that touch of sympathy which
makes the whole world kin stand uncovered in the presence of a calamity;
for tragedies, ever calamitous, are doubly so when they spring from
murder and attach themselves to the head of the State, the symbol of
power, the representative of the people and law. If ever mortal stood in
these relations to his country and his time, this man did so. It was the
universal sense that he did so which brought around his bedside his
fellow citizens without distinction of political opinion, and caused
women who had never seen him to pray for him, and little children, who
conceived not the emergency nor the magnitude nor the contingencies
hanging upon his life, to ask each day after his well-being, as if he
were a father ill and dying in some far-off place. Perhaps, too, the
flash of the assassin's pistol let in to many a heart a feeling of
honest regret, before dormant and unconscious, that they had consented
to see so good and so useful a man so pitilessly assailed in his private
honor during periods of angry partisan contention, and a consequent
wish, personally, to disavow this and to make a part of it at least up
to him in his dire misfortune."
The _Baltimore Sun_ (Independent), alluding to President Garfield's
death, said: "Turning from the peculiarly tragic and distressing
circumstances of the President's death, 'tis difficult to exaggerate the
loss which the nation sustains in his death at this time. Although his
Administration was in its infancy, President Garfield had already met
the confidence of his country in the integrity of his purposes, the
moderation, soundness and conservatism of his policy."
Said another Southern Journal: "In his death, mournful as it is, the
sections will evince a common sympathy that may cement more closely the
bonds of that fraternity so essential to the keeping of the compact
between the States. North, South, East and West will join in the grief
over the grave of the dead President--a sure sign that the currents of
the national life flow as strong as they ever did in the history of the
Union."
The _New Orleans Times_ said: "Throughout our whole land parties stand
disarmed, and citizens bitterly deplore the death of James A. Garfield.
Henceforth he lives in memory, and though he was permitted to accomplish
but little during his presidential service, by his death he has given to
his countrymen a deeper scrutiny into themselves--a most precious
service."
The _Picayune_, after referring to the assassination of President
Lincoln, said: "This is a sadder story in our national life. It was
Garfield's fortune to come to the high office of chief magistrate at a
time when peace and prosperity reigned throughout the broad confines of
this great land. There was naught but sincere respect for his authority
among the masses, and earnest wishes in the hearts of nearly all her
citizens that his administration might prove a happy one for himself as
it promised a prosperous one for the country. He was worthy of so proud
a position, and in his inaugural proclaimed the new life of a nation
united not in name but in truth."