E. E. Brown

“ I should indulge myself in a strange delusion if I hoped to say anything of President Garfield which is not already well known to his countrymen, or to add further honor to a name to which the judgment of the world, with marvelous unanimity, has already assigned its place. The public sorrow and love have found utterance, if not adequate, yet such as speech, and silence, and funeral rite, and stately procession, and prayers, and tears could give. On the twenty-sixth day of September, the day of the funeral, a common feeling stirred mankind as never before in history. ”

“ It is true that in our land there is no such outer quiet, no such deceitful repose. Here society is a restless and surging sea. The roar of the billows, the dash of the wave, is forever in our ears. Even the angry hoarseness of breakers is not unheard. But there is an understratum of deep, calm sea, [Pg 79] which the breath of the wildest tempest can never reach. There is, deep down in the hearts of the American people, a strong and abiding love of our country and its liberty, which no surface-storms of passion can ever shake. ”

“ It is the mourning of mankind for a great character already perfectly known and familiar. If there be any persons who fear that religious faith is dying, that science has shaken the hold of the moral law upon the minds of men, let them take comfort in asking themselves if any base or ignoble passion could have so moved mankind. Modern science has called into life these mighty servants, press and telegraph, who have created a nerve which joins together all human hearts and pulses simultaneously over the globe. ”

“ No one who saw President Garfield after his installation in the White House can fail to have observed the great change which his accession to power had occasioned in him. Only at intervals did his bright joyousness shine out again, as at the pleasant home at Mentor. The very day after he became President, the struggle for the spoils of office began with a fierceness hitherto unparalleled in all the strife of that kind which has been seen at Washington. He was half-maddened by his desire to do justice to all the contending factions. ”

“ The Union and the Congress must share the same fate. They must rise or fall together.
Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of political parties, and real ones cannot be evaded by political parties. The real political issues of the day declare themselves and come out of the depth of that deep which we call public opinion. The nation has a life of its own as distinctly defined as the life of an individual. ”

“ Over this vast horizon of interests North and South, above all party prejudices and personal wrong-doing, above our battle hosts and our victorious cause, above all that we hoped for and won, or you hoped for and lost, is the grand, onward movement of the Republic to perpetuate its glory, to save liberty alive, to preserve exact and equal justice to all, to protect and foster all these priceless principles, until they shall have crystalized into the form of enduring law, and become inwrought into the life and the habits of our people. ”

“ We have seen white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union, but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black skin. Our prisoners, escaping from the starvation of prison, and fleeing to our lines by the light of the North-star, never feared to enter the black man's cabin and ask for bread. In all that period of suffering and danger no Union soldier was ever betrayed by a black man or woman, and now that we have made them free, so long as we live we will stand by these black citizens. ”

“ Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it should be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice. It has been said that unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. It should be said, with the utmost emphasis, that this question of the suffrage will never give repose or safety to the States of the nation, until each, within its own jurisdiction, makes, and keeps the ballot free and pure by the strong sanctions of the law. ”

“ While this is true, it is equally undeniable that the principle of protection has always been recognized and adopted in some form or another by all nations, and is to-day, to a greater or less extent, the policy of every civilized government....
Protection, in its practical meaning, is that provident care for the industry and development of our own country which will give our own people an equal chance in the pursuit of wealth, and save us from the calamity of being dependent upon other nations with whom we may any day be at war. ”

“ Twenty-five years ago this republic was wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people. The baleful doctrine of State sovereignty had shocked and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the national government, and the grasping power of slavery was seizing the virgin territories of the West and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. ”

“ Year by year, we see the circle of its immortal membership enlarging; year by year, we see the elect of their country, in eloquent silence, taking their places in this American pantheon, bringing within its sacred precincts the wealth of those immortal memories which made their lives illustrious; and year by year, that august assembly is teaching deeper and grander lessons to those who serve in these more ephemeral Houses of Congress.
"Abraham Lincoln" (and may we not say the same of James Abram Garfield?) ”

“ Through such a time has this nation passed. When two hundred and fifty thousand brave spirits passed from the field of honor through that thin veil to the presence of God, and when at last its parting folds admitted the martyred President to the company of the dead heroes of the republic, the nation stood so near the veil that the whispers of God were heard by the children of men. Awe-stricken by his voice, the American people knelt in tearful reverence, and made a solemn covenant with God and each other that this nation should be saved from its enemies ”

“ I insist that it should be made an indispensable condition of graduation in every American college, that the student must understand the history of this continent since its discovery by Europeans, the origin and history of the United States, its constitution of government, the struggles through which it has passed, and the rights and duties of citizens who are to determine its destiny and share its glory.
Having thus gained the knowledge which is necessary to life, health, industry, and citizenship, the student is prepared to enter a wider and grander field of thought. ”

“ The Student should study himself his relation to Society, to Nature and to Art—and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of Himself, Society, Nature, and Art to God the Author of them all.
Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of Thought ever invented by Man, and its Literature [Pg 425] has never been equalled in purity of style and boldness of expression.
History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. The world's history is a divine Poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. ”

“ It is one of the most beneficent results of American institutions that we have ceased to speak of poverty and hardship, and the necessity for hard and humble toil as disadvantages to a spirit endowed by nature with the capacity for generous ambitions. In a society where labor is honorable, and where every place in social or public life is open to merit, early poverty is no more a disadvantage than a gymnasium to an athlete, or drill and discipline to a soldier.
General Garfield was never ashamed of his origin. ”

“ When State-rights ran mad, put on the form of secession, and attempted to drag the States out of the Union, we saw the grand lesson, taught in all the battles of the late war, that a State could no more be hurled from the Union, without ruin to the nation, than could a planet be thrown from its orbit without dragging after it, to chaos and ruin, the whole solar universe. ”

“ If they are to be disfranchised, if they are to have no voice in determining the conditions under which they are to live and labor, what hope have they for the future? It will rest with their late masters, whose treason they aided to thwart, to determine whether negroes shall be permitted to hold property, to enjoy the benefits of education, to enforce contracts, to have access to the courts of justice—in short, to enjoy any of those rights which give vitality and value to freedom. ”

“ It has never been my policy to conceal a truth merely because it is unpleasant. It may be well to smile in the face of danger, but it is neither well nor wise to let danger approach unchallenged and unannounced. A brave nation, like a brave man, desires to see and measure the perils which threaten it. It is the right of the American people to know the necessities of the Republic when they are called upon to make sacrifices for it. ”

“ No page of human history is so instructive and significant as the record of those early influences which develop the character and direct the lives of eminent men. To every man of great original power, there comes in early youth, a moment of sudden discovery—of self recognition—when his own nature is revealed to himself, when he catches, for the first time, a strain of that immortal song to which his own spirit answers, and which becomes thenceforth and forever the inspiration of his life ”

“ The germ of our political institutions, the primary cell from which they were evolved, was in the New England town, and the vital force, the informing soul of the town, was the Town Meeting, which for all local concerns was king, lords, and commons in all.
It is as much the duty of all good men to protect and defend the reputation of worthy public servants as to detect public rascals.
Political parties, like poets, are born, not made. No act of political mechanics, however wise, can manufacture to order and make a platform, and put a party on it which will live and flourish. ”

“ How marvellous the success the American people have achieved in dealing with these difficulties compared with that which attended the statesmanship of the times of Webster and Clay and Calhoun, giants as they were. The greatness of these men is not likely to be under-valued anywhere, least of all in Massachusetts. They contributed each in his own way those masterly discussions of the great principles by which the Constitution must be interpreted, and the economic laws on which material prosperity depends, which will abide as perpetual forces so long as the republic shall endure. ”

“ As our friend said in the pulpit yesterday, the saints of mankind, when they saw him, knew the birthmark of their race, and bowed their heads. The American people have anointed him as the representative of their sovereignty. Washington and Lincoln came forward to greet him and welcome him to a seat beside their own. I say there is deeper grief at this hour over the civilized world than at any other single hour in history. It seems to me that the death of President Garfield is the greatest single calamity this country ever suffered. ”

“ I think even the widow who goes mourning all her days will hardly wish now that our regiments had come home from the war with full ranks. God has taken from us our beloved, but think what has been brought into this precious life. Fifty millions of people, of many races, of many climes, the workman, the farmer, the slave just made free, met together to choose the man whom they could call to the presidency among mankind. ”