almost boyishly, happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that, after four months of trial, his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor, and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that troubles lay behind him, and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he was going to his Alma Mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, and to exchange. greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his upward progress, from the day he entered upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen. [{

Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death- and he did not quail. Not alone for one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell—what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendship, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth,

whose 'whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demands. And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree.

As the end drew near his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of the heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With a wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its far sails; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. 3

AUSTIN BLAIR

(1818-1894)

AUSTIN BLAIR, the "War-Governor of Michigan," was one of the most prominent organizers of the Republican party in the

Northwest, an aggressive abolitionist and a "Radical" under Andrew Johnson, whose impeachment he supported. In 1872, he made a number of strong speeches for civil as against military government, which were widely read throughout the country. The following on "Military Government" is from a report preserved in the collection of Mr. Enos Clark.

THE

MILITARY GOVERNMENT

(Delivered in Michigan, July 4th, 1872)

HE habits of military government are not easily laid aside. The soldier naturally has much greater faith in the efficiency of his sword to maintain public order and due respect for law than in the slower process of the court and the sheriff. He is apt to feel a certain contempt for the arrest that cannot be made without a demand based on affidavit, and for the imprisonment that may rapidly be terminated by an action of habeas corpus and the technicalities of the civil law. The arguments of the lawyer are to him little better than jargon-at the best, cunning devices to defeat justice. Tell him that the great reliance of good government must be upon the good judgment and patriotism of the people, and if he does not contradict you, he will still believe that it would be better if his sword could somehow be thrown into the scale. For some years after the close of the Rebellion it seemed necessary to continue the military occupation of the lately insurrectionary States, and it has been continued in a greater or less degree until this time. During those years we have learned to believe that the use of military force is the most summary and convenient method of putting down those evils which exist there, and very many no doubt seriously believe that there is no other efficient way. Their faith in the people is entirely lost, and they will struggle to keep

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up that system. Those portions of the people who may consider themselves oppressed and wronged fly to the military for protection, because they have found it efficient heretofore. The general government is constantly importuned to interfere upon every sort of pretext, and many statutes have been enacted to make such interference legal, until there is a danger that it may be drawn into precedent and become a common recourse. The great constitutional barriers which our fathers erected with such painstaking care and foresight, against the encroachments of power upon the liberties of the people, have been more or less arrested, one after another, until the time has arrived when it is necessary to look into these assumptions and consider whither they tend. None of the safeguards of liberty which experience has proved to be essential can safely be set aside for any cause not of the most serious nature, and then only in pursuance of settled laws. The Constitution of the United States has declared in section nine of the first article, that "the privilege of the Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless when in case of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." And yet a proposition has lately been made in Congress in a time of profound peace to authorize the President at his discretion to suspend the writ until the fourth of March next. The proposition passed the Senate, and was only defeated in the House by the most strenuous exertions. It seemed to me a very startling proposition considering all the circumstances that surrounded it. The President of the United States, with the power in his hands to suspend that writ at his pleasure, is a dictator in fact, whatever he may be called. It is in the power of his single will to shut up all the courts in the country, to arrest every person in the land by armed soldiery, without a warrant, and to imprison at discretion any citizen who may have incurred the displeasure of the government. This power is so vast and so dangerous that nothing short of the actual existence of the emergencies contemplated by the constitution could for a moment justify it. That it should have been contemplated at all is an evidence of the great progress made within the last four years in those principles and practices which easily justify the use of arbitrary power. There has been no invasion or rebellion, and there is no reason to apprehend either. What, then, was the purpose of this attempt to authorize the sus'pension of the writ in time of peace? Was it any well-grounded fear that the occasion might occur in which it might lawfully be done, or was it intended to exercise the power against the law

in a certain event? Whatever may have been the design of those who set the scheme on foot, it was frustrated altogether, and the result has been anything but satisfactory to them, as I believe every such effort in the future will be. It is now several years

since the war closed. The States have all been restored and are

represented in Congress. Is it not time that war legislation should cease? If it is not, when will it be? Are we to go on forever, as if a new rebellion was just about to break out? Shall we never again trust the people with the control of their own affairs? Has local self-government already failed, and must we bring in the mailed Cæsar at once? Perhaps these are vain questions, as I know many regard them, but with very many others they are of the most serious import, and surely it will never be out of order for the American people to consider carefully the drift of public affairs. It is their especial duty to know just what is the meaning of public acts which are in themselves unusual and which seem to lead us in the wrong direction.

What remains for us is restoration. We need to clear away all the rubbish of the war; to put behind us all old conflicts which have no longer any meaning. Why nurse the enmities. which grew out of slavery after slavery itself is dead? Why continue to indulge the spirit of war long after war has ceased? Why enact laws of doubtful constitutionality in hope of accomplishing by intimidation what could be much more easily done by conciliation and good will? Why maintain exasperating disabilities after all occasion for them has passed away? A union that rests upon force is not the union established by our forefathers. Force was necessary for a temporary object, but cannot, must not, take the place of statesmanship in our institutions. Reason is the power on which we must rely, with patriotism for the motive to give it direction. Our government is one of the people, and its appeal is always to the good sense and patriotism of the people. Let no man doubt the safety of that appeal in every part of the land. Interest, hopes, ambition, all combine to unite our whole population in one vast National Commonwealth under a Constitution which secures abundantly the rights of all. We want peace, indeed, real, enduring peace, based on mutual interests and common respect. We want order secured by the institution of peace; the court and jury and not the soldier with his bayonet, who never did and never can secure it—not the peace of a desert made by fear, but the blooming, wholesome peace that respects the rights and liberties of all men!