last communication to congress, 3 March, 1881, was a message returning with his veto a bill "to facilitate the refunding of the national debt," which contained a provision seriously impairing the value and tending to the destruction of the national banking system. On the following day he assisted at the inauguration of his successor.

The administration of President Hayes, although much attacked by the politicians of both parties, was on the whole very satisfactory to the people at large. By withdrawing the Federal troops from the southern state-houses, and restoring to the people of those states practical self-government, it prepared the way for that revival of patriotism among those lately estranged from the Union, that fraternal feeling between the two sections of the country, and the wonderful material advancement of the south which we now witness. It conducted with wisdom and firmness the preparations for the resumption of specie payments, as well as the funding of the public debt at lower rates of interest, and thus facilitated the development of the remarkable business prosperity that continued to its close. While in its endeavors to effect a thorough and permanent reform of the civil service there were conspicuous lapses and inconsistencies, it accomplished important and lasting results. Not only without any appropriations of money and without encouragement of any kind from congress, but in the face of the decided hostility of a large majority of its members, the system of competitive examinations was successfully applied in some of the executive departments at Washington, and in the great government offices at New York, thus proving its practicability and usefulness. The removal by President Hayes of some of the most powerful party managers from their offices, avowedly on the ground that the offices had been used as a part of the political machinery, was an act of high courage, and during his administration there was far less meddling with party politics on the part of officers of the government than at any period since Andrew Jackson's time. The success of the Republican party in the election of 1880 was largely due to the general satisfaction among the people with the Hayes administration.

On the expiration of his term, ex-President Hayes retired to his home at Fremont, Ohio. He was the recipient of various distinctions. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon

him by Kenyon college, Harvard University, Yale college, and Johns Hopkins university. He was made commander of the military order of the Loyal legion, the first president of the Society of the Army of West Virginia, and president of the 23d regiment Ohio volunteers association. Much of his time was devoted to benevolent and useful enterprises. He was president of the trustees of the John F. Slater education-fund, one of the trustees of the Peabody education fund, president of the National prison-reform association, an active member of the National conference of corrections and charities, a trustee of the Western Reserve university at Cleveland, Ohio, of the Wesleyan university of Delaware, Ohio, of Mount Union college, at Alliance, Ohio, and of several other charitable and educational institutions. On the occasion of a meeting of the National prison-reform association, held at Atlanta, Ga., in November, 1886, he was received with much popular enthusiasm, and greeted by an ex-governor of Georgia as one to whom, more than to any other, the people were indebted for the era of peace and union which they now enjoyed, and by the governor, Gen. John B. Gordon, as the man who had "made a true and noble effort to complete the restoration of the Union by restoring fraternal feeling between the estranged sections." Thus he devoted the last years of his life to dignified occupations and endeavors, mostly of a philanthropic character, which were congenial to his nature and kept him in active contact with public-spirited men, by whom he was highly esteemed. He died after a short illness at his home in Fremont, Ohio, 17 Jan., 1893. While he lived, the prejudice against him among some of his fellow-citizens, owing to the cloud which hung over his title to the presidency, had never entirely disappeared; but after his death even his former opponents admitted that there had never been the slightest reason for holding him responsible for the conduct of the returning boards in the southern states, or for the decision of the electoral commission which awarded the presidency to him, and that, when he had been declared elected by the competent authority, it was not only his right but his duty as a good citizen to accept the presidential office, and thus to put an end to one of the most perilous crises in the history of the republic. It was also universally recognized that the conduct of his administration had been conspicuously clean and blameless, as well as fruitful of

good results, and that he rendered the country especially valuable service by the statesmanlike wisdom of his conciliatory course toward the south, by the unflinching and defiant firmness with which he upheld sound principles of national finance, and by his efforts in the line of civil-service reform, after his predecessor, yielding to the impetuous pressure of his party friends, had abandoned the whole system. He was not a man of genius, but of a strong and clear intellect, quick perceptions, and far more than ordinary acquirements, animated with the most conscientious conceptions of duty and the highest patriotic motives. The uprightness of his character and the exquisite purity of his life, public as well as domestic, exercised a conspicuously wholesome influence not only upon the personnel of the governmental machinery, but also upon the social atmosphere of the national capital while he occupied the White House. See "Life, Public Services, and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes," by James Quay Howard (Cincinnati, 1876). Campaign lives were also written

by William D. Howells (New York, 1876) and Russell H. Conwell (Boston, 1876).

са.

Lucy CD. Hayes

His wife, LUCY WARE WEBB, born in Chillicothe, Ohio, 28 Aug., 1831; died in Fremont, Ohio, 25 June, 1889. She was the daughter of a physician, and married in 1852. Of eight children, four sons and one daughter are living. Mrs. Hayes was noted for her devotion to the wounded soldiers during the war. She refused to permit wine to be served on the White House table, and for this innovation incurred much censure in some political circles, but received high praise from the advocates of total abstinence, who, on the expiration of her husband's term of office, presented her with various testimonials, including an album filled with autographic expressions of approval from many prominent persons, and an association of prominent ladies presented her portrait, to be added to the collection at the White House. Her high character, her frankness and sincerity, as well as the rare charm of her being, won her in an uncommon degree the affection and esteem of all who came into contact with her.

JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD.

JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, twentieth president of the United States, born in Orange, Cuyahoga co., Ohio, 19 Nov., 1831; died in Elberon, N. J., 19 Sept., 1881. His father, Abram Garfield, was a native of New York, but of Massachusetts ancestry, descended from Edward Garfield, an English Puritan, who in 1630 was one of the founders of Watertown. His mother, Eliza Ballou, was born in New Hampshire, of a Huguenot family that fled from France to New England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. Garfield, therefore, was from lineage well represented in the struggles for civil and religious liberty, both in the Old and in the New World. Abram Garfield, his father, moved to Ohio in 1830, and settled in what was then known as "The Wilderness," now as the "Western Reserve," which was occupied by Connecticut people. Abram Garfield made a prosperous beginning in his new home, but died, after a sudden illness, at the age of thirtythree, leaving a widow with four small children, of whom James was the youngest. In bringing up her family, unaided in a lonely cabin (see accompanying illustration), and impressing on them a high standard of moral and intellectual worth, Mrs. Garfield displayed an almost heroic courage. It was a life of struggle and privation; but the poverty of her home differed from that of cities or settled communities-it was the poverty of the frontier, all shared it, and all were bound closely together in a common struggle, where there were no humiliating contrasts in neighboring wealth. At three years of age James A. Garfield went to school in a log hut, learned to read, and began that habit of omnivorous reading which ended only with his life. At ten years of age he was accustomed to manual labor, helping out his mother's meagre income by work at home or on the farms of the neighbors. Labor was play to the