PREFACE.

HISTORY is but the aggregate of individual biographies, and it sometimes happens in the history of great nations that the biography of a single man, comprehensively written, contains all the important history of the government through a series of years. The study of biography in the records of nearly every nation furnishes the surest and easiest means of obtaining certain and lasting information concerning the institutions, character, events, and time. It is, however, in the moral effect upon the readers that the writing and study of biography places its highest claims. It encourages the young, gives hope to the hopeless, warns the careless, cautions the foolish, and by its descent into the little details of practical life furnishes a guide, companion, and counselor to every student.

The life of the martyred President, James Abram. Garfield, furnishes a record of peculiar advantage to the young men of our land in their choice of habits, professions, companions, and political principles. It is surely a remarkably transparent and pure life. Yet we have too much confidence in our nation to think that even his life is a very great exception.

His biography is of equal importance to the women of the land, abounding as it does in incidents of motherly devotion, heroism, and love, and in accounts of the sublime courage, affection, and self-sacrifices of true wifehood.

It is the earnest hope of the writer that the biography of General Garfield in some form may find its way into every library, and that the interest in it may long outlive any present excitement concerning it; for the lessons it teaches, the courage it imparts, the love of honor and truth it awakens, and the sweet pictures of domestic affection, filial devotion, patriotic heroism, and religious faith which it reveals in our American life, cannot be valued too highly in the education of future generations. Of such a life it is a duty and a pleasure to write, and of such he believes it will be a duty and a pleasure to read.

INTRODUCTION.

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COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, BOSTON, September 27, 1881. MY DEAR COLONEL,- In answer to your letter, I regret very much that I have not time to write an extended introduction to your biography of General Garfield, which, now that his noble life is ended, I am glad to know is to be revised and again published. I cordially furnish you, however, my remarks at the dinner, last July, of the alumni of Williams College. But no tribute can do justice either to him or to the deep and loving sentiment of admiration and sympathy in which he is held in the hearts of the people. The best tribute is in the simple story of his heroic and ascending life and character. The youth of America will read it, and be reminded that they, too, can make their "lives sublime."

Very truly yours,

JOHN D. LONG.

COLONEL R. H. CONWELL.

The days that cluster around our glorious Fourth, turning its glory into sadness, are days not of alarm,

but sorrow. The heart of the nation is broken and melts in tears, but its faith and courage are unshaken. For the second time in the history of our republic a President has been shot by an assassin. But this time, thank God, no organized political or social purpose or significance crouches close behind the deed. The great victim lies not a sacrifice to partisan or sectional malignity. The party of half the people whose gallant candidate he defeated; the belt of humbled States which stood solid against his election, as they stood solid less than twenty years ago against his sword; and even the embittered malcontents in his own ranks, had no hand in his murder; but all alike, in the better nobility of human nature, now stand in common horror and pity over his wounds. Nay, the whole world, betraying its genuine faith and hope in the American republic, lifts its outstretched arms, and its hands are filled with the lilies of sympathy for us and for him. No decree issued through the secret channels of banded socialists made his assailant their slave and tool. The Czar fell beneath the avenging and relentless pursuit of organized murder. Abraham Lincoln fell the last and noblest martyr of a civil war which, victorious upon the field, yet carried in its train the forked. and hissing flames of treachery and assassination. But Garfield, in a time of profound peace, when, aided by his own generous words, the sympathies of the Union were welding into their old fraternity, of which there could be no better proof than the tributes of sympathy that have come up to him from. every quarter; in a time of universal prosperity, when the whole land smiles with the promise of plenteous harvests and with the happy homes and returns of thrifty industry; in a country the very atmosphere of which is freedom, where no man's lips are tied, and where no man lives who has not before

ay,

the law equal redress with every other man, and full redress for every grievance; in a country which is a very asylum for the oppressed of the whole world else, Garfield, the embodiment of American humanity; whose name a year ago was on these walls as the hope and example not only of the scholar, but of the poor and humble; whose heart never had an ungenerous throb; upon whom the only criticism was the boyish and bubbling sympathy of his nature; who had risked his life in battle for his fellow-men, and pitched his voice in peace to the highest notes of liberty, - Garfield falls bleeding beneath the crazy pistol-shot of a fool. The monstrous meaninglessness of the purpose robs the deed of something of its horror. But not meaningless is the lesson. If the will that did the killing was that of a maniac, yet the maniac takes his cue as well as other men. This time, so far as he took it from the Nihilists' sophistry and the spectacle of the czar's death, let it be a warning. So far as he took it from the poisonous example of great party leaders dragging the honor of American politics into the mire of spoils and plunder, let it be a warning. So far as he took it from a system which makes the holding of civil office the reward of the most persistent camp-fol lower and go-between, let it be a warning.

These are lessons which this awful calamity teaches. But it does not shake the foundations of that "government of the people which shall not perish from the earth." If the murderer was of sound mind, let his punishment be stern, swift, and sure. If not, or, in any event, terrible as is the blow, it is like the lightning which knows no respect of persons, save that the tallest monarch of the forest oftenest attracts and takes the stroke. Let no worshiper of more absolute government find in this event a charge against our own. In the prophetic and reverent words