CHAPTER XX.

INAUGURATION.

ASSAILED BY OFFICE-SEEKERS. THE

RESPONSIBILITIES AND ANNOYANCES OF A PRESIDENT. — METHODS OF SECURING A HEARING.

GENERAL GARFIELD'S SELF-SACRIFICE. - HIS HOME LIFE BROKEN UP.

CEREMONIES OF INAUGURATION.- DIFFICULTIES IN SELECTION OF COUNSELOK8. -THE CABINET.

EVERY blessing has its accompanying evil, of greater or less magnitude, and an election to the high position of President of the United States is far from being an exception. When the trials, annoyances, temptations, and dangers are carefully weighed it is a strange thing that great men should desire it. To perform all the duties faithfully and ably, the President is compelled to forsake his family, his social and religious privileges, his books, his friends, and his rest, and constantly grapple with the evils which ceaselessly assail both himself and the nation. The greatest of all these evils is connected with the change or recommissioning of all the officers of the nation at each inauguration.

From an early hour on the morning after his election until his death at Elberon, his time was taken, his footsteps dogged, or his sick-bed disturbed with

the ceaselessly importuning office seekers. Such a state of affairs is a great disgrace to our nation, and one which General Garfield was determined to remedy if possible.

The behavior of many aspirants for official position was but little less than that of the assassin himself. They invaded his private house in swarms. They stopped his carriage in the street; they called him out of bed; they bored him in the railroad carriages and stations; they wrote to his wife and his sons; they courted, fawningly, all his old neighbors and relatives. They covered him with flattery more contemptible than slander; they filled his office with piles of letters it was impossible for him to read or answer; they sent him tempting presents (?); they wrote most silly laudations of his life, and published them, to his great disgust; and teasing, coaxing, threatening, they made anxious and unhappy nearly every hour of his life after his election. More than six hundred applications were made for one office before he had the right to make the appointment. He could give it to but one, and thus innocently made more than six hundred bitter enemies.

Men who had supported him in the election, or who urged his name at Chicago, demanded the right to place their friends in office. He could not please them all. He said so; and some of his life-long friends, not appreciating his great responsibilities and difficulties, accused him in unmeasured terms of gross ingratitude. The outcry of the people against

the practice which Charles Sumner called "nepotism" compelled General Garfield, as a servant of the people, to refuse an appointment to personal friends or relatives in many cases where such a disposition of the office would otherwise have been acceptable. The fact that he had the power to appoint his friends was the very fact which hindered him in granting their requests. He frankly told them so when they applied to him, and looks of scorn, hatred, and contempt came to him from faces which had till then smiled continuously on him through a life-time.

As Mrs. Garfield had predicted, their home life was gone. No more domestic quiet; no more social family gatherings; no more rest. Naught came to them but pressing cares and almost disheartening responsibilities. Even the little boys felt the wear of ceaseless visiting, and sought an asylum away in the barn or at a neighbor's house. Nothing they possessed was longer their own. They and theirs were treated as public property, and the ceaseless vigils of the public press told to the whole world. their slightest movements, even to an extended account of the youngest boy's truancy at school, and of the daughter's different dresses. There was no escape from the public gaze, and the unexpected disclosure in the papers of each minor event made the press seem omnipotent. The lens which showed them thus was also one that burned at its focus.

He that gives himself to his nation must be prepared for any and every sacrifice. To make it cheer

fully is one element of greatness. That, it can safely be said, General Garfield did. Abandoning all hope of personal rest or pleasure, he gave himself wholly and cheerfully to the nation. Through all the months preceding his inauguration he planned, discussed, and studied how to remedy the evil of partisan appointments in the civil service. It was almost the only great evil which threatened or endangered the republic. His attempt was sincere, honest, and determined. The people saw it and appreciated it; and when the time of inauguration came, March 4, 1881, they showed their increasing respect by one of the most magnificent ceremonial displays which the nation ever witnessed. With vast throngs of enthusiastic visitors, with long lines of military organizations in their gay trappings, with miles of bunting and clouds of flags and streamers, with trumpets, drums, bands, and singing, with feasts, collations, speeches, and a grand ball, with huzzahs, congratulations, and all kinds of demonstrations of joy, the people hailed him as their chief magistrate. It was the more remarkable because the administration of General Hayes had been very successful and peaceful, successful because it was peaceful, and peaceful because it was successful. The demonstration was also surprising inasmuch as no great reforms beyond those of the civil service were expected or demanded by the people. It was a spontaneous demonstration of respect and love, which grew out of their personal regard for the personal character of

the President, rather than a demonstration connected. with any national issue. All parties united to do him honor, and General Hancock, the defeated candidate of the Democratic party, accepted promptly an invitation to participate in the popular ceremonies of the day.

But even so important an occasion as that of his installation to the headship of one of the mightiest nations of earth was not without impertinent intrusions by greedy office seekers.

What a grand scene was that in the Senate Chamber, in the great rotunda, and on the porch of the Capitol, when General Garfield took the oath of office. and delivered his inaugural address! He was calm and firm in all his movements before the assembled thousands, and his voice was clear and strong as he read his recommendations concerning a better civil service. How little did he know that he must give his life for those principles before the people could be made to realize the situation!

If in the short intervals in the work and talk of that great day he had time for reflection, how like a dream to him must have been the log cabin of boyhood, the piles of wood he had chopped, the rough work of the farm, and the rude accommodations at school; his praying mother, his devoted sisters, his affectionate cousins, his old schoolmates separated from him by an official distance unmeasurable, must have come to his mind in that hour with a strange impression. He was still a son, a husband, a father,