275. The Nation’s Woe

The Nation’92s Woe

Isa_40:1 : ’93Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.’94

This reiterated command to the ministers of religion centuries ago is just as appropriate this terrible morning, while we are awaiting tidings from the suffering couch of our chief magistrate.

’93The President shot!’94 was sounded,, through the rail-train as we halted a few moments on the morning of July 2d, at Williamstown, Mass., the place at which the President was expected in three days. ’93Absurd and impossible,’94 I said. I asked then, as I ask you now, Why should any one want to kill him? He had nothing but that which he had earned with his own brain and hand. He had fought his own way up from country home to college hall, and from college hall to the House of Representatives, and from House of Representatives to the Senate Chamber, and from the Senate Chamber to the Presidential chair. Why should any one want to kill him? He was not a despot who had been treading on the rights of the people. There was nothing of the Nero or the Robespierre in him. He had wronged no man. He was free and happy himself and wanted all the world free and happy. Why should any one want to kill him? He had a family to shepherd and educate, a noble wife and a group of little children leaning on his arm, and holding his hand, and who needed him for many years to come. If any one must shoot him, why shoot him then, just as after with indescribable perplexity and fatigue, he had launched his administration and was off for a few days of recreation which he had so dearly earned? How any man could take steady aim at such a good, kind, sympathetic heart, and draw the trigger and see him fall is inexplicable.

But the deed is done. There is a black shadow on every hearthstone in America. It seems as if there were one dead in each house. Again and again we have prayed as we prayed this morning, ’93Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from us.’94 God will hear our prayer, if not in one way, then in another. God’92s way is sometimes different from man’92s way, but it is always the best way.

I am thankful to my friends who have sent me a great multitude of telegrams this morning, showing their interest in this subject’97telegrams from gentlemen who are my friends, and from others who are strangers, official telegrams from the public office of telegraphy’97and they give a ray of hope. Who knows but our President may come forth again and ride through these very streets in triumph? God grant it! But the indications are not in that direction. I have hastened before my time of expected return, because I wanted in your presence to obey the text, ’93Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.’94 While I comfort you I must comfort my own soul, for no public event has ever so overwhelmed me. My personal acquaintance with him, though not intimate, filled me with faith in his capacity to guide and bless this nation.

I could dwell on the aggravations of this event, and say, what a pity that he could not have carried out the excellent policy proposed; what a pity that he could not longer have enjoyed the high honor bestowed by the suffrages of the people; what a pity that he should go out of life by the hand of violence; what an awful thing for his family and the nation and the world if he should die. But instead of dwelling upon the aggravations I shall obey my text, ’93Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,’94 and present only the alleviations of this stupendous horror.

Alleviation the first: James A. Garfield is prepared to exchange worlds if God sees fit to call him. Long ago he settled that matter. He was not dependent for happiness upon the course of a bullet or the whim of an assassin. On his knees and in days of health and with deliberation he had made all right for eternity. There has been nothing of cant or whining or lugubriousness in his religion, but a manly out and out profession of faith in God. Yea! he has preached this very Gospel. A minister said to me the other day, ’93I heard him preach; he preached for me in my own pulpit.’94 I said, ’93What style of sermon was it?’94 He responded, ’93Excellent, excellent.’94 But in all places he had preached’97in Wall Street to the excited throng the day after Lincoln was shot; at Chickamauga among the wounded soldiers; in the Congress of the United States in many a noble speech.

Religion was with him no new thing. When a college boy, and encamped among the mountains for summer recreation, at eventide he takes out his Bible and says: ’93Boys, at this time of evening I am apt to read a passage of the Scripture; if you would like to hear it, I will read a chapter now.’94 And then one of the comrades was called upon for prayer, and they all knelt in their summer tent. The last thing he did before leaving Mentor for Washington, was to take the holy sacrament of our Lord Jesus Christ, the tears of emotion rolling down the cheek of the communicant. The first opportunity he had after he was shot, he declared that he trusted all in the Lord’92s hand’97was ready to die or to live. Surely he was ready then. After these eight weeks of purifying distress, he is ready now.

I want all the world to mark that this illustrious bed, if it be a death-bed’97illustrious for patience, illustrious for courage, illustrious for gentleness’97is no infidel’92s deathbed, no scoffer’92s deathbed, a Christian deathbed. Though canopied and surrounded with the elegance of a ruler’92s mansion, it is the same kind of pillow that your old Christian father and mother died on, and the same pillow which shall be offered in our last sickness, however humble our lot may be. It puts me more than ever in love with the old Gospel’97the Gospel of the One who died at the hand of cruel assassins. O! thou assassinated Christ, by thy own wounds in the side and the hands and the feet and the brow, pity the head, the feet, the side, the physical anguish of our beloved President!

There have been other Christian men in the Presidential chair of this country, but the most pronounced Christian since the days of Washington, in the Presidential chair, is James A. Garfield. If he go’97God forbid that he should go now’97but if he go, he goes straight to the bosom of a merciful God. Death will be promotion. He will lose nothing, but gain everything. On the steps of the Capitol, that stormy day in March, he took the oath of high office. If he go now, at the gate of heaven he will take the crown of triumph. Whether he live or die, I shout for him, ’93Victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ!’94

Alleviation the second: his family will be magnificently provided for. It is an awful thing when the bread-winner of a family falls, if there be no estate left, and the wife must go forth, with her helpless children at her back, to fight for a livelihood. The mother, weak and sick with long watching, goes out to look for a place, and the children are taken by friends who, perhaps, get tired of the burden they assumed under sudden impulse of sympathy. But the more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars already subscribed to the Garfield fund are a hint that there is not one of us amid the fifty millions of America who will allow that afflicted family to suffer need. If this stroke come, the widow, the children, the aged mother will be the sacred charge of this nation. I see so many bereft women in the awful struggle for bread dying by inches, and finding no rest until they get inside the grave, that I am sure I am right when I present among the alleviations of this great sorrow the complete financial deliverance of our President’92s family.

Alleviation the third: if our President die, this nation, without a moment’92s halting, will march right on in its career of prosperity. The death of rulers in other lands often means bloody revolution. This nation endured the death of Presidents Harrison and Taylor and Lincoln, when it was not half as strong as it is now, and it will not be discomfited by this calamity. It will take more than one murderous wretch to stop this nation, when God commands it to march on. If on that awful second of July the President had been instantly slain, I know not what would have occurred. There would have been other pistol shots and panic, and perhaps national delirium. How good God was to spare our President these two months, until the nation could gather its equipoise; for I tell you that while the heart of this nation is very sore, its head is level.

There will be but one life taken, and that by the hand of the law. I have no admiration for the organizations that I hear are forming to tear down the Washington jail, and maul the desperado. No, no! Let the judge of the court take his place and the jury be impaneled, and the witnesses testify, and the verdict be rendered, and the judge, amid a silence like the grave, give the sentence, and the scaffold be raised, and, with a stout rope, this accursed Guiteau be hung by the neck until he be dead. All that excitement will soon be in the rear, and the nation chastened by this affliction, will move on and up.

’93But,’94 you say, ’93what if the President die, what of his successor?’94 I answer, I have no acquaintance with the one who would be the incoming President, but I beg of you, the American people, to give him a fair chance; do as you would like to be done by if you were put in the same crisis. The nation would make nothing by throwing any impediments in his way. Others make a prophecy in regard to this incoming President in case of the death of our present ruler’97I make a prophecy. They make prophecy from a political standpoint’97I make mine from a religious standpoint. If our President die, judging from what seems God’92s design of kindness to this nation, I think he will give especial blessing for especial emergency, and the chief ideas of President Garfield’92s administration will be carried out by President Arthur’92s administration.

There are men now in the Cabinet who have inaugurated such a great work that they will certainly be retained. Postmaster General James has sent such consternation among the scoundrels of the Star Routes, saving our country millions of dollars, and making his department more illustrious than have any of his predecessors, that I know his hand will be kept in that reformation. Secretary Windom has wrought what merchants and bankers all over the land have called a miracle of financiering, and I am sure he will not be dethroned while he is saving the land more millions than I dare to state. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War, admired by all parties, first for his own sake and next for his martyred father’92s sake, will, I am sure, continue in the councils of the nation.

And others of the Cabinet, whose brilliant and world-renowned services cannot afford to be stopped, will stay in their places; and with all the Episcopal churches of America, by the command of their liturgy, praying Sabbath by Sabbath for the President of the United States, and all the non-liturgical churches of America uniting in the same supplication, I am sure upon the new Chief Magistrate would come, straight from God, the spirit of good government. You say that his position, if called to it, will be one of great delicacy. I know it. But it will be one of unlimited and unparalleled opportunity. Mark that. Fellow citizens, fellow patriots, fellow Christians, fellow mourners, now is the time to trust God.

Alleviation the fourth: if our President die, he dies at what must be the best time. It does not seem to suit me, it does not seem to suit you; but God’92s time is always the best. Do you say this is the teaching of fatalism? It is the teaching of your Bible and my Bible that God sets the limit of our life. Had it been best, the President by this time would have been amid the cooling sea-breezes of Long Branch. Men with more bullets in them and in worse directions, are walking your streets today.

If he die’97God avert the sorrow!’97if he die, he will go at the time when he has the love of all the people. If he live he could not be an exception to the universal rule, that a brisk and decisive and reformatory administration rouses rancor and invective. Look up the files of the newspapers and see what surges of obloquy rolled over Lincoln and Madison and Monroe and Jefferson and Washington. Do you suppose Mr. Garfield could have carried out his intention of extirpating Mormonism, and that there would have been no wincing under the national surgery? He had other plans revolutionary for good.

It seems to me he suffered enough abuse in the political campaign of last autumn to suffice for one lifetime. If in addition to that there should be the insults of three or four years of contumely, it would be more than his share of bombardment. If James A. Garfield now dies, he dies in time to escape more insult than was ever heaped upon any of his predecessors, for by so much as he proposed greater reforms, he must have had to endure worse outrage. I was with him a few days before the bloody assault. I never saw a more anxious or perturbed countenance, and it seemed a relief to him to talk to my child, turning his back on the perplexities of State. What he has escaped, or seems about to escape, God only knows. The storm is lulled. If he goes, ours will be the grief’97his the congratulation.

Six months seems to be a very short administration, but in those six months he has accomplished what forty years of his predecessors failed to do’97the complete and eternal pacification of the North and South. There are more public meetings of sympathy in the South than in the North, on this subject. His sick bed, in eight weeks, has done more for the sisterhood of States than if he had lived out eight years, namely, two terms of the Presidency. The North, the South, the East, the West, stand on the four sides of his bed looking into each other’92s eyes with a kindliness that never before characterized them. If he expire, do not think his administration, because of its brevity, is a failure. There has gone out from the sick room an influence that will be felt as long as the American Government continues. Oh! measure not a man’92s life by days, or months, or years; measure it by the sweep of its influence. Out of six months of time a good man may build an eternity.

Alleviation the fifth: this calamity makes the business of office seeking disgustingly disreputable. Guiteau was no more crazy than thousands of other place-hunters. He had been refused an office, and he was full of unmingled and burning revenge. There was nothing else the matter with him. It was just this: ’93You haven’92t given me what I want; now I’92ll kill you.’94 For months after each presidential inauguration the hotels of Washington are roosts for these buzzards. They are the crawling vermin of this nation. Guiteau was no rarity. There were hundreds of Guiteaus in Washington after the inauguration, except that they had not the courage to shoot. I saw them some two months after, or six weeks after. They were mad enough to do it. I saw it in their eyes.

They killed two other Presidents, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. I know the physicians called the disease congestion of the lungs or liver, but the plain truth was that they were worried to death; they were trampled out of life by place-hunters. Now, in God’92s name, let this thing stop. Three Presidents sacrificed to this one demon are enough. Let the Congress of the United States at the next session start a work of presidential emancipation. Four Presidents have recommended civil service reform, and it has amounted to little or nothing. But this assassination will compel speedy and decisive action, and so some good will come of it.

But is it not sadly strange that the world makes no advance except through the sacrifice of human life? The Church is to be reformed, but Wycliffe and John Oldcastle must perish; and the scenes of Piedmont and Brussels market-place must be enacted. The French depotism must be destroyed; but the streets of Paris must be incarnadined with human gore. The United States are to be separated from foreign rulers; but the frosts of Valley Forge must devour, and the bayonets of Yorktown must stab. National contests about slavery must be settled; but a million brave Northern and Southern men must die. Official patronage is to be regulated; but James A. Garfield must be assassinated. Alas! alas! without the shedding of blood there seems to be no reformation for the suffering state, and no atonement for the sin-cursed world. It seems for every reformation there must be a Messiah born in a manger and dying on a cross.

Alleviation the sixth: this calamity has resulted in an outburst of sympathy glorious and sublime. There never was anything like it since the world stood. You tell me this is a selfish world, and it is every man for himself, and there is no kindness or generosity left. You make a mistake. Throne and cottage, Victoria and the village schoolgirls, parlor and kitchen, trans-Atlantic and cis-Atlantic, trans-Pacific and cis-Pacific, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, Eastern hemisphere and Western hemisphere, have by voice, by pen, by telephone, by telegram, by day, by night, poured forth sympathy for our President and his family and the nation. That man expressed the, feeling of many in this country when last week he offered to spare part or all the blood from his veins, if it was necessary, to invigorate the President. We go back to ancient history to find a scene like that, and we speak of it in poetry and in song. We need not go so far back now. There are men here today who, wrought upon by the same power in this great sorrow, would bare their arm for the lancet, crying, like that old hero of centuries ago: ’93Pour my blood into his veins that he die not.’94 I think we must be brothers and sisters all; I think that nations must belong to one family, and that they must have the same great mother’97God. A little foretaste this of the good time when all misunderstanding shall cease and everybody shall say pleasant things about everybody else, and the embroidered eagle and lion and bear will be taken off the banners, and there shall be substituted the lamb and the dove. How strange that one sick-bed should have given us such a glimpse of a millennium!

The President’92s son was said to be keeping a scrap-book with all the expressions of sympathy and kindness, that he might show them to his father after he got well. Unsuccessful attempt! No book that ever went forth from earthly bindery would be large enough to contain the story. It will require the infinite book of God’92s remembrance to keep the record of the earthly and celestial sympathy that has hovered these long, dreadful weeks over the emaciated form of our suffering President.

Alleviation the last: the fact that this nation has impressed upon it as never before the uncertainty of human life starting out on a holiday tour’97coming back in an ambulance. Strong health no warrant against fatality. The President had a model physique. Out of a hundred men you would have selected him as the most healthy. Fine intellect no warrant. He was decidedly the most brilliant mind that ever occupied the White House. Able to select what food he would, what residence he would, what defence he would, yet we have been told more than once during the last two or three days that he is dying. Out of all this come lessons of perpetual readiness. It was a wonderful eulogy day before yesterday pronounced by the surgeons when they said: ’93There is no need of telling him he has to die, for he said at the start he had no preparations to make.’94 Be ye also ready, so that whether by flying bullet or falling scaffold, or colliding rail-trains, or in gradual decrease of ordinary sickness ye be called away you may not die unprepared.

I have this morning tried, at the behest of my text, to comfort you by the rehearsal of the alleviations of the national calamity; but, after all, there will remain in all our hearts a grief for many a day. I know just what you all feel. Oh, that he only could get well! How we would ring the bells and thunder the cannon, and set the night afire with pyrotechnic display. Oh! if he only could get well! But it does not seem to me at this crisis’97although I have been hopeful until now’97that he will recover.

I fear the message very soon will come shuddering along the lines: ’93President Garfield is dead!’94 If so, then with the pomp of great processions, and the tolling of bells, and the booming of minute guns, his silent form will move through these great cities toward his western home. He started from it with the congratulations of his country neighbors only a few months ago. They will at the same depot take up his palled casket, and with blinding tears carry it to the quiet graveyard and lay it down among his old friends.

We have no Westminster Abbey in which to bury kings, but we have a great national heart in which we enshrine those who have suffered for our land. Into that great shrine of the national heart we will carry our beloved President, and lay him down beside Adams and Lincoln and Washington and the other mighty men who loved God and toiled for the betterment of the race. Then we will sound forth, partly in requiem and partly in grand march of triumph, the words which Garfield employed after another famous assassination: ’93The Lord reigneth. Though clouds and darkness are around about him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne.’94 God save the President! God save the nation!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage