The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-10-13

| a plight he would have been once re
stored to healthl Suppose during the
next three and half years questions OF
International right should arise be-
tween England and America, as ever
and anon questions do arise, how could
the restored President have acted, re-
membering that the Queen and all the
Royal Court, from the first day
of his wounding, had bent over
his suffering couch The un-
paralleled kindness and sympathy
during his sickness would have heaped
around his Administration embarrass-
ments mountain high. Beside that, all
the people having brought him under
| obligation, the multitude of those who
want favors would have been multi
piled thOusand-fOld, and line of new
hotels reaching all around the city of
Washington would not have accOmmo-
dated the Otfice-seekeTs. 81 sent you an
invalid's chair, give a COnsulship." 81
invented the cooling apparatus, give
me POst-Office." 81 wrote the grand
est editorials of sympathy, send me to
the Court of Belgium" 81 gave Mrs.
Garfield $4,000, give me a recognition
of my services" 81 caught the Wash
ingtOn malaria waiting on your case as
correspondent, l need two years of
official position somewhere within
reach of the air that blows off the
Alps" And because of the disappOint-
ments consequent on inability to please
all his benefactOrs, and because of the
adopting Ofan independent line of policy
in all subjects, instead of being, as he
is now, the center of the nations admi-
ration, amounting almost to idOlatry,
he would in two years have been more
denounced and more, maligned and
more ohated than any President dur
ing SOur memory. No man, in
spired or uninspired, could have
met the expectations within the
last three months aroused in regard
to him. He has escaped enough calumny
during the next three years to have COW
cred three continents With Vituperative
newspapers from Badin's Bay to TERRA
del EuegO.-, If Washington and Jeffer-
sOnaand John Quincy Adams and Mon
roe. and Madison and LINCOLN did not es-
cape, much less than Garfield, for no
such unreasonable expectations had
been reused in regard to any of his pre-
decessOrs. If the first half of your pro-
lOnged prayer meant the q welfare .Of
James A. Garfield, than it has been an
swered, completely answered, glorious
II answered, triun1phantly answered,
forever answered, and could have been
answered in no other way His body
has never GR8sted so we'll as now in,the:
Cleveland cemetery, nor has his soul
ever rested so well as to-day in the
bosom of his Maker. Quod erat demon
strandum.
But the second half of your prolonged
prayer was for the best interest of the
nation. Has this last half Of your pray
er been answered? 1 suppose, in the
first place. that no afflictiOn that ever
came upon this country has been so
sanctified. When Booth shot Lincoln
the nation had been for four years
drunk on blood and massacre, and the
assassination was considered only one
paragraph in book of horrors. We
were used to death and slaughter. Be-
fore that war had not, as now / have
not, any capacity to witness suffering,
but somehow during those days down
at Sharpsburg 1 could preach in hos
pital where there were fifty shattered
and dying COnfederates, and yet go
through with my sermon. Right in the
midst of these hardening times Lincoln
was assassinated. But this last Presi-
Dental assassination was in time of
profound peace, and the nation fell
prOstrate and sick under the calamity.
Even the blasphemers went down on
their knees before God, Those who had
not prayed since they uttered their in
fantile supplicatiOn beside the trundle-
bed formulated appropriate petition.
The nation never was so chastened or so
tender or so wOrshipful as now. In
that respect your prayer has been an
swered,
Another consideration: From what
you now know of our departed Presi-
dent, you must know that the paragraph
in his inaugural which referred to the
extirpatiOn of Moral was the most
earnest part of it. That institution was
an insult to every man in America.
James A. Garfield, as a husband and a
father, felt ordained of God to destroy
that abOmination. He would not allow
it to pass one more year without being
struck of the lightning. He would have,
by law passed in Congress, proclaimed
that pOlygamy was against the interests
of good government, and while the
pOlygamist, because of present cOmpli-
cations, might retain his numerous
wives, he who hereafter took more mar
ital cOmpaniOnshiP than is allowed in
the other States should go to prison and
should be denied suffrage. The United
States military encampment on the
hills just back of Salt Lake City, whose
guns could rake that SOdOm into ashes
in one forenoon, aided by few other
regiments in Utah and Wyoming, could
enforce the law. You say that Presi-
dent Buchanan sent forth an army and
failed to do the work. President Bu-
chanan, in some respects a great and
\ L