The Portland daily press., 1881-07-15
A Ringing Speech.
Gen. Woodford's Address at the Brooklyn
Meeting for Praise and Thanksgiving.


tude to God for sparing the Presidents life and
to pray for his recovery. Among the speakers
was Gen. Woodford, who made an impressive
and telling speech. He spoke as follows:
Mr.. PRESIDENT AND NEIGHBoRs: 1t seems
very meet, right and our bounden duty that at
such an hour as this we should gather in these
houses of prayer to thank our Heavenly Faith
er that the President still lives; to pray to our
Father that the President may be spared to us
in the fullness of his prime and the strength of
his great manhood. 1t is doubly fitting that
we should meet in this house of prayer, for
James A. Garfield is man who in every place
of life-as student in the old Williams College
days, as soldier, as member of Congress, as pol
itician, and as President-has been a constant,
sincere praying man. He is man so simple
in his personal habits that he never thrusts his
family devotion on a friend or stranger who
tarries within his gates. Well do I remember
when at Mentor last Winter, before he came to
his Inauguration, how / learned that each night
after the guests had retired he gathered his
own family in the little parlor to the right of
the hall, and with his wife and children around
led in prayer that God might care for his home
and the Republic he was about to rule. In an
age OF scepticism, when SO many think it W Use
to reject the central truth of Gods Fatherhood
this eloquent orator. this brave soldier, this
great statesman, has been an honest, earnest,
prayerful Christian nan. God bless him in
ocean, lifts an agonized cry: "God spare our
President!'
And yet in our sorrow I think we are more
proud, more tender of James A. Garfield to-
night than we have ever been before.
His boyhood friends knew what generous,
earnest, ambitious young student he was His
old comrades in the army knew what soldier
he was. His associates in Congress knew what
brave, resolute, wise leader and debater he
was, giving aud taking great, stalwart blows,
and giving and taking them in great-hearted,
generous and manly fashion. We have meas
ured him in the struggle of life. We have
weighed him in the conflict of politics We
have watched each step. and been glad that
each step has been upward since those student
days when he struggled for bread as well as for
knowledge, until to-day he is the uncrowned
head of the Great Republic.
But We never fully knew him until now,
as he lies, great-hearted and gentle
tongued, fighting for fife, and looking
death calmly and resolutely in the face,
determined to conquer death and compel
life for your sake and mine, knowing that if he
lives it will be for the Republic and not for
himself, knowing that he is fighting this battle
OF life for you and for me. God bless our
brave, good President. When think of that
struggle, my thoughts 60 as your thoughts go,
to the wife who seems to have come right out
from the shadow of death, that with loving
hand and tender heart she might lead him
away from the shadow back to beauty
and health and strength. 1 think OF
him as he stood on Inauguration day
with the thousands gathered around
him, with martial music and glad ac-
claim on every hand. 1 think of him after he
had put his hand on the Bible and sworn that
he would obey and maintain the Constitution,
turning to his wife with loving kiss; the wife
who had been his schoolmate in the days away
back in the old Ohio schoolhouse; and then
reverently STOPPING and kissing the little old
mother, whose faith and love and good sense
had trained him up to be President of these
United States. God bless the President! God
bless his loyal wife! Gods richest blessings
be on that little mother and spare her aged
eyes from seeing her boy pass before her to the
Better Land. 1t is great thing to be great
soldier, great thing to be great orator, a
grand thing to be great statesman and wise
scholar; but it is a far greater and nobler and
grander thing to be a true man who is faithful
to wife and obedient to mother, kind father
and loving Christian.
My friends, am deeply glad Of another
thing. If we needed proof that the sad years
OF battle have horne fruit, we have it tonight
If we ever doubted that the Republic could be
saved, let us reverently thank God that by the
side of Garfeld's bed of suffering we see the
whole nation kneeling in supplication. In the
shadow of his possible death the blue and the
gray kneel, swearing that they will be true to
the Republic. If he lives, and God grant he
may, the way is open through the Red Sea,
across the desert into true and enduring recon.
ciliation. If he live, and God grant he may,
he will come back from the shadow of the
grave to bind together the old Republic by
love and fraternal union forevermore. But if
in the strange mystery of Providence that per-
mitted Lincoln to die like Moses when he
looked into the promised land, if our loving
friend and good President is to go above, let us
pray in the solemn stiffness of this hour that
though the President may die the Republic
shall live, and live forever.
II h ,tav tI,otft ic .,a
ment of the people and for the people," bid
you remember that this is a government of
law, and that he only is a good citizen and a
true son Of the Republic who, in every time
and place. obeys law and holds up the hands of
those who rightfully rule under the law.
bid you remember that the same ba llots
which made President. named also his sue
cessor. bid you remember that the patriot
ism that bids you to pray for the President to-
night, compels you, if the President should be
called away from us, to be loyalty obedent to
his successor and earnest supporters of the
Government, that still lives.
There is grandeur in the thought that we,
the people, are after all, the real rulers in the
land. The law to which we must bow is our
embodied will. For us, the people, Presidents
rule, and in our Congress, we, the people, are
assembled. For us, the people, the Republic
lives, that our homes may be happy and safe,
that our children may be educated and grow
to better and larger manhood than our own.
And SO by very close and tender ties, such OF
our rulers as are truly good and great, become
our own forever more. God gave us Washing
ton. God gave us Lincoln. May He spare to us
Garfield that coming back to us from the very
silence and shadow of the grave, our President
may bring lis solemn hush and holy peace into
the mad passion of our politics and so teach us
that we are men, citizens and brothers.
Let us tonight calmly resolve to put aside
the folly and petty meanness of our past Let
us highly resolve that from this hour so tender
in its sorrow, so pure in its purpose of better
patriotism, we will try to put duty above pas
sion, and the Nation above party.
So from this deep sorrow the Republic shal
have great gain and our President, coming
back from the grave, shall lead us in the bet
ter ways of a more perfect union. May Goo
thus bring him back and help him thus to ht
our leader in happier days to come. My faitl
| grows strong that he thus shall come back. A
| party made him President. But God ha:
larger and more lasting work for this stroDl
man to do. Back from the grave he comes t,
be the President of the whole people. Ma
we have the purpose TO hold up his hands and
cheer his heart in all the work he still mus
| do.