Morning journal and courier., 1881-09-21
The Dead President.
comments on His Life and Work
 lFrom the Hartford Courant.1

! We thank God also for what his life, his prostrated life, has done for us No man of
 thls generation may measure the value of his | achievement. We are in the depths of tiisap- | continent now. We had built great hopes. 1 ID the regeneration of our national politics \ upon his administration. It seemed that he I was dlvlnely raised up to accomplish certain
 thngs. It turns out that he was divinely 1 raised up to accomplish other things of | which we did not so much think. He seemed competent and willing to be the clear-headed ] klndly-hearted, steady leader in better na l t1onal life. But God willed otherwise and l had another mission for him, which is end | ed He was chosen to be a sacrifice in A | large way let us hope to political reqenera- | tion, but sacrifice we know to the sentiment of nationality; to the frmer union of the once discordant sections of the now welded republic; to loyalty to the office of the Chief Magistrate. North and South, East and West have stood anxiously together by his bedside, forgetting all differences in
 prayer for the life of the President, and for the life of this President whose open mind
 invited unity and confidence and goodwill; and they will gather about his grave in new spirit of concord-a concord which we can
 already trace to this mysterious dispensation. And then, in a larger way, this typical Re-
 publican has drawn to him and to his coun-
 try the sympathy of the peoples of every civ
 ilized land, from the humblest to the highest.
 ln a concert of concern, of feeling and lively
 interest never before exhibited, in anything
 like this unanimous movement, in the history
 of the world.
 From the Boston Advertiser.l
 General Garfield was not in all points
 equally strong, nor man of invariable wis
 dom. He made mistakes of judgment and
 of conduct Men pardoned his mistakes be-
 cause they believed he never intended a
 wrong act. His conspicuous integrity of aim
 and of motive was a sufficient shield against
 whatever assaults envy or malignity con- trived for his injury. No man was ever more monstrously misrepresented and as- sailed, and no man ever came forth from the trial more successfully. His life is lesson to politicians which it would be well for them if they could apprehend in all it's sig nlfcance. Reviewing in this sad hour his marvellous career from cradle of obscurity and want to that ed-chamber of suffering into which poured the anxious condolences of kings and emperors, and of the wise and good in every nation where virtue and lb- erty are honored words, the thought which will come sooner or later to all, and when it comes will abide, is that after all CHARACTER is the main thing, the most precious posses sion the surest power, the noblest legacy, the most enduring fame.
 From the New York Tribunel
 He is President more. Only four months he held the helm, but the work done in that short time will bless the land for ages. No other administration has ever done more for the good of the country than this which had just begun. The time has not yet come for a calm and dispassionate review of Garfield's acts, nor are the eyes, now dim with tears, able as yet to see all the merit of his plans. Those who were close in his counsel will have much to say of the noble and lofty aims which inspired him, but his fame will not rest upon unrealized hopes. The cold and passionless verdict of history, though 1t may find fault or a flaw. will more than satisfy those who loved James A. Garfield most, and will place his name far toward the highest in the list of human rulers.
 [From the New York Herald.l
 Mir Garfield was the twentieth President of the United States and if we survey the whole list we shall not find man in it more typical of the manhood of the na- ton which had chosen him for the first office in it's gift. In the happy phrase of the poet, choice as the mutual act of all our souls'' selects a man distilled of all our virtues' when an individual is to stand for a nation, and in that large sense the choice of this man was instinctively just. From simple coun- try home where the pinch of poverty averted only by constant and patient labor, she hardy lad, well endowed by nature with l stout heart and good head, with enthusi- asm, courage and industry, worked his way upward step by step till he stood at the top of the ladder. He who begins life without fortune, without education, without the SUD- port of influential friends, and makes his way successfully against s'those twin iailers of the larling heart, low birth and iron fortune," proves his own sterling worth, and proves Llso the soundness of our American theory hat from the masses of the people will al- ways arise men as competent to stand at the lelm of State as are the rulers supplied by he machinery of monarchical succession in he aristocratic countries The lives of Gar eld and Lincoln will always be linked to- ether in pathetic record of common ragic fate but they will also be cIassed to- ether as indications of the type of man that 5 to be contributed to the drama of our na- ions history by those divisions of our peo- le that grow up in circumstances where they re comparatively unaffected by outside in uences.
 From the New York World.l
 That the countrymen of President Garfield i'll universally lament his death must be at- ributed not so much to the influence upon ublic feeling of President Garfeld's own haracter and life, nor yet so much to the lanner of his taking off, as to the profound nd real reverence of Americans for Ameri- an institutions. Every man in this country feels that the assassin's pistol ,as really aimed at the republic, incarnated pr the time in the Chief Magistrate. The ste President was typical American. Born l the obscurest station of life-if there be uch thing as station in our floating merican life-he attained the most conspic- ous. If, having attained the most conspic- ous station, he had shown in it low and un- Torthy qualities, or performed in it low and nworthy acts, his success would indeed ave been disgraceful instead of be- ,g creditable to the system under which 1ch an elevation was possible. If President rarfield had been an oily demagogue or an ynorant and brutal bigot-and we have seen xamples of these classes set in very high laces-his unfitness would have been ren- cred more fragrant by the fierce light which eats upon the Presidential chair not less July than upon the throne. But he really rose -om the ranks of the people to conspicu- us position in politics by his abilities put orth at their best, on the whole, from first ) last, in what he undoubtedly believed to @ the public service.
 From the New York Times.l
 Not the least of the services which James . Garfield will have rendered to his country ill be the impossibility of any wide or long eparture from the standard of administra- on which would have been expected of him ad he lived. As time passes, his character ill be idealized as that of no other Presi- ents save Lincoln and Washington have
  lterrupted administration will be gauged erhaps more by the standard of popular imagination than by rational calculation. But @ the achievements of which he will be eemed to have been capable ever so much eyond his probable strength or resolution, ,eir very conception cannot but serve to inn art a needed element of nobility to the aims f party as well as to impose no less need l restraint upon the self-seeking and sordid nbition of professional politicians. It might ave seemed more glorious death to have sllen martyr to an exalted cause or great rinciple than to become the victim of such roke as might be dealt by poisonous rep le But the blood of the dead President ill, we believe and trust, nourish such hatred nd horror of the evils out of which it's she'd ing grew, that the potency of his death may rove, in the providence of God, to be great z than aught which could have attended the nfagging and best directed energies of his fla