The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1886-09-02
MEMORIAL ADDRESS
On Ex-President lanes A. Garfield,
Pronounced in the Hall Of Representa-.
tives, February ~. 1882,
Before the Departments of the Govern
ment of the United States,
BY James @. Blaine, in Response to an
Invitation From the Two
Houses of Congress.

Houses of Congress-
Mr. PRESIDENT: For the second time in
this generation the great departments OF
the Government of the United States are
assembled in the Hail of Representatives
to do honor to the memory of a m murdered
President. Lincoln fell at the close of a
mighty struggle in which the passions of
men had been deeply stirred. The trag-
ical termination of his great life added
but another to the heightened succession
of fhorrors which had marked so many lin
tells with the bloodof the first-born. Gar
field was slain in q day of peace, when
brother had been reconciled to brother,
and when anger and hate had been BAN
ished from the land. ssWhoever shall
hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if
he will show it as it has been exhibited
where such example was last to have been
looked for, let him not give it the grim
visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by re-
venge, the face black with settled hate.
Let him draw, rather. a decorous, smooth
faced, bloodless demon; not so much an
example of human nature in its deprav-
ity and in its paroxysms of crime, as an
Internal being, fiend in the ordinary
display and developments. of his charac-
ter"
FROM THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS
At Plymouth till the uprising against
Charles L, about twenty thousand emil
grants came from old England to New
En- gland. As they came in pursuit of in
tel1ectual freedom and ecclesiastical I'm
pendence rather than for worldly honor
and profit, the emigration naturally
ceased when the contest for religious
liberty began in earnest at home.
The man who struck his most effective
blow for freedom of conscience by sailing
for the colonies in 1920 would have been
The opportunity had then come on the
soil Of England for that great contest
which established the authority of Par
lament, gave religious freedom to the
people, sent Cherries to the block, and
committed to the hands of Oliver Crom-
well the supreme executive authority of
England. The English emigration was
never renewed, and from these twenty
thousand men, and from small emigra-
tion from Scotland, from Ireland and
from France, are descended the vast
numbers who have New England blood
in their veins.
In 1886 the revocation of the edict of
Nantes by Louis XIV. scattered to other
countries four hundred thousand Protest
ants, who we're among the most inte1li-
gent and enterprising of French sub
jects-merchants of capital, skilled man
r,fo fk---
at the time to all others in Europe. A
considerable number of these Huguenot
French came to America: a few landed in
New England and became henorably
prominent In its history. Their names
havefin large part become Anglicized, or
have disappeared, but their blood is
traceable In many of the most reputable
families, and their fame is perpetuated in
honorable memorials and useful institu-
tions.
From these two sources, the English
Puritan and the French -Huguenot, came
the late President-has father, Abram
Garfield, being descended from the one,,
and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the
other.
TT WAS GOOD STOCK
On both sides-none better, none Drawer,
none truer. There was in it an in
heritance Of courage, of man1iness, of
fmperishable love of liberty, of undylng
adherence to principle. Garfield was
proud of his blood; and, with as much
satisfaction as if he were British noble
man reading his stately ancestral record
in Burke's "Peerage, ~ he spoke of himself
as ninth in descent from those who
would not endure the oppression of the
Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the
brave French Protestants who refused to
submit to tyranny even from the Grand
Monarque.
General Garfield delighted to dwell on
these traits, and. during his only visit to
England, be busted himself searching out
every trace of his forefathers in parish
Tegistries and on ancient army rolls. Sit
ting In the gallery of the House of COM
mons, one night after long days labor
In this field of research, he said, with evil
dent elation, that in every warm which
for three centuries patriots of English
blood had struck sturdy blows for consti-
tutional government and human liberty,
his family had been represented. They
were at Marston Moor, at Naseby and at
Saratoga and at Monmouth; and in his
own person had battled for the same
great cause in the war which preserved
the Union of the States.
HIS FATHER DYING
Before he was two years old, Garfield's
life was one of privation, but its poverty
has been made indellcately and unjustly
prominent. Thousands of readers have
imagined him as the ragged, starving
child, whose reality too often greets the
eye in the squalid sections of our larger
cities. General Garfeld's infancy and
youth had none of this destitution, mono
OF these p1tiful features appealing TO the
tender heart, and to the open hand of
charity. He was poor boy in the same
sense in which Henry Clay was poor
boy; in which Andrew Jackson was a
poor boy; in which Daniel Webster was
poor boy: in the sense in which
a large majority of the eminent men
of America in all generations have been
poor boys. Before a great multitude, in
public speech, Mr.. Webster bore this
testimony:
at did not happen to me to be born in
log cabin, but my elder brothers and
sisters were born in a log cabin raised
amid the snow-drifts of New Hampshire,
at period so early that when the smoke
rose first from it's rude chimney and
curled over the frozen hills there was no
similar evidence of white man IS habita-
ton between it and the settlements on
the rivers of Canada. Its remains still
exist. make to it an annual visit. 1
carry my children to it to teach them the
hardships endured by the generations
which have gone before them. 1 love to
dwell on the tender recollections, the
kindred ties, the early affections, and the