one
lifetime. He was then facing three or four years of insult and contumely
greater than any that had been heaped upon his predecessors. He had
proposed greater reforms, and by so much he was threatened to endure
worse outrages. His term of office was just six months, but he
accomplished what forty years of his predecessors had failed to do--the
complete and eternal pacification of the North and the South. There were
more public meetings of sympathy for him, at this time, in the South
than there were in the North. His death-bed in eight weeks did more for
the sisterhood of States than if he had lived eight years--two terms of
the Presidency. His cabinet followed the reform spirit of his
leadership. Postmaster General James made his department illustrious by
spreading consternation among the scoundrels of the Star Route, saving
the country millions of dollars. Secretary Windom wrought what the
bankers and merchants called a financial miracle. Robert Lincoln, the
son of another martyred President, was Secretary of War.

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:
"You haven't given me what I want; now I'll kill you." 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 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. Three Presidents sacrificed
to this one demon are enough. I urged Congress at the next session to
start a work of presidential emancipation. Four Presidents have
recommended civil service reform, and it has amounted to little or
nothing. But this assassination I hoped would compel speedy and decisive
action.

James A. Garfield was prepared for eternity. He often preached the
Gospel. "I heard him preach, he preached for me in my pulpit," a
minister told me. He preached once in Wall Street to an excited thron