ssion never would have been agreed to by the Democrats had
they known that Judge David Davis, of our own State, would retire
from the Bench to take a place in the Senate; and it is almost
certain that had Judge Davis remained on the bench he would have
been a member of the Electoral Commission, and would have surely
voted in favor of Tilden, which would have made him President.

While Hayes was President the "green-back craze" seemed to almost
take possession of the country. I delivered an address at Rockford,
Illinois, before an agricultural society, taking issue to some
extent with the public sentiment of the country, and favoring sound
money. The President was going through the country at that time
on a speaking tour, and in the course of some of his addresses he
commended what I had said. He, accompanied by General Sherman,
visited Springfield, and I entertained them at the Executive
Mansion.

President Hayes, himself realizing the embarrassment under which
he entered the office of President, was not a candidate for
renomination, and very wisely so. But as I have said, President
Hayes was a good man; he made a very commendable record as President
of the United States, and he was specially fortunate in the selection
of his cabinet, showing rare discrimination in selecting some of
the ablest men in the country as his advisers. Evarts was his
Secretary of State, and John Sherman Secretary of the Treasury.

It is a rather peculiar coincidence that both James A. Garfield
and R. B. Hayes were members of the Ohio delegation in the Thirty-
ninth Congress, and both afterwards arrived at the Presidency.

James A. Garfield was a man of extraordinary ability. I was very
intimate with him during our service in the House. He was an
extremely likable man; I became very fond of him, and I believe
the feeling was reciprocated. Also he was distinguished for his
eloquence, and I have heard him make some of the most wonderfully
stirring and impressive speeches in the House. He was probably
not the orator that Robert G. Ingersoll was, but I should say that
he was one of the most effective public speakers of his period;
his speeches were deeper and more serious, uttered in a graver
style than the beautiful poetic imagery of the great agnostic.
President Lincoln liked Garfield, and he was one of the younger
men in the House who always supported the President, and on whom
the President relied. He entered the Thirty-eighth Co