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ment and to the commands of his superiors. The obedience which he rendered to those above him he rigidly required of those under his command.

"His influence over his troops grew steadily and constantly. He won his ascendancy over them, neither by artifice nor by any one act of special daring, but he gradually filled them with his own spirit, until their confidence in him knew no bounds. His power as a commander was developed slowly and silently; not like volcanic land lifted from the sea by sudden and violent upheaval, but rather like a coral island, where each increment is a growth-an act of life and work.

"Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms-strength and forceeach possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain. Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, the thunderbolt. The great tragic poet of Greece, in describing the punishment of Prometheus for rebellion against Jupiter, represented Vulcan descending from heaven, attended by two mighty spirits, Strength and Force, by whose aid he held and bound Prometheus to the rock.

"In subduing our great rebellion, the Republic called to its aid men who represented many forms of great excellence and power. A very few of our commanders possessed more force than Thomas-more genius for planning and executing bold and daring enterprises; but, in my judg ment, no other was so complete in embodiment and incarnation of strength-the strength that resists, maintains, and endures. His power was not that of the cataract which leaps in fury down the chasm, but rather that of the river, broad and deep, whose current is steady, silent, and irresistible."

From the peroration the following is taken:

"The language applied to the Iron Duke, by the historian of the Peninsular War, might also be mistaken for a description of Thomas. Napier says:

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"He held his army in hand, keeping it, with unmitigated labor, always in a fit state to march or to fight. Sometimes he was indebted to fortune, sometimes to his natural genius, always to his untiring industry; for he was emphatically a painstaking man.'

"The language of Lord Brougham, addressed to Wellington, is a fitting description of Thomas:

"Mighty captain! who never advanced except to cover his arms with

glory; mightier captain! who never retreated except to eclipse the glory of his advance.'

"If I remember correctly, no enemy was ever able to fight Thomas out of any position he undertook to hold.

"On the whole, I can not doubt that the most fitting parallel to General Thomas is found in our greatest American, the man who was 'first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.' The personal resemblance of General Thomas to Washington was often the subject of remark. Even at West Point, Rosecrans was accustomed to call him General Washington. He resembled Washington in the gravity and dignity of his character; in the solidity of his judgment; in the careful accuracy of all his transactions; in his incorruptible integrity, and in his extreme, but unaffected, modesty.

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But his career is ended. Struck dead at his post of duty, a bereaved nation bore his honored dust across the continent and laid it to rest on the banks of the Hudson, amidst the tears and grief of millions. The nation stood at his grave as a mourner. No one knew until he was dead how strong was his hold on the hearts of the American people. Every citizen felt that a pillar of state had fallen; that a great and true and pure man had passed from earth.

"There are no fitting words in which I may speak of the loss which every member of this society has sustained in his death.

"The general of the army has beautifully said, in his order announc ing the death of Thomas:

“Though he leaves no child to bear his name, the Old Army of the Cumberland, numbered by tens of thousands, called him father, and will weep for him in tears of manly grief.'

"To us, his comrades, he has left the rich legacy of his friendship. To his country and to mankind, he has left his character and his fame as a priceless and everlasting possession.

""O iron nerve to true occasion true!

O fallen at length that tower of strength

Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!'
'His work is done;

But while the races of mankind endure,

Let his great example stand

Colossal seen of every land,

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure,

Till in all lands and through all human story,

The path of Duty be the way to Glory.""

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NOONTIDE.

was an honest man. You

JAMES ABRAM GARF and Whought otherwise, you can

not know the story of his life, and think him ever guilty of a dishonest act. His character is as clear as crystal; the sunlight of truth illumined his soul alway, and there the shadows of insincerity never fell.

Nevertheless, General Garfield could not wholly escape the soil<ing slime of the mud slingers. Charges were made against him which, if true, would have made our Hyperion a most degraded and filthy Satyr.

The time has come when Garfield's character needs no defense. To-day the whole world believes in him. When the hurricane came he boldly and successfully vindicated himself. Then the people ratified his arguments and his declarations by their suffrages. Finally, History has set her great seal upon the judgment in his favor.

The three principal accusations made against Mr. Garfield were in their day known respectively as the Credit Mobilier Steal, the Salary Grab, and the De Gollyer Bribery. A formidable array!

There was a time when the biographer of Garfield would have been forced to devote a volume to these charges in order to refute them. But now a few pages will be sufficient; and their chief purpose, indeed, must only be to show how Garfield himself treated them.

When elected to Conseemed to have a life Before the next election came, it looked as elected again.

The charges all came upon him at once. gress in 1872, for the sixth time, Garfield estate in his office. if he could never be

In the winter of 1872-3, came the Credit Mobilier exposure; early in '73, followed the Salary Grab; and finally, in 1874, the De Gollyer scandal appeared.

These troubles were met in the only way that could have succeeded, and also in the only way possible to Garfield's nature— openly and manfully. Writing to his friend Hinsdale, he said: "The district is lost, and as soon as I can close up affairs here I am coming home to capture it."

While at Washington, in 1873, he prepared two exhaustive pamphlets one entitled "Review of the Transactions of the Credit Mobilier Company," and the other "The Increase of Salaries." These papers, and the general discussions which were going on at the same time, threw much light on the subjects. But the opportunity was too good for politicians to lose, and it was only after a desperate struggle that Mr. Garfield was renominated and reëlected in 1874.

But the victory was gained, and from that time on the Reserve never ceased to grow stronger, year by year, in faith in General Garfield.

Instead of a reproduction of the extensive literature on these subjects, which political necessities alone occasioned, it will suffice here to quote from a speech which in brief covered the whole field. This address was made to his constituents, at Warren, O., on September 19, 1874. September 19-anniversary of Chickamauga, and of the day of his death!

The reply proper began thus:

"There are three things which I propose to discuss; two of them may hardly be said to refer to my public career, one of them directly to my official work. The first one I refer to is my alleged connection with

THE CREDIT MOBILIER.

"There is a large number of people in the United States who use these words without any adequate idea of what they mean. I have no doubt that a great many people feel about it very much as the fishwoman at Billingsgate market felt when Sidney Smith, the great humorist of England, came along and began to talk with her. She answered back in a very

saucy way, and he finally commenced to call her mathematical names; he called her a parallelogram, a hypothenuse, a parallelopipedon, and other such terms, and she stood back aghast and said she never heard such a nasty talking man in her life-never was abused so before. Now people think they have said an enormous thing when they say that somebody had something to do with the Credit Mobilier. I ask your attention just for a few moments to what that thing is, and in the next place to understand precisely what it is that I am supposed to have had to do with it.

"The Credit Mobilier was a corporation chartered in 1859 by the State of Pennsylvania, and authorized to build houses, buy lands, loan money, etc. Nothing of consequence was done with that company until the year 1867, when a number of men bought up whatever stock there was in it, and commenced to do a very large business. In the winter of 1867, Mr. Train came to me and showed me a list of names and subscribers to the stock of the Credit Mobilier Company, and asked me to subscribe $1,000. I should say there were fifteen or twenty members of Congress on the list, and many more prominent business men. He said that the company was going to buy lands along the lines of the Pacific Railroad at places where they thought cities and villages would grow up, and to develop them, and he had no doubt that the growth of the country would make that investment double itself in a very short time.

"That was the alleged scheme that the Credit Mobilier Company had undertaken a thing that if there is any gentleman in Warren who would feel any hesitancy in buying, it would be because he didn't believe in the growth of the country where the business was to be done. That stock was offered to me as a plain business proposition, with no intimation whatever that it was offered because the subscribers were members of Congress, for it was offered to many other people, and no better men lived than at least a large number of the gentlemen to whom it was offered. Some of them took it at once. Some men are cautious about making an investment; others are quick to determine. To none of those men was any explanation made that this Credit Mobilier Company was in any way connected with a ring of seven-men who owned the principal portion of the stock and who had contracted with the directors of the Union Pacific road for building six or seven hundred miles at an extravagant price, largely above what the work was worth. That was a secret held only by those seven men who owned the principal portion of the stock. It is

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