No death in our history, save possibly that of Lincoln, so generally and profoundly filled the hearts of the American people with sorrow as did the death of Garfield.

You seek one of yourselves to speak for you; one who not only, like the lamented dead, thinks as the people think and feels as the people feel, but one who belongs to this local community and who shares our own peculiar shade of sorrow.

FELLOW CITIZENS:--In arising to address you on this occasion I feel my own inability to do the subject justice; and the hollow impotence of human language to express the sentiment of national woe.

We have assembled to honor the memory, to revere the character, and recount the living virtues of a fallen patriot and statesman.

Garfield, the popular idol of the nation, is no more.

We have, in time of our greatest need, lost one of our greatest statesmen and purest patriots.

Unbelief and astonishment were succeeded by wordless sorrow, and this was mingled with emotions of patriotic vengeance.

Patriots in this mournful hour can brook no sympathy for the damning deed--can bear no manifestation of joy for the bloody work of the assassin.

As President he possessed no powers but those freely delegated to him by his fellow-citizens.

His highest duty under the Constitution, and by the delegation of the people, was to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and Government established by the Revolutionary Fathers.

The blow struck not the President alone; it reached in its rebound the popular heart of America.

The shot meant the annihilation of delegated power, and as such reached the fountains of popular vitality.

Such assassinations are extremely dangerous to liberty and constitutional government.

If the will of the majority is defeated in this manner, popular government will not long survive.

The popular frenzy which developed itself in mobs in many sections of our country, on the reception of the tidings of Lincoln's death, is but the logical sequence of the assassin's stroke at civil liberty and popular rights.

For, mark you, fellow-citizens, there is a smothered volcano of wrath and vengeance in the great popular heart upon such occasions.

A word may vent it, and fill all this fair land with the lava of blood and ashes.

This we know, that the time elapsing between the assassin's shot and the lamented death of his victim has been sufficient for the supremacy of reason and the subjugation of passion so far as to prevent any immediate dire results to free…

The American people, yea the Anglo-Saxon race, are believers in law and order.

Passion may triumph for an hour, but the sober-second-thought of the masses is sure to assert itself.

Passion has never but once in our history crystalized into revolution.

It is this subordination to law, this reverence for its majesty, this reliant faith in its methods and results, that constitute the bulwark of our liberties, and make the American people capable of self-government.

Their genius for public affairs was triumphant over all opposition and victorious in their rising greatness.

The success of such men is possible only in a government by the people.

Be it said to the everlasting honor of the people, and their fitness for government, that they not only recognized the ability of these men, but they gave them their affections without stint, and their hearty support in opposition to party.