Dean Swift describes the tomb as a place where savage enmity can rend the heart no more. Here, in the ominous shadow of the cypress, the faults and foibles of life are forgotten, and the imagination builds a shining pathway to the stars. Ascending this with rapid flight, the great dead is transfigured as he rises; the clouds close around him, and, in the twinkling of an eye, he is set afar on the heights with Miltiades and Alexander.

The tendency to the deification of men is strongest when a sudden eclipse falls athwart the disk of a great life at noontide. The pall of gloom sweeps swiftly across the landscape, and the beholder, feeling the chill of the darkness, mistakes it for the death of nature. So it was three hundred years ago when the silent Prince of Orange, the founder of Dutch independence, was smitten down in Delft. So it was when the peerless Lincoln fell. So it is when Garfield dies by the bullet of an assassin.

No doubt this man is glorified by his shameful and causeless death. The contrast between his life and his death is indeed the very irony of fate. On the popular imagination he is borne away to Washington and Lincoln. He is canonized—the American people will have it so.

In due season fervor will subside. The keen indignation and poignant sorrow of this great and sensitive citizenship will at length give place to other emotions. The murdered Garfield will then pass through an ordeal more trying than any of his life. He will be coolly measured and his stature ascertained by those inexorable laws which determine the rank and place of both living and dead. No doubt he will suffer loss; but there is of James A. Garfield a residuum of greatness—

And this residuum of greatness, whatever it shall be, will constitute the Garfield of the future—the Garfield of history.

For the present there will be—there can but be—a blending of the real and the ideal. The glamour of the apotheosis will dazzle the vision of those who witnessed it. It is enough, therefore, that the narrative of to-day shall be such as befits the universal sentiment. The biographer of the future may weigh with more critical exactitude the weakness against the greatness, and poise in a more delicate balance the evil against the good.

The following pages embody an effort to present, in fair proportion, The Life and Work of James A. Garfield. Such sources of information as are at present accessible have been faithfully consulted; and it is sincerely hoped that the outline here given of the personal and public career of the illustrious dead, will be found true to the life. As far as practicable in the following pages, the purposes and character of President Garfield will be determined from his own words. His apothegms and sayings, not a few, and his public papers and speeches have alike contributed their wealth to the better parts of the volume. The story of the President’s wounding and death has been gathered from the abundant sources—official and semi-official—of the journals and magazines of the day. It is hoped that the narrative, as a whole, will not be found deficient in interest, or unworthy of the subject.

This preface would be incomplete if failure should be made to mention the invaluable and extensive service rendered the author in the preparation of the work, by Messrs. Augustus L. Mason, Nathaniel P. Conrey, and Leonard Barney, to whose industry and discriminating taste much of whatever merit the book contains, must be accredited. And with this acknowledgment should be coupled a like recognition of the spirit of The Publishers, who, with their accustomed liberality, have spared no pains to illustrate the work in a manner befitting the subject. May all who read these pages find in them as full a measure of profit as the author has found of pleasure in their preparation.