at President Grant’s request, went to New Orleans in company with Senators Sherman and Matthews and other Republicans, to watch the counting of the Louisiana vote.  He made a special study of the West Feliciana Parish case, and embodied his views in a brief but significant report.  In January, 1877, made two notable speeches in the House on the duty of Congress in a Presidential election, and claimed that the Vice-President had a constitutional right to count the electoral vote.  Opposed the Electoral Commission, yet when the commission was ordered was chosen by acclamation to fill one of the two seats allotted to Republican Representatives.  Mr. Blaine left the House for the Senate in 1877, and this made Mr. Garfield the undisputed leader of his party in the House.  At this time and subsequently was its candidate for Speaker.  Was elected to the United States Senate January 13, 1880.  Attended the Republican convention which met at Chicago in June, 1880, where he opposed the renomination of President Grant and supported Senator Sherman.  On the thirty-sixth ballot the delegates broke, their ranks, and, rushing to General Garfield, he was unanimously nominated for President on June 8, 1880.  Was elected November 2, 1880, receiving 214 electoral votes to 144 that were cast for Winfield S. Hancock.  Was shot July 2, 1881, by an assassin in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station, in Washington, and died from the effects of the wound September 19 at Elberon, N.J.  He was buried at Cleveland, Ohio.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Fellow-Citizens:  We stand to-day upon an eminence which overlooks a hundred years of national life—­a century crowded with perils, but crowned with the triumphs of liberty and law.  Before continuing the onward march let us pause on this height for a moment to strengthen our faith and renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have traveled.

It is now three days more than a hundred years since the adoption of the first written constitution of the United States—­the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.  The new Republic was then beset with danger on every hand.  It had not conquered a place in the family of nations.  The decisive battle of the war for independence, whose centennial anniversary will soon be gratefully celebrated at Yorktown, had not yet been fought.  The colonists were struggling not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind; for the world did not then believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves.

We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.  When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a National Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with full power of self-preservation and ample authority for the accomplishment of its great object.