ADDRESS 



BY 



Mr. ELIHU ROOT 



UPON THE UNVEILING OF A STATUE OF 
PRESIDENT ARTHUR IN MADISON SQUARE, 
NEW YORK, JUNE THIRTEENTH, 1899 jt> 



ADDRESS 



BY 



Mr. ELIHU ROOT 

UPON THE UNVEILING OF A STATUE OF 
PRESIDENT ARTHUR IN MADISON SQUARE, 
NEW YORK,' JUNE THIRTEENTH, 1899 j* j» 



I2L 
^8 






Mr. Mayor: 

The Committee of which Mr. Stewart is 
Chairman has charged me with the duty of 
formally presenting to the city of New York 
the statue of Chester Al]an Arthur, the 
twenty-first President of the United States, 
now about to be unveiled. 

The statue is the result of the contribu- 
tions of President Arthur's personal associ- 
ates and friends here in his home, who knew 
him as he was, and admired and loved him 
long before the world knew him, and who 
found in the universal esteem and admira- 
tion accorded to him by the whole people 
in his later years, not a revelation, but a 
recognition of his character and qualities. 
This memorial of our old fellow- townsman 
is to stand appropriately in the New York 
of Arthur's day, in the square around which 
centered so much of the city's activity in 
his time, in front of the old Club House 
of the Union League, of which he was long 



:m active, and at the last an honorary 
member, and near the familial- pathway 
along which so many of us have pas-.-. I 
with him on his way to and from his Lex- 
ington avenue home. 

Tlic persona] relations which have 
prompted this expression of affection and 
esteem are rapidly lapsing into oblivion. 
The men and women who knew him, who 
felt the direct influence of his clear and 
bright intelligence, his commanding char- 
acter, the Bweetness and gentleness of his 
disp< 'sit ion, the rich stores of his cultivated 
mind, the grace and charm of his courtesy, 
his grave and simple dignity, and his Loyal 
and steadfast friendship, are passing swiftly 
away. In but a few years more the joy 
he gave in living, the sharp sorrow of his 
u ii timely death, the treasured memories of 
his association and his friendship, will 
exist no Longer in any human heart. He 
will l»e 1 mi t a name on a page of American 
history, and his personality, potent as it 



was in life, living as it is still in onr hearts, 
will have ceased from its separate exist- 
ence, and live only in the undistinguished 
immortality of effect in the life of the race. 
Were this all the story his memory might 
well be left to die with the dying. But 
there remains a record of national safety, 
achieved in a time of imminent peril by 
his noble qualities, his hard endurance, his 
self-sacrifice and patriotism ; and it is right 
that this record of patriotic service should 
be preserved and continually recalled to 
the minds of generations to come by this 
statue of imperishable bronze standing 
upon the public land of the great city 
which gave him to the nation. 

No greater peril ever menaced the con- 
stitutional government of the United States 
than that which confronted the American 
people when President Garfield fell by the 
hand of Guiteau on the 2d of July, 1881. 
External assaults consolidate a people and 
stimulate their loyalty to their institutions. 



6 

But when Garfield fell the danger came 
from within. The factional strife within 
the dominant party which resulted in the 
nomination of President Garfield had been 
of unprecedented bitterness. Vice-Presi- 
dent Arthur had been selected from the 
defeated faction. He was one <>f its most 
conspicuous and active leaders. Stilled 
for a time during the canvass, the contro- 
versy was resumed with renewed vigor 
and more violent feelings in the early days 
of the new Administration. It extended 
through every State and city and hamlet. 
Suddenly the adherents of the murdered 
President saw the powers of government 
about to be transferred to the leader of 
their defeated adversaries, and that trans- 
fer e fleeted by the act of an assassin. 
Many of them could not instantly accept 
the truth that it was the act solely of a 
half-crazed and disappointed seeker for 
oflice; many of them questioned whether 
the men who were to profit by the act 



were not the instigators of it. It seemed 
beyond endurance that Garfield's enemies 
should profit by his death. Dark suspic- 
ions and angry threatenings filled the 
public mind, and for the moment there 
was doubt — grave doubt — and imminent 
peril that the orderly succession of power 
under the Constitution might not take its 
peaceful course. Under such conditions, 
acting upon the telegraphed request of the 
Cabinet, in order that the first step might 
be safely passed, Arthur took the oath of 
office at his home in Lexington avenue at 
midnight on the night when Garfield died, 
and entered upon the solemn duties of the 
Presidency. Surely no more lonely and 
pathetic figure was ever seen assuming the 
powers of government. He had no people 
behind him, for Garfield, not he, was the 
people's choice ; he had no party behind 
him, for the dominant faction of his party 
hated his name — were enraged by his ad 
vancement, and distrusted his motives. He 



8 



had not even his own faction behind him, for 
lit- already knew that the just discharge of 
his duties would not accord with the ar- 
dent desires of their partisanship, and that 
disappointmenl and estrangement lay he- 
fore him there. He was alone. He was 
bowed down by the weight of fearful 
responsibility and crushed to the earth by 
the feeling, exaggerated but not unfounded, 
that he took up his heavy burden sur- 
rounded by dislike, suspicion, distrust and 
condemnation as an enemy of the martyred 
Garfield and the beneficiary of his murder. 
Deep and settled melancholy possessed 
him ; almost despair overwhelmed him. 
He went to power walking through the 
valley of the shadow of death, and as- 
cended the steps of a throne as one who is 
accused goes to his trial. 

Then came the revelation to the people 
<>)' America that OUT ever-fortunate repub- 
lic had again found the man for the hour. 
His actions were informed and guided by 



9 



absolute self-devotion to the loftiest con- 
ception of his great office. The solid sub- 
stance of character inherited from his 
Scotch ancestry and his Vermont birth- 
place, and developed by the typical Ameri- 
can training of the poor clergyman's son 
carving out his own fortune without any 
resources except those which rested within 
himself, made him master of himself and 
dependent only upon the dictates of his 
own judgment and his own conscience. 
His skill as a politician in the best sense, 
and his experience as an administrator, 
made him a judge of men and their 
motives, and enabled him to shun the pit- 
falls which encompass the feet of an un- 
wary executive. His instinctive sympathy 
and chivalric regard for the memory and 
the purposes of the lamented Garfield dis- 
armed resentment. The dignified courtesy 
of his manners and the considerate sincerity 
of his speech conciliated the friendship 
even of his enemies. The extremists of his 



10 



own parly faction found that their de- 
mands for the fruits of revolution were 
addressed to one no longer a leader of a 
faction, but the President of the whole 
people, conscious of all his obligations, and 
determined to execute the people's will. 
The coldness, the alienation of old allies, 
the reproaches wdiich they visited upon 
him, lie suffered in silence and in sorrow, 
but with unchanged and steadfast deter- 
mination, lie was wise in statesmanship 
and firm ami effective in administration. 
Honesty in national finance, purity and 
effectiveness in the civil service, the pro- 
motion of commerce, the re-creation of 
the American Navy, reconciliation between 
North and South, and honorable friend- 
ship with foreign nations, received his 
active support. Good causes found in him 
a friend, and bad measures met in him an 
unyielding opponent. 

The genuineness of his patriotism, the 
integrity <>1 his purpose and the wisdom of 



11 



his conduct, changed general distrust to 
universal confidence, re-established popular 
belief in the adequacy of our constitutional 
system in all emergencies, and restored an 
abiding trust in the perpetuity of our 
government. He himself greatly aided to 
make true the memorable words of his 
first inaugural : 

" Men may die, but the fabrics of onr free 
institutions remain unshaken." 

The strain of that terrible ordeal and 
the concentrated and unremitting effort of 
those burdened years exhausted the vital 
forces of his frame and brought him to the 
grave in the meridian of his days. He 
gave his life to his country as truly as one 
who dies from wounds or disease in war. 

With proud and sensitive reticence he 
had suffered much from calumny. Its 
completest refutation was the demonstra- 
tion of what he was. And he was always 
the same. The noble form of which all 
America was proud as it bore with dignity 



12 



and flawless honor the chief magistracy of 
the greatest of republics was none other 
than the simple and true American gentle- 
man who walked with us among our homes 
and to whose memory we offer this poor 
tribute. 



nu nP CONGRESS 

Hi 



j