atally
wounded. He lingered eighty days, dying September 19, 1881. (He
is buried at Cleveland, Ohio.) Garfield was a man of great intellect,
and attracted people to him by his generous nature. I have spoken
of him in an oration delivered, May 12, 1887, at the unveiling of
a statue of him at the foot of Capitol Hill, Washington, D. C.,
erected by the Society of the Army of the Cumberland.(13)

Over such competitors as Mr. Reed, of Maine, Mr. Burrows of Michigan,
Mr. Hiscock of New York, and others, I was chosen Speaker of the
Forty-seventh Congress, December 5, 1881. The contest was sharp
before the caucus met, but when my nomination became reasonably
apparent, Mr. Hiscock, Mr. Reed, and Mr. Burrows, my three leading
competitors, generously voted and had their friends vote for my
nomination.

Chester A. Arthur, as Vice-President, succeeded to the Presidency
on the death of Mr. Garfield. There came, later, an acute division
in the Republican party, Blaine and Conkling (both then out of
office by a singular coincidence), being the assumed heads of the
opposing factions. President Arthur tried, faithfully, to bring
the elements together by recognizing both, but in this, as is
usually the case, he was not successful and had not the active
support of either faction. Mr. Blaine was too inordinately ambitious
and jealous of power to patiently bide his time, and Mr. Conkling
was too imperious and vengeful to tolerate, through his political
friends, fair treatment of his supposed enemies. Mr. Conkling was
a man of honesty and sincerity, true to his friends to a degree,
of overtowering intellect, with marvellous industry. Notwithstanding
his many unfortunate traits of character, Mr. Conkling was a great
man.

Mr. Blaine was essentially a politician, and possessed of a vaulting
and consuming ambition, and was jealous of even his would-be personal
and political friends. Mr. Conkling advised some of his friends
in Congress to support me for Speaker, as did also his former
senatorial colleague, Mr. Platt of New York. The members from New
York state, however, though many of them were followers of Mr.
Conkling, unitedly supported Mr. Hiscock until the latter decided,
during the caucus, himself to vote for me. Mr. Blaine, though to
me personally professing warm friendship, held secret meetings at
the State Department and at his house to devise methods of preventing
my election.(14) He had been a member, for many terms,