5

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 379

Republican parties. Perhaps a political abolitionist would equally misjudge
and underrate the value of the nonvoting and moral suasion party, of which
Mr. Garrison was the admitted leader; while in fact the two were the halves
necessary to make the whole. Without Adams, Giddings, Hale, Chase, Wade,
Seward, Wilson and Sumner to plead our cause in the councils of the nation,
the taskmasters would have remained the contented and undisturbed rulers
of the Union, and no condition of things would have been brought about
authorizing the Federal Government to abolish slavery in the country's
defence. As one of those whose bonds have been broken, I cannot see without
pain any attempt to disparage and undervalue any man's work in this
cause.

Hereafter, when we get a little farther away from the conflict, some
brave and truth-loving man, with all the facts before him, uninfluenced by
filial love and veneration for men, or party associations, or pride of name,
will gather from here and there the scattered fragments, my small contribution
perhaps among the number, and give to those who shall come after us
an impartial history of this the grandest moral conflict of the century. Truth
is patient and time is just. With these and like reflections which have often
brought consolation to better men than myself, when upon them has fallen
the keen edge of censure, and with the scrupulous justice done me in the
biography of myself, lately written by Mr. Frederick May Holland of
Concord, Massachusetts, I can easily rest contented.

CHAPTER III
A GRAND OCCASION: DOUBTS AS TO GARFIELD'S COURSE.

Inaurguration of President Garfield – A valuable precedent – An affecting scene – The greed of the
office-seekers – Conference with President Garfield – Distrust of the Vice-President –
Garfield not a stalwart – Encounter of Garfield with Tucker – Hope in promises of a new
departure – The sorrow stricken Nation.

In the first part of this remarkable decade of American life and history, we
had the election and grand inauguration of James A. Garfield, as President
of the United States, and in a few months thereafter we had his tragic death
hy the hand of a desperate assassin. On the Fourth of March in that year, I
happened to be United States Marshal of the District of Columbia, having
been appointed to that office, four years previous to that date, by President
Rutherford B. Hayes. This official position placed me in touch with both the
outgoing president and the president elect. By the unwritten law of long