the 21st of February. The ceremonies were of the most imposing character. A procession of more than six thousand persons marched from the base of the monument, along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, while salutes were fired from the batteries of the navy yard. At the Capitol the procession was reviewed by the President of the United States. The concluding ceremonies were held in the House of Representatives, where a great throng of distinguished people had assembled-not so much to do honor to the occasion as to be honored by it. The principal oration, written by Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, as well as the less formal addresses of the day, was well worthy of the event, and calculated to add-if aught could add-to the fame of him who was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens."

CHAPTER XLIII.

GROVER CLEVELAND, twenty-second President of the United States, was born at Caldwell, New Jersey, March 18, 1837. Three years afterwards he was taken by his father and mother to Fayetteville, near Syracuse, New York. Here, in his boyhood, he received such limited education as the schools of the place afforded. For a while in his youth he was clerk in a village store. Afterwards the family removed first to Clinton and then to Holland Patent. At the latter place his father died, and young Cleveland, left to his own resources, went to New York and became a teacher in an asylum for the blind. After a short time, however, the young man, finding such pursuits uncongenial to his tastes, went to Buffalo and engaged in the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1859, and, four years afterwards, began his public career as Assistant District Attorney. In 1869 he was elected Sheriff of Erie County, and in 1881 was chosen Mayor of Buffalo. His next promotion by his fellow-citizens was to the governorship of New York, to which position he was elected in 1882, by the astonishing majority of 192,854-the majority being perhaps unparalleled in the history of American elections. It was while he still held this office that, in July of 1884, he was nominated by the Democratic party for the Presidency of the United States.

Much interest was manifested by the public in the constitution of the new Cabinet. On the day following the inauguration the nominations were sent to the Senate, and

were as follows: For Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware; for Secretary of the Treasury, Daniel Manning, of New York; for Secretary of the Interior, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi; for Secretary of War, William C. Endicott, of Massachusetts; for Secretary of the Navy, William C. Whitney, of New York; for Postmaster-General, William F. Vilas, of Wisconsin; for Attorney-General, Augustus H. Garland, of Arkansas. The peculiarity of the appointments was that two of them were from New York. But the prejudice which might arise on this account was fully counterbalanced by the high character and undoubted abilities of the men whom the President had chosen as the responsible advisers of his administration.

At the beginning of his administration the President was confronted with the irrepressible question of the distribution of patronage. His party had come into power on a platform declaring for civil-service reform. Of late years the political opinion of the country had begun to turn with disgust from the gross practice of rewarding men for mere party services. In the evenly balanced presidential contests of 1880 and 1884 it became all-important to conciliate, at least by profession, the growing phalanx of civil-service reformers. They it was to whom Cleveland owed his election; for they accepted his pledges and principles. Their views and the President's were in accord, and the new administration was launched with civil-service reform inscribed on its pennon.

The event showed, however, that the Democratic party was not equal to its pledges and not up to the President's level of principle. It was clear that the Democratic leaders had in large part upheld the banner of civil service merely as an expedient. The President's sincere attempt to enforce the principles of the party platform by an actual reform became appalling to the captain-generals of his party. To them the declaration in favor of a new and better sys

tem was purely nominal. They made a rush to gather the spoils of victory, and were astounded that the Chief Magistrate should presume to refuse them. From the outset it was a grave question whether the President would be able to stand by the flag of reform or rather be driven to readopt the cast-off system of spoils.

It was a peculiarity of this epoch that the deeds and memories of the Civil War revived in public interests. The circumstance was attributable perhaps to the fact that the great men of that conflict now entered the shadows of old age and became talkative about the stirring exploits of their youth and manhood. Now it was that the series of authoritative publications concerning the war for the Union, written by the leading participants, began to appear. This work, so important to a true knowledge of the great struggle for and against the Union, was begun by General William T. Sherman, who in 1875 published his Memoirs narrating the story of that part of the war in which he had been a leader. This publication had indeed been preceded by some years by that of Alexander H. Stephens, late VicePresident of the Confederacy, who in 1870 completed his two volumes entitled The War between the States. In 1884 General Grant began the publication, in the Century Magazine, of a series of war articles which attracted universal attention, and which led to the preparation and issuance of his Memoirs in 1885-6. Similar contributions by many other eminent commanders of the Union and Confederate armies followed in succession, until a large literature of the Civil War was left on record for the instruction of after times.

The interest in these publications was heightened by the death within a limited period of a large number of the great generals who had led armies in the war for the Union. It was early in the summer of 1885 that the attention of the people was called away from public affairs by the an

nouncement that the veteran General Ulysses S. Grant had been stricken with a fatal malady; that his days would be few among the living. The hero of Vicksburg and Appomattox sank under the ravages of a malignant cancer which had fixed itself in his throat, and on the 23d of July he died quietly at a summer cottage on Mount McGregor, New York. For some months the silent hero, who had commanded the combined armies of the United States, had been engaged in the pathetic work of bringing to completion his two volumes of Memoirs, from the sale of which -such is the gratitude of republics-the resources of his family must be chiefly drawn. It was a race, with death for the goal. Scarcely had the enfeebled general laid down his pencil until the enemy knocked at the door.

The last days of Grant were hallowed by the sympathies of the nation which he had so gloriously defended. The news of his death passed over the land like the shadow of a great cloud. Almost every city and hamlet showed in some appropriate way its emblems of grief. The funeral ceremonies equaled, if they did not surpass, any which have ever been witnessed. The procession in New York City was perhaps the most solemn, elaborate and imposing pageant ever exhibited in honor of the dead, at least since the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. On August 8th, 1885, the body of General Grant was laid to rest in Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson. There, on a summit from which may be seen the great river and the metropolis of the nation, is the tomb of him whose courage and magnanimity in war will forever give him rank with the few master spirits who, by their heroic deeds, have honored the human race, and by their genius have changed somewhat the course of history.

The enterprise of rearing a suitable monument to General Grant was delayed by untoward circumstances. The gen