settled upon the best and surest foundations that peace and happiness,
truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for
all generations."


***

James A. Garfield
Inaugural Address
Friday, March 4, 1881

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.