The Grenada Sentinel

Curious Coincidences In the Late President Garfield's Life.

The Hartford Convention

On the 26th of August, the day when the late President's physicians first gave him up as beyond recovery, General R. D. Mussey, a lawyer of this city, being asked whether he expected the President would recover, said he did not, but thought he would die on the 19th of September, the anniversary of the first day of the battle of Chickamauga. His prediction postponing death for so long a time attracted considerable attention and much more comment since, it being verified. The Times' correspondent called on General Mussey here to-day and obtained from him some particulars of the prediction. He said: "The President never told me that he thought he would die on the 19th, as has been printed in some papers, Marshal Henry, a particular friend of his, however, told me that the President told him that he thought he would die on the 19th of November of last year, his forty-ninth birthday. General Garfield was never in any way what might be called superstitious, though he was a great believer in dates, sequences and coincidences. The New England stock which peopled the West are like him in that respect. Garfield's mind was analytical, and he gave such matters more attention than most people do. I will give you an incident illustrating what I mean. On the 19th of June of the present year the Army of the Cumberland (of which General Garfield was a distinguished and honored and I an humble member) had a grand reunion. Not one of the party thought about the date until Judge Devens, of Massachusetts, in responding to the toast, "The Ladies," accidentally referred to it, adding that the selection of the date of the dinner was a happy one, in view of the fact that it was the anniversary as far as the date, but not the month, was concerned, of one of the largest battles of the Army of the Cumberland. "A few minutes afterward, in speaking to the President, I asked if he had noticed the similarity of his nomination with that of Lincoln. He said he had. And I, without thinking of it, said Providence may have the same destiny for you. He did not answer for awhile, remaining silent and thoughtful. Then he said: The first Western man elected to the Presidency was Harrison, of Indiana. Lincoln was elected in 1860, and I was elected in 1880.' Thinking that we had not noticed the jumps of twenty years he said '40, '60 and '80, what does that mean? Then again,' said the President, 'look at the part Indiana has played in it. Besides having the honor itself in Harrison's case it was Indiana that turned the scales and made Lincoln the Republican nominee and President. It was Indiana by Ben. Harrison, a grandson of President Harrison, that cast the vote of Indiana that made me the nominee and President.' Then, tapping his finger on the back of his hand, he repeated 1840, 1860, 1880." "Did he continue the sequence?" "O, yes. Said he, Harrison died while he was President and in the White House; Lincoln was assassinated while he was President: what will become of me?' Of course, this put us all, or at least the little group that sat around him, thinking of coincidences, and I asked the President if he had noticed a Shakespearean quotation on Marcus Ward's business calendar of the date he was nominated for President. He said he had received at least fifty of them from different persons, all of whom called his attention to the peculiarity of the quotation. It was from Julius Caesar: 'that a man might know the end of this day's business ere it comes.' In view of all the circumstances this was a remarkable incident, and it had considerable effect on the President. While he did not believe in special acts of Providence, he liked to talk of such things and reason out conclusions. The incident following his nomination was in the same line. I published it during the campaign after securing the President's permission, though I then stated it was on information furnished by General Swaim. It was furnished by Swaim first and by the President afterward. While on his way to the building in which the Convention was held, a man handed him on the street a circular or dodger of some kind. He says he first supposed it was a railroad advertisement. He was about throwing it away when he noticed that it had extracts from the Scriptures on it. Not having time to read it then, he crushed it up and put it into his pocket. On the close of that day he was nominated, and before he left the Convention he had received hundreds of telegrams extending congratulations. Going to his room, he emptied his pockets on a table, telling Swaim to save those that should be saved and destroy those that should be destroyed." General Swaim was doing this when he saw the crumpled paper. Opening it he read it, and was so struck with the quotations, that he saved it until General Garfield returned, when he read it. Garfield told me it made the hair of his head almost stand on end. There were two quotations. The first was this: 'The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.' The other was: 'Neither is there salvation in any other: For there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.' The connection of the two quotations lay in the fact that Garfield had never been spoken of as a candidate before the Convention, and, that he was about the only man who could bring the factions of the party as existed then together and march through to victory, as they combined the party as hardly another man could! The 19th was an important date in his life. It was the day of his birth, of his greatest triumphs, and finally it was the date of his death."