Julia Sand

rdf:langString Julia Sand

rdf:langString Julia Sand

rdf:langString Julia Sand

rdf:langString Julia Sand

rdf:langString correspondence with Chester A. Arthur

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString The hours of Garfield's life are numbered – before this meets your eye, you may be President. The people are bowed in grief; but – do you realize it? – not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor. What president ever entered office under circumstances so sad?… The day [Garfield] was shot, the thought rose in a thousand minds that you might be the instigator of the foul act. Is not that a humiliation which cuts deeper than any bullet can pierce? Your kindest opponents say 'Arthur will try to do right' – adding gloomily – 'He won't succeed though making a man President cannot change him.'…But making a man President can change him! Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine. Faith in your better nature forces me to write to you – but not to beg you to resign. Do what is more difficult & brave. Reform! It is not proof of highest goodness never to have done wrong, but it is proof of it, sometimes in ones career, to pause & ponder, to recognize the evil, to turn resolutely against it…. Once there comes a crisis which renders miracles feasible. The great tidal wave of sorrow which has rolled over the country has swept you loose from your old moorings & set you on a mountaintop, alone. Disappoint our fears. Force the nation to have faith in you. Show from the first that you have none but the purest of aims. You cannot slink back into obscurity, if you would. A hundred years hence, school boys will recite your name in the list of presidents & tell of your administration. And what shall posterity say? It is for you to choose….

rdf:langString Julia I. Sand (1850–1933) was an American woman who corresponded with the American President Chester A. Arthur, beginning in late August 1881. Arthur saved twenty-three letters, all of which were discovered in 1958 after his grandson, Chester Alan Arthur III (also known as Gavin Arthur), sold his grandfather's papers to the Library of Congress. The last surviving letter is dated September 15, 1883. It is not known whether Arthur ever wrote back as no letter from him has ever been found. Sand often referred to herself as the President's "little dwarf", an allusion to the idea that in a royal court, only the dwarf would have the courage to tell the truth.