Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!

This exclamation is associated with the immediate aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, when the United States faced shock, grief, and fears of governmental collapse at the end of the Civil War. James A. Garfield—then a Union general and Republican congressman-elect from Ohio—was in New York City when news spread and an angry, volatile crowd gathered. In accounts of the moment, Garfield addressed the crowd to calm it and to reaffirm constitutional continuity: despite the murder of the president, the nation’s institutions would endure. The line became one of the best-known phrases attributed to Garfield from his early public career, later often quoted as emblematic of steadiness in crisis.

The sentence fuses religious assurance (“God reigns”) with civic reassurance (“the Government at Washington still lives”), presenting national stability as both a moral and constitutional fact. Spoken to a crowd at a moment of panic and potential violence, it functions as a call to restraint: grief and anger must not become mob action or political chaos. The quote also reflects a core post–Civil War theme—continuity of lawful government over personal rule. By insisting that the government “still lives,” Garfield frames the assassination as a tragedy that cannot be allowed to undo the Union’s institutional legitimacy, turning private mourning into public resolve.