II. FREEDOM TO MISREPRESENT IS NOT FREEDOM
One of the great perils of the American republic, which makes progress so slow and misery so rich in victims, is the perversions which opponents put upon the words of public men, and the distortions which are given to their meaning. It is not only brutal, but to misshape righteous ideas is treason to those who receive them, and it brands such malefactors as criminal minds. The traitor and the liar are abhorred, but somehow we have not yet classified the unspeakable vice that deforms minds by disfiguring ideas so that they make a man say what he never said and to represent what he never was. This malignant vice is not above the village gossip and the vile tongue of common slander, but it has been especially the method of gamblers in the most sacred social interests, and of demagogues trying to control the election of officers and legislators for our government.
Such perversions were placed on Lincoln’s meaning throughout the South that his name was the most abhorred of all names, until the miseries of reconstruction, by contrast, so brought in comparisons that he became known as the one great soul who had not, through all the terrible struggle, ever uttered a single bitter word against them, and who was the one great friend who could have given them justice and peace.
Soon the typical view of the intelligent South was that “his untimely and tragic end was one of the severest catastrophes of the war,” and, to the South, his death was “the direst misfortune that ever darkened the calendar of its woes.”
Up to the time of his nomination and following him in many ways on to his death, the Eastern States took up the most trivial news items and used them for ridicule, as representing Lincoln to be the mere caricature of a man.
One of these minor incidents, showing this defaming method, is represented as follows in the newspaper headlines of New York and New England. The great news, in the midst of the fearful times, relating to this incident was usually introduced in these words, “Old Abe kisses a Pretty Girl.”
Here is the true story: A little girl named Grace Bedell lived at Westfield, New York. Her father was a republican, but her two brothers were democrats, and, therefore, hearing much excited argument, she was greatly interested. Of course, she was a republican and she wanted to help her father. Seeing a portrait of Lincoln gave her an idea. If Lincoln only had whiskers like her father, he would look better, and so her brothers might not be so much against him. No sooner was this improvement thought of than she hastened to put it into an earnest letter to Mr. Lincoln, telling him of her idea.
She seemed to think that all great men, like her father, must have a little girl, so she said in closing, “If you have no time to answer my letter, will you allow your little girl to reply for you?”
Such a letter could not be ignored by the great-hearted man to whom it came. He replied,
“Springfield, Illinois, Oct. 19, 1860.
“My dear little Miss:
“Your very agreeable letter of the fifteenth is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter. I have three sons; one seventeen; one nine, and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to whiskers, having never worn any, do you think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I should begin now?
“Your very sincere well-wisher,
A. Lincoln.”
It happened, when on the journey to Washington to be inaugurated, that the train stopped at Westfield. Suddenly, in speaking to the people, he remembered.
“I have a little correspondent at this place,” he said, “I would like to see her.”
Some one called out and asked if Grace Bedell was in the crowd that surged around the train. Far back in the crowd the way began to open and a beautiful little girl came forward, timid but happy, to speak to the President-elect, who was also happy to show her that he had taken her advice and begun to grow a beard. The little girl was lifted up to him. He took her in his arms and tenderly kissed her forehead in the midst of the enthusiastic approval of a cheering multitude.
But the story ran the rounds of the East as the uncouth conduct of a backwoods demagogue.
As Europe got its idea of the new President from the New York and New England papers, he was believed by foreign leaders to be the proof of degenerate democracy and the failure of popular government. Throughout the war there was lavished upon him an unceasing tirade of caricature and lampoon. But they had been deceived. The shock of his assassination seemed to tear off the veil that blinded their eyes, and since then all the scholarship of Europe has analyzed his career as showing one of the great characters of the world. History finds that he was a prophet of ideal humanity, the farthest possible from despotic sovereignties. Dynastic states can never fight for a democratic government merely to preserve it, and democracies can never fight merely to preserve a party in power. It may very well be doubted that the North could have won the Civil War if there had not been involved the moral issues of human slavery. England would surely have intervened for the starving workers of their cottonmills, but the workers refused to have their cause supported by fastening slavery upon any part of the human race.
Lincoln Statue—Chicago, Illinois.