Will the members of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, who now see the efforts of the journal to misrepresent Catholics in doctrine and in morals, please read these efforts by the light of this George Washington picture?
We also commend careful examination, of this picture to the friends and admirers of Mr. Beecher. Let them ask themselves this question: Would the men who, for the sake of a little larger circulation, do not hesitate to caricature their own Protestant co-religionists—would these men, we say, be reasonably expected to be very scrupulous in the vilification of those whose Catholic faith they detest?
And for similar reasons, we commend consideration of both these pictures to all readers of a Journal of Civilization which, week after week, by innuendo, assertion, falsehood, and caricature, strives to awaken the lowest prejudices of religious
intolerance, the vilest passions of religious bigotry, and the sweeping persecution of American citizens who choose to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience.
We see that, in 1861, the proprietors of the Journal of Civilization held sentiments looked upon in this latitude as rebel and pro-slavery. We freely admit that they had a perfect right so to do, accepting, of course, the legal and social consequences flowing from such holding. Open to them to assume the social and moral superiority of Southern gentlemen over Northern traders. Free to them to vaunt Southern honor at the expense of Northern honesty. But surely they might advocate, as they did, with all the eloquence of their editorials and all the influence of their wide circulation, the dissolution of the Union and the strong reprobation of anti-slavery sentiment, without insinuating that Eastern and Western merchants are swindlers, without calumniating Mr. Lincoln, and without vilifying Mr. Beecher?
The journal’s proprietors were perfectly well aware how grossly Mr. Lincoln was misrepresented, and how utterly he was misunderstood in the South. To what extent sectional bitterness was intensified against him was shown by the free application of the epithet “gorilla.” Under these circumstances, was it—we will not say considerate—but was it honest, was it fair, to picture him as a drunken clown to men who did not know him, and were all too ready to believe it? Was it respectful, was it decent, to caricature the President-elect to those who did know him, as celebrating in drunken orgies the death of the Constitution and the funeral of the Union?
Henry Ward Beecher was looked upon in the South as the ardent
apostle of an Abolition evangel which taught servile insurrection and midnight murder—not an enviable reputation surely. But was it fair, was it honest, to give shape, body, and unnatural proportions to this belief by picturing him as insulting the Father of his Country, aided by John Brown as his henchman, armed with a Harper’s Ferry spear?
And so we reach the journal’s issue of March 9, 1861, but have thus far found no portrait of President either elect or de facto, except as a drunken clown (Mr. Merryman). We learn, however, by way of explanation, that he is a sectional President! A long editorial of this number is headed Reconstruction, and contains such vigorous Union sentiment as this:
“Granted—if you will, for the sake of argument—that the Southern rebellion against the election of a sectional President is treason, and liable to punishment—is it wise, is it prudent, is it possible to punish it?”