by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter One

          The life of Abraham Lincoln, as it is written and accepted today, is false history. The South can never have justice until he is dethroned, and he can only be dethroned by proving from absolute authority these falsehoods to be false. He must have his rightful place in history if the South ever expects to have her rightful place in history. Whence may we look to prove these teachings of present day history to be false? The answer, "To Northern authority."
          Was Abraham Lincoln a friend to the South or was he a friend to the slaves of the South? If one studies the history of the War 1861-1865, it will be found that he was not a friend of the South or of the Negroes up to the time of his assassination. Then why could it be thought that he would be a friend later had he lived, rather than that he would have carried out the schemes of conquest by further unconstitutional methods and falsehoods? Let us remember his double dealing with Virginia after the fall of Richmond.
          Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860 by an avowedly anti-South party without an electoral vote from the South. In his campaign speeches he had promised everything that any party or section demanded -- showing that his promises could not be relied upon. Hear what he said in a speech delivered on 27 January 1837:

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of '76 did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, and so to the support of the Constitution and laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor -- let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.

          This was a fine speech. See what Lincoln said, and then see what Lincoln did. How could he be trusted?
          There are ten distinct violations of the Constitution by Abraham Lincoln:

Coercion in 1861. Article IV.

Laws of Neutrality -- Trent Affair. Article VI, Clause 2 -- Violation of International Law.

Writ of Habeas Corpus Suspended. Article I, Section IX, Clause 2.

War Declared Without the Consent of Congress, 1861. Article I, Section VIII, Clauses 11, 12.

Emancipation Proclamation. Article IV, Section III, Clause 2.

West Virginia Made a State. Article IV, Section III, Clause 1.

Freedom of Speech Denied. Vallandigham Imprisoned in Ohio. Amendment One.

Blockading Parts of States that Were Held by the Federal Government to be Still in the Union.

Liberty of the Press Denied. Amendment One.

Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law. Article IV, Section II, Clause 3.

          How did Lincoln's actions tally with his words? Was this honest dealing? Let us now quote the admissions of Lincoln's own contemporaries in the North. Godwin, of The Nation, says, "The first real breach in the Constitution was President Lincoln's using his war power to abolish slavery." Thaddeus Stevens stated, "I will not stultify myself by supposing that Mr. Lincoln has any warrant in the Constitution for dismembering Virginia." A.K. McClure, his friend, said, "Mr. Lincoln swore to obey the Constitution, but in eighteen months violated it by his Emancipation Proclamation".⁽¹⁾ James Ford Rhodes said, "There was no authority for the Proclamation by the Constitution and laws -- nor was there any statute that warranted it."⁽²⁾ Wendell Phillips, at the Cooper Institute, said in 1864, "I judge Mr. Lincoln by his acts, his violations of the law, his overthrow of liberty in the Northern States. I judge Mr. Lincoln by his words, his deeds, and so judging him, I am unwilling to trust Abraham Lincoln with the future of this country." Percy Gregg said:

Lincoln never hesitated to violate the Constitution when he so desired. The Chief Justice testified to this. Lincoln suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus in 1861; he allowed West Virginia to be formed from Virginia contrary to the Constitution; he issued his Emancipation Proclamation without consulting his Cabinet and in violation of the Constitution

          Charles Sumner said:

When Lincoln reinforced Fort Sumter and called for 75,000 men without the consent of Congress, it was the greatest breach ever made in the Constitution, and would hereafter give the President the liberty to declare war whenever he wished without the consent of Congress.

          Lincoln had no respect for the decisions of the Supreme Court, the highest law in the land. As J.G. Holland pointed out, "The South stood by the decisions of the Supreme Court -- the North did not and Lincoln did not."⁽³⁾ Abraham Lincoln himself stated in his Cooper Institute speech, "In spite of Judge Taney's decision, Congress did not have a right to prohibit slavery in the territories." In his Inaugural Address, he said, "If the decisions of the Supreme Court are irrevocably fixed, then the people cease to be their own masters, and practically resign their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
          To pander to the South's vote, he openly said that any state had the constitutional right to secede if her rights were interfered with. Yet as soon as he was elected, he denied this and began to plan to coerce the seceding states back into the Union. He had openly said that coercion was not constitutional, and yet he called for 75,000 men to begin the coercion act without the consent of his Cabinet or Congress. He gave as his excuse that he could not afford to do without the revenue from the Southern states, and must prevent their withdrawal, right or wrong. This was the cunning that Seward said amounted to genius.
          While insisting that the Southern states were still in the Union, on 19 July 1861, Lincoln declared a blockade, which brought untold suffering and privation on the people of the South. No nation can blockade her own ports. When England and France declared neutrality, Lincoln, fearing they would later acknowledge the seceding states as a Confederacy, issued his Emancipation Proclamation in the hope of conciliating them, though he acknowledged that he thought "it would result in the massacre of the women and children in the South."
          When the South, not desiring war, made every effort for peace, he blocked every effort that was made. When he learned of the Crittendom Resolutions before he was inaugurated, he sent word to every Republican member of Congress to vote against them. When he learned of the Peace Convention presided over by ex-President Tyler, he sent Salmon P. Chase to represent him, instructed to vote against every compromise, especially against the return of fugitive slaves. And yet this was the man who had said in Peoria, Illinois in 1854, "The slaveholder has a legal and moral right to his slaves. Fairly and fully I will give them any legislation for reclaiming their fugitive slaves. The master has the right to seize the runaway slave in every state in the Union."

Endnotes

1. Lincoln and Men of the War Time (1892).

2. History of the United States, Volume IV.

3. Life of Lincoln (1865), page 284.

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Two

          When the Virginia Convention pleaded for peace, Lincoln sent word by Colonel Baldwin to say, "It is too late for peace." He did not send word why it was too late, for at that time four expeditions were on the way to Sumter and Pickens to force war. He refused to see the Peace Commissioners sent by the Confederate government to plead for peace -- but through Seward and Judge Campbell he kept them deceived until war had been declared.
          Abraham Lincoln did not want peace for he had promised coercion, which meant war. He knew, too, that the South would never stand for his administration.
          What were those four expeditions he had already sent? Mr. Johnstone's Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861⁽¹⁾ will tell you all about it. Read it.
          An armistice had been entered into between South Carolina and the United States government on 6 December 1860. A similar armistice had been entered into between Florida and the United States government on 29 January 1861. These armistices agreed that the forts, Sumter and Pickens, should neither be garrisoned nor provisioned so long as these armistices continued in force. Papers to this effect had been filed in the United States Army and Navy Departments and Abraham Lincoln knew this -- hence his secret orders.
          To violate an armistice is a treacherous act of war. This is acknowledged by all nations. Before his inauguration Lincoln had sent a confidential message to General Winfield Scott to be ready, when his inauguration on 4 March 1861 should take place, to hold or retake the forts.⁽²⁾ He had in mind then to break this armistice.
          One of the agreements of an armistice was that no person, friend nor foe, could visit the forts while the terms of the armistice were in force. President Lincoln sent Lieutenant Worden with a secret message to Captain Adams at Fort Pickens. This was an act of a spy. On March 12^th, President Lincoln directed Montgomery Blair, one of his Cabinet, to telegraph to G.V. Fox to come to Washington to arrange for reinforcing Fort Sumter. Fox was sent on March 15^th to Fort Sumter and arranged with Anderson for reinforcement. This was an act of a spy. Lamon had also been sent secretly to Charleston to confer with Anderson. This was also the act of a spy.
          On March 29^th, Abraham Lincoln ordered three ships with 300 men and provisions to be ready to go to Fort Sumter -- all orders were marked private. On April 1^st, he sent a secret message to the Commandant at Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York to fit out the Powhatan without delay. In this message, he said, "You will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department this fact."⁽³⁾ A fourth expedition was secretly sent to Pensacola under Lieutenant Porter on April 7^th on which date the three vessels were directed to go to Fort Sumter. On that same day, President Lincoln directed Seward to say to the Peace Commissioners, "no design to reinforce Fort Sumter." In short, there were four expeditions ordered to garrison and provision Forts Sumter and Pickens while the armistice was yet in force. Not until sufficient time had elapsed to suppose that the vessels had landed were the Peace Commissioners informed of these facts.
          Fortunately, a storm delayed some of the ships. When the Confederate government was informed of this treachery, permission was given to General Beauregard to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter. Anderson was ordered to surrender the fort. He refused until he could receive orders from the United States authorities. General Beauregard sent word that unless the fort was surrendered within a certain time, it would be fired upon. It was not surrendered and the shot was fired, and war began.
          Who was responsible? No one but Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, who on his own authority, without the consent of Cabinet or Congress, declared war by breaking the armistice agreed upon and forcing the Confederate troops to fire. This is the truth of the matter as the War Records at Washington reveal it.⁽⁴⁾ Hallam, in his Constitutional History, rightly says, "The aggressor in war is not the first that uses force, but the first who renders force necessary.
          President Lincoln sent a note to each member of the Cabinet asking advice about holding Fort Sumter. Two may be said to have voted for it. Blair favored it; Chase was doubtful. He said, "I will oppose any attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter, if it means war." However, the others decidedly voted against it. Notice that Lincoln did not call a Cabinet meeting and he did not call his Congress. Why? He knew that neither would favor war.
          Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, said, "There was not a man in the Cabinet that did not know that an attempt to reinforce Sumter would be the first blow of war." And again he said, "Of all the Cabinet Blair only is in favor of reinforcing Sumter."
William Seward, Secretary of State, said, "Even preparation to reinforce will precipitate war. I would instruct Anderson to return from Sumter.
          General Braxton Bragg said, "They have placed an engineer officer at Fort Pickens to violate, as I consider, our agreement not to reinforce."
          Hosmer, in his History of the American Nation wrote:

The determination expressed by Lincoln in his Inaugural Address to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the United States precipitated the outbreak, and his determination to collect duties and imports was practically an announcement of an offensive war.⁽⁵⁾

          The New York Express said, "The people petitioned and pleaded, begged and implored Lincoln and Seward to be heard before matters were brought to a bloody extreme, but their petitions were spurned and treated with contempt."⁽⁶⁾
          In The Opening of the Twentieth Century, these words are found: "The war was inaugurated by the North on an unconstitutional basis, and defended on an unconstitutional basis."
          The New York Herald stated:

We have no doubt Mr. Lincoln wants the Cabinet at Montgomery to take the initiative by capturing the two forts in its waters, for it would give him the opportunity of throwing upon the Southern Confederacy the responsibility of commencing hostilities. But the country and posterity will hold him just as responsible as if he struck the first blow.⁽⁷⁾

          Again, the New York Herald stated:

Unless Mr. Lincoln's Administration makes the first demonstration and attack, President Davis says there will be no bloodshed. With Mr. Lincoln's Administration, therefore, rests the responsibility of precipitating a collision, and the fearful evils of protracted war.⁽⁸⁾

          Governor Moore of Alabama said:

I have had a conference with Secretary Mallory of Florida, and Secretary Fitzpatrick of Alabama, in which they informed me that they and Secretary Slidell had a personal interview with the President and the Secretary of the Navy and were assured by them that no attack would be made upon Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens or any excuse given for the shedding of blood during the present administration.

          Stephen Douglas said, "Lincoln is trying to plunge the country into a cruel war as the surest means of destroying the Union upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting public property."
          Zack Chandler wrote to Governor Blair, "The manufacturing states think a war will be awful, but without a little blood-letting the Union will not be worth a curse."⁽⁹⁾
          Benjamin Williams, of Lowell, Massachusetts, said:

The South was invaded and a war of subjugation was begun by the Federal government against the seceding states in amazing disregard of the foundation principle of its existence -- and the South accepts the contest forced upon her with a courage characteristic of this proud-spirited people.

          Horton's History states, "The first gun of the war was the gun put into that war fleet that sailed against Charleston. The first gun fired at Fort Sumter was the first gun in self-defense. This is the simple fact stripped of all nonsense with which it has been surrounded by Abolitionists."⁽¹⁰⁾
          J.D. Holland writes, "Up to the fall of Sumter Lincoln had no basis for action. If he had raised an army that would have been an act of hostility that would have been coercion. A thousand Northern papers would have pounced on him as a provoker of war. After Sumter fell he could declare war."⁽¹¹⁾
          It is true many causes had led to the secession of the states, but none of these would have declared war. The South did not want war and the North did not want war, so Abraham Lincoln was responsible for bringing the crisis that forced war in order to please his anti-South party. One cannot truthfully deny this -- the facts of history prove it. Mr. Lincoln had pledged his party, if elected he would, in case the Southern states seceded, coerce them back into the Union.⁽¹²⁾
          General Donn Piatt said, "Lincoln's low estimate of humanity blinded him to the South. He could not understand that men could fight for a principle. He thought this movement on the part of the South was only a political game of bluff. It was said, "The South can't fight. She has no resources."⁽¹³⁾
          Hanibal Hamlin said, "If they fight they must come to us for arms, and they must come without money to pay for them."
          Lincoln tried in every way to quiet the fears of his constituents, but when the states did secede he remembered his promise to coerce.
          The leaders of the North, strong, just and brainy men, who while differing with the South along slavery and other lines political and commercial, stood for the Constitution and stood by the decisions of the Supreme Court, and would never have taken up arms to coerce the Southern states. But when the cry was raised, "The flag has been fired upon," they felt that their refusal to enlist might be misjudged, and many hired substitutes to take their place. There was nothing said when the flag was fired upon on the Star of the West in Buchanan's Administration. It was simply an excuse of Lincoln's to fire the men of the North to take up arms.
          The following will show the spirit of the true men of the North at that time:

A committee was appointed to draw up resolutions to present to the Massachusetts Legislature when sectional feeling was at its height. They calmly and deliberately weighed the arguments on the side of the slaveholders, and then as calmly and deliberately weighed those on the side of the Abolitionists. Then they came to a conclusion and said:
          "Nothing which is not founded upon the eternal principles of truth and justice can ever long prevail against an irresistible force of public disapprobation. Your committee feel that the conduct of the Abolitionists is not only wrong in policy but erroneous in morals.
          "Your committee are determined to fulfill their duty to the state and to our common country in the most firm and faithful manner. In remembering that while they are men of Massachusetts, they are incapable of meanly forgetting that they also are Americans."⁽¹⁴⁾

          George Lunt said, "Abraham Lincoln was not the choice of the people of the North. The Republican Party put him in power, because he seemed to afford the prospect of more malleable material for their purposes."⁽¹⁵⁾
          This anti-South party wanted a man from the lower class to humiliate the upper class. The lower class voted for him because they were of his class, and the lower class are glorifying him today because they sympathize with him.
          Lincoln hated the aristocrats, whether they were slaveholders or not. This statement has been denied, but a man who headed the list of subscribers to John Brown's raid in Kansas and Virginia, advocating murder and arson, who telegraphed congratulations to Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and Hunter for cruel treatment of women and children, who stood for destroying all food supplies, leaving both White and Black to starve, who allowed the women of New Orleans, Louisiana to be treated with such indignity by the order of Benjamin Butler, and who allowed Negro troops to guard and fire upon Southern prisoners, could not have had love but abounding hate in his heart for the South.⁽¹⁶⁾
          Nor could a man who advocated Parson Brownlow for the Governor of a Southern state, after hearing his New York speech, love the people he wished to put him to rule over. This is what Brownlow said:

If I had the power I would arm every wolf, panther, catamount and tiger in the mountains of America; every negro in the Southern Confederacy, and every devil in hell and turn them on the rebels in the South.
          I would like to see Richmond and Charleston captured by negro troops commanded by Butler the Beast and driven into the Gulf of Mexico to be drowned as the devils did the hogs in the Sea of Galilee (long and loud applause).

          And after, when he was made Governor of Tennessee, he said, "If I could I would divide the army going South into three divisions. 1^st, with knives to do the killing; 2^nd, with torches dipped in spirits of turpentine to do the burning; and 3^rd, with compasses to divide the land."
          Had Abraham Lincoln forgotten his Inaugural Address of March, 1861?

The Republican Party placed on the platform for my acceptance and as a law to themselves and me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
          "Resolved: That the maintenance of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power in which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend: and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed forces of the soil of any state, or territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

          These messages of congratulations for lawless invasion of the South by armed forces make Abraham Lincoln a criminal by his own definition.

Endnotes

1. Curryville, Georgia.

2. Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Hon. E.B. Washburn, dated Springfield, Illinois, 21 December 1860.

3. War of the Rebellion Records, Volume IV, p. 109.

4. Series 1, Volume IV, pages 90-259.

5. Volume XX, page 20

6. 15 April 1861.

7. 6 April 1861.

8. 7 April 1861.

9. Quoted by S.D. Carpenter, The Logic of History (Madison, Wisconsin: self-published, 1864), pg. 138.

10. page 109.

11. Life of Lincoln (1865).

12. The Makers of America, page 270.

13. Reminiscences of Lincoln.

14. George Lunt, Chairman.

15. George Lunt, Origins of the Late War (1866).

16. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume X, page 190.

 True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Three

          Abraham Lincoln was not humane in his treatment of the Andersonville prisoners. He refused medicine, making it contraband of war -- medicine that was necessary to relieve their sufferings -- and even refused to relieve them from their horrid congested condition when the Southern authorities were willing to send them home without exchange. As Commander-in-Chief of the Army, by a word he could have done this:

Abraham Lincoln indicted for cruelty to our soldiers in Southern prisons. He is held responsible for it all.
          Abraham Lincoln could be indicted and arraigned for the crime against justice and humanity. There is not an impartial jury in the land that would hesitate to pronounce him guilty of murder in the first degree. He now stands before the great court of the Nation for that crime and other offenses against the laws and liberties of the country. The people will soon render against him the verdict of guilty, and the sentence of banishment and indelible disgrace will be passed and executed upon him.⁽¹⁾

          Percy Gregg said:

Lincoln's order that Confederate commissions or letters of marque granted to private or public ships should be disregarded and their crews treated as pirates, and all medicines declared contraband of war, violated every rule of civilized war and outraged the conscience of Christendom.

          Lincoln never hesitated to violate the Constitution when he so desired. The Chief Justice testified to this. Lincoln suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus in 1861; he allowed West Virginia to be formed from Virginia contrary to the Constitution; he issued his Emancipation Proclamation without consulting his Cabinet and in violation of the Constitution.
          He did not interfere when Seward refused to let the Southern men in Northern prisons have the $85,000 sent by the women of England in loving sympathy with Southern prisoners.
          Abraham Lincoln was not humane in his treatment of those Democrat suspects in regard to freedom of speech -- Vallandigham of Ohio, for instance. He said the South was right -- that was all: "Mr. Lincoln stands responsible for the casting into prisons citizens of the United States on orders as arbitrary as the Lettres de Cachet of Louis XIV of France, instead of their arrest as in Great Britain in her crisis on legal arrests."⁽²⁾ Frederick Bancroft says, "Some of the features of these arbitrary arrests bore a striking resemblance to the odious institutions of the ancient regime of France -- the Bastille and Lettres de Cachet".⁽³⁾ Judge Jeremiah Black, in his Essays, says, "Of the wanton cruelties that Lincoln's Administration has afflicted upon unoffending citizens, I have neither space, nor skill, nor time, to paint them. Since the fall of Robespierre nothing has occurred to cast such disrepute on Republican institutions."⁽⁴⁾
          In Galena, Illinois, Mr. Lincoln urged the Hon. Madison Y. Johnson to join the Abolition Party. He declined. Mr. Lincoln told him he could have anything he desired if he would consent, for he regretted to part with him more than any man in that section of the state. Mr. Johnson replied that his political views like his religious views were not a matter of barter. A little later Mr. Johnson was arrested on a telegraphic dispatch signed by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, without any cause being assigned and he was sent a thousand miles away and incarcerated in the dark walls of an American Bastille, put into a low, dirty, ill-ventilated room, and closely guarded and all personal things taken from him. To enter that fort was equivalent to being dead to the outside world. It was never known what caused his arrest. No specific charge was ever brought against him, and all that could ever be learned was that the act was directed by the President himself as a military necessity.⁽⁵⁾ Many instances of this kind can be given of the injustices of such arrests of Democrat suspects at the time.⁽⁶⁾

Endnotes

1. New York Herald, 29 October 1864.

2. James Ford Rhodes, History, Volume III, page 232.

3. Life of Seward (1900), Volume II, page 254.

4. page 153.

5. State of Illinois, Supreme Court, 3^rd Grand Division, April Term A.D. 1866.

6. John A. Marshall, American Bastile (Wiggins, Mississippi: Crown Rights Book Company, [1881] 1998).

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Four

         Abraham Lincoln did not love the Negroes, and he was hypocritical about what he said in their praise. The Negro to this day has never found out Lincoln's hypocrisy because for political reasons it was best for the party that elected Lincoln to keep him deceived. The day is near, however, when the educated Christian Negro will use his own knowledge and learn the truth. He will learn, too, that his truest friends are the Democrats of the South. He will learn at last that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was never intended to free him, and that his freedom really came from the Southern people. It came, it is true, not in the way it had been planned -- by gradual emancipation -- but by the Thirteenth Amendment offered by John Brooks Henderson, of Missouri, after Lincoln's death. Many Southern people like General Lee and his mother had either freed their slaves before the war or had it in their wills that they should be freed gradually.
         Did not Edward Coles, of Virginia, a large slaveholder, move to Illinois in 1819 to free his slaves and give to each of them 165 acres of land?
         Did not John Randolph, of Roanoke, free his slaves, and buy territory in Ohio to place them after freedom? Did not that fine Negro University at Zanesville, Ohio, result in large measure from this?
         Did not Thomas Jefferson, when Virginia gave up her Northwest territory, make a proviso that the states formed from it -- Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- should not be slave states? Did he not urge the slaveholders, after the Missouri Compromise, to free their slaves as rapidly as possible lest there should come sudden emancipation, which he prayed God he would never live to see?
         Did not George Mason free his slaves, and George Washington say he wished he could live to see every slave free?
         Had the South been left alone the slaves would have been long ago freed and no ugly feeling ever would have existed between the former owners and their slaves. The South loved these people and were interested in their welfare. The South is the logical home of the Negro:

Jefferson Davis, when in the United States Senate, urged that a plan be made for emancipation that would be best for the slaveholders and the slave. This was why Southern men and women were so insistent about securing more slave territory to relieve the congested condition of the slave states that they might prepare the slaves as freed for their government. ⁽¹⁾

         Abraham Lincoln said:

Gradual emancipation was the best plan, and the North should not criticize too severely the Southern brethren for tardiness in this matter.
         The Abolition Crusade, which began at the time of the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and which reached an intense pitch in 1839, caused Southern men to withdraw membership in abolition societies.

         In 1816, the African Colonization Society was organized with James Madison, a slaveholder, as president. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, testified that slaveholders were planning to free their slaves. When Madison became President he secured a tract of land about the size of Mississippi on the west coast of Africa, named Liberia, and its capital was called Monrovia to honor him, and to this the slaves as freed were to be sent. In 1847 it became a Republic with only Negroes as officers:

Many wills have been written in the South freeing the slaves by gradual emancipation.
          In 1860 there were 247,817 freed negroes in the South; there were 268,817 in the North. Virginia before that time had freed 58,042, Maryland 83,743, North Carolina 30,462, and other states in smaller numbers -- in all amounting to more than 247,817, for it was the custom when freed to go North, and the old owners encouraged it.
         When war was declared in 1861 there were 3,950,531 negroes as slaves in the South. To these faithful ones the 200,000 slaveholders in the Southern Army and Navy entrusted their loved ones. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not cause a Confederate soldier to return home for fear his loved ones would be massacred.
         Many of the slaves in the South before the war belonged to Northern slaveholders. Girard, of Philadelphia, worked his slaves on a large sugar plantation in Louisiana. It was from the profits of this plantation Girard College was built. Hemmingway, of Boston, had his slaves on a plantation -- not in the Southern States, but in Cuba -- and his will left them to his daughter as late as 1870.
         Thomas Elkins, of Effingham County, Georgia, before 1860, offered to free his slaves and send them back to Africa at his own expense and the slaves begged to let them remain with him. Among these slaves were the sons of African kings and princes.⁽²⁾

         There were before the Missouri Compromise, 1820, 106 anti-slavery societies, with 5,150 members in the South, and 24 abolition societies in the North with only 920 members. ⁽³⁾

         General Lee thought the freeing of the slaves should be left in God's hands and not be settled by tempestuous controversy: "There was no doubt that the blacks were immeasurably better off here than they were in Africa -- morally, physically, and socially."
         The South has been vilified for not educating the Negro in the days of slavery. However, the South was giving to the Negro the best possible education -- that education that fitted him for the workshop, the field, the church, the kitchen, the nursery, the home. This was an education that taught the Negro self-control, obedience, and perseverance -- yes, taught him to realize his weaknesses and how to grow stronger for the battle of life. The institutions of slavery as it was in the South, so far from degrading the Negro, was fast elevating him above his nature and his race.
         No higher compliment was ever paid the institution of slavery than that by the North, which was willing to make the Negro its social and political equal after one hundred years of civilization under Southern Christianizing influence. Never has been recorded in history such rapid civilization from savagery to Christian citizenship. The Black man ought to thank the institution of slavery -- the easiest road that any slave people have ever passed from savagery to civilization with the kindest and most humane masters. Hundreds of thousands of the slaves in 1865 were professing Christians and many were partaking of the communion in the church of their masters.
         Southern men were anxious for the slaves to be free. They were studying earnestly the problems of freedom, when Northern fanatical Abolitionists took the matter into their own hands. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., the historian, realized this and said, "Had the South been allowed to manage this question unfettered, the slaves would have been, ere this, fully emancipated and that without bloodshed or race problems."
         Contrast these sentiments with Abraham Lincoln's much celebrated Emancipation Proclamation:

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was not issued from a humane standpoint. Lincoln hoped it would incite the negroes to rise against the women and children.
         His Emancipation Proclamation was intended only as a punishment for the seceding states. It was with no thought of freeing the slaves of more than 300,000 slaveholders then in the Northern army.
         His Emancipation Proclamation was issued for a fourfold purpose and it was issued with fear and trepidation lest he should offend his Northern constituents. He did it:
         First:
          Because of an oath -- that if Lee should be driven from Maryland he would free the slaves (Barnes and Guerber).
          Second:
         The time of enlistment had expired for many men in the army and he hoped this would encourage their re-enlistment.
          Third:
          Trusting that Southern men would be forced to return home to protect their wives and children from negro insurrection.
          Fourth:
          Above all he issued it to prevent foreign nations from recognizing the Confederacy.

          Not a Negro in the states that did not secede was freed by Lincoln's Proclamation and it had no effect even in the South as it was unconstitutional and Lincoln knew it. Many in the North resented it, and Lincoln was unhappy over the situation as Lamon testified.
          According to Wendell Phillips, "Lincoln was badgered into emancipation. After he issued it, he said it was the greatest folly of his life. It was like the Pope's bull against the comet."
          Was Lincoln satisfied with its effect? Let us see what happened:

Many and many a man deserted in the winter of 1862-'65 because of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The soldiers did not believe that Lincoln had the right to issue it. They refused to fight.⁽⁴⁾

          Lincoln was not thinking of the Negro. He did not care whether the Negro was freed or not. He had said, "Slaves are property, and if freed should be paid for." He had said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
          In his letter to Alexander Stephens, who wrote expressing his sympathy for him in the greatest responsibility resting upon him as President in those perilous days, he said:

Do the people of the South really entertain fear that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their slaves, or with them about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington. ⁽⁵⁾

          Lincoln never stood for the social or political equality of the Negro. In his speech at Charleston, Illinois in 1858, he said:

I am not now, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.

          President Lincoln, in his Emancipation Proclamation, evidently had in mind to colonize or segregate the slaves if freed: "It is my purpose to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the government existing there."
          From the time of his election as President, Lincoln was striving to find some means of colonizing the negroes. An experiment had been made of sending them to Liberia, but it was a failure, and he wished to try another colony, hoping that would be successful. He sent one colony to Cow Island under Koch as overseer, but he proved very cruel to the Negroes and they begged to return. He then asked for an appropriation of money from Congress to purchase land in Central America, but Central America refused to sell and said, "Do not send the negroes here." The North said, "Do not send the negroes here."
          It was agreed then that a Black Territory should be set apart for the segregation of the Negroes in Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina, but Lincoln, unhappy and in despair, asked Benjamin Butler's advice, saying, "If we turn 200,00 armed negroes in the South, among their former owners, from whom we have taken their arms, it will inevitably lead to a race war. It cannot be done. The negroes must be gotten rid of." To this, Butler replied, "Why not send them to Panama to dig the canal?"⁽⁶⁾ Lincoln was delighted at this suggestion, and asked Butler to consult Seward at once. Only a few days later, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln and one of his conspirators wounded Seward. What would have been the result had Lincoln lived cannot be established. The faithful Negroes would possibly have been sent to that place of yellow fever and malarial dangers to perish from the face of the earth, for we had no Gorgas of Alabama to study our sanitary laws for them at that time.

Endnotes

1. Congressional Record.

2. Richardson, Defense of the South, page 20.

3. Lundy, Universal Emancipation.

4. McClure's Magazine, January, 1893, page 165.

5. Public and Private Letters of Alexander H. Stephens, page 150.

6. Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography (Boston, Massachusetts: Thayer, 1892).

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Five

          The South has always resented the falsehoods that have entered the biographies of Lincoln since his assassination. Those who knew him in life knew him best:

People found in Lincoln before his death nothing remarkably good or great, but on the contrary found in him the reverse of goodness or greatness.
          Lincoln as one of Fame's immortals does not appear in the Lincoln of 1861. ⁽¹⁾

          Had Lincoln lived could he have justified the loss of more than a million lives and the destruction of more than eight billions of dollars of property on a Constitutional basis? Of course he could not, and would not have been considered worthy of the honors heaped on him because of his martyrdom.
          I hear of Lincoln and read of him in eulogies and biographies and fail to recognize the man I knew in private life before he became President of the United States. ⁽²⁾

          When dealing with the Border States, Lincoln said, "Slavery is not to be interfered with." When dealing with the Republican Party, he said, "This country cannot remain half slave and half free." When dealing with the Abolitionists, he said, "This war is against slavery." However, he sent word to Benjamin Butler in New Orleans, "This war is not to free the slaves."
          Simeon Cameron, Lincoln's Secretary of War, wrote to General Butler, "President Lincoln desires the right to hold slaves to be fully recognized. The war is prosecuted for the Union; hence no question concerning slavery will arise."
          When dealing with foreign nations, Lincoln said, "The slaves must be emancipated." When speaking as he thought to please the South, he said, "I have no desire to free the slave." "I have no Constitutional right to free the slaves." "If I free the slaves they must be segregated."
          Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, said:

How can we justify the acts of Mr. Lincoln's administration?
          An unconstitutional policy called for an unconstitutional coercion.
          An unconstitutional coercion called for an unconstitutional war.
          An unconstitutional war called for an unconstitutional despotism.
          Authority uncontrolled and unlimited by men, by Constitution, by Supreme Court, or by law was Lincoln's war policy.⁽³⁾

          Abraham Lincoln did not hesitate to violate the Constitution at any time. Nor did he hesitate to say that he would not abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has always been acknowledged to be the highest tribunal of the land by all loyal to the Constitution. Did not John Fremont say that Abraham Lincoln, with selfish disregard for the Constitution, violated the freedom of the press? Did not Chief Justice Taney say that the President had unconstitutionally suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus?
          When President Davis sent James M. Mason, of Virginia, and John Slidell, of Louisiana, to England to place the Confederacy in its true light before the European nations, were not the Commissioners seized and taken from the English ship Trent and imprisoned at Fort Warren -- thus violating the International Law of Neutrality? Did Abraham Lincoln think it wrong to violate the Laws of Neutrality? Not at all, but he sent Captain Wilkes, the officer who seized the Commissioners, a gold medal as a reward. Had Seward not later realized what had been done, and the danger of offending England, and sent England a hasty apology, there is no telling what the consequences would have been.
          Lothrop tells in his book that Seward could not conceal his gratification and approval of the act. McClellan was sent for and asked his opinion, and McClellan said, "Either you must surrender those prisoners or you will have war with England, and war with England means we cannot hope to keep the South in the Union."⁽⁴⁾ This put a new light on the subject and Seward became less joyous.
          Captain Wilkes had undoubtedly violated International Law and had offered a gross insult to England. President Lincoln, the Cabinet, and Congress, instead of rebuking him, had rewarded him for it. The press and the pulpit had applauded him for it. The authorities at Washington said, "We will arbitrate the matter." England was in no humor to arbitrate. Her method was an ultimatum: "You surrender those prisoners and make an apology." Only seven days were given them to decide the matter. And if in seven days that matter was not decided, Lord Lyons was ordered to close the legation, remove the archives, notify the British Atlantic fleet, and return home.
          Exuberance left the Cabinet -- shame and humiliation followed. Seward shut himself in his room, barred the door against interruption, and began his apology.⁽⁵⁾ The United States had been foremost in resisting right of search. She had made it a cause of war in 1812. She demanded at the cannon's mouth "the right of friendly ships to pass unquestioned on the highway of nations -- the right of a neutral flag to protect everything not contraband of war." England remembered this and the British Lion was roused and America had to act quickly. Southern men were back of the demand in 1812 and no roar of the British Lion had any effect then because they stood for what was right.
          What was Seward's answer when he came out of retirement? "The four persons now held in military custody at Fort Warren will be cheerfully liberated. Your lordship will indicate a time for receiving them." What a humiliation that must have been to the Cabinet!
          Now after Lincoln, without the consent of Cabinet or Congress -- just on his own responsibility -- had violated the Constitution by so many illegal acts, he felt it wise to call Congress to meet in order to have these illegal acts legalized. He admitted every one of these acts and admitted that they were illegal. However, the Congress refused to legalize crime.
          The proposed Joint Resolution read thus:

Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled:
          THAT all the extraordinary acts, proclamations, and orders herein before mentioned be and the same are approved, and declared to be in all respects legal and valid to the same, and with the same effect as if they had been issued and done under the previous and express authority and direction of the Congress of the United States.

          The four secret expeditions to break the armistices must have been included in the expression "extraordinary acts," as they are not otherwise hinted at.
          President Lincoln and his Cabinet tried and tried again to get the Joint Resolution passed, but Congress refused, and it has not been passed to this day.
          The South is still bearing the onus of the Andersonville horrors -- but as the Hon. George Christian has said: "Mr. Lincoln was directly responsible for all the sufferings and deaths of prisoners on both sides during the war." The orders given by the Confederate government was that the prisoners were to have the same rations in the same quantity and of the same quality as the men of the Confederacy. The hospitals were to be placed in every respect upon the same footing as those of the Confederacy.
          When the stockade at Andersonville, built for 10,000 men, was overcrowded with 30,000 because of the refusal on the part of Northern authority to exchange the prisoners, disease broke out, and the South having no medicine, for the Federal government had made medicine contraband of war for the first time in civilized warfare, what could be expected but horrible suffering and death?
          Special messengers were sent to Mr. Lincoln to intercede in behalf of these poor dying men. He refused to see the messengers or to hear their messages. Some of the prisoners themselves were sent to intercede but their request was not heard. Finally the Northern authorities urged that they send through the lines these men ten to fifteen thousand at a time, without exchange, and this was refused. As a last resort some of the prisoners were marched to the Florida line and left there. The surrender came fortunately just at this time.
          Charles A. Dana, Secretary of War -- no friend of the South, for he was responsible for allowing the shackles to be put on President Davis -- said, "The evidence must be taken as conclusive. It proves that it was not the Confederate authorities who insisted on keeping our prisoners in distress, want and disease, but the Commander-in-Chief of our own Army."
          Who was this Commander-in-Chief? Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.

1. James Schouler, History of the United States, Volume VI, pg. 21.

2. Piatt, Reminiscences of Lincoln, page 21.

3. Address delivered at Chicago, Illinois, June 1902.

4. page 325.

5. Ibid., page 330.

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Six

          Lincoln was not a religious man -- say what you will. When he became a candidate for the Illinois Legislature, he was accused of being an infidel, and he never denied it. He was accused of saying Jesus was not the Son of God, and he never denied it.⁽¹⁾
          Ward H. Lamon says he went further than any person he ever knew in regard to religious things -- he shocked him:

He goes to church but he goes to mimic and mock.
          He never joined any church. He did not believe the Bible was inspired.
          He denied that Jesus was the Son of God. Overwhelming testimony out of many mouths, and one stranger than out of his own, place these truths beyond controversy.⁽²⁾

          Herndon said, "Lincoln was a deep-grounded infidel." Dennis Hanks, Lincoln's first cousin, said, "Abe would make fun of the preacher. He would reproduce the sermon with a nasal twang, roll his eyes and make droll faces to the delight of the wild fellow collected. Abe never did sing sacred songs. He sang songs of a very questionable character." John G. Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretary, said, "Mr. Lincoln did not to my knowledge in any way change his religious views, opinions or beliefs from the time he left Springfield to the day of his death."
          It is said that all of his state papers and his Emancipation Proclamation have religious utterances in them. If so, others for effect had the sacred words added:

On January 1, 1863, the second writing of the Emancipation Proclamation was read. The members of the Cabinet noticed that the name of God was not mentioned in it, and reminded the President that such an important document should recognize the name of the Deity. Lincoln said he had overlooked that fact and asked the Cabinet to assist him in preparing a paragraph recognizing God. Chief Justice Chase prepared it:
          "I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
          It was accepted without a change.

          It was stated Lincoln was on his knees for hours before the battle of Gettysburg. Barnes, in his Popular History, says Mr. Lincoln was making vows instead. He made a rash vow that if General Lee was driven out of Maryland, he would free the slaves -- a vow is quite different from a prayer.
          How can ministers and lecturers and religious teachers hold Lincoln as an example for Christian children to emulate? The danger is great and mothers are realizing it. They find their children holding him up as an example in denying the Divinity of our Lord, and the needlessness of uniting with any church.

Endnotes

1. Herndon's letter to Lamon.

2. Life of Abraham Lincoln (1872).

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Seven

          Abraham Lincoln is held up as a great prohibitionist. He was not. While never a drunkard himself, he did not hesitate to make others drunk. On 6 March 1833, Lincoln had a Saloon License issued under the name of Berry & Lincoln. This license was certified to by Charles E. Apel, County Clerk of Sangamon County, Illinois, 25 April 1908. They were allowed to sell whiskey, rum, wine, Holland gin, apple, peach, and French brandy. The Bond is now in existence signed by Abraham Lincoln.
          Some will argue that it was quite common for taverns and inns to have saloons connected with them in Lincoln's time. So it was, but the saloon keeper was never held up as a prohibitionist.
          Then on 19 December 1840, an act was presented to the Illinois House of Representatives (Abraham Lincoln being a member of the Legislature at that time) to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors and to have a fine of $1,000 placed upon the sale of any vinous or spiritous liquors after the passing of the act. Abraham Lincoln moved to lay the bill on the table, and this was done.⁽¹⁾
          Lamon, in speaking on this subject, said, "When President he signed the liquor revenue bill and turned the saloons loose on the country. The people all drank and Abe was for doing what the people did."⁽²⁾
          Abraham Lincoln was a remarkable man in that he fooled so many people most of the time -- but he was neither good nor great.
         An irreligious and vulgar man cannot be called good. A man who says one thing and does another cannot be called great.
          He was not an honest man. I do not mean to say that he would steal, for there cannot be found in his life anything to indicate the slightest dishonesty along this line, although he did wink at it in others. He died with empty coffers. Had he been dishonest he could have died rich. It is true he was called "Honest Abe," but he was not honest in his speech, and he was not honest in his politics.
          His Republican Party that felt the necessity of exalting him since his death could not have worshipped him before he died, or they would not have allowed his widow to plead for support as her lately discovered letters show,⁽³⁾ nor have allowed her to accept charity from Cyrus Field as testified by J.P. Morgan,⁽⁴⁾ who said elsewhere:

I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only way to save the country, but I see my mistake. I visited Washington a few weeks ago, and I saw the corruption of the present administration -- and so long as Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet are in power, so long will war continue. And for what? For the preservation of the Constitution and the Union? No, but for the sake of politicians and government contractors.⁽⁵⁾

          Horace Greeley said, "I cannot trust 'honest old Abe.' He is too smart for me." Yes, Lincoln was smart -- that term fits him. He saw Seward was too smart and would give trouble out of the Cabinet, so he made him Secretary of State -- better to have him in than out. He saw Chase was aspiring to be President, so he named him Chief Justice to get rid of him. Chase had been called "the irritating fly in the ointment" at the White House. Lincoln was smart enough to know it was his daughter, Mrs. Kate Chase Sprague, who was managing her father's Presidential aspirations. So he anticipated her schemes and without her knowledge had her father made Chief Justice. When Sumner told her of her father's appointment as Chief Justice, she replied, "Are you, too, Mr. Sumner, in this business of shelving papa?"⁽⁶⁾ Cameron was giving trouble so he made him Minister to Russia.
          Lamon said:

Mr. Lincoln did not possess a single quality for his office as President. People said he was good and honest and well meaning, but never pretended that he was great.
          He was only nominated by means of a corrupt bargain entered into by Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania and Caleb Smith, of Indiana, provided Lincoln would pledge them Cabinet positions. These pledges Lincoln fulfilled and thus made himself a party to corrupt bargains.⁽⁷⁾

          George Lunt said, "The nomination of Mr. Lincoln was purely accidental. Few had ever heard of him before his nomination."⁽⁸⁾ The New York Times said, "His election was more by shouts and applause which dominated than from any direct labors of any of the delegates." John T. Morse said, "He was nominated purely as a sectional candidate of a sectional party."⁽⁹⁾
          Had Lincoln not been assassinated would he have made better terms during the Reconstruction period? It was thought so at first and Jefferson Davis, General Howell Cobb, and others expressed their opinion that he would, but the history of the man, not known then, has brought the South to the conclusion that he would not have done even what Andrew Johnson tried to do.

Endnotes

1. Journal of House of Representatives of Illinois (1840), page 135.

2. Life of Lincoln.

3. Mary Lincoln's letters, dated 26 December 1865 and 13 January 1866.

4. Barron's, 25 December 1922, p. 11.

5. New Haven Register; copied in New York World, 15 September 1864.

6. Life of Salmon P. Chase, p. 630.

7. Life of Lincoln, page 449.

8. Origins of the Late War.

9. Lincoln (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1892), Volume I, page 178.

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Eight

The candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, is an uneducated man -- a vulgar village politician without any experience worth mentioning in the practical duties of statesmanship, and only noted for some very unpopular votes which he gave while a member of Congress.⁽²⁾

         The tone of levity and frivolity which characterizes the speeches of Mr. Lincoln causes the hearts of our citizens to sink within them. They perceive already that he is not the man for the crisis, and begin to despond of any extrication from impending difficulties.⁽³⁾

         The humiliating spectacle is thus presented of the President-elect indulging in the merest clap-trap of the politician thanking the people for voting for him, flattering their political pride and appealing to their sectional animosities.⁽⁴⁾

         The Administration is an insult to the flag, and a traitor to their God (cheers). Russia never dared exercise the privileges which Mr. Lincoln did, without reading a newspaper to see what people thought. A hound might hunt Mr. Lincoln, and never find him by an honest scent.⁽⁵⁾

         The Union belongs to me as much as to Abraham Lincoln. What right has he or any official -- our servants -- to claim that I shall cease criticising his mistakes, when they are dragging the Union to ruin? I find grave faults with Abraham Lincoln.⁽⁶⁾

         This is what the press said of Lincoln as the time drew near for re-election:

This halting imbecility of Mr. Lincoln heightens the contrast between the unhesitating boldness of the Democratic party. If we had a positive, intrepid Douglas, instead of a feeble, vacillating Lincoln at the head of the government, how different would have been the fortunes of the country. The people are turning their eyes to the Democratic party for relief.⁽⁷⁾

         Mr. Lincoln is wholly unqualified for his position, the personal presence, the dignity nor the knowledge demanded in the magistrate of a great people. No branch of the Administration has been well and efficiently administered under him. His soul seems to be made of leather and incapable of any grand or noble emotion. You leave his presence with your enthusiasm dampened, your better feelings crushed, and your hopes cast to the winds. Even wisdom from him seems but folly.⁽⁸⁾

         That there is in the Republican party a widely diffused impression of the feebleness, faithlessness and incapacity of Mr. Lincoln's administration is notorious.⁽⁹⁾

         Anything for a change in this imbecile and torpid administration. Let us have a shaking up of its dry bones -- anything for a change.⁽¹⁰⁾

         The result of the Baltimore Convention is like a game of cards when the devil is one of the players. Mr. Lincoln will certainly be nominated and probably by acclamation without the formality of a ballot. It is like a trial before a jury that has been skillfully packed by the counsel of one party. Mr. Lincoln tried to reinstate himself in the good graces of his party by the Emancipation Proclamation but he is now painfully conscious that the radicals distrust and despise him.⁽¹¹⁾

         The age of rail splitters and tailors, of buffoons, boors and fanatics has succeeded. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Johnson are both men of mediocre talent, neglected education, narrow views, deficient information and of course, vulgar manners. A statesman is supposed to be a man of some depth of thought and extent of knowledge. Has this country with so proud a record been reduced to such intellectual poverty as to be forced to present two such names as Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson for the highest stations in this most trying crisis of its history? It is a cruel mockery and bitter humiliation. Such nominations at this juncture are an insult to the common sense of the people.⁽¹²⁾

         The mortification of the Republican party is great. They begin when it is too late to realize the truth of the allegations made by the Union men of Illinois as to the incompetency of Lincoln for the presidency. His supporters appealed to his published speeches as a proof of his ability. It now appears, as it was suspected then, that those speeches were carefully prepared by Mr. Judd, and other friends of Lincoln, and revised, polished and rewritten to such a degree that those who heard him on the stump could not recognize them when they appeared in print.
         This was part of the game of deception played by his party to force such a man upon the country for its chief magistrate.
         His chief characteristics were an immense "gift of gab," and an ability to joke, and with a wonderful command of language, unaccompanied with corresponding ideas. Let the American people prepare for a hurricane.⁽¹³⁾

         It was my privilege to be present at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, at Gettysburg, the afternoon of November 19, 1863, and to hear the now famous speech of Abraham Lincoln on that occasion. I can bear witness to the fact that this address pronounced by Edward Everett to be "unequaled in the annals of oratory," fell upon unappreciative ears, was entirely unnoticed and wholly disappointing to a majority of the hearers. It was my good fortune as a newspaper correspondent to sit directly beside Mr. Lincoln.
         When he finished reading the manuscript he thrust it back into his overcoat pocket and sat down -- not a word, not a cheer, not a shout. The people looked at each other as if to say, "Is that all?" I am well aware accounts have differed but an eye witness and hearer in my position beside the speaker -- hence the foregoing account may be relied upon.⁽¹⁴⁾

         After the speech, Lincoln turned to me and said, "Lamon, that speech was like a wet blanket on the audience. I am distressed about it."
         Seward asked Everett what he thought of the speech. Mr. Everett replied, "It was not what I expected. I am disappointed. What do you think, Mr. Seward?" Mr. Seward replied, "It is a failure."
         I state it as an absolute fact that the Gettysburg speech was not regarded as a speech of any extraordinary merit until after Lincoln's death.⁽¹⁵⁾

         The special phrase that has been most deeply ingrained and assimilated into the heart and speech of the world, and now generally attributed to Lincoln in the Gettysburg speech -- "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- does not belong to Lincoln, but to Daniel Webster. In 1830 he uttered it in his memorable reply to Hayne.⁽¹⁶⁾

         Though Mr. Lincoln is President of the United States he has been a bad one -- a totally incapable one -- a president who has directed the operation of every department of the government, and prolonged the war to the infinite loss of the country in men and money.⁽¹⁷⁾

         Mr. Lincoln's attempt to buy General McClellan is one of the most scandalous and damaging disclosures ever made against a public man. This disclosure was made by Ex-Postmaster Blair in his speech at the Cooper Institute. It commanded universal credence as coming from a source so well informed as a late member of the Cabinet, who must have been cognizant of the transaction and whose personal honor and reputation was above question.⁽¹⁸⁾

         A great revolution.
         Private confessions of a high Republican official.
         Dismal future for the nation.
         How the war is to be prosecuted if Lincoln is re-elected. Southerners to be exterminated. The North to become bankrupt, and half the men to be killed off.
         The Union must be restored.
         A startling exposure to show Mr. Lincoln a despicable tyrant.⁽¹⁹⁾

         At the breaking out of our late civil war there was in the Western part of Connecticut, and extending into adjoining counties of New York an ugly feeling of discontent against what seemed to be the policy of Mr. Lincoln to towards the rebelling states.⁽²⁰⁾

         In the winter of 1862-'63 many and many a man deserted the army. They refused to fight. Mr. Lincoln knew that hundreds of soldiers were being urged by parents and friends to desert. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois reserved their vote. The people were weary of war, weary of so much waste of life and money. Open dissatisfaction was shown in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which broke out in violence over the draft for more men.⁽²¹⁾

Endnotes

1. New York Express, 20 February 1861, page 33.

2. New York Herald, 22 May 1860, Editorial.

3. New York Express, February 1861.

4. Philadelphia Argus.

5. Alfred R. Wooten, Attorney-General, Delaware, New York Tribune, 4 June 1863.

6. Wendell Phillips, ibid., 22 August 1862.

7. Editorial: "A Yearning for the Democratic Party." New York World, 15 April 1864.

8. Dr. Bronson, editorial: "Extracts From Republican Sources," New York World, 13 April 1864.

9. Editorial, ibid., 2 June 1864.

10. Editorial, New York Herald, 2 June 1864.

11. Editorial: "The Baltimore Convention," New York World, 4 June 1864.

12. Editorial: "Lincoln and Johnson," ibid., 9 June 1864.

13. New York Express, copied by Baltimore Sun, 20 February 1861.

14. W.H. Cunningham, editorial "Reporter for Gettysburg Speech," Montgomery (Missouri) Star.

15. Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847-1865 (Chicago, Illinois: A.E. McClurg and Company, 1895).

16. Bradley, page 227.

17. Editorial, New York Herald, 13 June 1864.

18. Editorial, New York World, 21 October 1864.

19. Ibid., 26 October 1864.

20. New York Churchman, 5 August 1899.

21. Ida Tarbell, Life of Lincoln (New York: Doubleday and McClure Company, 1900)

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Nine

         Studying carefully and honestly all history written of Lincoln before his death -- history given by friends, relatives, and the press -- nothing can be found to justify the fulsome praise we find after his death. According to Judd Steward, "Here in this new world country with no pride of ancestry arose the greatest man since the meek and lowly Nazarene; a man whose life had a greater influence on the human race than any teacher, thinker or toiler since the beginning of the Christian Era."⁽¹⁾ P.D. Ross, an Englishman, said, "Abraham Lincoln is the greatest man that the world has ever possessed."⁽²⁾ Don Piatt, after Lincoln's "martyrdom," called him "the greatest figure looming up in our history."
         Before his death, Stanton, in a letter to President Buchanan, expressed his contempt for Lincoln. He also advised the revolutionary overthrow of the Lincoln government in order that McClellan be made military dictator. After his assassination, standing over Lincoln's dead body, he said, "Now he belongs to the ages," and from thenceforth he began to eulogize the man whom he once despised.
         John Hay, Secretary of State, eulogized Lincoln after his death as "the greatest, wisest, godliest man that has appeared on earth since Christ." Others seemed to wish to outdo one another in offering their praise to the dead President. J.G. Holland waited until after Lincoln had died to say:

Lincoln unequaled since Washington in service to the Nation. Mr. Lincoln will always be remembered as eminently a Christian President. Conscience, not popular applause, not love of power, was the ruling motive of Lincoln's life. No stimulant ever entered his mouth, no profanity ever came from his lips.
         Abraham Lincoln was the first of all men who have walked the earth since the Nazarene.⁽³⁾

         William M. Davidson praised Lincoln as "the greatest statesman of the Nineteenth Century." J.B. Wade went even further to assert, "History will show Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest man that ever lived."
         It is queer that a Southern-born man and a Confederate soldier should be Lincoln's greatest glorifier. Henry Watterson, undoubtedly posted by James Breckenridge Speed, Lincoln's friend, who asked him to present the statue of Lincoln to Kentucky, said among other things:

You lowly cabin which is to be dedicated on the morrow may well be likened to the Manger of Bethlehem, the boy that went thence to a God-like destiny, to the Son of God, the Father Almighty of Him and us all. Whence his prompting except from God? His tragic death may be likened also to that other martyr whom Lincoln so closely resembled.
         There are utterances of his which read like rescripts from the Sermon on the Mount. Reviled as Him of Galilee, slain, even as Him of Galilee, yet as gentle and as unoffending a man who died for men.

         J.M. Merrill, in the Detroit Free Press, said:

Abraham Lincoln is so far above every other man in human history that to compare him to others seems sacrilege.
         No where on the earth is there a historic character to compare to our sainted martyr, Abraham Lincoln.

         Albert Bushnell Hart said, "Abraham Lincoln was the greatest man of the Civil War Period." The Sunday School Times said, "Abraham Lincoln is the Christian exemplar for children today."
         It will not be safe for ministers of the Gospel, editors of Christian newspapers, Sunday School teachers, public speakers or true historians to quote from those who deified Lincoln after martyrdom. Parents testify that they are obliged to keep their children from Sunday School and church on the nearest Sunday to Lincoln's birthday so dreadful is this deification, making such a man as great as God Himself.
         Walter McElreath, after reading Rothschild's Lincoln: Master of Men, said:

Mr. Lincoln was not an ordinary man we all agree, but greatness is a relative term and considering the opportunities and responsibilities and station which Mr. Lincoln occupied he must be judged by the standards of greatness by which other men are judged. Judging him by these standards I cannot see how Mr. Lincoln was at all a great man or how he can be said to possess even the second order of greatness.
         How can a man be considered great when the men associated with him four years in such an enterprise as civil war were not impressed with his greatness until the enterprise was over, is more than I can understand.
         McClellan had known him years before the war and was not impressed with his greatness. Chase, Seward and Stanton never thought him a great man until after his death. It is strange that such men living close to him for four years could not recognize in him some signs of greatness while he lived. I cannot see anything great in his choice of men or generals. His ministers were chosen to remove them from opposition to the administration. He held the power to depose -- his mastery over men came from his power to exercise unlimited authority.

         Seward testified that this power was greater than that of Queen Victoria. The St. Louis Globe Democrat brashly asked the question, "Where now is the man so rash as to even warmly criticize Abraham Lincoln?"⁽⁴⁾ This is certainly true for one adverse comment subjects one to the accusation either of prejudice or injustice, and brings forth a storm of abuse upon the one brave enough to dare it. However, as one writer stated:

In seeking the truth about him, it would be most unjust to take only the testimony of his enemies, and it would be equally as unjust to take only the testimony of his glorifiers. Lincoln was a man as other men with weak points and strong points of character, and the fairest testimony ought to come from those who knew him best, loved him well, honored him and yet were friendly enough, truthful enough and just enough to see and acknowledge his faults.

         In the Preface to The True Story of a Great Life, written by Herndon and Weik after the first Life of Lincoln by Herndon had been destroyed, is found the following:

With a view of throwing light on some attributes of Mr. Lincoln's character hitherto obscure these volumes are given to the world. The whole truth concerning Mr. Lincoln should be known. The truth will at last come out, and no man need hope to evade it. Some persons will doubtless object to the narrative of certain facts, but these facts are indispensable to a full knowledge of Mr. Lincoln. We must have all the facts about him. We must be prepared to take Mr. Lincoln as he was. Mr. Lincoln was my warm and personal friend. My purpose to tell the truth about him need occasion no apprehension. God's naked truth cannot injure his fame.⁽⁵⁾

         Would to God that this sentiment had prevailed!

Endnotes

1. Address delivered at North Plainfield, New Jersey, 10 February 1917.

2. Harper's Weekly, 7 November 1908.

3. Abraham Lincoln.

4. 6 March 1898.

5. True Story of a Great Life (Chicago, Illinois: Bedford, Clark and Company, 1889).

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Ten

          Lamon and Herndon both testified that Mr. Lincoln would have resented such adulation. He was a plain man and expected plain language in praising him and only the truth to be recorded.
          Before his death it was said:

He was the jolliest man. He sang vulgar songs.
          He was known for his coarse and vulgar jokes.
          He was a perfect boor
          As a lawyer, he was a cunning clown.
          He was a man of indomitable will.
          He was a perfect tyrant. He soon forgot his friends.
          His duplicity brought on the war.
          He only retailed the wit of other men.
          He was the most cunning man in the world.
          He had no religion at all.
          He was full of mirth.
          He drank with the crowd.
          He hated the slave.
          He was never tactful. He knew not the word gratitude. He never remembered a favor.
          He was very ambitious. His sole ambition was to gain office.
          He was a man without personal attachments. He was incapable of feeling pity for the suffering.
          He had not the instincts of a gentleman.
          He was very awkward in ladies' presence.
          His vulgar stories are too indecent to print.

          What was said about Lincoln after his death?

He was the saddest man in the world.
          He was remarkable for his pure mindedness.
          He was a gentleman by instinct.
          At the bar he was a genius.
          He was a man without a will.
          He was the softest hearted man in the world.
          He never forgot a kindness.
          He was a man without duplicity.
          He was the wittiest of men.
          He had not a particle of cunning.
          He was the godliest man since the Nazarene.
          He rarely smiled.
          He never touched liquor.
          He freed the slave.
          He was exceedingly tactful.
          He had not a particle of ambition.
          He was very literary.
          He was a man of God and found often on his knees.
          He was a man after God's own pattern.
          He never acquired a vice, and never had an impure thought.

          Books portraying the life of Lincoln, written by many of his glorifiers since his death, cannot be relied upon for truthfulness. Much in these volumes is given from the "inner consciousness" of the writers, and is not founded on truth. If one gives a careful examination of the printed conversations with friends or foes, the private and public letters to friends, relatives and politicians, public speeches, political documents and reports, and all that is recorded of Mr. Lincoln in State or Congressional Records while living, there will not be found anything to warrant those beautiful sentiments and humane and religious expressions which abound in these late works. Lincoln did not talk in language like that.
          That exquisite little story of Lincoln's writing the will for a dying Confederate soldier is, by the confession of the author, a story taken from her "inner consciousness." Yet it is incorporated in the readers for children and widely used in our Southern schools. Likewise, that incident recorded of Lincoln's walking back several miles to place some fallen birds back into their nests does not tally with the lack of humaneness to animals as related by Lamon and Herndon in anecdotes of Lincoln.
          Lincoln's tenderness to his little Tad is an undisputed point -- found in early and late writings -- but other instances of humaneness and tenderness are far from being substantiated. The Life of Lincoln, by Hay and Nicolay, cannot be relied on as Lamon's and Herndon's for by Hay's own confession, they were in the habit of "telling the truth about everything and everybody like two everlasting angels with one exception -- Lincoln." This was because "we are Lincoln men through and through."⁽¹⁾
          It is perfectly natural for the Rev. John Wesley Hill, Chancellor of the Lincoln Memorial University, to glorify Abraham Lincoln in his Lincoln, Man of God. The success of his university, like the success of the Republican party, depended upon it, but the very fact that this was necessary, and that the writer of this and other like books had to go out of their way to prove that Lincoln was a Christian is the strongest proof of the doubt of these statements. Who ever thought of writing a book to prove Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, or Stonewall Jackson were Christians? Dr. Hill was born in 1863, and could not have known Lincoln personally as Lamon and Herndon did, and their statements on this subject are most explicit. Not a minister in Springfield wold vote for Lincoln, and not a relative has ever testified to his religious faith. Even his stepmother, a very religious woman who loved him devotedly, denied the statement that "Abe shed penitential tears over his Bible." The testimony of his wife should be the strongest of all testimonies for she knew him best. She said, "Mr. Lincoln had no faith, no hope."
          How can any true estimate be reached about a man whose friends so grossly falsify to make him appear great? After Lincoln's death, Lamon said:

The ceremony of Mr. Lincoln's apotheosis was planned and executed after his death by men who were unfriendly to him while he lived. Men who had exhausted the resources of their skill and ingenuity in venomous detractions of the living Lincoln were the first after his death, to undertake the task of guarding his memory not as a human being, but as a god.

          There was fierce rivalry who should canonize Mr. Lincoln in the most solemn words; who should compare him to the most sacred character in all history. He was prophet, priest, and king, he was Washington, he was Moses, he was likened to Christ the Redeemer, he was likened unto God. After that came the ceremony of apotheosis. And this was the work of men who spoke of the living Lincoln except with jeers and contempt. After his death it became a political necessity to pose him as "the greatest, wisest, godliest man that ever lived."
          Those who scorned and reviled him while living were Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase; Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton; Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin; Secretary of State, Wm. Seward, Fremont; Senators Sumner, Trumbull, Ben Wade, Henry Wilson, Thaddeus Stevens, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Winter Davis, Horace Greeley, Zack Chandler of Michigan, and a host of others.⁽²⁾
          General Don Piatt, who traveled with Lincoln when he was making his campaign speeches and hence knew him intimately, said:

When a leader dies all good men go to lying about him. From the moment that covers his remains to the last echo of the rural press, in speeches, in sermons, eulogies, reminiscences, we hear nothing but pious lies.
          Abraham Lincoln has almost disappeared from human knowledge. I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life.⁽³⁾

Endnotes

1. New York Times, 24 October 1915.

2. Lamon, Life of Lincoln.

3. Piatt, Reminiscences of Lincoln.

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Eleven

          The vilification of Jefferson Davis seemed necessary to make the glorification of Abraham Lincoln more effective:

The murder of President Lincoln furnished the final proof of the ghastly spirit of the rebellion. Davis inspired the murder of Lincoln.
          Davis is as guilty of Lincoln's murder as Booth. Davis was conspicuous for every extreme of ferocity, inhumanity and malignity. He was responsible for untold and unimaginable cruelties practiced on loyal citizens in the South.
          If it seems too incredible to be true that rebel leaders were guilty of Lincoln's assassination, it must be remembered that Lincoln's murder is no more atrocious than many crimes of which Davis is notoriously guilty.⁽¹⁾

          Poor Jeff Davis began to feel like a wandering Jew -- a price was put on his head. He dared rest nowhere for fear of meeting the fate of a traitor -- afraid to risk an interview with Sherman and not daring to wait for Johnson's surrender, he fled to Charlotte.⁽²⁾

          The hanging of traitors is sure to begin before the month is over. The nations of Europe may rest assured that Jeff Davis will be swinging from the battlements of Washington at least by the Fourth of July. We spit upon a later and longer deferred justice.⁽³⁾

          The failure of Jeff Davis has brought down on him the hatred and abuse of his own people. Were he here today nothing but execration would have been showered upon him.⁽⁴⁾

          While I would not be bloody-minded, yet if I had my way I would long ago have organized a military tribunal under military power and I would have put Jefferson Davis and all the members of the Cabinet on trial for the murders at Andersonville. Jefferson Davis murdered a thousand men, robbed a thousand widows and orphans, and burned down a thousand homes.⁽⁵⁾

          The judiciary has ample evidence of Davis' guilt of Lincoln's murder, and of the murder of our soldiers in prison.⁽⁶⁾

          Boutwell, of Massachusetts, introduced the following resolution in Congress: "BE IT RESOLVED, That Jefferson Davis shall be tried on the charge of killing prisoners and murdering Abraham Lincoln."
          Orders to kill Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet on the spot were found on the person of Dahlgren in Richmond, Virginia. However, was Davis ever found guilty of any one of the many charges brought against him? Could he be convicted of any one of the accusations ever brought against him?
         Jefferson Davis' trial was never allowed -- it was called several times but was postponed and postponed. His complicity with the assassination of Lincoln was hooted at even by his worst enemies. The secret records of the Confederate government proved beyond doubt he was in no way responsible for the cruel treatment of the Andersonville prisoners but their own government was responsible.

Endnotes

1. Harper's Weekly, 17 June 1865.

2. Cheney, History of the Civil War, page 359.

3. New York Tribune, 1861.

4. Major George W. Nichols, The Story of a Great March.

5. Thaddeus Stevens, House of Congress, 19 March 1867.

6. John Forney, Clerk of the Senate, Washington Chronicles.

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Chapter Twelve

         George Shea, in a letter to the New York Tribune, said, "Mr. Horace Greeley received a letter from Mrs. Jefferson Davis June 22, 1865, imploring him to bring about a speedy trial of her husband upon the charge of assassination of President Lincoln, and the suppressed cruelties at Andersonville Prison."⁽¹⁾ A public trial was prayed in order that the accusations might be publicly met, and her husband speedily vindicated. Charles A. Dana, Lincoln's Assistant Secretary of War, said in the New York Sun:

Mr. Greeley came to my residence and placed the letter in my hands, saying he personally did not believe the charge of complicity in the assassination of Lincoln to be true, and that Mr. Davis could be released.
          We called Mr. Greeley's attention to the charge against Mr. Davis of cruel treatment of Union soldiers at Andersonville.
          There was a general opinion among the gentlemen of the Republican party that Mr. Davis did not by thought or act participate in a conspiracy against Mr. Lincoln, and none were more emphatic than Mr. Thaddeus Stevens.
          The only remaining charge, then, was the cruel treatment of the Andersonville prisoners, so at the suggestion of Mr. Greeley, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Stevens, I went to Canada to examine the official archives of the Confederate States. From these documents, not meant for public eyes, but used in secret session, it was evident that Mr. Davis was not guilty of that charge. I reported this at once to Mr. Greeley.
          On November 9, 1866, this notice, evidently written by him, appeared in The Tribune:
          "Eighteen months have nearly elapsed since Jefferson Davis was made a state prisoner. He has been publicly charged with conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln and $100,000 offered for his capture upon this charge. The capture was made, and the money paid, yet no attempt has been made by the government to procure an indictment on this charge. He has been charged with the virtual murder of Union soldiers while prisoners of war at Andersonville -- but no official attempt has been made to indict him on this charge.
          A great government may deal sternly with offenders, but not meanly; it cannot afford to seem unwilling to repair an obvious wrong.
          It was not Jefferson Davis or any subordinate or associate of his who should now be condemned for the horrors of Andersonville. We were responsible ourselves for the continued deterioration of our captives in misery, starvation and sickness in the South.
          Of the charge of cruelty to our prisoners so often brought against Mr. Davis, and reiterated by Mr. Blaine in his speech in the United States Senate, we think Mr. Davis must be held altogether acquitted.⁽²⁾

          Through the courtesy of General John C. Breckenridge, Judge Shea was allowed to examine the records of the Confederacy, especially those in regard to the care of and exchange of prisoners. This was taken from Judge Shea's report:

These secret sessions show that Mr. Davis strongly desired to do something which would secure better treatment of his men in Northern prisons; and would place the war on the footing of war waged by people in modern times, and divest it of a saving character. Mr. Davis never did yield to the continued demand for retaliation.

          Another source stated:

The stories which have been so sediously spread of the barbarity and cruelty of the Confederates to all wounded Union men ought to be set at rest by the printed statements of the eleven Union surgeons, just released, who have come back from Richmond, where they were sent after their capture on the field of Bull Run, with the most distinct testimony that the Confederates treated their prisoners with humanity. Who are the miscreants who assert that the rebels burned the wounded in hospitals and bayoneted them as they lay helpless on the battlefield?⁽³⁾

          Jefferson Davis needs no other vindication than the fact that the United States authorities dared not bring him to trial as a traitor or rebel but left his case in the hands of the Supreme Court on a technical point and there it remains today. Judge Joseph Holt paid large sums for witnesses to testify against President Davis. When the committee met to investigate the charges, the witnesses swore Conover had told them to swear to the falsehoods.
          Jefferson Davis was accused of being arrested in woman's dress. Those who arrested him testified to the falsity of this charge. I have the affidavits of these Union men. The Federal authorities, upon receiving General Wilson's telegram, ordered the woman's clothes to be produced. They never were able to do it:

I am no admirer of Jeff Davis -- I am a Yankee, full of Yankee prejudices, but I think it is wicked to lie. I was with the party that captured Jeff Davis; I saw the whole transaction from the beginning. I now say that Jeff Davis did not have on at the time he was taken any such garment as is worn by women. He did have over his shoulders a water proof article of clothing, something like a haveloch. He was not in the least concealed. He wore a hat and did not carry a pail, bucket or kettle of any kind. I defy any person to find a single officer or soldier who was present at the capture to say that he was disguised in woman's clothes, or that his wife acted in any way unlady-like or un-dignified on that occasion.⁽⁴⁾

          Jefferson Davis was accused of using his office as Secretary of War under President Pierce to arm the South for war. However, the official documents show that arms were taken from arsenals in the South during his term of office to strengthen the western forts. The utter unpreparedness for war in the Southern states proves that the South had no share of the arms that had previously been distributed.
          He was accused of taking large sums of gold belonging to the Confederacy from Richmond when that city fell. However, the Confederate treasurer testified to the disposition of all gold that belonged to the Confederate government and President Davis received none. When arrested, the President had no gold -- only a small amount in Confederate bills upon his person or in his possession.
          Mrs. Cheney, in her history published in 1894, said, "Davis had to live in a box car as he passed through the South as no one cared enough for him to give him hospitality." On the contrary, there was not a Southern home but would have esteemed it a great honor to have had him as a guest.
          The misrepresentations have been endless, but not one has touched the character of the man to blur it, and these calumnies like a boomerang have already reacted upon many preferring them. Ridpath, the historian -- one who had been one of John Brown's ardent defenders -- one who had never been able to see any good in Jefferson Davis -- after knowing him face to face, and after being welcomed as a guest at Beauvoir, said, "Jefferson Davis was the ideal embodiment of sweetness, goodness and light."
          To me it has always been the greatest enigma that one who, in his political life, had rendered so many services of value to the United States government when Secretary of War under President Pierce, should have been arrested, imprisoned, manacled, refused a trial, denied citizenship, forced to twenty years of martyrdom just because he stood by the Constitution of the United States as he had been taught to do at the Military Academy under United States authority.
          Dr. Craven, his prison physician, gave this testimony: "The more I saw of him the more I was convinced of his sincere religious convictions. He impressed me more with the divine origin of God's Word than any professor of Christianity I ever met." Did his Christianity extend to forgiveness of his enemies? A Northern man, Ridpath, the historian, also a guest at Beauvoir, testified that during his visit he never heard one word of bitterness toward any man from Jefferson Davis. A quotation from a speech made to the Mississippi Legislature on 10 March 1884 will in itself suffice to answer this question:

Our people have accepted that decree; it therefore behooves them, as they may, to promote the general welfare of the Union, to show to the world that hereafter as heretofore, the patriotism of our people is not measured by lines of latitude and longitude, but is as broad as the obligations they have assumed and embraces the whole of our ocean-bound domain. Let them leave to their children's children the good example of never swerving from the path of duty, and preferring to return good for evil rather than to cherish the unmanly feeling of revenge.

          Would one think from this that President Davis regretted the stand he took in 1861? Never! Hear him again in that same speech:

It has been said that I should apply to the United States for a pardon; but repentance must precede the right of pardon, and I have not repented. Remembering, as I must, all which has been suffered, all which has been lost, disappointed hope, and crushed aspirations, yet I deliberately say, if it were to do over again, I would do just as I did in 1861.

          Would one say while stressing loyalty to the Union and to the national flag, President Davis meant that our children should be taught to forget the things for which their fathers fought? Not at all! Hear him again:

Never teach your children to admit that their fathers were wrong in their effort to maintain the sovereignty, freedom and independence which was their inalienable birthright. I cannot believe that the causes for which our sacrifices were made can ever be lost, but rather hope that those who now deny the justice of our asserted claims will learn from experience that the fathers builded wisely and the Constitution should be construed according to the commentaries of those men who made it.

          Not one could touch the character of Jefferson Davis morally -- pure in thought, pure in speech, pure in life, and pure in religious professions. His mistakes were of the head, not the heart. Why is it that such a character as this is not oftener held up by ministers of the Gospel, public speakers, and teachers for the youth of our land to emulate?

Endnotes

1. 24 January 1876.

2. Charles A. Dana, New York Sun.

3. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, page 163.

4. Testimony of James H. Parker, Elburnville, Pennsylvania; copied from Portland Argus (Maine).

A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln
and Vindication of the South

by Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Conclusion

         Dr. A.W. Littlefield, of Neeham, Massachusetts, said prophetically:

The South though defeated, really saved to America, and as we now see it, to the world all that was best in American nationality.
          The Constitution of the Confederacy furnishes ample proof that Lee's shrine at Lexington, not Lincoln's tomb will become the shrine of American patriotism, when once history is told correctly.

          Had the cause of the South in 1865 prevailed, history would have been truthfully written by unprejudiced historians. The Southern statesmen who had been true to the Constitution could better have steered the Ship of State than such men as Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Fessenden, Turnbill, Andrew Johnson, and others. It has taken the South many years to get off that "rock of offense," the Reconstruction Period. While the South was combating the destructive forces at work during this time -- homes were being destroyed, domestic relations were upset, property was being confiscated, politics was being corrupted, liberty of speech, and liberty of the press were being suppressed -- the North was writing the history unmolested. We of the South have allowed this history written from the Northern viewpoint, with absolute ignorance of the South, to be taught in our schools all these years with an indifference that is truly appalling.
          We have allowed our leaders and our soldiers to be spoken of as "rebels." Secession is not rebellion.
          We have allowed them to be called "traitors." They could never convict one Southern man for the stand he took in 1861.
          We have allowed our cause to be spoken of as a "Lost Cause." The Cause for which the Confederate soldier fought was not a "Lost Cause." The late war was fought to maintain the very same principle for which the Americans of 1776 fought -- the non-interference with just rights. The trouble in 1865 was that the South failed to maintain this principle by force of arms. Being a Republic of sovereign states and not a nation, she had the right to resent any interference with rights which had been guaranteed to her by the Constitution. The South never has abandoned the principle for which she fought nor ever will. By overwhelming arms, 2,850,000 forced 600,000 to surrender, and in surrendering she was forced to submit to the terms of parole.
          We have allowed the war to be called a "Civil War," because the North called it so when the history was first written, and by allowing this we have acknowledged that we were a nation, not sovereign states, and therefore the South had no right to secede. No wonder the doctrine of States' Rights has been so misunderstood!
          It is with no thought of stirring up sectional strife, but rather with the desire of allaying sectional bitterness that I am anxious to have the truth known. If the North does not know the South's side of history -- and how can she know it if we do not tell it to her? -- the historians of the future will continue to misrepresent the South and the South will continue to resent the misrepresentations.
          We of the South are not advocating the adoption of any one textbook, but we are advocating that those textbooks which are unjust to the South shall be ruled out of our schools, out of our homes, out of our public and private libraries, and that the new encyclopedias and books of references now being sold be carefully examined before being placed in homes or libraries.
          The great underlying thought which animated the soldiers of the Confederacy was their profound regard for the principle of state self-government. The South was not fighting to hold her slaves, but for the freedom of controlling her own domestic affairs. Only a very small minority of the men who fought in the Southern army were slaveholders. There were over a thousand more slaveholders in the Northern army than in the Southern. Only a small percent of the Confederate soldiers ever owned slaves.⁽¹⁾ Furthermore, General Lee, who had freed his slaves before the war, commanded the Southern forces, while General Grant, who owned slaves until the Thirteenth Amendment, commanded the Northern forces.
          George Lunt wrote:

In presenting the causes which led to the war, it will be seen that slavery, though an occasion, was not in reality the cause of the war.
          The doctrine of States Rights is not well understood. The states do not derive their rights from the Constitution, but the Constitution derives its rights from the states.
          The states do not derive their rights from the Federal government, but each state derives its power from the people of the states. At last the people hold the power, and it is not the people of all the states collectively, but the people of each one of the sovereign states, separately, who act in convention representing the will of the people, so the people must not surrender this power to direct their local affairs to the government.⁽²⁾

          In his book, History of the United States, George Bancroft said, "The Federal government is only a common agent of the transaction of the business delegated to it by the action of the states."
          Already instances have come to notice where textbooks making false statements about the North have been rejected in Southern schools. Will not the North be as magnanimous? The South should be as quick to resent an injustice to the North in history as she now resents an injustice to the South in history.
          Dr. J.L.M. Curry, in his Southern States of the American Nation, says:

History, poetry, romance, art, and public opinion have been most unjust to the South. If the true record be given, the South is rich in patriotism, in intellectual force, in civic and military achievements, in heroism, in honorable and sagacious statesmanship -- but if history as now written is accepted it will consign the South to infamy.

          The South should not be afraid to speak the truth and call injustice by its proper name. In failing to do this we have been unjust to the South. For fear of offending some personal friends of the North, we have assumed an apologetic tone too long, and for fear of failing to secure an office or some honor we have allowed politics to make us unjust, and we have not dared to criticize Abraham Lincoln, and many are now falling down to worship him.
          There is no need for any animus to be shown, for no facts must be stated which cannot be substantiated by reliable authority. But we must not be afraid to speak boldly. By inheritance we of the South are not cowards.
          All I ask is that the reader consider what is stated here. Disprove it, if you can, for I will be glad to know wherein I am wrong. If you cannot disprove it, then accept it gracefully. Acknowledge your mistakes and be just. Help to right the wrongs against the South and cease criticizing those who are trying to do it.

Endnotes

1. John R. Deering, page 381.

2. George Lunt, Origins of the Late War, page 10.