175 
 T9 
 
PROPAGANDA IN 
 HISTORY 
 
 By LYON G. TYLER 
 
 RICHMOND, VA. 
 
 RICHMOND: 
 
 RICHMOND PRESS, INC., PRINTERS 
 1920 
 
Propaganda In History. 
 
 During the World War we heard a great deal of propaganda, 
 and the word WPS used generally in a bad sense. But there is 
 really nothing harmful in the word itself. It signifies only a means 
 of publicity, which, when applied properly and legitimately serves 
 a very good purpose. The Germans applied it improperly. They 
 sent to this country millions of dollars to buy up newspapers and 
 newspaper men to abuse the allies and make palatable their own 
 conduct, too often brutal in the extreme. Propaganda is a form 
 of advertisement, and it is only when advertisements are resorted to 
 for the purpose of spreading erroneous conceptions that they are to 
 be condemned. Quack advertisements are at all time pernicious. 
 A feature especially popular in this country is propaganda ap 
 plied to history. This consists in using striking characters and 
 events of the past to give importance to present matters. As long 
 as the truth is told much good must result, for the past contains 
 vast archives of experience, from which valuable information may 
 he had. The reverse happens when to give prominence to particu 
 lar ends, historical matter is exploited at the expense of truth. 
 
 These thoughts are suggested by what is so often read in the 
 newspapers and periodicals of the North and even in books which 
 have a more serious character. By sheer dint of assertion, taken 
 up and published as if by concerted arrangement, certain things 
 are given a character that never did belong to them. The idea 
 seems to be with many who are active in the matter that the real 
 truth makes no difference provided the multitude can be got to 
 accept a certain view. This is the very essence of German propa- 
 gaiidism, so much feared and condemned during the World War. 
 But this is not true of all, for there are some who appear to be 
 swept along by a force which they are powerless to resist. 
 
 Let me cite some of the cases which have been made the 
 subject of this kind of exploitation. 
 
 1. There is a manifest disposition to place Plymouth before 
 Jamestown. It is an old story and goes back a hundred and fifty 
 
 M17459 
 
years to the historian Hutchinson, who asserted in his history 
 of Massachusetts that the Virginia colony had virtually failed and 
 that the Pilgrim colony was the means of reviving it. How far 
 from the truth Hutchinson strayed in his statement is shown by 
 Bradford s contemporary narrative "The Plymouth Plantation/ 
 which proves very clearly that it was the successful establishment 
 of the Virginia colony that induced the Puritans to leave Hol 
 land for America, in preference to some Dutch plantation like 
 Guiana. Sir Edwyn Sandys was the patron as well of the Puritan 
 colonv as of the Virginia colony. They sailed under a patent of 
 the Virginia Company of London granted through his auspices, 
 and when by miscalculation they landed outside of the dominion 
 of the Virginia Company the compact adopted by them in the 
 cabin of the Mayflower followed th* terms of the original patent. 
 It was. indeed, owing to the Jamestown Colony that landing was 
 at all possible. Six years before, Sir Thomas Gates had sent 
 Argall from Jamestown, who had driven the French from their 
 settlements in Nova Scotia and on the coast of Maine, and thus 
 prevented them from occupying the coast of Massachusetts as they 
 were about to do. 
 
 So far from the truth was Hutchinson s statement that in 
 1620 the Virginia colony had virtually failed, that even after the 
 massacrte of 1622 Virginia had over nine hundred colonists, and 
 the Plymouth colonv but one hundred and fifty, and these, accord 
 ing to Bradford, were in a starving condition from which they were 
 rescued by a ship of Capt. John Hudclleston. a member of the 
 Virginia colony. In 1629 when the Plymouth colony had 300 
 inhabitants, the Jamestown colony had 3.000. 
 
 But rtecent writers do not even admit the reservation. of Hutch 
 inson of a prior though vanishing Jamestown. That ancient settle 
 ment, with all that it stands for. is actually to be snubbed out < 
 recognition, and the claim is now boldly advanced that the Ply 
 mouth settlement was the first colony and all Americans the 
 virtual output of that plantation. Jamestown is not to be al 
 lowed (even a share in the upbuilding of America. Can anything 
 be more astonishing, and where is the "New England conscience" 
 that it does not revolt against this perversion of the truth? 
 
Among the many recent instances of this historic prevarication 
 which have fallen under my notice, reference may be made to the 
 columns of the Saturday Evening Post for February 7, 1920, to 
 the World s Work for November, 1919. and to Mr. James M. Beck s 
 book. "The War and Humanity," published by G. P. Putnam s 
 Sons in 1917. No plea of ignorance can be advanced for these 
 writers, and, on the other hand, it is impossible to believe that they 
 deliberately falsified. They come under the class of propaganda 
 victims rather than propaganda sinners. They were swept on 
 against their own better knowledge by the spirit of propagandism 
 so deadly to the very existence of truth. 
 
 As to the first these, the article in the Saturday Evening 
 Post, the person who composed the editorial entitled "Sanctuary," 
 uses the following words: 
 
 "Two ships, the Mayflower and the Buford, mark epochs in the 
 history of America. The Mayflower brought the first of the 
 builders to this country, the Buford has taken away the first 
 destroyer." 
 
 We learn from the Richmond News Leader for March 1, 1920, 
 that Mrs. Elizabeth Henry Lyons, the historian general of the 
 National Society of the Colonial Dames in the State of Virginia, 
 wrote a protest against this statement and received a reply vir 
 tually admitting that the editors knew differently when they made 
 it. Their words were that in "a strict sense" Mrs. Lyons was "his 
 torically correct," but that "they did not believe in this narrow 
 sense our editorial is likely to be misleading even to school boys, 
 who are thoroughly familiar with these dates in American history." 
 The dates referred to were 1607, when the Sarah Constant and 
 her two companion ships brought the first settlers to Jamestown, 
 and 1620, when the Mayflower brought the Puritans to Plymouth 
 in Massachusetts. 
 
 There is a hint here that in a broad sense the article in the paper 
 was correct, but on this point the learned editors did not en 
 lighten Mrs. Lyons. There is no broader word than error and no 
 narrower word than truth. It is the Good Book which says: 
 "Enter ye by the narrow gate ; for wide is the gate and broad the 
 way that leadeth to destruction." 
 
The plain truth is that neither in its origin nor in the in 
 stitutions established in New England did the Plymouth colony 
 lay the foundation of the American Commonwealth. It was ante 
 dated by Jamestown, and for a very long time its institutions 
 were aristocratic in every feature. American institutions of to 
 day are democratic, and are tested by the law of reason and nature. 
 On the contrary, in New England the suffrage was confined dur 
 ing the seventeenth century to a few favored members of the Con 
 gregational Church, and everything was tested by the stern decrees 
 of the Old Testament. In Massachusetts the law divided the peo 
 ple into "the better class," "those above the ordinary degree," and 
 "those of mean condition." Though there were annual elections 
 the magistrates had no difficulty in retaining office for life through 
 the law of preference, which universally prevailed, and the town 
 meetings were little oligarchies governed by the minister and a 
 select clique. 1 So the Rev. Mr. Stone aptly described Massachusetts 
 of the seventeenth century "as a speaking aristocracy in the face of 
 a silent democracy." 
 
 Though the Charter of King William, in 1691, introduced sev 
 eral very important reforms in Massachusetts, and his firm hand 
 in suppressing tyranny in all the other New England colonies was 
 strongly felt, the essential principles of the Puritan governments 
 remained the same. To the very end of the colonial days the dis 
 tinctions in society were observed with such punctilious nicety + 1 * 
 the students at Harvard and Yale were arranged according to the 
 dignity of their birth and rank, and the ballot was very limited. 
 Weeden in his Social and Economic History of New England sums 
 up the character of the New England institutions in the words 
 that "they were democratic in form, but aristocratic in the sub 
 stance of the administration." And even today some of the worst 
 inequalities in elections prevail in the New England States. 2 
 
 On the other hand, Virginia, where the first colony was planted, 
 which afforded inspiration to all the rest, appealed from the first 
 
 iFor the working of the ballot in New England, see Baldwin in 
 American Historical Papers, IV, p. 81. 
 
 2Jones, The Rotten Boroughs of New England in North American 
 Review, CXCVII, p. 486. 
 
to the law of nature and of reason, which constitutes the very es 
 sence of the democratic principle. She had the first English in 
 stitutions, as shown in the first jury trial, the first popular elec 
 tions, and the first representative body of law makers, and, before 
 any Puritan foot had planted itself upon Plymouth Rock, courts 
 for the administration of justice and for the recordation of deeds, 
 mortgages and wills, were established facts. Instead of resting 
 on church membership as in Massachusetts, the House of Bur 
 gesses, which was the great controlling body in Virginia, rested 
 for more than a hundred years upon universal suffrage. There 
 was, it is true, an apparent change in 1670 when the possession 
 of a freehold was made the condition of voting, but it was not a 
 real change, since the law did not define the extent of the free 
 hold until as late as 1736; and even under the new law, as shown 
 by Dr. J. F. Jameson, 3 more people voted in Virginia down to the 
 American Revolution than did in Massachusetts. There was a 
 splendid and spectacular body of aristocrats in colonial Virginia, 
 but they did not have anything like the political power and pres 
 tige of the New England preachers and magistrates. 
 
 That popular institution s were a dominating feature in Vir 
 ginia is the evidence of Alexander Spotswood, who writing, in 
 1713, declared 4 that the Assembly which met that year was com 
 posed of representatives of the plain people; of Governor Robert 
 Dinwiddie, who, in 1754, complained 5 of the House of Burgesses 
 for their "constant encroachment on the prerogatives of the Crown 
 and "their Republican ways of thinking; 77 of Rev. Andrew 
 Burnaby, an English traveler, who, in 1759, wrote of the public 
 or political character of the Virginians, as haughty and impatient 
 of restraint, and "scarcely able to bear the thought of being con 
 trolled by any superior power; 7 of Col. Landon Carter, of "Sa- 
 bine Hall, "who attributed 6 his own defeat, in 1765, to his un 
 popularity with the common voters, who were jealous of any aris 
 tocratic pretentious; of J. F. D. Smythe, another British traveler 
 
 *New York Nation, April 27, 1893. 
 ^Letters of Alexander Spotswood, II, p. 1. 
 *The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, I, p. 100. 
 ^William and Mary Quarterly, XVI, 259. 
 
6 
 
 before the American Revolution, who spoke of the haughtiness of 
 the great middle class, who comprised half of the population; of 
 Edmund Randolph, who referring to the same period described 7 
 the aristocracy of Virginia as "little and feeble, and incapable of 
 daring to assert any privilege clashing with the rights of the 
 people at large;" of Colonel St. George Tucker, who denied 8 that 
 there was such a thing as "dependence of classes" in Virginia, and 
 declared that the aristocracy of Virginia was as "harmless a set 
 of men as ever existed;" and finally of Thomas Jefferson, who, in 
 1814, writing 9 to John Adams, while referring to the tradi 
 tionary reverence paid to certain families in Massachusetts and 
 Connecticut, "which had rendered the officers of those governments 
 nearly hereditary in those families," derided the power of the 
 aristocracy in Virginia both before and after the Revolution. 
 
 If, indeed, there was any doubt where popular institutions had 
 the stronger hold, the doubt is removed when we notice what hap 
 pened when the two communities for the first time had the oppor 
 tunity of directing without foreign restraint, the government of 
 their own country. Soon after independence was secured, Virginia 
 became the headquarters of the Democratic-Republican Party 
 the party of popular ideas and New England became the head 
 quarters of the Federalist Party the party of aristocratic ideas. 
 
 In the work of making a constitution for the new government 
 and of organizing it, Virginia, as John Fiske says, furnished "four 
 out of the five constructive statesmen engaged" Washington, 
 Jefferson, Madison and Marshall. Not one of them was of Puri 
 tan stock. The fifth was Alexander Hamilton, a native of the 
 West Indies and a New Yorker by adoption. In the matter of 
 extending our territories it was the cavalier, George Rogers Clark, 
 that conquered the Northwest Territory, now represented by five 
 great States. And Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, New 
 Mexico and all the West were added to the Union by Virginian 
 and Southern Presidents, thus trebling the area of the Republic 
 and making it a continental power. Had the Puritan influence, 
 
 THenry, Patrick Henry, I, 209. 
 
 ^William and Mary College Quarterly, XXII, 252. 
 
 9/ftid., XXIII, 227. 
 
which opposed these annexations of territory, prevailed, the United 
 States would be confined to-day to a narrow strip along the Atlantic 
 Coast. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the rightful name of the Republic is the 
 historic name of Virginia (first given by the greatest of English 
 queens and accepted by the Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower 
 compact). "United States of America," are merely words of de 
 scription. They are not a name. 
 
 Now as to the writer in the World s Work. . This is no less a 
 person than William Snowden Sims, an admiral in the United 
 States Navy. In an article, entitled "The Return of the May 
 flower/ he describes how Great Britain welcomed our navy at 
 the outset of our participation in the war with a moving picture 
 film which depicted how in 1620 a few Englishmen had landed 
 in North America and laid the foundations of a new state, based on 
 English conceptions of justice and liberty, how out of the dis 
 jointed colonies they had founded one of the mightiest nations of 
 history, and how when the liberties of mankind were endan 
 gered, the descendants of the "old Mayflower pioneers" had in 
 their turn crossed the ocean this time going eastward to fight for 
 the traditions of the race. Admiral Sims makes this comment: 
 
 "The whole story appealed to the British masses as one of the 
 great miracles of history a single miserable little settlement in 
 Massachusetts Bay expanding into a continent overflowing with 
 resources and wealth a shipload of men, women and children 
 developing in three centuries into a nation of more than 100,000,- 
 000 people. And the arrival of our destroyers, pictured on the 
 film, informed the British people that all this youth and energy 
 had been thrown upon their side of the battle." 
 
 Not a hint of Jamestown, not a word of tribute to the men, 
 who, in the early days before Plymouth Rock, laid down their lives 
 by thousands that this great continent might be saved from French 
 and Spanish dominion and Plymouth itself might exist. 
 
 Nothing more aptly describes the effect of this propagandist 
 program than its acceptance and exploitation in England through 
 the moving picture film described by Admiral Sims. The English 
 managers cared nothing between Jamestown and Plymouth, but 
 
were bent from their natural regard for truth, by the wish to 
 please the present dominant influence in America, which they 
 correctly located northward. 
 
 Finally, as to Mr. Beck, in his book, entitled "The War and 
 Humanity," which Theodore Roosevelt endorsed with a "Fore 
 word," no one can doubt that he knew better when he wrote the 
 words which follow. They were part of an address delivered by 
 him in 1916 at a luncheon, given to him in London by the Pil 
 grim Society of that city, when Viscount Brice and other emi 
 nent Englishmen were present. And yet he must not be judged 
 too harshly. Like Admiral Sims, he was the helpless victim of 
 propaganda. Mr. Beck said: 
 
 "Never was a nation more dominated by a tradition than the 
 United States by the tradition of its political isolation. It has its 
 root in the very beginning of the American Commonwealth. In 
 nine generations no political party and a few public men have 
 ever questioned its continued efficacy. The pioneers who came in 
 1620 across the Atlantic to Plymouth Bock and founded the 
 American Commonwealth desired like the intrepid Kent in King 
 Lear to shape their old course in a country new/ so that the 
 spirit of detachment from Europe was emplanted in the very souls 
 of the pioneers who conquered the virgin forests of America." 
 
 Mark what Mr. Beck said: "The pioneers who came in 1620 
 across the Atlantic to Plymouth Bock and founded the American 
 Commonwealth." Not a word of the men who came in the Sarah 
 Constant, the Goodspeed and the Discovery, and prepared the way 
 at Jamestown for all future colonization of America. 
 
 2. The second myth which has been extensively circulated is 
 that the Plymouth settlers came to America for religious freedom. 
 As a matter of fact, they left England for Holland because they 
 were persecuted, and they left Holland for America, not because 
 they were persecuted by the Dutch, but, as Bradford narrates, 
 because they w^ere in danger of being absorbed in the body of the 
 Dutch nation by natural causes. Charles M. Andrews, in a re 
 cent work, declares that with the single exception of giving to 
 New England the congregational form of worship, these humble 
 
9 
 
 and simple settlers were "without importance in the world of 
 thought, literature or education." 
 
 The settlers who came with John Winthrop in 1630 were the 
 real builders of Massachusetts, which for a century and a half 
 was the enemy of free thought. The persecuted in England turned 
 persecutors in America, and the colonial disputes with England 
 turned upon the religious and political tyranny which the Puri 
 tans erected in New England. Far from religious convictions 
 being the only driving force that sent hundreds of men to New 
 England, hardly a fifth of the people in Massachusetts were pro 
 fessed Christians ; and yet it was this fifth that had the power and 
 taxed and persecuted all the rest. The liberty they wanted from 
 England was the liberty to harass the majority of the population 
 which did not agree with them. Seen at this distance of time Eng 
 land showed a marvel of patience in dealing with the people of 
 Massachusetts in the 17th century. And yet there is not an 
 instance of severity which has not had its respectable defenders, 
 and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in his "Massachusetts Its His 
 torians and Its History," takes notice of how these apologists 
 have in their histories "struggled" and "squirmed" and "shuffled" 
 in the face of the record. 
 
 3. The third myth of which I shall take notice is one strangely 
 endorsed by Charles Francis Adams himself in the same book. 
 He makes the remarkable statement that the Massachusetts Con 
 stitution of 1780, written by his great-grandfather, John Adams, 
 first fixed the principles of the American written constitution, 
 and pioneered the way to the Federal Constitution of eight years 
 later. This assertion has been taken up and repeated by many 
 persons since, till it is becoming rapidly accepted as a fact by the 
 writing and reading public of the North. As in the case of James 
 town, George Mason and the Virginia Constitution of 1776 are 
 ignored and made to suffer from a propaganda of untruth. 
 
 4. Not to mention numerous other subjects of propagandism, 
 there is the Lincoln myth. Hardly a single paper published north 
 of Mason and Dixon s line can be taken up without the reader 
 seeing something about this wonderful hero of the North. We 
 all know that the North started out with making a hero of John 
 
10 
 
 Brown, but abandoned him for the much more desirable character 
 of Mr. Lincoln. His assassination gave propagandists a gocd 
 starting point, and since then never has propaganda been more 
 active. Washington is even relegated to the background, and a 
 highly worthy and eminent historian, Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, 
 calls Lincoln "The First American." The ideality given him is 
 chiefly based upon a great fabrication sedulously taught and in- 
 culated that Lincoln fought the South for the abolition of slavery 
 of the negroes. This was denied to the very last by Lincoln him 
 self, but is exploited in the recently published play of Mr. Drink- 
 water, an Englishman, as it has been by hundreds of other writer* 
 
 The mischievousness of this Lincoln propaganda idea was ex 
 hibited recently to the full by Rev. Charles Francis Potter, pastor 
 of the Lenox Avenue Unitarian Church, New York, in an address 
 delivered on March 7, 1920, at Earl Hall, Columbia University, 
 and reported in the "Sun and New York Herald." This gentleman 
 characterizes Lincoln as the "future social Christ" of America, 
 and prophesied the coming of an "American Church" and an 
 "American Bible," in which people "will find in parallel columns 
 the stories of Christ and of Lincoln." 
 
 Absurd and blasphemous as this hysterical prophecy may ap 
 pear to some, it may, nevertheless, come true. What the Roman 
 Senate achieved by decree in the case of their emperors, may in 
 this day be more certainly accomplished by money and propaganda. 
 When the most elemental facts in the history of the United States 
 are snubbed and ignored, as in the case of Jamestown, it is not 
 at all surprising that the character of Lincoln is so represented by 
 the Northern press that the true Lincoln is no longer recognizable. 
 Everything in any way tending to lessen his importance is studi 
 ously kept in the background. 
 
 The writer certainly has no wish to detract from Lincoln s 
 real merits. That he was a man of ability and originality, that 
 he was tactful and resourceful, that he was unwilling to resort to 
 extreme measures when milder measures would suffice; that he did 
 not cherish the same venom against the South as many of his 
 party did is frankly admitted. But that either of these things, 
 or all of them, is sufficient to make him an ideal person in history, 
 
11 
 
 by no means follows. There are too many deficiencies in the op 
 posite scale of his character. 
 
 It is impossible to associate idealism with coarseness, and Lin 
 coln, judged by every test of historic evidence, was a very coarse 
 man. There is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of his* 
 friend and admirer, Ward H. Lamon, who declared that "in his 
 tendency to tell stories of the grosser sort, Lincoln was restrained 
 by no presence and no occasion." Herndon, who was his law part 
 ner, says that "he loved a story, however extravagant or vulgar, 
 if it had a good point," and Don Piatt declares that he managed 
 to live through the cares and responsibilities of the war only by 
 reason of his coarse mold. After his election Piatt saw much of 
 Lincoln, who told stories, "no one of which will bear printing," 
 and Hugh McCulloch tells of "the very funny stories" of Mr. 
 Lincoln during the war, after hearing of Sheridan s victory in the 
 Valley of Virginia stories, he says, "which would not be lis 
 tened to with pleasure by very refined ears." And General Mc- 
 Clellan said "his stories were seldom refined." 
 
 Indeed, what kind of an ideal man is he who could open a 
 Cabinet meeting called to discuss the Emancipation proclamation 
 with reading foolish things from Artemas Ward, and, when visiting 
 the field of Sharpsburg, freshly soaked wtih the blood of thousands 
 of brave men, could call for the singing of a ribald song? 10 
 
 Certainly it would never do to put Lincoln s letter 11 to Mrs. 
 Browning on the subject of marriage in a column parallel with the 
 stories of Christ. Its grotesque humor, its coarse suggestions and 
 its base insinuations against the virtue of a lady to whom he had 
 proposed and by whom he had been rejected, are shocking enough 
 without subjecting it to such a test. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s kindness in individual cases and professions of 
 charity in his messages, which have been greatly exploited, by no 
 means prove that he had any exalted sense of humanity. The 
 recognized expression of humanity among nations is the inter- 
 
 ioDon Piatt in Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, p. 486; 
 George Edmunds (Mrs. Minor Meriwether), Facts and Falsehoods, 
 73-90. 
 
 uLamon, Life of Lincoln, 1872, p. 181. Nicolay and Hay, Letters 
 and Speeches of Aoraham Lincoln, I, 17-19. 
 
12 
 
 national law, and Lincoln and his government acted repeatedly 
 contrary to it. 
 
 How stands history in regard to the claim of humanity? 
 Here is the testimony of the late Charles Francis Adams, a Fed 
 eral Brigadier General, and President of the Massachusetts His 
 torical Society: "Our own methods during the last stages of 
 the war were sufficiently described by General Sheridan, when 
 during the Franco-Prussian war, as the guest of Bismarck, he de 
 clared against humanity in warfare, contending that the correct 
 policy was to treat a hostile population with the utmost rigor, 
 leaving them, as he expressed it, Nothing but their eyes to weep 
 with over the war/ 7; The doctrine that there must be no hu 
 manity in warfare proclaimed by Sheridan was also voiced by 
 Sherman in his letter to General Grant March 9, 1864: "Until 
 we can repopulate Georgia it is useless for us to occupy it, but the 
 utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their 
 military resources * * * I can make the march and make Georgia 
 howl/ General Halleck wanted the site of Charleston, thick with 
 the heroic memories of the Revolution, sowed with salt, and Gen 
 eral Grant, in his letter to General David Hunter, thought it pru 
 dent to notify the crows to carry their provisions with them in 
 future flights across the Valley. Nothing need be said of the 
 ferocious spirit of the lesser tribe of Federal commanders. 
 
 And Lincoln, in spite of the fine catchy sentiment of his 
 Gettysburg speech, gave his sanction to the same policy when he 
 said in response to a protest against his employment of negro 
 troops : "No human power can subdue this rebellion without the 
 use of the emancipation policy and every other policy calculated 
 to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion." 
 
 Secretary Chase, in his diary, shows that on July 21, 1862, in 
 a Cabinet meeting the President expressed himself as "averse to 
 arming the negroes," but shortly after, on August 3, 1862, the 
 President said on the same question that "he was pretty well 
 cured of any objections to any measure except want of adapted- 
 ness to putting down the Rebellion." To the spoliators Hunter, 
 Sheridan and Sherman, he wrote his enthusiastic commendations 
 and not a word of censure. 
 
13 
 
 By an act of Congress, approved July 17, 1862, and pub 
 lished with an approving proclamation by Lincoln, death, im 
 prisonment or confiscation of property were denounced on five 
 million white people in the South and all their abettors and aiders 
 in the North. To reduce the South into submission Lincoln in 
 stituted on his own motion a blockade, a means of war so extreme 
 that despite its legality under the International Law, it evoked 
 from the Germans the most savage retaliation when applied to 
 them. He threatened with hanging as pirates Southern privateers- 
 men and as guerillas regularly commissioned partisans. He sus 
 pended the cartel of exchange, and when the Federal prisoners 
 necessarily fared badly for lack of food on account of the blockade 
 and the universal devastation, he retorted their sufferings upon 
 the Confederate prisoners thousands of whom, perished of cold 
 and starvation in the midst of plenty. Indeed, he refused to see 
 or hear a committee of Federal prisoners permitted by Mr. Davis 
 to visit Washington in the interest of the suffering prisoners at 
 Andersonville. 
 
 Medicines were made contraband, and to justify the seizure of 
 neutral goods at sea a great enlargement of the principle of the 
 "ultimate destination" was introduced into the International Law. 
 The property of non-combatants was seized everywhere without 
 compensation, and within the areas embraced by the Union lines, 
 the oath of allegiance was required of both sexes above sixteen 
 years of age under penalty of being driven from their homes. 
 Houses, barns, villages and towns were destroyed in the South, and 
 in the North by the authority of the President thirty-eight thou 
 sand persons are said to have been arrested and confined as pris 
 oners without trial or formal charge. Even the acts for which 
 Lincoln has been most applauded in recent days his emancipation 
 proclamation stands on no really humanitarian ground. 
 
 He declared to a committee of clergymen from Chicago that in 
 issuing his emancipation proclamation he would look only to its 
 effect as a war measure, independent of its "legal" or "constitu 
 tional" character or of "its moral nature in view of the possible con 
 sequences of insurrection or massacre in the Southern States." 
 This declaration, which involved directly the admission that, if 
 
14 
 
 he were once convinced that emancipation would contribute to end 
 ing the war, he would proclaim it regardless of massacre, is not 
 exactly such as would recommend him as a champion of humanity 
 to the Southern people. Massacre of women and children is a 
 dreadful thing. 
 
 When we come to examine Lincoln s statecraft, it appears to 
 indicate a lack of decision utterly at variance with the inordinate 
 estimate placed upon his abilities by modern propagandists. These 
 people never tire of blaming Mr. Buchanan for not at once using 
 force to suppress the "rebel lion," and yet have not a word of 
 censure against Lincoln for allowing a whole month to pass with 
 out taking any action. That he declared in his inaugural ad 
 dress that he intended to hold the forts and public property was 
 no more than what Mr. Buchanan had also said, and this declara 
 tion was subject to developments. Even James Schouler, in his 
 history, states that "so reticent, indeed, of his plans had been 
 the new President, while sifting opinions through the month, that 
 it seemed as though he had no policy, but was waiting for his Cabi 
 net to frame one for him." Is this the kind of appearance that 
 a President who is expected to lead in matters should assume 
 before the nation? 
 
 After the meeting of the Cabinet on March 15, 1861, in which 
 five of the members opposed action, Lincoln s mind more and more 
 tended to the same conclusion. It is idle to say, as many of his 
 panegyrists do, that Lincoln had no knowledge of Seward s as 
 surances to Judge Campbell that the troops would be withdrawn 
 from Fort Sumter. Mr. Schouler is an admirer, but he cannot 
 agree with this view of the case, and Lincoln s biographers, Nicolay 
 and Hay, soften "assurances" down to "opinions," as if this made 
 much difference as to their moral character, provided the informa 
 tion was to be imparted to President Davis, which Judge Camp 
 bell assures us he was permitted by Seward to do. What person 
 had the power to convert "opinions" into action unless it was the 
 Secretary of State acting under the President? 
 
 It appears, indeed, that the policy of giving up Fort Sumter 
 went to the extent of the preparation of an editorial for a New 
 York paper to defend Lincoln, a copy of which was furnished 
 
15 
 
 Gov. Francis Pickens, of South Carolina, "by one very near the 
 most intimate counsels of the President of the United States." 12 
 But after signing an order for withdrawing the troops, Lincoln 
 reconsidered when the governors of seven of the Northern States, 
 which were under control of the tariff interests, assembled in Wash 
 ington about the first of April, 1861, and protested against it. 
 
 That the final determination turned on the tariff question is 
 not surprising when one considers the obstinacy of the North in 
 adhering to protection in 1833. On March 16, 1861, Stanton, 
 who had been a member of Buchanan s Cabinet, wrote to the ex- 
 President that "the Eepublicans are beginning to think that a 
 monstrous blunder was made in the tariff bill (the Morrill tariff 
 included ranges from 50 to 80 per cent.), that it will cut off the 
 trade of New York, build up New Orleans and the Southern ports 
 and leave the government no revenue." There was a Confederate 
 tariff of from ten to twenty per cent., and Lincoln s fears of it 
 were ultimately excited. 
 
 So on April 1, Seward materially changed his attitude by 
 placing in Judge Campbell s hands a written memorandum to 
 the effect that the President might desire to supply Fort Sumter, 
 but would not do so without giving notice. On April 4 Lincoln 
 had an interview with Col. John B. Baldwin, who came from 
 the Virginia Convention, and in response to an appeal told him 
 he had come too late, and asked "what would become of his 
 tariff if he allowed those men at Montgomery to open Charleston 
 as a port of entry with their ten per cent, tariff?" 13 That day 
 Lincoln drafted instructions to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter 
 that relief would be sent, and ordered him to hold the fort. 
 
 The same sort of uncertainty and vacillation hedged about 
 Lincoln s action on Emancipation. He suppressed several meas 
 ures looking to that end by his generals, and on Sept. 13, I860, 
 declared that Emancipation was absolutely futile and likened the 
 
 "Francis Pickens Letter in William and Mary College Quarterly, 
 XXIV, 78-84. It has been suggested that the person who gave the 
 editorial to Gov. Pickens was Mr. Todd, Mrs. Lincoln s brother, who 
 resided in Alabama and joined the Confederate Army. 
 
 isQordon, Life o/ Jefferson Davis, 124. 
 
16 
 
 policy to "the Pope s bull against the comet." He asked : "Would 
 my word free the slaves when I cannot even enforce the Constitu 
 tion in the Rebel States? Is there a single court or magistrate 
 or individual who would be influenced by it there ?" 14 And yet on 
 September 23, he decided to do what he had refused to do ten days 
 before. The only circumstance which had happened in the interval 
 was the battle of Sharpsburg, but this certainly did not affect the 
 substance of the objections which he had urged on Sept. 13. "No 
 court, nor magistrate, nor individual in the South was by that bat 
 tle put in better mind as to the question. In the North the effect 
 of the proclamation, according to Lincoln himself, "looked soberly 
 in the face is not very satisfactory." The Republicans were de 
 feated in the elections which followed, and Mr. Rhodes, the his 
 torian, writes that "no one can doubt that it (the proclamation of 
 emancipation) was a contributing force." It is difficult to under 
 stand what single fact places Lincoln s action on a higher plane 
 than that of Lord Dunmore during the American Revolution. 
 
 Nevertheless, the propagandists have been successful in dis 
 seminating the idea that Lincoln was the great emancipator and 
 that all his shuffling and equivocation was fine evidence of con 
 summate leadership on his part. 
 
 The propagandist has in similar manner smoothed away all 
 exceptions affecting the relations of President Lincoln to his 
 Cabinet. And yet such exceptions existed, if any confidence is to be 
 placed in Charles Francis Adams, Sr., who in his "Memorial Ad 
 dress" on Seward represents him as practically subordinate to his 
 Secretary of State. And while Gideon Welles, Secretary of the 
 Navy, repels the charge and claims that the President was the 
 dominating mind, his narrative of the incredible liberties taken by 
 Seward, and the President s indifference to them, till roused by 
 others to a proper sense of his dignity, does not redound much to 
 Lincoln s credit. Welles complains much of the assumptions of 
 Seward, but doubtless forgot his own action in the Trent affair, 
 when he publicly approved the conduct of Wilkes, subsequently 
 disavowed by Lincoln. If, indeed, Lincoln did not, on the side, 
 
 and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, VIII, 
 30, 31. 
 
17 
 
 give Welles permission to act as he did, which is very probable, 
 what was this approval but officiousness on Welles part meriting 
 signal rebuke? And if Welles did write with Lincoln s permis 
 sion, what was Lincoln s final action in apologizing to Great Bri 
 tain, but a species of camouflage unworthy a President of the 
 United States. 
 
 This deference,, if not submission to his secretaries, is said by 
 others to have been even more manifested by Lincoln with Stanton, 
 his Secretary of War, than with Seward, his Secretary of State. 
 John C. Hopes declares that Lincoln and Stanton constantly 
 interfered with military plans greatly to the detriment of military 
 success, and the history of the A irginia campaigns is a history of 
 official blunders in the appointment by Lincoln of incompetent 
 generals. Charles Francis Adams, Sr., declares in the same 
 "Memorial Address" on Seward that Lincoln was "quite deficient 
 in his acquaintance with the character and qualities of public 
 men or their aptitude for the positions to which he assigned them. 
 Indeed he never selected them solely by that standard." Welles, in 
 his rejoinder, does not deny that such appointments were made, 
 but retorts only by saying they occurred chiefly on the recom 
 mendation of Mr. Seward "who was vigilant and tenacious in dis 
 pensing the patronage of the State Department." This does not 
 help the case. The very point against Lincoln is that he did not 
 <exert his own individuality sufficiently against a lot of impudent 
 secretaries. It is impossible to suppose that any other man, in the 
 whole list of Presidents, would have rested under such vassalage. 
 
 Lincoln s weakness of character is aptly illustrated by his 
 course at other times. He never could rise above the idea that 
 the South was fighting for slavery, and though the South re 
 sented the suggestion as an insult he more than once proposed to 
 his Cabinet to pay the South for their slaves, if they would return 
 to the Union. But his Cabinet, for quite different reasons, re 
 sisted the project, and Lincoln submitted. Indeed, his very last 
 act showed how incapable he was of withstanding the influence of 
 men of superior power like Stanton. On his visit to Richmond, 
 after the evacuation in April, 1865, he authorized the Virginia 
 Legislature to be called together, and yet he had hardly returned 
 
18 
 
 to Washington when, succumbing to the vehement protests of 
 Stanton, as Stanton himself says, he recalled the permission,, ex 
 cusing himself on grounds which are plainly matter of after 
 thought. 15 
 
 Much important detail is furnished by Dr. Clifton B. Hall 
 towards enabling us to judge of Lincoln s character in his recent 
 life of "Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee/ The 
 object of the appointment was the restoration of Tennessee to the 
 Union, but Lincoln, despite his professions of "charity," instead 
 of selecting a cool, conservative person for the position, took An 
 drew Johnson a man whom Dr. Hall describes as one of the most 
 venomous and hated men in Tennessee. He not only took him, 
 but stood by him, and condoned all his violence, which got him 
 into fierce quarrels with all the Federal generals at any time in 
 Tennessee. That Andrew Johnson was in large degree a dema 
 gogue, as Dr. Hall states, is undoubtedly true, and yet he had 
 certain qualities, which exhibited under other conditions, com 
 mand our admiration and esteem. No one can tell how far Lin 
 coln would have allowed the radicals to go after the war in their 
 reconstruction of the South. His action referred to in regard to 
 the Virginia Legislature is not particularly encouraging, but 
 Johnson s conduct is a matter of history. However violent he was, 
 while the war was going on, he proved himself incapable, after 
 the war was over, of the meanness of persecuting a defenseless 
 and conquered people; and asserting his authority as President, 
 as any self-respecting man would have done, he turned the truer 
 lent Stanton out of office, thereby risking expulsion from his own 
 high position at the hands of a crazy and malignant Congress. 
 
 In prosecuting the war Lincoln appealed to a great idea the 
 Union which he declared was his sole idea in prosecuting the 
 war, but the old Union was founded on consent and the Union he 
 had in mind was one of force. His war, therefore, was contrary 
 to the principles of self-government expressed in the Declaration 
 of Independence and to the modern principle of self-determina 
 tion, now the accepted doctrine of the world a doctrine not 
 
 isConnor, Life of John A. Campbell, 174-198. 
 
19 
 
 only endorsed by the present President of the United States, 
 but recently by both houses of Congress, in the case of Ireland 
 a divided and much weaker country than the Confederates States 
 of America, which had a thoroughly organized government, in 
 possession of a territory more than half the size of Europe. 
 
 The truth is, there never was a war more inconsistent in 
 principle than that waged against the Southern States in 1861. 
 Besides the great territory which it occupied the Southern Gov 
 ernment placed in the field armies as vast as Napoleon s, and for 
 four years waged a war on equal terms with the great and popu 
 lous North, aided by recruits from Europe and enlistments from 
 the South s own population. Indeed, we have Lincoln s own state 
 ment that without the aid of the Southern negro troops he would 
 have had "to abandon the war in three weeks." 16 
 
 The present Southerners are glad to be free of slavery and are 
 loyal citizens of the Union, but this is far from saying that they 
 approve the violent methods by which slavery was abolished and 
 the Union restored. 
 
 In conclusion of this article on propaganda, I may cite a 
 few sentences from Robert Quillen in the Saturday Evening Post 
 for January 24, 1920, which the editors might have taken to 
 heart when preparing their editorial about Plymouth Rock. 
 
 "Since the purpose of propaganda is to present one side of a 
 case, it is from its very inception a distortion of facts, and an 
 avoidance of the whole truth. * * * Truth lies at the bottom 
 of a well and we are poisoning the well. * * * Propaganda has 
 made doubters of us all." 
 
 Was the divine Pocahontas after all correct, when in her inter 
 view with John Smith in England in 1616 she characterized the 
 white race as hopeless liars? 
 
 The exact language of Pocahontas was: "Your countrymen 
 will lie much." 
 
 incomplete Works of Abraham Lincoln, X, 190. 
 
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