Tyler v. Lincoln
Sirs:
In your article TYLER VERSUS LINCOLN, [April 9, you seek to discredit certain criticisms made by me on Abraham Lincoln by attacking and underrating another President, John Tyler, who had, of course, nothing to do with the case. Your comment shows that you have not kept up with the historical advance, for scholars are now agreed that the Bank was never an issue in 1840 and that Tyler was not a Democrat adopted by the Whigs but that he had as good a standing in the Whig party as any other man -- the Whig party being a composite party. Moreover, Tyler's efforts for peace in 1861 exclude the idea that he had any "embitterment" against the government on account of any party quarrel in 1841. Your article challenges a comparison. Both Tyler and Lincoln were confronted with war when they took office. In 1841 the menacing factor was Great Britain, supported by France and Mexico. Had war ensued, the Union would have been "encircled with a wall of fire." From this threatening situation the country emerged, by Tyler's skillful diplomacy, a world power, and without any bloodshed whatever. The factors in this result were the great Treaty of Washington (1842), negotiated, as Daniel Web ster, Tyler's Secretary of State, declared, "from step to step and from day to day under the President's own immediate supervision and di rection," the virtual protectorate established over the Hawaiian Islands, the annexation of Texas which made possible the acquisition of California and New Mexico, and the opening of the Orient through the first treaty with China.
There was no war, and Tyler's patient negotiation contrasted with Lincoln's conduct, who with the dissolution of the Union staring him in the face made no attempt, as President-elect, to aid Tyler's peace efforts as Virginia Commissioner to Buchanan and as President of the Peace Convention. After Lincoln's inauguration his mind appeared in a kind of maze. He signed important papers without reading them, and while refusing to see the Confederate Commissioners, suffered them to tarry in Washington, where they were fed with all sorts of promises by Seward, his Secretary of State. What does James Schouler, a friendly historian say? It is that Lincoln's behavior through the month of March, 1861 was as "though he had no policy and was waiting for his Cabinet to form one for him." And yet this month was the crucial period of his administration, for the issue of peace or war was then decided!
His resolve after weeks of vacillation to reinforce Fort Sumter was a confession of bankruptcy in statesmanship, which is concerned with the preservation of human values and not the destruction of them. After that decision, force of the mass, and not skill of the individual, was called to the settlement of questions, and the North having the superior power won the war, as it would doubtless have done under any President. But how near Lincoln came to losing the war is shown by his saying that without the aid of the Negro troops taken from the South's own population "he would have had to give up the war in three weeks."
Throughout the war Lincoln danced from one position to another. Want of space prevents the mention of but two notorious instances of his instability. He decided to issue a proclamation of emancipation in July, 1863, but when Seward showed him its impropriety at the time, he admitted his error, pocketed his paper and for months later talked on both sides of the question. He at first decided to write a paper justifying the action of Captain Wilkes in seizing the Confederate Commissioners from the British steam packet Trent, but shortly joined with his Cabinet in making a humiliating apology to Great Britain.
As to the domestic history of John Tyler's administration, Daniel Webster eulogized his substitute measure for the Bank, called "the Exchequer" as "second" only in promise to the Constitution itself.
He pronounced his treatment of Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island as "worthy of all praise," and his management of the public funds as "remarkably cautious, exact and particular." In Tyler's time there were no public defaulters, no corrupt army contracts, and nothing resembling the present oil scandals.. Instead of building up a colossal debt like Lincoln, Tyler reduced the one that came to him, and administered the government on one fourth less expense than his predecessor, Van Buren.
Alexander H. Stephens said of Tyler's State Papers that "in point of ability they compared favorably with those of any of his predecessors," and Jefferson Davis said that "He was the most felicitous among the orators he had known."
Coming to more personal matters, how is it possible to associate Tyler with such filthy stories as are ascribed to Lincoln by his friends? Granting that Tyler could not have written Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, it is also true that he could not have written, at any period of his life. The indecent letter which Lincoln wrote to a Mrs. Owens concerning a lady to whom he had proposed and by whom he had been rejected, nor could he have written any letter like that which Lincoln wrote to General Grant in 1865 asking that his son, aged 22, who had been kept at Harvard College, despite the draft, should be put on his staff and "not in the ranks." Tyler had two grandsons, privates in the Confederate Army, one of whom was killed and the other wounded, and two sons by his second marriage who surrendered at Appomattox aged 16 and 18.
Nor does it require any studied argument to make a Christian of John Tyler. As a member of the Episcopal Church he talked the language of Jesus. When being solicited to help the son of one of his political persecutors he said, "I would seek no sweeter revenge over my enemies than to do them favors."
As to his general appearance the famous Charles Dickens, who saw him in 1842, wrote of his "mild and pleasant appearance" and his "remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly agreeable manners" and added "in his whole carriage and demeanor he became his station singularly well."
Quite in contrast was the description of Lincoln by Col. Theodore Lyman of Massachusetts, an officer on General Meade's staff, who saw Lincoln not long before his death: "There was an expression of plebeian vulgarity in his face. You recognize the recounter of coarse stories." LYON G. TYLER
"Lion's Den" Holdcroft P. 0., Charles City Co., Va.
The statement of TIME which occasioned Dr. Tyler's letter was to the effect that compared to Abraham Lincoln, John Tyler was "historically a dwarf. "ED.
Will Not Have It
Sirs:
We don't want a parochial product in the presidency and I don't want you TIME after seeing a copy.
The frontispiece [Gov. Smith], April 30, gives me enough of TIME for all time. Please cancel. . . . I will not have it in my home.
JOHN T. HARBOLD, M. D.
Dallastown, Pa.
Whew!
Sirs:
. . . Ziggy's face on the front cover, and Bishop IvIcConnell on page 30 [TIME, May 14]. Whew!
A. E. BRUCE
Claremont, Calif.
Dumpy
Sirs:
TIME has so much good in it, so much to recommend it that if a little better judgment were exercised, less criticism would be in order.
For instance, in your May 14 issue, 3rd column, page 18, what possible excuse have you for referring to the late Queen Victoria of England as "dumpy"; the word lacks respect when it refers to that beloved ruler of a Great Nation who during her life was described as "the most Queenly woman and the most womanly Queen of her time."
CHARLES R. STOREY
Brockton, Mass.
"Dumpy" is an exact, descriptive adjective, meaning, according to Webster's New International, "short and thick, of proportionately low stature." TIME is exact.--ED.
Hammond Flayed
Sirs:
I gather increasing entertainment each week, from TIME'S letters, especially from such diverting ones as that of John H. Hammond Jr., (May 7). This lad must be very Junior indeed; the sophomoric conceit fairly oozes from him. The prospect of your losing Mr. Hammond Jr.'s patronage, "unless you change your style or start a phonographic record department" must present a saddening alternative. Incidentally, our Junior's use of such verbal banalities as "quite a few," "Variety has far more than you" and so on, emphasizes the nerve of him, in assuming the role of Mentor to TIME in the matter of style.
May the rest of us hope that TIME will mercifully refrain from forming its style on Mr. Hammond Jr.'s model? We might stand for the canned music department, but not for the other.
CARL MARSHALL
Ettersburg, Calif.
No Hiding
Sirs:
Anent the regrettable misadventure of His Excellency Mahmoud Samy Pasha, Egyptian Minister to the U. S., at the Shenandoah Blossom Festival (TIME, May 14), without wishing to enter into the grammatical status of that "dark-complected" gentleman, may I not suggest that perhaps the "stupid race-blindness" of which you speak might have been displayed not by Mrs. Reynolds but by those warm persuaders of the Pasha who failed to realize that the Negro strain is as evident when promulgated through a line of princes and pashas as when through the humblest Senegambian dragged unwillingly into slavery, and that, unfortunately, or otherwise, depending upon the point of view, neither title nor position can hide it from the Southerner's eye? ARCHIBALD MCDONALD
Ingram, Texas
Let students of rhetoric reread Subscriber McDonald's letter. His one sentence contains 118 words grammatically arranged. -- ED.
Cringe
Sirs: Don't you honestly think it rather silly to call "so mild liberal as Heywood Broun "pinkish?" And why, pray, should he not "omit tact?" Fancy the amazing, and disgusting phenomenon of a tactful Heywood Broun! And how about that stupid line in the same article (May 14, p. 26) parenthetically labelling the Nation "small but earnestly liberal weekly." Small? Can it be that you measure the greatness of a periodical by its subscription list? How TIME must cringe before the Saturday Evening Post! If TIME could produce just once a number as great as the least of the Nation's fifty-two during the past year, what an achieve ment that would be. . . .
RALPH F. WELD
Middletown, Conn.
Solve
Sirs:
Kindly indicate the solution of this problem. "The one-man Thompson machine gun weighs ten pounds, which is 100% lighter than any other weapon of similar functions." (TIME, May 14.) Let x equal weight of other weapon. x-100%x=10. Solve for x.
E. P. LYON
University of Minnesota Medical School Minneapolis, Minn.
Subscriber-Dean Lyon's question has been posed by 48 fellow-subscribers, but by none so neatly. "100%" is, of course, absurd. But the Thompson gun is much lighter. -- ED.
Rolls-Royce
Sirs:
As a regular subscriber may I get you to settle a disputed question for me? Just write on this sheet below the name of the most expensive automobile of American make and perhaps the two leading European cars. . . .
B. E. THOM
Port Arthur, Tex.
The most expensive automobile is the Rolls-Royce (Lonsdale Model) $19,885. Other expensive cars are the Isotta-Fraschini (Italy) $17,800; the Hispano-Suiza (France) $20,000. -- ED.
Rockefeller Caption
Sirs:
I very much regret the incomplete caption which you have placed under the cover-page picture of Mr. Rockefeller in TIME of May 21. This read alone gives a most unfavorable and unjust impression of what Mr. Rockefeller is alleged to have stated on the subject of money. . . . On the cover you have "I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you can. . . ." while on page 34 Mr. Rockefeller's remark is stated:
"I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you can, fairly and honestly; to keep all you can, and to give away all you can."
You should, I think, have made your quotation carry the words "fairly and honestly."
I have no special brief for Mr. Rockefeller Sr., whom I have had the pleasure of meeting but once, but for whose constructive contribution to American life both through industry and philanthropy, in spite of some mistakes from a public point of view, which he may have made in the early conduct of his business, I have a great respect. Far more important is the general principle involved, namely, that of seeing that a right impression is given by every newspaper and magazine of the real purport of a public man's remarks.
ANSON PHELPS STOKES
Washington, D. C.
TIME'S captions are often elliptical.-- ED.