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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (March 2, 1899)
iJI i L Conservative. 3 lives of illustrious men is frequently afflicted with cross eyed views of both character nnd achievement. Abraham Lincoln is the most conspicuous victim of this kind of injustice in our country , perhaps the most so of any man since George "Wash ington. "Writers who have written of the chnracters and deeds of both long since lifted them into something far above anything merely human , and it is probably true that it would require the strongest reputation to survive an hon est and impartial statement of the real truth about the personal lives and char acters of either of them. The halo which surrounds their names does not permit a just view of the lives they actu ally lived as men who , after all , were very like other human beings , including a fair proportion of weaknesses which are a common inheritance. Washington could , would , and did "swear like a pir ate ; " he was as full of ambition as an egg is full of meat , and he had a grasp ing love of the thing called money. Mr. Lincoln was a cunning politician of Illi nois for thirty years , practised law on the circuits with ordinary lawyers in opposition , without rising above the/ / level of the brethren of the bar , reached a seat in congress where he was chiefly prominent for his obscurity , and was allowed to lapse into his old and singu lar habits of life until Leonard Swett , Norman B. Judd , and one or two other people , pitted him in debate with Doug las , which made him famous. They assisted in composing his speeches on the slavery question which consisted in largo measure , of appeals to human sympathy for the slave , and in twisting the views of Mr. Douglas so as to mis lead the neonlo. But not content with deifying Mr. Lincoln as the man who destroyed slav- eiy and saved the Union , and as a statesman of imposing rank , the more recent biographer insists upon his hav ing been a great soldier. It is supposed that the "On to Richmond" order and "Bull Run" occurred before he had ac quired genius for command , and that when , after McOlellan was in front of Richmond , pledged by Mr. Lincoln to have McDowell's corps marched in time to compose his right wing , which never moved a step in that direction and was withdrawn , he had not yet reached his full powers as a general of fighting armies. Nor can it bo seen very clearly that Mr. Lincoln proved his military greatness when he sent Pope to slaugh ter and disgrace , and a whole army to destruction , at Second Bull Run. Equally obscure is the claim to his mili tary genius when McClellan took the broken army of Pope , pursued Leo into Maryland , utterly unable to extort an order from either General Lincoln , General Halleck or the lovely Mr. Stanton - ton , and drove Lee back into Virginia , fighting the bloody battle of Antietam "with a hnlter around his neck. " Gen eral William B. Franklin has said , in a letter which THE CONSERVATIVE has read , that if McClellan had been de feated at Antietam , he would have been "court-martialed and shot" as a trai tor to his country , of course because he pursued Leo , forced him to battle , and won a great victory without any other order than that of poor Halleck , warning him "not to get too far from Washington. " From all that wo can gather of Mr. Lincoln's powers as a mil itary commander , they must have been exercised after Generals Grant and Sherman appeared on the field. And yet , it is probable that if both Grant and Sherman could now read biographies , they would turn over in their moulding coffins to learn for the first time that Mr. Lincoln commanded "The March to the Sea , " and directed the terrible combats with Lee's starving and deci mated armies which led to the inevitable at Appomattox. \L CLEVELAND AN HAWAII. President Cleveland may have been sometimes wrong but he was generally right ; and , either wrong or right , he was emphatic there was no misunder standing his position. And never was he more clearly in the right than in his opposition to those who favored * the annexation of Hawaii to the United States. , , We refer in this connection to -tlietSnuexatiouists from Honolulu. The story' is briefly told. Hawaii the Sandwich islands of our boyhood was simply stolen from its original pos sessors , by those who were sent from the Christian church to convert them to Christianity. About the middle of the century , or a little earlier , in the ' 80's and ' 40's , missionaries were sent from New England to Christianize the Sand wich islanders. This work was promptly effected ; never were discovered more tractable savages. Almost without per suasion they forsook idolatry and es poused Christianity. Perhaps never were Christian missionaries more kindly treated. They and their famil ies found a home in the beautiful island and thrived mightily under the foster ing care of Hawaiian royalty. So prosperous were they that almost without effort by simply living on the lands supplied them by the royal boun ty , the sous and daughters of the New England missionaries became million aires ; and after the lapse of half a cen tury , waxed so wealthy , so powerful and so ungrateful as to wrest the islands from the kind-hearted Sandwich island ers , dethrone the family of their benefac tors and , like the serpent , venomously sting the hand that had cherished them. There are bloodier pictures in the book of time , but one of the meanest of all historical events is the stealing of the Hawaiian islands from their rightful owners , by those who had been nur tured and made rich through the lavish generosity of their benefactors and vic tims. The event has been consummated ; the old line of kings has passed away forever. No one can deny that in heathendom as well as in Christianity there was an element of the heroic in this line of monarchs. But they are a tiling of the past ; their domains fiavo been annexed to the great republic , firm fixed forever. But the shameful narrative of the ungrateful miscreants who robbed them should bo published to their disgrace forever. W. F. FOSTER. A ROOSTKK WITH A MOKAL. The people of the United States are not particularly proud that their navy , standing four or five miles out in the Pacific ocean , has been able , without in jury to itself , to disperse an array of naked Filipinos drawn up with boomer angs and bows and arrows to oppose it on shore. It was an abject and pitiful spectacle , certainly ; Robinson Crusoe never took his savages at any such odds ; and still maybe it had to be done. The writer recalls having had a differ ence , in his earlier years , with a White Leghorn rooster named Billy , as to the best place for White Leghorn roosters to roost at night. Billy declared for an apple-tree that stood in the garden , while the forces of civilization , having an eye to the strawberry-bed , held for the regularly-established hen-house of orthodoxy. The hen-house was cer tainly somewhat cramped for ono who aspired to perfect freedom , as described by the 18th century writers , but on the other hand such freedom was inconsist ent with the rights of the rest of man kind to eat its own strawberries. So. as Billy would not be reasoned with , a strategem was practised which involved the use of a degree of force , and Billy , held firmly by the legs , and appealing in vain to the other civilized nations , was taken and deposited within the hated limits of the hennery , where he spent the rest of his days. The writer was not proud of the super iority of strength which enabled him to accomplish this , but having such strength , he would have been foolish , and false to his trust besides , if ho had not made use of it. An anthropologist who has made a study of lips , announces his conclusion that thick lips indicate , not sensuality , but mixed blood. "Really thick lips never occur , except as an anomaly , in the white race. " The average salary paid to Congre gational ministers in the United States is $1,125 per year. This is more than any stationary engineer in Nebraska City earns.