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withdrawn , he had not yet reached his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.
