Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln

18. Justice

........................................................................ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Justice He hath skewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord 1'e" quire of thee, but to do justly, anti to love mercy, anti to walk humbly with thy God? -MICAH vi, 8 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Justice WE, AS A PEOPLE, LIKE FAIR PLAY. WE BOAST OF OUR ability to give everybody a show in spite of prejudices - in spite of everything. Willingness to give the oppressed a chance to state their case and make their plea is a part of the Magna Charta - in fact, its very essence - and runs through all that is based thereon. On this principle is founded our system of jurisprudence. This is what the American public meant when it fought the Civil War and freed the slaves. It was what the political leaders of Mrs. Lincoln's period were talking about in their speeches, and what they were writing about in their papers. We men regard ourselves as chivalrous. We profess a readiness to give a woman an even break. At least, we claim to be willing to do so if the woman is not in direct economic competition with us. Perhaps we are less chival1'ous since the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, but even now we would resent the charge that we are unfair to a woman in distress. Have the American people been fair to Mrs. Lincoln? Have we, men or women, been willing to give her a day in court? Have we men been chivalrous toward her? Here is Isaac N. Arnold's answer::l " The abuses which a portion of the American press so pitilessly poured upon the head of Mary Lincoln recall that splendid outburst of 1 Bibliography, No. 4, pp. 439-40. 349 JUSTICE TO MRS. LINCOLN eloquence upon the part of Burke, when speaking of the Queen of France. ' Little did I dream that I should live to see such disasters fall upon her in a nation of gallant men; a nation of honor; cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords would have left their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry has gone.' May I also remind you of the words of the Earl of Oxford to the Duke of Burgundy, when the latter spoke coarsely of Margaret of Anjou. ' My lord, whatever may have been the defects of my mistress, she is in. distress and almost in desolation.' " W. O. Stoddard had the gift of prophecy when he gave utterance to the following: 1 " People are picking up all sorts of stray gossip relating to asserted occurrences under this roof [the White House], and they are making strange work out of some of it. It is a work they will not cease from. They will do it to the very end so effectively that a host of excellent people will one day close their eyes to the wife's robe with her husband's blood. There will be in that day a strange blindness and brutality concerning the awful shock produced by an infernal murder. Then charity and chivalry alike will be forgotten in the sneering comments which will follow the remaining days of a disturbed mind and a shattered nervous system. Even the shadow of the tomb itself will, at last, not be regarded as a sufficient curtain to prevent an unjust judgment from peering and looking back to this time, and reading in it nothing but the prurient scandals of this feverish war time." Howard Glyndon wrote: 2 " I think her extravagances of behavior, her hallucinations, her sufferings of mind and body have not met with that respect, that respectful silence and. sympathy from the American Press and people, which the distinguished services of her husband to his country gave them a right to command. Her erratic behavior has been commented upon in a spirit which will not show well when all 1 Bibliography, No. 168, p. 63. 350 2 Bibliography, No. 61. JUSTICE TO MRS. LINCOLN - - - ...,.-- .",.,.,. - - • ..¢I'"~ .. the events connected with her life have become history. I feel satisfied that in a few years Mrs. Lincoln will be thought of with the sincerest pity and that there will be a prevailing regret that the foibles and weaknesses of an un~ offending woman, whose mind was shaken, as well it might be, by the...