Show acim in ta unia un ia n Is n 0 Z M 4 k 0 MOW an V M 7 4 4 41 4 5 N an 1 4 N k UR A A Y A J y x aft J 0 k 1 V lincoln arrives jn in washington 3 by ELMO SCOTT WATSON the fact that it deals S with a certain set of truths mst most hk of which can be bucked hocked up api by docu afek j evidence it Is rather queer that hint there should havo have been in the past und and for thai that matter still are so many ways of writing biography one style stile which wils was much in vogue voge in the early lays days of tills this republic was the kind which made inside abraham lincoln suspicious of till nil biography for ns as lie ho said to ills friend He herradon blog ns as written are arc false and misleading the author of a life of ills fits hero paints mints him as it perfect roan magnifies gill iles ills his Perfect perfections lons and suppresses hta his imperfect imperfections lons describes the success of ills his hero in glowing terms never once hinting at ills his failures and blunders can it be tim tile the prop prophetic hetle vision or of chis man of destiny made him film foresee what his biographers would do and caused him film to utter titter those words for immediately after tilt death a perfect horde of writers began creating a lincoln myth in much the same fas fashion lilon ns lincoln himself had characterized it describing this process when it was just beginning ingersoll declared washington Is now only oaly n steel engraving of the real man who lived ih ed and loved and tinted and schemed scherner ned wo ire know but little hundreds of people are now engaged in smoothing out the he lines on Lincol ns face forcing all features to tile the common mold so that lie may he be known not as he really was hilt but according to their poor standard as he should have been somewhere between the extremes of the old style filhiol nisi fisl bonum biographer and the modern muckraker somewhere between the superficial p blo biographer grapher and the compiler of the lie dull facts of a chos who there lies the ideal type of blo biographer grapher who mio can so blend fact and opinion who scan can so mold avold both the creation of a mythical superman nn and the delineation of a weak vessel of human clay and vin cm present tile the portrait el of 1 a ann who Is both a liero hero and n believable human being modern blo biography graphy lias hus furnished at least one example of tills this type of writer but the tragedy of it Is ii that death interrupted ills his work before it was finished for such Is the two volume study of the lie first ly 10 years of abraham Lincol Lineol ns life by the lute late albert J 1 beveridge published recently by the floughton llo aimin com company priny literary critics seeni beem t to 4 ile he unanimous in n the opinion ex expressed presed by one of them thor on the whole tills la Is incomparably tb the gwit test story of fit Lincol ns life before alj presidency it was a cruel that took beveridge from us its before he reached tile the avii civil war for beveridge died soon after he ha find bad made the first fai bt draft of his chapter on the lincoln douglas de debates bitleR and as another critic tins has justly said it ends like Sc huberts sym phony por for the lincoln which stalks through tile the of books Is a different lincoln from eliat presented to us by the myth makers lie he ts Is a far les le s perfect hut hia much more understand a able figure n hurran hum sin being ile he had find his weaknesses his flaws some of which are not nit wholly admirable themselves hilt but tile the won man himself Is nil all tit e more beca tise lie rose to the he heights ll 11 lid dirt in spite of those thoe flaws leate the fact dint alint e demolishes many of the favorite myths about Linc lincoln eln tie Is not nn nil lile fly by it i stretch of could he ile be clas clasil al blell t pil ellb ith flip muckrake h rv aie doca if not cringe coln a foia hat che illusion it i is the flip only ohly feln bine nn nil honest lil 11 n ea fan n do d 0 so ati vs one mile critic and therein iles li eshe abe areni cwm little t nt if what 11 tins hn lone done tile the mytle nl ners erg iad clerndon for telling the truth about lincoln many years igi ago beveridge lins lini lin i jil without exception but had lived it Is that flint tile lie modern ayt f r makara anil cis would not have hae dared try to f i A all portraits from Beve ridges lincoln courtesy houghton mifflan company 1 abraham lincoln in 1857 the made by alschuler in urbana III from the col lection of frederick H Mers orve Z 2 mary todd lincoln from a print in the collection of oliver R barrett 3 abraham lincoln about 1048 1848 from a daguerreotype re formerly owned by robert T lincoln in I 1 the collection of frederick H Ivie serve 4 Ali abraham raham lincoln in 1858 the t made at macomb ill III from the collection of t frederick H Mess Mes lynch llynch film there simply Is no answer to the facts which lie he presents the myths which beveridge Beverl dge has demolished are many the picture of the loy boy lincoln rending by the light of the fireplace beveridge neve ridge shows to be imaginary the story of its ills industrious and energetic youth hab bob been much overdone for beveridge shows that flint he had bad considerable of a distaste for manual mantral labor did it dorily ou ly when it was absolutely necessary and when he did hire out ills his employers often hirl had reason to complain that he was more likely to lie telling stories than working tile the story of his letter to it a minister begging him to preach a sermon over his ji no others grove grave Is shown to be impossible becaas tit at that time lincoln con could not write another favorite story about lincoln Is that of ills his witnessing tile the slave auction in new ew orleans and his declaration that flint when he had a chance lie he would lift hit that institution and lift hit it hard it Is true that lie he saw the lie slave auction but there Is no record lint flint lie commented upon it either then or thereafter and for years ills fits attitude toward slavery was title ap of indifference especially was tills this shown in ili his career carcer as a legislator in ill illinois innis when a decided stand on slavery would lave have made him very unpopular lincoln had find nil tle tile more reason to keep silent on the slavery question then for ns as n legislator he was more concerned with managing tile the fight for the removal of the capital from Von vandalla lalla to springfield in ili his fits own district rind and lie he was not taking uy chances on antagonizing anyone who would have any influence in ili that contest no other historian hns fins ever made as careful a study of Lincol ns career in hie file 1111 illinois legislature as tins beveridge rind from flint study there la Is only one possible conclusion to tn firna that lincoln wits a clever manipulator a typical partisan politician more inora concerned with results result than methods and nd guided hy by expediency this was true cepec especially lally of slavery for as beveridge says two decades were to pass before lincoln showed much concern ovir over sla slavery verr As a congressman fler prid e shows lincoln to ti have been pretty much nt nf it a failure fal lure ills his appeal for election was not 1 t cutiss of any special atnes for tile the lot jot but as too said turn nymn dibou Is fair ploy play you know that Is my argument arter after being elected lie virtually dauble ills constituents with it 11 strong against tile mexican war which wax poli in fir his attile fane and they wore were so hy by tilts tills that tie he was war denied lea led election reelection re rind and tit his whole political career seemed wrecked forever deeply humiliated lie he returned to 1111 illinois it a discredited min man and again took ook up ills his profession of law lav at about ib out this ills time tie lie become became subject of its fits of f melancholy wf ili bordered closely upon ital insanity anity Accord lup to the legend it was ills grief arlel over tile the death of ann ana rutledge Rut leIge willett which wits was responsible for or tills condit condition loll in view of tile iho recent fuhre over the publication of the pur ported portera love letters letter between ann rutledge ind ano lincoln in the atlantic ont alp monthly it Is interesting I 1 to p note that flint shows that ann wits in iba e fl pg n john Alc Nimar had and not with lincoln coln and ami that ii lincoln no doubt was vas deeply affected by anns death it could not account for his condition described by one of ills his friends as lincoln was crazy as a loon although most of Lincol ns love affairs were unfortunate and followed by mental latis lapses cs In including chiding ills his unhappy marriage to mary todd from which he had once backed out Beve ridges conclusion seems to be that it was his hitter bitter disappointment in politics and the strain caused by excessive study and reading which were principally responsible for far the melancholy which overtook him from time to time among tho the other weaknesses of tilts this very human being abraham lincoln which beveridge Beverl dge shows was ills his habit of writing anonymous letters to the newspapers it was one of these which involved him film in the famous duel witt with james shields which leaves one with the feeling that by the standards of the day lincoln deserved a thrashing hut but the result of tilts this was its as beveridge points out at last ills his habit formed in boyhood of ridiculing other persons person through offensive anonymous letters had been sternly checked never lid did lincoln forget that lint experience from the time of the flip shields duel lincoln was infinitely circumspect find and considerate si in his dealings with others ne ile was a regular reader of newspapers ani and especially the newspaper poetry of the time many pieces of which he clipped more than that lie he attempted to write poetry himself ills his earliest poem Is the now famous couplet which lie he scribbled in the copy book when lie he was a boy abraham lincoln his fiand and pen ile he will be good but god knows aben but it was during g his career as it a legislator both state and national that lie he became more ambitious its as a versifier beveridge records tint on instance in which lie wrote a poem of ten vm verses ses on the ancient topics of death decay and the comforts of memory and it was only one fine of four canto beveridge Reverl dge one which lip lie rails tile the best of tile verses erke in this canto tind and r remarks fortunately the lie remaining of if tilts this production appear to n have been lost then lie he says anys lincoln was thirty seven years old when he wrote these poems poem nearly twenty years were to elapse before he produced the second inaugural but it wits was nl also n in this period that tile the lin coln coin of immortality ans aa being molded in ili the fiery furnace of these latter days davs of nf impenetrable ra lift gloom and one of tile the mysteries of nf lincoln which beveridge dors does riot not attempt to solve live and which may never bp be la Is the lie cidh buddi ti genius in the use of words which lincoln developed at tills period in his career beveridge shows him working earenst ly for n literary style seeking the file exact word or phrases tind and tilt the musical combination which were to make the address immortal but there Is no reason waldi hillh can be assigned for the lie change from the man mail who ho wrote a very poor floor kind hind of poetry into the lie writer of matchless prose but the fact let remains that inn by file time date tie lie was forty five tills timaly tonti lawyer and politician who differed only from hundreds of other midwestern mid western wester n lawyers of ills his day and generation only hy by ili ills honesty hit it great perso personal lial nail ami base alln al aeterna terna I 1 eions of gaiety gayety and gloom was he beginning ginning t tn dp fp celop into pie ifie towering ger genius iltis of the 1111 lincoln col Fou douglas glas deb debater riter tin anil the only man who coull could have led the notion safely through the four yen of golly agony or of isol nn n i liy by some strange alchemy tills man whom beveridge Beverl dge makes wi us see so clearly was ch changing ringing into the statesman and lender who w probably could never have existed without flip molding in ill fiery fur furnace rince of nf ills his early years when he was disciplined by bv hu humiliation milla ond and driven to a ruthless self analysis by disappointment so for nil hint flint tills latest biographer ff lincoln takes away fron from us lis many b h pretty hegend lie tills lias given gen us ns nn nil greater and finer ch character arneter and one more worthy of our respect and admiration because through tin on understanding of nf abraham lincoln the bring being we can call come nearer an understanding of abraham lincoln tile lie r |