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Show GET GDDLY MIXED ! i People Seem to Want Them Made to Order. It is a curious thing tfiat the people will have history as they want to have it regardless of what really happened. This singular retrospective power of ncrp notions or impressions over actual ac-tual events extends even to the lives and deaths of persons. A case in point is the assumption, found in virtually all the papers, In connect'on with the j sad death of the President's son, that during the incumbency of the 'residency 'resi-dency Lincoln lost his boy, whose nick-name nick-name was "Tad," says the Boston I Transcript. This is not at all the case. "Tad" was the familiar name of the. President's Presi-dent's son, Thomas, who died, at the age of eighteen, some years after his father's death and, of course, afler the family had left Washington. The President's son who died during his term of office was Willie (William Wallace), whose death, at the age of j twelve, In February, lSf2, brought a i pang of sorrow to the nation. Nor Is it true, as one paper asserts in order . to explain this confusion, that It was Willie Lincoln who was properly called i by the nickname "Tad." This was the familiar name of the boy Thomas always. al-ways. Not infrequently after his brother Willie's death "Tad" Lincoln accompanied accom-panied his father in his appearances in public places. He was a familiar figure, but his death, after the family's fam-ily's removal, did not attract the poignant poign-ant attention that Willie's death did, coming, as that previous blow did, during dur-ing the severest stress and strain of the early period of the Civil war. All this is made clear in the biographies biogra-phies of Lincoln, and it is a part of the recollection of many of those now living whose memory covers the days of the Civil war, but the notion that "Lincoln's Tad" died during his father's fa-ther's term of office is so firmly fixed that some even of those who were alive in the early '60s entertain it. If there is a remedy or a correction for this particular error perhaps it lies in teaching the true names of Lincoln's Lin-coln's sons, and the reasons for them, so that they will get these boys differentiated. differ-entiated. Lincoln's eldest son, Robert Todd, now living and distinguished (people sometimes forget that, too), was named after his mother's father, Robert Rob-ert S. Todd, an influential Kentuckian. The second, Edward Baker, who died in infancy, was named for a friend. I The next, William Wallace, was named after Gen. William Wallace, a friend of Lincoln's in Illinois. Thomas ("Tad"), the youngest, bore the name of Lincoln's father. |