Tyler v. Lincoln

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Throughout the war Lincoln danced from one position to another. Want of space prevents the mention of but two notorious instances of his instability. He decided to issue a proclamation of emancipation in July, 1863, but when Seward showed him its impropriety at the time, he admitted his error, pocketed his paper and for months later talked on both sides of the question. He at first decided to write a paper justifying the action of Captain Wilkes in seizing the Confederate Commissioners from the British steam packet Trent, but shortly joined with his Cabinet in making a humiliating apology to Great Britain.

As to the domestic history of John Tyler's administration, Daniel Webster eulogized his substitute measure for the Bank, called "the Exchequer" as "second" only in promise to the Constitution itself.

He pronounced his treatment of Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island as "worthy of all praise," and his management of the public funds as "remarkably cautious, exact and particular." In Tyler's time there were no public defaulters, no corrupt army contracts, and nothing resembling the present oil scandals.. Instead of building up a colossal debt like Lincoln, Tyler reduced the one that came to him, and administered the government on one fourth less expense than his predecessor, Van Buren.

Alexander H. Stephens said of Tyler's State Papers that "in point of ability they compared favorably with those of any of his predecessors," and Jefferson Davis said that "He was the most felicitous among the orators he had known."

Coming to more personal matters, how is it possible to associate Tyler with such filthy stories as are ascribed to Lincoln by his friends? Granting that Tyler could not have written Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, it is also true that he could not have written, at any period of his life. The indecent letter which Lincoln wrote to a Mrs. Owens concerning a lady to whom he had proposed and by whom he had been rejected, nor could he have written any letter like that which Lincoln wrote to General Grant in 1865 asking that his son, aged 22, who had been kept at Harvard College, despite the draft, should be put on his staff and "not in the ranks." Tyler had two grandsons, privates in the Confederate Army, one of whom was killed and the other wounded, and two sons by his second marriage who surrendered at Appomattox aged 16 and 18.

Nor does it require any studied argument to make a Christian of John Tyler. As a member of the Episcopal Church he talked the language of Jesus. When being solicited to help the son of one of his political persecutors he said, "I would seek no sweeter revenge over my enemies than to do them favors."

As to his general appearance the famous Charles Dickens, who saw him in 1842, wrote of his "mild and pleasant appearance" and his "remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly agreeable manners" and added "in his whole carriage and demeanor he became his station singularly well."

Quite in contrast was the description of Lincoln by Col. Theodore Lyman of Massachusetts, an officer on General Meade's staff, who saw Lincoln not long before his death: "There was an expression of plebeian vulgarity in his face. You recognize the recounter of coarse stories." LYON G. TYLER