Tarbell on Otto Eisenschiml

[Rob Wick]

As promised, here's something from the Ida Tarbell collection that I found interesting, and I hope you all do as well.

On March 30, 1939, Otto Eisenschiml wrote to Tarbell.

My dear Miss Tarbell,
In the December 1938 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History is an article entitled "The Education of Linton Usher" from which I quote the following sentence:
"Whenever Linton importuned his father concerning the conspiracy that led to Lincoln's murder, Secretary Usher would reply that the ramifications were so far-reaching that it was well that investigations had gone no farther. At that point John P. Usher's lips were sealed."
I should be grateful for your interpretation of this cryptic statement if you care to give it to me, either for my own use only or with the right to quote it.
Very truly yours,
Otto Eisenschiml

On April 12, 1939, Tarbell replied with a two-page letter.

Dear Mr. Eisenschiml:
I have your letter of March 30th asking me what I make of the quotation from John F. Usher taken from "The Education of Linton Usher" in the December issue of the Indiana Magazine of History.
I confess that it does not seem cryptic when you recall the experience of Indiana through the War with the various copperhead societies so strong in the Middle West. These societies attempted, as you know, to engineer the separation of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio from the Union. They were in more or less close touch with the Confederates in Canada. You know of course their efforts to seize the government of Indiana, also set free the Confederate prisoners in their country and return them to the Southern Army. All of these things were scotched. Lincoln regarded them as foolish rather than criminal.
But they did involve many men in the State, men who when the War was over settled down to orderly living with greatly subdued spirits and probably no little alarm. How far was the investigation of the conspiracy which had resulted in Lincoln's death to be pushed? If it had been pushed out into the States where these organizations had been in sympathy with the Confederacy and from the beginning of the War had been active it would have brought in hundreds of men who were now willing to accept the outcome of the War, glad to do it to save their scalps.
Usher, I think, agreed with Lincoln in his policy of not making mountains out of what he regarded as mole hills.
There was immense political dissatisfaction, as you know, in the North with Lincoln's conduct of the War. Bitter and unwise things were written, said and done. When a catastrophe such as the Civil War and the death of Lincoln comes to a head a wise statesman does all he can to restore peace, to forget, to bear no malice. No doubt Usher was under the influence of Lincoln's memorable last words, "malice towards none, charity towards all." He did not want to see his fellow Indianians pursued and punished. He was quite right when he said the ramifications were so far-reaching that it was well that investigation had gone no farther. Personally, I agree with him, the more strongly because I believe Booth's plot was of his own making.
Very sincerely yours
Ida M. Tarbell

There was no more correspondence between the two.

Eisenschiml comes up with Tarbell again, however, after she contacted George S. Bryan in 1940 asking about Thomas Y. Mears and if Bryan knew anything about him or where she could get more information about him. In another letter to Bryan, she praised The Great American Myth, saying "I am especially gratified by the short shift you made of recent attempts to include Secretary Stanton in the group of conspirators collected by Booth. You give a deservedly severe and, I hope, final treatment to the story of Booth's escape and wanderings. You have written the most solid and straightforward account that we have and happily one unclouded by innuendo and sensation."

On December 30, 1940, Bryan wrote:

My dear Miss Tarbell:
Henry W. Mears was the head of the undertaking establishment of Henry W. Mears & Son, and the business is being carried on by the son (whose Christian name I am not able to give you) at 805 North Calvert Street, Baltimore. I suggest you write to that address. I am not personally acquainted with the Mears family connections; and Mr. Crummer, a former Baltimorean and now a neighbor of mine, could not enlighten me. A daughter of Henry W. Mears, who took all care of him in his latest years, is also living in Baltimore; and you might ask that the brother, if he cannot answer your query, turn it over to her.
Needless to say, I am highly gratified to learn of your approval of my book. I have had a very good "press" but naturally I value above else the favorable opinion of the "Old Guard" of Lincoln students and authorities. I have had kind words from Dr. Louis A. Warren (see Lincoln Lore for November 25th), Rufus Rockwell Wilson (who intends to publish next year what I suppose will be the definitive edition of Lincoln's works--letters, addresses, state papers), F. Lauriston Bullard (president of the Lincoln Club of Boston and chief editorial writer of the Boston Herald), Tyler Dennett, and many others. But may I say that commendation from the dean of Lincoln interpreters is especially valued by me. If you have the inclination and the leisure to extend the first paragraph in your letter of the 23rd, I assure you I shall be deeply appreciative.
You may be interested to know that Eisenschiml, author of "Why Was Lincoln Murdered?", did a review of my book for the Chicago Daily News in which he emptied several vials of scorn. That is the one and only notice of the sort I have had.
Your sincerely
G.S. Bryan

Tarbell replied on January 3, 1941.

I was pleased with your kind reference to my Lincoln work. As one of the old guard, about the oldest, I think, I am never very sure of my standing with the younger Lincoln students, but I am thankful for them. They are constantly unearthing things that I never found and enabling me to correct what are supposed to be facts.
I should like to see that review of Eisenschiml. I have never seen a book like his, a masterpiece of insinuation. Did you ever know of a man spending four or five hundred pages building up a case and then telling you candidly that of course he has no proof for any of these things.

On the next day, Bryan quickly wrote Tarbell a response.

Dear Miss Tarbell:
I am enclosing for you a cutting of Eisenschiml's "review" and also a carbon-copy of a letter that I wrote at my publisher's request. Will you please return the cutting when you have finished with it?

Later, he wrote No; I've never been able to understand what Eisenschiml was trying to do--unless it was that his publishers and he wished to sell a sensational book and at the same time provide a loophole by which they might escape the imputation of having slandered the dead. I suppose you have seen his "Reviewers Reviewed?" It contains the text of a paper he read at the Clements Library at Ann Arbor at the invitation of Randolph G. Adams. Between ourselves, it seems to me a completely dishonest defense--he calls it a "challenge!"

Tarbell doesn't mention Eisenschiml in her reply. Hope all finds this as interesting as I have.

Best
Rob