"Our One Common Country" author talk in Stratford, CT

[David Lockmiller]

(08-22-2014 05:47 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Here is another person's opinion on Mary and emancipation.

Five days after Mary Lincoln's death Jane Grey Swisshelm wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune. She wrote, "In statesmanship she was farther-sighted than he [Lincoln] — was more radically opposed to slavery, and urged him to Emancipation, as a matter of right, long before he saw it as a matter of necessity."

Hi Roger. I was wondering if you had a citation reference to the entire letter published by the Chicago Tribune on July 20, 1882. I tried to find the complete text of the letter but I was unable to do so.

Jane Grey Swisshelm was indeed radically opposed to slavery. Following Lincoln's assassination, she wrote in a letter or article published shortly thereafter by the St. Cloud Democrat on May 4, 1865: "I do not look on this death as a National calamity" because she feared "the destruction of our Government through the leniency and magnanimity of President Lincoln" She believed that God "removed from this place one who was totally incapable of understanding, or believing in, the wickedness, the cruelty, and barbarism of the Southern people." (Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Professor Michael Burlingame, Vol. Two, page 821.)

As regards the government's Reconstruction policy following Lincoln's death, Jane Grey Swisshelm got her wish. I wonder if Mary Todd Lincoln who "was was more radically opposed to slavery" than President Lincoln and a close friend of Jane Grey Swisshelm shared the same opinions regarding the Southern people and the correct Reconstruction policy for the government to follow.