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

[David Lockmiller]

I found the letter by googling “Chicago Tribune July 20, 1882.” The letter “Tribute to the Dead from Mrs. Jane Grey Swisshelm” appears on page 7 of 12, column 4.

Swissdale, Pa., July 17.—Today brings the sad, glad tidings that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln has passed from that darkness which had fallen upon her path through this life, out into the light and joy of that life toward which her vision has so long been strained.

Years ago she held my hands in a close, warm clasp—such a clasp as only a true heart can inspire—and, looking into my eyes, said: “Ah, my dear friend, you will rejoice when you know that I have gone to my husband and children!”

I want to write of her as a historical character—as one to whom the people of this country owe a great reparation, but can only think of her as a most affectionate, faithful friend. Yet she was the inspiration of her husband’s political career. It was she who

“Urged him up the steep; Where brings the noblest crown.
Honor may gain or virtue keep—An honest man’s renown.”
In statesmanship she was farther-sighted than he—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.

She opposed the appointment of Seward to a Cabinet place because she believed him to be a temporizer, and that his pride and disappointment would prevent any zeal in making the Administration successful. Her sympathies were with the radical Abolitionists from first to last of the War of the Rebellion; and it was simply as an Abolitionist that she honored me with her friendship and confidence at a time when she held the proudest social position in the world, and I had not the means to get a second dress. She must have known I was poor; but nothing in our intercourse ever reminded me that my $10 must go as far as her $1,000; and the ground of her friendship was my sympathy with her husband. I never knew a woman who more completely merged herself in her husband. Whatever aid or counsel she gave him, in her eyes his acts were his own, and she never sought any of the credit due to them.

There is more to this letter for those interested in reading the complete letter. There is even a paragraph that explains that Mary Todd Lincoln’s “wearing of rich clothing [was] a patriotic duty.”

Jane Grey Swisshelm letter published Chicago Tribune July 20, 1882 at page 7 of 12, column 4