Tough Tarbell Trivia

[David Lockmiller]

(08-03-2023 12:34 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Tarbell speaking: "This whole attack on [redacted] has seemed to me both ignorant and unkind. I wish I could do more to get him a fair hearing. That will come in time, however. The great thing is, in my judgment, is not to allow him to agonize over it too much, as I am afraid he is doing."

You may Google to your heart's content.

Best
Rob

I did google the last part of the quote which led me to a disagreement that Lincoln seems to have with Tarbell about what should be done when falsely accused.

In his last public address, Lincoln said: "As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer." (Complete Works of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, Editors, New York, [1905], xi, 85.)

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 8, p. 401-402, April 11, 1865:

"As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up, and seeking to sustain, the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows. In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanying Proclamation, I presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable; and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. . . ."


I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all---a merely pernicious abstraction."