Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[260]

To Francis G. Shaw.

I thank you for the “Life of General Garfield.” I did not think I should ever again take so much interest in a political campaign as I do in his election. I read every word of his speech on “Honest money,” eight columns long. I am not well posted upon financial questions, and have had rather a distaste for such controversies. But his statements were so very plain that I understood every sentence; and my common sense and my moral sense cordially responded thereto. Everything I have read of his seems to me to have the ring of true metal. I am constantly reminded of the practical good sense and sturdy honesty of Francis Jackson.

I was especially pleased with the emphasis he places on the assertion that there was a right and wrong in the War of the Rebellion; I would not have one unnecessary word said that would hurt the feelings or wound the pride of tie South. They acted just as we should have acted if we had been educated under the same institution. But their institution was bad, and the means they took to sustain and extend it were bad. I have been disgusted, and somewhat discouraged, by the “mush of concession” that has passed current under the name of magnanimity. The tendency to speak of both sides as equally in the right, because they both fought bravely, is utterly wrong in principle and demoralizing in its influence.