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 WARD H. LAMON 
 
 AND 
 
 THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE. 
 
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 i-i^e^niana? 
 
My Dear General: 
 
 Permit me to thank you and other friends at Bloomington 
 for many late attentions, among which I feel compelled to 
 mention your last letter and its enclosure — a copy of the 
 Weekly Pa7itagraph, of April 25, 1866. In it I find an article 
 taken from the 'Jacksonville Journal, a portion of which the 
 Journal, in turn, credits to the Chicago Tribune ; all of which 
 is supposed to have heen suggested by a letter written by me 
 to President Johnson and published pretty extensively by the 
 loyal press of the country. 
 
 For this gross co-mpound of vulgar defamation the Panta- 
 graph acknowledges itself indebted to the joint mendacity of 
 the Tribune and the Journal, and then, that these " apples of 
 gold" might not be without their " pictures of silver," it 
 dishes up the whole with a few mild and very apparent slan- 
 ders of its own. As skilled counterfeiters always find baser, 
 meaner, and more ignorant criminals to "shove" the false 
 coin, so this man seems to think himself generally employed 
 to retail all the impudent calumnies which his industrious scis- 
 sors can glean from his exchanges. He seems to have a nat- 
 ural bent for this menial part of the business of newspaper 
 defamation ; but he ought never to aspire above it, and will 
 inevitably spoil any well got-up slander which he attempts to 
 amend while passing through his willing but clumsy hands. 
 He will never succeed at the business of original lying, for the 
 simple reason that he has not sufiicient mind to lie well or 
 plausibly. The practice of this vice is not so simple a thing 
 after all. To excel asthe great exemplars of the vice have 
 excelled, to become notorious and earn a livelihood as a mere 
 common defamer, to have his name enrolled among the stars 
 of the profession, beside those of Barrere, White, or Cono- 
 ver, a man must not only be a knave, but he must be a keen, 
 shrewd, quick-witted, and long-headed knave. This fellow 
 of the Pantagrapli is doubtless a knave, and ambitious of 
 doing all the malicious mischief he can ; but his effort in my 
 
case convinces me that if he is a very despicable creature, he 
 is also a very harmless one. If all his falsehoods are as trans- 
 parent and ill-contrived as the one he aimed at me, he might 
 scribble on forever to the injury of nobody. " We need sim- 
 ply to state," he says, "that here, where Mr. L. was well 
 known for six years, he was 7iever trusted as a Republican, and 
 we all wondered at Mr. Lincoln's confidence in such a man." 
 His memory, as you will see, is very short ; indeed, the pro- 
 verb attributes " short memories " to all his class. Everybody 
 in that section of the State is well aware that I was twice " 
 elected district attorney on the Republican ticket by the nu- 
 merous counties of the eighth judicial district, the first time 
 including the capital of the State. In 1856 I received more 
 votes than any other candidate on the ticket, and in 1860 I 
 was unanimously chosen by the people to the same office. This 
 bit of history will show that Mr. Lincoln's "confidence" m 
 me was shared by all his immediate felloA^-citizens and by all 
 mine, and that, too, at the very time this innocent man de- 
 scribes himself as being in a state of absolute ''wonder'' at 
 Mr. Lincoln's regard for me. It is hardly probable that the 
 feeble breath of such a simpleton and such a scamp will out- 
 Aveigh the recorded verdict of a whole people. 
 
 I am not exactly sure that I ever saw the editor of the 
 Jacksonville Journal His contribution to this exquisite 
 patchwork of slander seems to have been entirely gratuitous— 
 an amateur piece of scurrility, merely to employ the fingers 
 which had a natural itching for the work. I was never a 
 candidate for Congress, as he asserts, and of course never 
 asked his support. If he is the man I suspect him to be, I 
 have had but one interview with him for years; he then 
 appeared as a pitiful mendicant, whose ambition was limited 
 to the plunder of my purse. He succeeded in relieving me 
 of a few hundred dollars in the shape of a loan, and it is not 
 worth while to remark, that the conscious rascal has ever since 
 preferred other society to mine. I have only heard of him 
 since as a sort of political vagabond t)r hack, " at your ser- 
 vice," for a small gratuity— an excellent hand to suggest a 
 stratagem for reaching the bottom of a decent man's pocket. 
 
B 
 
 or for calumniating a pure and honorable reputation. Having 
 no character to sell or to lose, he can be had cheap, and is not 
 particular about the kind of work he is required to do. He 
 will spew out his foul aspersions upon the purest and noblest 
 name in the land with as little scruple as he would borrow 
 money or puff the grog-shop that gave him free drinks. 
 
 I am also informed that a clerical imposter, by the name of 
 Hammond, has amused himself by circulating and enlarging 
 upon these slanders in his paper at Danville. Courts of jus- 
 tice do not take the evidence of persons convicted of infamous 
 crimes, nor do the public, credit the utterances of a debauched 
 preacher or a canting libertine. This fellow, a clergyman 
 after the Onderdonk and Kalloch pattern, a pastor rising 
 fresh from the embraces of a prostituted parishioner, may 
 pollute my name by uttering it, but can surely leave no stain 
 on my character. 
 
 When the Tribune article first appeared, I took some pains 
 to learn which particular one of Mr. Lincoln's old traducers 
 had turned his attention to me. A call upon one of the 
 editors here, (who denied all knowledge of it,) and a little 
 further inquiry, led me to the conclusion that Horace White 
 might reasonably claim the honor of that elegant and truthful 
 composition. He evidently intended this trashy string of 
 falsehoods to be as brutal in effect as it was in temper, and if 
 he lacked the facts necessary to a formidable assault, he would 
 make up that little defect by malicious and impudent asser- 
 tions. In White's view of the case, I was simply offensively 
 honest and consistent, and it is, of course, perfectly natural 
 that he should belie and traduce me. By a corrupt abuse of 
 his confidential relations to a congressional committee, the 
 fellow amassed a handsome sum in whiskey speculations, and 
 in his purchase of an interest in the Tribune with this hire of 
 official debasement there was a sort of eminent propriety. 
 "Baseness was an instinct in him ;" it was an impulse of his 
 nature to seek this thriving band of shameless calumniators — 
 calumniators who knew no tie of political or personal fidelity ; 
 to whom plunder was everything, honor and shame were 
 nothing; who pretended to have political sentiments, not 
 
\ 
 
 because they were blessed with a conscience, but because they 
 had a newspaper, and by a union of venality, calumny, and 
 treachery, it could be made to pay. Where else could this 
 creature have found congenial society and congenial work ? 
 The hand of this unclean scamp is against whatever is pure 
 and decent in society, as naturally and inevitably as Falstaff 
 fell to lechery and his cups, and therefore his proper place 
 was the Tribune office. 
 
 It is a sufficient answer to all the statements of hi^ article 
 that they formed the staple of much discussion in the news- 
 papers, in Congress, and elsewhere, and that several delega- 
 tions of my personal enemies retailed these identical slanders 
 to the ear of President Lincoln himself. Mr. Wilson, Mr. 
 Hale, Mr. Grimes, or Mr. Washburn e might tell Mr. White 
 with what contempt and disgust they were received. With 
 disdain and indignation he repulsed all the eiforts of that pow- 
 erful and malignant conspiracy to defraud me of my good 
 name as an officer and a man. Some of mymaligners are not 
 likely to forget the brief and pithy sentences in which the 
 President expressed these sentiments. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln found it impossible to betray his friend for 
 the single reason that he had been loaded with the falsehoods 
 of a vile faction, which had only for the moment ceased its 
 treacherous warfare upon liim to begin it upon ine. And 
 when, in the fear that my continuance in place might embar- 
 rass him, I tendered my resignation, he again and again re- 
 fused to accept it, witli the assurance that when I laid down 
 my office it should not be with his consent. Solel}" in defer- 
 ence to his views I held it, though unprofitable and unpleasant 
 to me, until after his death, when I im})roved the first oppor- 
 tunity to retire. 
 
 It is perfectly true, as my assailants allege, that I did issue 
 an order to keep mischievous meddlers and malicious gossips — 
 even though they 'mir/ht be members of Congress — from nosing 
 and prying about the jail. I did not think it fit that some of 
 the persons wlio claimed this right slmuld be continually con- 
 federating and sweltering with negroes in my cells. On one 
 occasion I withheld a negro struuipel, connnitted to my cus- 
 
tody, from the arms of her paramour for several days, -which 
 proved a frightful scandal to the Military Governor and a 
 portion of the United States Senate, but which Mr. Lincoln 
 deemed a very proper thing to do. This is what this Horace 
 White calls "the hand of oppression laid heavily on the col- 
 ored people of the District." If he will divest himself of his 
 prejudices in favor of amalgamated society, he will see in this 
 only a benevolent attenipt to protect the morals of the ne- 
 groes. To be sure these unfortunate people have since be- 
 come " the wards of the nation," but they were then mine, 
 and as the object of all legal punishment is in part the refor- 
 mation of the criminal, I cannot understand upon what prin- 
 ciple of official duty I could have permitted the negroes under 
 my care to associate with such visitors as I have referred to. 
 White's individual antecedents are probably of no sort of 
 importance to anybody; but as a perfect type of a very infa- 
 mous class, he may deserve a word or two more. It so hap- 
 pened that the despicable faction which he, as a hireling, 
 served, gave Mr. Lincoln's administration about the only 
 serious trouble it ever had. He himself was the "On to 
 Richmond" correspondent of the Tribune, and the mischief he 
 did was precisely commensurate with his mean ability. Mr. 
 Lincoln gave one of the Tribune editors the lucrative oiEce of 
 postmaster at Chicago, and another the largest cotton per- 
 mit ever issued, (by the way, this was given to the only gen- 
 tleman I ever knew connected with this filthy sheet,) and the 
 Tribune office controlled a large amount of the executive patron- 
 age in Illinois; but this generous eifort to appease their 
 cormorant appetites only stimulated them to publish more 
 venomous and mendacious assaults upon him and his policy. 
 Depraved and insolent speculators in the blood and credit 
 of the country, they took up the war-cries of Wendell 
 Phillips, and denounced Abraham Lincoln as an "obstacle" 
 to the devilish progress of the radical scheme, not for re- 
 storing, but for dissevering the Union. They united them- 
 selves with those atrocious conspirators, who sought to depose 
 him from office and proclaim a dictator in the person of Fre- 
 mont or Ben. Wade. Because he was wise and merciful, 
 
they painted liim as weak and imbecile. Because he "waged 
 the war in no spirit of conquest or subjugation, but solely 
 for the supremacy of the Union and the Constitution," 
 they joined the infidels and red republicans and pronounced 
 him a Pharaoh, who would not "let the people go." On their 
 own theory they proceeded to make themselves his " lice 
 and flies"' — his intolerable curse and nuisance — to the very 
 hour of his death. Then they sang brutal and impious 
 hymns of praise to the Almighty for removing him who "had 
 been so clear in his great office," and putting in his room one 
 who despised the weak and temporizing thought of restoring 
 the peace and integrity of the country, but would constitute 
 himself a fatal scourge to the Avhole people of the South. They 
 licked their lips over his blood and thanked God that now they 
 might embroil their country still deeper, and like cowardly 
 wolves and hyenas, they might strip and tear and mangle a 
 defenceless and prostrate people. His death was a joyous event 
 to them, and for aught I know their incendiary calumnies 
 may have inspired his assassin. At all events, if Booth had 
 wrapped his bullet in a shred of the Chicago Tribune^ he 
 might have lodo-ed a vindication of his crime in the brain of 
 his victim. They had already assassinated, so far as in them 
 lay, the good name of that pure and noble victim — and he their 
 constant and habitual benefactor! They "stabbed him in a 
 friendly embrace," for they took his patronage Avithout stint, 
 and then stung his heart with cruel and persistent defama- 
 tion. 
 
 They embittered his mightiest toils and baulked his dearest 
 purposes when tlie destinies of the nation were trembling in 
 the balance, and his holiest ambition was to save it. Such arc 
 the men who, for the mere gratification of slandering some- 
 body, have chosen to depict me as a "hyena feasting upon the 
 dead body of Lincoln." I leave you to draw the parallel be- 
 tween us. No one knew Mr. Lincoln better, none loved him 
 more than I. My friendship did not begin Avith his oflicial 
 career. I Wiis near him in private life ; I was near him in all 
 the darkest hours of the late struggle; I was near him Avhen 
 llic fii-^t )-;it ional hope of peace dawned upon the land. In 
 
truth, I might say without ofiense to the people of his State 
 and mine, that I retained his confidence unshaken as he 
 retained my affections unbroken, until his own life was offered 
 up the last great sacrifice to domestic discord, on the very 
 threshold of peace, and in the actual blaze and glory of the 
 nation's triumph. 
 
 I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 WARD H. LAMON, 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 General Asahel Gridley, 
 
 Bloomington, Illinois. 
 
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