Article January 8, 1927 Issue

My attention has been drawn to a letter in the Union of...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts,—Springfield

Union

My attention has been drawn to a letter in the Union of August 25, in which a gentleman from Haverhill accused Albert F. Gilmore, editor of The Christian Science Journal, of misquoting a letter from President Lincoln. Presumably, the writer from Haverhill referred to an address by Mr. Gilmore at a meeting of the Maine W. C. T. U., which was reported in The Christian Science Monitor of August 20. Thus it is to be observed that what Mr. Gilmore actually quoted, and quoted correctly, was not a letter from President Lincoln, but was an oral statement by him to Chaplain James B. Merwin of the United States Army, which the latter preserved and recorded.

The following is what President Lincoln said in the afternoon of the day when he was assassinated: "Merwin, with the help of the people, we have cleaned up a colossal job. Slavery is abolished. After reconstruction, the next great question will be the overthrow and abolition of the liquor traffic; and you know, Merwin, that my head and my heart and my hand and my pulse will go into that work. Less than a quarter of a century ago I predicted that the time would come when there would be neither a slave nor a drunkard in the land. I have lived to see, thank God, one of those prophecies fulfilled. I hope to see the other realized."

This quotation is taken from a book entitled "Lincoln and Prohibition," by Charles T. White, formerly political news editor of the New York Tribune, and formerly tax commissioner of New York city.

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