that “London was altogether beside itself on one point, in especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln.  Behind this it placed another demon, if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward.  In regard to these two men English society seemed demented.  Defense was useless:  explanation was vain.  One could only let the passion exhaust itself.  One’s best friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln’s brutality and Seward’s ferocity became a dogma of popular faith.”

Adams relates further that the last time he saw Thackeray at Christmas of 1863 they spoke of their mutual friend Mrs. Frank Hampton of South Carolina, whom Thackeray had portrayed as Ethel Newcome, and who had recently passed away from life.  Thackeray had read in the British papers that her parents had been prevented by the Federal soldiers from passing through the lines to see her on her deathbed.  Adams writes that

in speaking of it Thackeray’s voice trembled and his eyes filled with tears.  The coarse cruelty of Lincoln and his hirelings was notorious.  He never doubted that the Federals made a business of harrowing the tenderest feelings of women—­particularly of women—­in order to punish their opponents.  On quite insufficient evidence he burst into reproach.  Had he (Adams) carried in his pocket the proofs that the reproach was unjust he would have gained nothing by showing them.  At that moment Thackeray, and all London society with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotions; for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what were they?

Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful politician, Thurlow Weed, and our most able constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, and later our most brilliant orator, Henry Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of bringing the British people to their senses and correcting British opinion, but all to little purpose.  Gettysburg and Vicksburg did far more toward modifying that opinion than the persuasiveness of Weed, the logic of Evarts, or the eloquence of Beecher, and it took Chattanooga, the March to the Sea, and Appomattox to dispel the illusion entirely.

Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the English in 1862.  The conception prevailing in England and in this country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature.  I have had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years.  I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials, his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the castle and forest at Wilhelmshoehe.  With all this experience, with all this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the British and American press of today.