Daily national Democrat., 1860-07-13
Too much Humbugging of Posterity.


similar; so as to give pCsterity an idea Of how
the old one looked The next thing will be
to rebuild other portions of the house, and
others again, and finally the venerable old
mansion will be transformed into an entirely
new concern This new concern will become
ancient in the lapse of time, the story of its
reconstruction be forgotten or overlooked,
and posterity will gaze upon the mouldering
ruins as those of the identical residence ofthe
immortal Washington. Thus will most
sacred sentiment lie trihed with, and future
generations be as badly fooled as the lady
who shed copious tears year or two ago,
over an ice-house at Mount Vernon, thinking
it the tomb Of the Father of His Country. 1t
would be better, we should think, to let the
mansion stand-protect it as much as posi-
ble from the elements, but suffer it to mellow
with the inevitable decay ,hat must come
upon it-leave the old porch where the hero
was wont to tread with stately step, to such
treatment as time would give, and play no
humbug upon posterity. Instead of rebuild
ing the mansion. let an exact picture Of it be
takea and carefully preserved at the National
Capital. Then. in after years, as the appre-
eiatve visitor gazes upon the crumbling edi-
fee, he will love to note each relic of the
past, and compare the fading or the falling
structure with what it was when Art assum
ed the sacred task of its preservation upon
canvass Let not what we may call, for the
want of Of a better term, the Fictitious spirit
Cf the age make national memorials and
national relics for us, to order, as it makes
splendid marble rails of plaster, finely grain.
ed oakea doors Of pine, and imposing granite
pillars of ,oood covered with paint and
sprnkled with sand Let US have the genu-
inc relics, the genuine ruins, the genuine me-
MORALS of every character or let US have
nothing. Out upon these base limitations
Every sincere and earnest man, every lover
of the truth cannot but regi ct that SO many
false impressions have been made upon sue
ceeding times by the carelessness or the ma
lignty or the selfshness or the varied per-
sonal, religious and political motives of pre-
cedng generations. There are falsifcations
of history, which arise from a thousand diff
ferent causes-many of which are about of
the same character as the notion of building
a Lran-new house and designating it, for the
benefit of after times as the residence of the
Father of his Country.
Rnt - rostor;,,, L., l.
tie how it is done, whether from careessness,
recklessness, misconcepton of the fitness of
things, malicious intention or from any
other motive. 1t is the business of every
sincere man to see that the history of his own
times is not falsi6ed, and to protest against
everything which may have that tendency.
If statue of some great man, who has de-
served well of his country is erected to be
gazed upon and reverenced by coming gene
rations, and it does not look like the man it
pretends to represent, let it be knocked down
and smashed to pieces. What is the use of
sculpturing out contemplate lie and per-
petuatng it? Let the base counterfeit
perish. When posterity look upon what
| they are told is the countenance of Webster.
in the name of God let it be Webster, and
not the image of Fejee Islander. The idea
of practising upon posterity, as the third rate
illustrated newspaper humbugger practices
upon his subscribers by giving them a | ke-
| ness of Monroe Edwards for the Duke of
Wellington and of Murrel for Kossuth or
Garibadi, is disgusting. Let the age, its
great men, and its great deeds, be faithfully
represented
How much there has been of the grossest
Justification of history-speaking of history
as simply the general sum of events that have
occurred, the world will never know but
every dilgent seareher into the less familiar
records of the past, those materials upon
which the prevalent written histories are
built, will be surprised to find how manifest
ly false are many of the most widely received
notions that are entertained of the men and
things of preceding times. He will find that
some heroic deed, which filled his young
mind with the glow of an almost ecstatic en-
thusiasm, and came down to him with all the
gravity of historical narration, is but fable
of some long dead poet or popular tradi.
ton so poorly substantiated as to be unwor.
thy of credit Some writer has used it to
adorn his story and to give it interest A
very worthy motive, truly. He will find,
too, and with a pang, that the names of both
men and women have been consigned to in-
fanny, on the written and the printed page,
and so handed down from generation to gen.
GRAFTON, upon testimony which would not
have received a moments consideration in
any decent court of justice, whether ancient
or modern. The palpable slander of some
base enemy has been accepted as the truth
and inwoyen into history Names have been
confounded, and the honest man made to take
the credit through all time, of the rogue's
raseality, while some woman is everlastingly
hated for what she never dreamed of doing
and because she happened to have some
namesake who was not as good as she should
have BEEN Now, the poetess of the Isles of
Greece, the burning Sappho," who so "loved
and sung" for long, long period after her
death, hundreds of years, bore the stigma Of
deeds too abhorrent to be named. 1t was
discovered, at last, bya proper comparison of
records in their chronological order, that the
Sappho of infamous LesJian lore memory was
not the Poetess but an altogether different
being. Yet even to this day is the one con-
founded with tho otber and ,Loro - NJ, lol,,