180 Mutilations of Lincoln's Speech.

2

Wednesday, October 13, 1858.

The editor of the Galesburg Democrat has taken pains to compare the report of Lincoln's Galesburg speech as published in the Times with what he did say, with this result:
"We have taken the pains to go over the reports of the speeches carefully and note the material alterations – saying nothing of long passages, where the Times' reporter appeared to aim only at the sense, without giving the language – and find that they number ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY.

"We believe that an action for libel would hold against these villains, and they richly deserve the prosecution."

We find the last half hour of Lincoln's Alton speech – the portion where he pitches into Douglas the heaviest—most horribly garbled in the Times' report. There is scarcely a correctly reported paragraph in the last half of the speech! Many sentences are dropped out which were absolutely necessary for the sense; many are transposed so as to read wrong end first; many are made to read exactly opposite of the orator's intention, and the whole aim has been to blunt the keen edge of Mr. Lincoln's wit, to mar the beauty of his most eloquent passages, to destroy the force of his irresistible logic and break the blows that he rained down upon the head of his pro-slavery opponent, and to make him talk like a half-witted booby. And remember these mutilations are made under Mr. Douglas' own eye and direction by that wheat-rust colored, bandy-legged reporter he takes with him to do up his dirty work.—Chicago Press and Tribune.