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Editor's Easy Chair

By George William Curtis

The experience of the last month has but taught us afresh how inaccurate we all are in telling what we know. Every body has observed how difficult it is for a man to repeat precisely what he hears, to describe exactly what he sees: and whoever has made a speech and been reported in the newspapers knows what extraordinary things he has been made to say.

But at the present time the whole country is thrown into high excitement, fortunes are won and lost, the wildest public enthusiasm or depression is displayed, simply because some man guesses, another infers, and a third declares, that what is possible and agreeable is therefore probable and therefore true.

Yet every man in his senses ought to be able to see just where the slip is. Thus we heard on a certain Sunday morning, officially, that certain battles had been fought in the Southwest. They were parts of a movement which was to culminate in the capture of Vicksburg. Now we were all so ardently anxious that Vicksburg should be taken, that it was very sure somebody would guess, or infer, or say that it was taken. So on the same Sunday, in the evening, came the extra, which every body might have prophesied, with its tremendous heading, “Vicksburg ours!” How many people, instructed by the experience of the war, believed the heading? How many did not instantly run their eyes along the columns to see that the morning news was confirmed, and that Mr. Fuller, in Memphis, said the flag waved over Vicksburg. That was all. That was the sole reason for announcing that Vicksburg was ours. Somebody thought he heard the cannonading stop. Somebody told Mr. Fuller that somebody thought be heard the cannonading stop. Somebody in Cleveland said that Mr. Fuller said that the Stars and Stripes floated over Vicksburg. And although we had all had our experience from the first Bull Run to the last Fredericksburg to teach us, we shouted victory, and asked in long columns of grave writing, “What next?”

Apparently there was no editor who had the courage to say, “Mr. Fuller, in Memphis, says that he thinks Vicksburg is taken. If Mr. Fuller had any certain information he would not express it as his opinion. If he knew that we had it he would say how be knew. And as the capture was sure to he reported after the previous accounts, we ought to say to our readers that there is no other ground for believing Vicksburg to be ours than that General Grant bas invested it.” No one said it. It was announced that the news was not indeed official, but the confirmation would doubtless arrive immediately. On Monday evening came Admiral Porter’s dispatch. He said that Haines’s Bluff was taken! Hurrah! That the fortifications were destroyed. Hi–hi! Porter put his name to that. There was no mistake there at least. To-morrow, he added, Grant will doubtless have the city. Well, let us hope so. But history is what we want, not prophecy. On Tuesday evening comes General Hurlbut’s dispatch inclosing ordnance officer Lyford’s of Grant’s army. It was dated two days after Porter’s. “I think we shall have the place to-morrow.” “If we take Vicksburg we shall take,” etc. In the same papers that published this were other surmises–”that another line of defenses has been discovered in the rear of Vicksburg”–“that the rebels may have made themselves so strong in field-works behind the city as to render some countervailing operations of like kind necessary before General Grant can venture,” etc.

By this time, of course, public confidence broke down, and people, began to be foolishly gloomy. Gold, which had fallen four or five per cent., rose again. The air was full of sinister rumors. And yet the absurdity of all rumors was conspicuous in the morning dispatches from Washington published side by side in the same paper. One said: “Dispatches from General Grant, dated the 22d, have been received to-day fully confirming,” etc. The next said, also from Washington upon the same day: “It is not believed that General Grant himself has recently sent any telegrams to the Government.” No ingenuity could invent completer contradictions than appeared in every statement–the ludicrous fact being that all the while every body knew exactly what was inference and what was fact, and yet were so in love with the big letters which certified what they wished to believe, that they had not the heart to confess that they had no right to believe it.

It is past now, but the moral is as fresh as ever. If we will learn that what “is said,” and what “is understood” is not known, but merely guessed, and that our own guessing is as good as any body’s, we shall save ourselves a great deal of pain and trouble.

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SEE ALSO: Mass media and the war; Siege, 1863; Vicksburg (Miss.)

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