The Humbugs of the World by P. T. Barnum (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

exhausting an edition of sixty thousand in pamphlet form. And who was the author? A literary gentleman, who has devoted very many years of his life to mathematical and astronomical studies, and was at the time connected as an editor with the Sun⁠—one whose name has since been widely known in literature and politics⁠—Richard Adams Locke, Esq., then in his youth, and now in the decline of years. Mr. Locke, who still survives, is a native of the British Isles, and, at the time of his first connection with the New York press, was the only shorthand reporter in this city, where he laid the basis of a competency he now enjoys. Mr. Locke declares that his original object in writing the Moon story was to satirize some of the extravagances of Doctor Dick, and to make some astronomical suggestions which he felt diffident about offering seriously.

Whatever may have been his object, his hit was unrivaled; and for months the press of Christendom, but far more in Europe than here, teemed with it, until Sir John Herschel was actually compelled to come out with a denial over his own signature. In the meantime, it was printed and published in many languages, with superb illustrations. Mr. Endicott, the celebrated lithographer, some years ago had in his possession a splendid series of engravings, of extra folio size, got up in Italy, in the highest style of art, and illustrating the “Moon Hoax.”

Here, in New York, the public were, for a long time, divided on the subject, the vast majority believing, and a few grumpy customers rejecting the story. One day, Mr. Locke was introduced by a mutual friend at the door of the Sun office to a very grave old orthodox Quaker, who, in the calmest manner, went on to tell him all about the embarkation of Herschel’s apparatus at London, where he had seen it with his own eyes. Of course, Locke’s optics expanded somewhat while he listened to this remarkable statement, but he wisely kept his own counsel.

The discussions of the press were very rich; the Sun, of course, defending the affair as genuine, and others doubting it. The Mercantile Advertiser, the Albany Daily Advertiser, the New York Commercial Advertiser, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New York Spirit of ’76, the Sunday News, the United States Gazette, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and hosts of other papers came out with the most solemn acceptance and admiration of these “wonderful discoveries,” and were eclipsed in their approval only by the scientific journals abroad. The Evening Post, however, was decidedly skeptical, and took up the matter in this irreverent way:

“It is quite proper that the Sun should be the means of shedding so much light on the Moon. That there should be winged people in the moon does not strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a race of beings on the Earth; and that there does still exist such a race, rests on the evidence of that most veracious of voyagers and circumstantial of chroniclers, Peter Wilkins, whose celebrated work not only gives an account of the general appearance and habits of a most interesting tribe of flying Indians; but, also, of all those more delicate and engaging traits which the author was enabled to discover by reason of the conjugal relations he entered into with one of the females of the winged tribe.”

The moon-hoax had its day, and some of its glory still survives. Mr. Locke, its author, is now quietly residing in the beautiful little home of a friend on the Clove Road, Staten Island, and no doubt, as he gazes up at the evening luminary, often fancies that he sees a broad grin on the countenance of its only well-authenticated tenant, “the hoary solitary whom the criminal code of the nursery has banished thither for collecting fuel on the Sabbath-day.”

XXXIII

The miscegenation hoax⁠—​A great literary sell⁠—​Political humbugging⁠—​Tricks of the wire-pullers⁠—​Machinery employed to render the pamphlet notorious⁠—​Who were sold and how it was done.

Some persons say that “all is fair in politics.” Without agreeing with this doctrine, I nevertheless feel that the history of Ancient and Modern Humbugs would not be complete without a record of the last and one of the most successful of known literary hoaxes. This is the pamphlet entitled “Miscegenation,” which advocates the blending of the white and black races upon this continent, as a result not only inevitable from the freeing of the negro, but desirable as a means of creating a more perfect race of men than any now existing. This pamphlet is a clever political quiz; and was written by three young gentlemen of the World newspaper, namely. D. G. Croly, George Wakeman, and E. C. Howell.

The design of “Miscegenation” was exceedingly ambitious, and the machinery employed was probably among the most ingenious and audacious ever put into operation to procure the endorsement of absurd theories, and give the subject the widest notoriety. The object was to so make use of the prevailing ideas of the extremists of the Anti-Slavery party, as to induce them to accept doctrines which would be obnoxious to the great mass of the community, and which would, of course, be used in the political canvass which was to ensue. It was equally important that the “Democrats” should be made to believe that the pamphlet in question emanated from a “Republican” source. The idea was suggested by a discourse delivered by Mr. Theodore Tilton, at the Cooper Institute, before the American Anti-Slavery Society, in May 1863, on the negro, in which that distinguished orator argued, that in some future time the blood of the negro would form one of the mingled bloods of the great regenerated American nation. The scheme once conceived, it began immediately to be put into execution. The first stumbling-block was the name “amalgamation,” by which this fraternizing of the races had been always known. It was evident that a