Editing or writing (or even teaching) works meant for children has always been a balancing act, as other adults differ on what they feel is suitable and appropriate for young readers. It was an even more complex act in the early 19th-century United States, then loudly disuniting over slavery. Editors especially had a tough time, trying to keep both Northern and Southern subscribers happy. Subscribers to Robert Merry’s Museum were a lively bunch proud of where they were from and liable to fly into tantrums over insults to their regions; in fact, they “pre-fought” the Civil War in the hugely popular letters column. (The Southerners lost.) Thus, when the editor of the Museum made some extremely poor choices in 1856, Henry Clarke Wright—a fervent abolitionist—took him to task in a letter published in The Liberator. “ ‘Merry’s Museum’ the Handmaid of Slavery” is a diatribe against editorial decisions, a certain popular writer for children, and—maybe—the results of the Presidential election of 1856.

The spark was a riddle in the October 1856 issue of Merry’s Museum. At that time, the puzzle column often included a hieroglyphic rebus consisting of white figures on a black background. The October issue ended with the following riddle from “Natchez” as puzzle number 197: “Why is our Hieroglyphical Rebus like the bright side of slavery?” [p. 128] The answer was revealed in the November 1856 issue: “A little light on a dark field.” [p. 159]

The November issue also included a letter from “Black-Eyed Lillie” in the popular letters column: “My mother takes the Museum. I like it very much. I love to read the Chat, and think the ‘Famous Farm’ a very good story. I should like to know the reason of the battle now raging among your subscribers. I am only eight years old.” [p. 158] (The “battle now raging” involved an algebra problem that began a flame war just ending.)

“Black-Eyed Lillie” earned another mention in the letters column in January 1857. The editor commented, “ ‘Black-Eyed Lillie.’ must allow us to judge what is best for us to publish, and what to reject. There are some questions, which, if once admitted into our discussions, would exclude all others, and lead to a worse war than that from which Aunt Sue has just extricated us.” [p. 30] That’s the last mention of “Black-Eyed Lillie” or her letters, until Wright’s letter to the Liberator.

At a time when sectionalism was threatening the nation, ensuring that subscribers North and South didn’t feel slighted was complicated. Slavery was barely mentioned in the articles or stories published in the Museum. But the editor—Robert Newton Stearns or Stephen Allen—made some strange editing choices. During a time when slavery was an inflammatory subject, why include the riddle to begin with? In the column in which the editor takes “Black-Eyed Lillie” to task on the subject of a question which “would … lead to a worse war” appears a long letter in which a teenager describes shooting an abolitionist in effigy. The editor blanked out the abolitionist’s name, which led a Southerner to attempt again and again to learn it. Why include the original letter—so badly edited—especially since space in the letters column was notoriously limited and subscribers knew that their letters might not be printed at all? Why not simply comment on the non-inflammatory portion of the letter, as was done with “Black-Eyed Lillie”?

Wright’s rant against the Museum was a rant against its editor, which in 1856 was not Samuel Griswold Goodrich, though he had founded the magazine. But Goodrich comes under fire, possibly for a reason Wright doesn’t mention. The month the original riddle was published in the Museum, Goodrich published a piece in the New York Evening Post advocating not abolition, but the containment of slavery to the current slave states. In “Who Are the Aggressors?” [15 October 1856; p. 1], Goodrich asserts that slavery is vile, but that “in no country, anywhere, in any age, has it ever been so mildly administered, so much softened by a general feeling of kindness and humanity. … We make no war on slavery where it is established. Believing, as we do, that it has grown and increased by unconstitutional aggression, we still submit to it as it is. We accept it as sheltered by the compromise of the constitution. Within this boundary it is sacred. We desire to leave it, with all its good and evil, to those who are interested in it and responsible for it.”

Not what Wright would have been happy to read. Goodrich was campaigning for John C. Frémont, an anti-slavery candidate for President. By the time Wright wrote his letter to the Liberator, James Buchanan—who felt that slavery had to be protected, because it was constitutional—had been elected.

All this appears to come together in Wright’s enraged epistle. With an added layer: a family tree at ancestry.com hints that “Black-Eyed Lillie” and her brother could have been related to Wright by marriage. Wright married Elizabeth LeBreton Stickney, widow of Peter Stickney and mother of three. The oldest was Peter Le Breton Stickney—Wright’s stepson—who married Mary Rhea and fathered two children about the age of the ones Wright mentions: Sarah Higginson Astley Stickney, born in 1849, and Edward Rhea Stickney, born in 1847. Perhaps they were “Black-Eyed Lillie” and her brother. The “family” formed by the subscribers and editors of the Museum has some unexpected branches.

Presented here is only the part of Wright’s letter pertaining to the Museum.