The Naivete of a Child

• Lauren B
• 0
• on Oct 20, 2022

This week, one of the letters I read was Grace Bedell to Abraham Lincoln and I honestly loved it so much. What struck me was how she doesn’t fully realize the depths of what it means to not have the ability to vote, she considers herself to have so much power. A belief she’s able to hold onto solely due to her childlike naivete. Grace is quite spunky, something you most likely associated with children now, not the children in the early 1860s. She tells the future president, “if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them [her brothers] to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.” This eleven year old girl just called a widely respected and honored politician thin, in a bad way. During this time women were more commonly demure and feminine. Choosing to refrain from mentioning their own opinions or hiding them in between compliments or phrases with hidden meaning. Grace didn’t do any of that, she was upfront and gave a clear reason why she believed Lincoln should grow a beard the way that only a child could. There was no part of her that thought she should be more polite or that she was being rude by insulting a presidential nominee. Instead all she was thinking was how she could help Lincoln win the election, to her this meant growing a beard because if he did she could convince the rest of her family to vote for him. It didn’t occur to her how she could come across to him or if he would even take her seriously and not as a joke. She was naively optimistic, choosing to believe the best because that was all she ever did as a child. Her age also allowed her to forget what it meant to be a girl or woman growing up in that time period. They didn’t have any true power of their own, all their power came through the men in their lives. This was no different from Grace and yet she didn’t realize she had no power, she thought that she could do anything. She remarks to Lincoln that, “My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can.” She’s aware of what’s going on in her life and around her that the men in her family just aren’t getting. But instead of knowing everything and the impact it can have on you she has the childlike hope and innocence  that allows her to almost ignore it. She believes that she has power therefore it doesn’t matter if she can vote because she’ll persuade others to vote for Lincoln. She knows that she has the proven ability to convince others of who they should vote for. She’s proud of this, happy to show it off Lincoln not in a bragging way that an adult or someone that wants to get on the politician’s good side would but with the childlike innocence of wanting to show someone important something you can do. Her naivete allowed her to look at the world in a different way and see things that others don’t care about, in that same vein her age also allows her to feel differently about heated topics. Her age gives her power that is simply lost on adults, hope and untainted happiness. 

Grace’s attitude also reminds me of Japanese-American children in internment camps in the 1940s. Many of those children were in the dark about why they were in the camps, they truly believed it was done so the government could keep them safe not because the government hated anyone with Japanese descent. Similar to Grace these kids still, “wrote letters, played games, and practiced martial arts,” (Japanese American Incarceration Camp Research Guide). In that way they were able to ignore and yet understand what was going on around them. They knew they were in internment camps but didn’t fully understand why, part of their lives still continued as normal. Their age gave them something the adults just couldn’t have. The innocence not to fully understand the depths of what was happening around them. They could live their lives generally the same, unknowing of what was truly going on while adults had to face the truth everyday, they didn’t have any power to protect themselves.