The answers returned to some of the questions gave an illuminating idea
of the intelligence of those answering them. For instance, one of our
questions in a given examination was a request to name five of the New
England States. One competitor, obviously of foreign birth, answered:
"England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cork." His neighbor, who
had probably looked over his shoulder but who had North of Ireland
prejudices, made the same answer except that he substituted Belfast
for Cork. A request for a statement as to the life of Abraham Lincoln
elicited, among other less startling pieces of information, the fact
that many of the applicants thought that he was a general in the Civil
War; several thought that he was President of the Confederate States;
three thought he had been assassinated by Jefferson Davis, one by Thomas
Jefferson, one by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington
Booth--the last representing a memory of the fact that he had been shot
by a man named Booth, to whose surname the writer added the name with
which he was most familiar in connection therewith. A request to name
five of the States that seceded in 1861 received answers that included
almost every State in the Union.
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