AIf they genuinely believe it increased interest in chess beyond diehard connoisseurs, they're sadly mistaken.
Paul Morphy's life was ended in 1884. After 1865 (at the close of the Civil War, he was driven out of chess by former Northern associates who threatened “cutting” Morphy “so dead”. And why? other than Northern newspapers making up a sordid assortment of absurd rumors. While the North had Morphy supposedly on the staff of the Confederate General Bureaugard, Morphy was on his way to Havana and Paris! What started the ruckus what that the Richmond paper announced Morphy was to attend a Richmond Chess Club, then Northern extremists attached the words “Rebel” and “Bitter Secessionist” to the story, insinuating their plot to ruin him for his “Bad Move”. Accusations by the Yankees which are founded on no actual evidence and for lack of spinal fortitude, could never muster the courage to admit they made a Bad Mistake.) For Northern errors, in 1865, Morphy, to his face, was blackballed, ostracized, driven out from Chess. They rewrote his history, in coverup, claimed a “mystery malady of the mind” was to blame for the why Morphy disappeared. Refusing to admit their bad judgment, their hateful, petty rumors were entirely to blame for the ruin of Morphy's chess career.
Then, Morphy was mystified, vilified and written about as if only a mere "ghost," literally. Right up until the end of his life, sporadic reports still surfaced amidst a Northern campaign of defamation in news columns, false reports of his death, again and again, false tales of his admission to an asylum, fully unfounded and in spite of the defamation, visitors to New Orleans still reported encounters with Morphy's masterful play during private sessions, giving odds of a knight and still winning. Reported in “good health” and “independent circumstances”.
The World Expo would not come to New Orleans until after Paul Morphy was dead. The big national and international events steered far away from the home town of the Bright and Shining Son of the South, Paul Morphy... the North couldn't allow the spotlight shine on a Southerner, after all, upon whom all the blame for evil is heaped.
Why couldn't they have brought the World Expo to New Orleans in 1880 or 1875 for that matter, to draw the media and people of the world, to see Mr. Morphy on the streets of New Orleans and to verify he was in no ‘insane asylum” as his friends, associates, family, even himself personally, had vouched so many times in Newspapers. No? Not possible?
The two players, Steinitz and Zukertort, salivating as though in a cat fight over the world title, both visit New Orleans, 1882 and 1884, just prior to the death of Mr. Morphy at the YOUNG age of 47. Now, Mr. Morphy all this time has been being reported from 1870s-1880s in good health, of sound mind and body, and could be seen daily on Canal street! Why not bring the people there for Steinitz and Zukertort to duke it out while Morphy yet lives and allow the throng of people, to judge for themselves... since so many reports were being made of the matter.
Zukertort visited in April 1884 and Paul Morphy death occurs on July 10, 1884, but this is published, just weeks before in The Tennessean Nashville, Tennessee Monday, June 23, 1884 — A letter from Cincinnati says: “Yes, I guess Zukertort is very sore over my comparison. Do you know my little article so excited him, that he came all the way from New Orleans to show us how much better than Morphy he is? Bah! It makes me laugh, to think how we stirred up the menagerie.”
After the death of Morphy, Steinitz also couldn't get his fill of bashing, berating and vilification of Paul Morphy. Steinitz joined in on the Northern Yankee campaign to defame Paul Morphy... and as though Karma herself had visited the very fate of Steinitz to repay a lifetime of misdeeds, Steinitz DID ACTUALLY go into an Asylum!
Says, The Age Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Saturday, June 19, 1897—“The happiness of “the Bohemian Caesar,” as Steinitz fondly called himself, was not unalloyed. Paul Morphy was his bête noire. He attempted to undermine the pedestal upon which Morphy's glory is everlastingly established. But he did not succeed. If Blackburne makes a brilliant combination, he calls it a “bit of Morphy.” But no one ever heard anybody call a brilliant finish a bit of Steinitz…”
Suspicion Still Surrounds Steinitz 19 Jun 1897, Sat The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) Newspapers.com
The Times Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Sunday, January 11, 1885 — The Chess Board. — Herr Steinitz's long-looked for “International Chess Magazine” is now before the public and we are glad to find its “Introduction” that it has earned its title by having subscribers in almost every country in the world. Its first article is on “Paul Morphy and the play of his time,” the burden of which is that Mr. Morphy, through the champion of his era, was, in the highest sense of the chess mastership of to-day, neither original, correct nor brilliant. Let us go over the counts separately.
In proof that Morphy was not an original player Herr von der Lasa is cited as saying that he (Morphy) had made no inventions in the openings. Well, who, in the strict sense of the term has invented anything? The idea of 1. P to K4, P to K4 2. P to K B 4, P x P, 3. P to Q 4, Q checks, 4. K to K 2 has come down to us from the Middle Ages (see our report of April 25, 1880,) and yet, with a Q Kt attachment, it now poses as the “Steinitz Gambit,” and is considered by its “author” as the most “original” opening in chess. Lack of space, we presume, alone prevented Mr. Steinitz from also quoting Von der Lasa's more important opinion, namely, that Paul Morphy was the greatest practical chess genius the world had ever seen!
Next, Mr. Morphy is declared to be not very correct and some little errors are magnified to support this assertion. Thus Herr Steinitz asks, “What would be said nowadays if any first-class player would compromise his game so early in the opening to the extent of losing a piece for two pawns on the twelfth move?” Well, we don't remember just now what it was we said on hearing that a distinguished chess champion in the Vienna tournament was virtually beaten on the tenth move by Dr. Zukertort and also beaten in the same tourney by Mr. Ware, to whom Morphy successfully gave the odds of knight! and who hasn't visibly improved since that time. Again, Mr. Steinitz says: “In the second game (with Anderssen) Morphy is a clear rook ahead on the twenty-third move, in consequence of unsound sacrifices. Morphy fails to take advantage of the position and allows his adversary to escape with a draw.” On looking for the supposed burly blundering we discovered that Morphy was indeed a rook ahead at that particular moment, but that he was, in consequence of Anderssen's “unsound sacrifices,” in a critical position and that winning was, to say the least, a very delicate question to decide at the moment. All of which apparently necessary explanation was also, no doubt, crowded out by Mr. Steinitz for lack of room. Of course, the learned critic, who was smashed up in almost the very opening of his own gambit by Englisch and Tschigorin in two of those “brilliant games of the London Congress,” would have avoided such a mistake.
Then, again, Mr. Morphy is decided not to be brilliant in a match sense. In the first place Steinitz appears to give the term brilliant a peculiarly limited signification and under it narrows down Morphy's brilliant match games to two, and even these are not very brilliant in his opinion. As appreciation of brilliancy is purely a matter of taste we have no fault to find with his opinion and can only add that in this connection he informs an ignorant chess world that the celebrated Morphy-Paulsen game, wherein the former so wonderfully sacrificed his queen, was not “as commonly supposed,” a match game, but a “casual, off-hand encounter.” The error of supposing it a match game, however, is very pardonable, for the players themselves labored under this error, also the spectators, and the delusion was carried to such an extent that the editor of the book of the First American Chess Congress blindly printed it on page 252 as the sixth game of the Morphy-Paulsen match!
There are also minor points in the article which betray ignorance of the commonest facts in Morphy literature. Thus it is said on page 5 that the preliminary Morphy-Harrwitz game “is not recorded at all;” whereas, in point of fact, the aforesaid game has been printed in almost every edition of Morphy's games (except Lowenthal's) for the last quarter of a century!
Herr Steinitz, however, admires a few points in Morphy's game which dimly resemble his own. “Really,” said a learned serpent, “the eagle is a very unscientific creature. I can't bear to have it highly thought of. Its flying quite disgust me, for I long ago demonstrated that it couldn't be safely done! Yet there are some points about its walk I quite admire, and I think that if it had its wings clipped and its legs pared I could school it into a highly respectable crawl.”
Steinitz Envy and Vindictive Remarks 23 Nov 1884, Sun The Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com
