Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/149
THE FORGED LETTER OF GENERAL LEE. 145
should exhort their sons to follow when another day of judg- ment comes round! "Do you duty, like the old Puritan," ex- claims the pseudo-parent in closing his letter, "You cannot do more."
The real General Lee, no doubt, is too busy to trouble him- self with such silly inventions, and has no time to contradict them; but this is not the first pretended letter "picked up at Arlington House"; it may not be the last; and Virginian news- papers ought to be careful of his fame, even in the smallest matters, and not suffer a Yankee's parts of speech to be fathered upon him.
(The Richmond Times, Wednesday, December 19, 1900, p. 8.)
THE LETTER SPURIOUS. DR. J. WILLIAM JONES MAKES OUT A GOOD CASE FOR His SIDE.
Editor of The Times:
SIR, I see that you have recently reproduced a letter which
went the rounds of the papers during the "War between the States," and has been published in several books, purporting to be from Colonel R. E. Lee at Arlington, to his son Custis, at West Point.
I published in the University Monthly, New York, in March, 1872, the following article which, I think, shows conclusively that the letter is spurious :
GENERAL LEE'S LETTER To His SON.
"The famous letter purporting to be from General Lee, at Arlington, to his son Custis, at West Point, is unmistakably spurious. This letter, which is published in the November num- ber of the University Monthly, has long passed current as giving the key-note of the life of the great chieftain.
"It has been very extensively copied, and appears in a num- ber of books about the war. It seems a pity to spoil all that
