other example of the mendacity of our enemies, and how they publish things that are utterly false. There seems to have been no object in this publication but to amuse the people. So far, it is a harmless deception, yet the cause of truth needs this refutation."[1]
This Repudiation Letter, from "a source entitled to know," administers a knock-out blow to The Duty Letter. Unfortunately it lay hidden in the files of the Sentinel for nearly half a century, when it was discovered, in 1913, in a search made on my behalf, by Louis K. Gould, Esq., Counselor at Law, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to whom I am indebted for the discovery of the original publication of The Duty Letter in the New York Sun. I can but think that if this Repudiation Letter had been known to the early biographers of General Lee, The Duty Letter would never have attained its vogue and celebrity.
IV.
But who was "the source entitled to know," from whom the Sentinel received the Repudiation Letter? Obviously someone very near to General Lee. Never did a letter speak more ex cathedra; and every fact stated in it is correct. More than this, whoever wrote this letter had doubtless consulted with General Lee (there was ample time during the two weeks after its first publication in the Whig), for who but General Lee would know that he never dated any of his letters "Arlington House" (though his father-in-law, G. W. Parke Custis, did), or that he had never been in New Mexico? And, without authority from General Lee, who would have dared to denounce publicly, as "utterly false," a letter like The Duty Letter, which many still refuse to believe spurious, and esteem worthy of the South's great hero?
- ↑ I am indebted for a copy of The Duty Letter as it appeared in the Whig and Sentinel, and of the Repudiation Letter as it appeared in the Sentinel, to Mr. H. R. McIlwaine, the courteous and efficient Librarian of the Virginia State Library, Richmond, Va. This is only a small part of the cheerful and unremunerated service rendered by the Virginia State Library in my quest for information concerning The Duty Letter, for all of which I owe thanks to Mr. McIlwaine and to his assistants.
