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in procuring Confederate books, documents, &c., and with best wishes for your health and happiness, I beg leave to subscribe myself,
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Chateau D'Eu, Seine Inferieure, October 14th, 1876.
Rev. J. Wm. Jones,
Secretary Southern Historical Society:
Sir — I hasten to thank you for your letter of September 25th, and for the certificate of my membership in the Southern Historical Society.
I beg you to convey the expression of my gratitude to the members of your Executive Committee, who, inspired with the most liberal spirit, have opened their doors to me. As you say, you cannot expect to win me over to the
lost cause: right or wrong, my sympathies with the
Federal cause can be at least openly avowed, because I did not wait for the success of that cause to profess them in a practical way, for they induced me to join the
Northern army not when it was elated by victory, but shortly after
Bull Run.
If I had not been animated by those convictions, I would never have taken a part in the war, and consequently neither attempted to relate its history nor solicited the honor of becoming a member of your Society.
I have strongly expressed these opinions on the political causes of the war at the begining of my work.
It is natural that Southerners should object to these, should find my judgment harsh and unjust.
In that great quarrel, I can no more expect to please the side against which I fought, than you can hope to persuade me that I was wrong in joining the Federal armies.
But that vexed question once settled, I have entered into the real part of my work with the sincere wish to relate the military events without the slightest partiality, and if I can, in that respect, help the South to obtain that fair hearing at the bar of history, which, as you say, is all that she now asks, I shall do it most cheerfully.
You ask leave to publish my former letter.
Although I have kept no minute of it, as it was quite private, I do not think that there is anything in it which would not be fit for publication.
In fact the ideas which I expressed in that letter are those which will inspire the conclusion of my work if I live long enough to come to that point: therefore I cheerfully aquiesce in your request.
Believe me sir, yours truly,
I have received your monthly publications and two bound ones — the first containing several numbers bound together, and the other on the “Treatment of prisoners.”
I shall study the later carefully, for you cannot ignore that the treatment of the Federal prisoners at Andersonville is considered generally, and I fear justly, as a dark spot on the page of the Southern annals.
Anything which would contribute to bring the truth forward on that subject will be gratefully received.
