cember 16, 1864.[1] But. in its next issue, Tuesday, December 20, the Sentinel confesses that it was imposed on, and denounces the letter as a "Yankee Forgery,"[2] and prints as its authority a letter, unsigned, but described as "from a source entitled to know." This letter which we shall call the Repudiation Letter, is as follows:
"I have read the published letter, said to have been written by General R. E. Lee. There is nothing about it that can be recognized as genuine by anyone familiar with his style. He never dated any of his letters Arlington House. In April, 1852, he never had belonged to any regiment, and could not, therefore, have been about to search for it in New Mexico. He was transferred to the Cavalry in 1855, and had previously been in the Engineer Corps. In the spring of 1852, he was engaged in the construction of the Fort at Sellers Point Flats (near Baltimore), and preparing to go to West Point, as Superintendent of the Military Academy there. He has never been to New Mexico. This plain statement of facts is made to furnish an-
- ↑ The laudatory comment is as follows: "The habit of publishing private letters, without their owners' consent, merely because they have chanced to fall into the hands of some unworthy person, is so much to be condemned that we are always reluctant to treat as public what has thus become so. The following letter we shall be pardoned, we hope, for making an exceptional case. It is so excellent a letter, and so full of admirable sentiments, that every father in the Confederacy will be most happy, if his sons shall consider it as addressed specially to themselves. In the hope that it will be thus received, and thus become universally profitable, we throw ourselves upon the author's indulgence for our readers' pleasure and benefit."
- ↑ The Sentinel's confession of imposition is as follows: "We have received the following from a source entitled to know, in reference to the letter imputed to General Lee, which lately appeared in this paper, into which it had been copied from a United States print. It seems that it was a Yankee forgery. In this characteristic act, the Yankees, while illustrating their own depravity, paid the only tribute of which they were capable to General Lee's worth. They knew that to give semblance and credibility to the fraud, it was necessary to fill the letter with elevated sentiments, borrowed where they could find them. The defects of style they took care to guard against, by pleading haste of composition. We are often deceived by forgeries of this sort, whether in the manufactured correspondence which is a part of the 'enterprise' of the Northern journalism, or in the clumsy imitations which are occasionally ventured upon by such Confederate newspapers as are willing to copy after such teachers. A glance usually suffices to detect the trick. But in the instance to which we are now referring, in common with many other Confederate journals, we were imposed upon."
