troduction? The same questions may be asked as to what took place in the office of the New York Sun, supposing the "editing" to have been done there. Editing implies design. An editor may correct errors, expunge objectionable matter, shorten what is too long to print in full. But why should the editor of the Sun, any more than the sender of the copy of The Duty Letter, think it necessary to substitute his own introduction (and what an introduction!) for what General Lee had already written; or to supply an introduction which General Lee did not write—being himself, in either case, guilty of literary forgery? It is simply inconceivable. It is far easier to believe that the whole letter is a forgery, for which, as we shall see, plausible motives can be suggested, than to believe that the first two sentences are a forgery, for whose fabrication it is impossible to suggest any motive whatever. The first answer, then, to "The Editorial Emendation Theory" is that it rests upon a gratuitous assumption, so incredible as to be negligible.
(2.) But conceding, for the sake of argument merely, that the first two sentences of The Duty Letter should be stricken out, as added in "editing," will this remove all the difficulties which render its authenticity doubtful? I think it can be shown, without the first two sentences, that The Duty Letter is a forgery. The reasons are as follows:
(a.) Neither the original of The Duty Letter, nor any copy of it (General Lee copied, in his own hand, many of his letters), has been found among the papers of General Lee. The Sun printed from a copy. It did not profess to have the original.
(b.) General Custis Lee does not remember that he ever received such a letter. Could he forget it, when half of it was devoted to the striking anecdote of the "Dark Day," and the devotion to duty of the "old Puritan"—matters which would impress the imagination, and sink deep in the memory, of a brilliant young cadet, not yet twenty-one? And the occasion, when he wrote to his father three letters on three successive days, could he forget that?
(c.) Shortly after its publication in Richmond, in December, 1864, The Duty Letter was publicly repudiated and pro-
