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His intimate friend, Colonel R. H. Dulaney, of Loudoun county, Virginia, writes: “Of course, we cannot tell what Lewis said to the Federal officer when captured.
He might have regretted the necessity of the war, but he would have denied every principle he had held during his life if what General Doubleday says were true.”
His friend, General Wm. H. Payne, of Warrenton, Virginia, and his old staff officer, Major Peyton Randolph, are equally emphatic in denying the moral possibility of Armistead's using any such language, when himself.
We have a letter from Colonel R. W. Martin, of Pittsylvania county, who was wounded at General Armistead's side, who had frequent conversation with Federal officers who ministered to Armistead in his last moments, and who not only heard nothing of this recantation, but indignantly denies its possibility, saying: “General Armistead was no hypocrite, he could not have felt that he was sinning against his country, and have been the brave and gallant defender of the cause that he was — for no life lost during the struggle was more freely and willingly sacrificed for principle than was his.”
Charles H. Barnes, in his History of the Philadelphia brigade, (pp. 190-192,) gives an appreciative notice of General Armistead's gallantry, and death, but puts no such words into his mouth, nor do any of the other numerous writers on Gettysburg, so far as we have seen.
But in addition to this negative testimony, we submit the following correspondence, which explains itself, and settles the question beyond peradventure:
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