Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

After such an array of the concessions against him quoted and referred to above, it is worth while to repeat the statement about those authors that is made in the third paragraph of this letter, and to add that every one of them is shown, in his book quoted or referred to, to be an ardent admirer of Lincoln and a partisan of the North against the South. To reconcile their concessions with their admiration is not the duty of the writer of this letter. There are some unconscious betrayals of their estimate of their hero that are very significant. A number of these eulogists have thought it worth while to declare very expressly their belief that Lincoln did not purposely betray General McClellan and his army to defeat in the Seven Days Battles before Richmond. McClure (page 207) is one; Holland (page 53, et seq.) is another; and John Codman Ropes declares it, in his Story of the Civil War, Part II (page 16), and reaffirms his belief on more than one other page. McClellan, in his celebrated dispatch after his retreat, reproached Stanton with this atrocious crime, and so worded the dispatch that he imputed the same guilt to Lincoln. McClure, in his Lincoln, etc. (page 202), and Nicolay and Hay, in their Abraham Lincoln (pages 441, 442 and 451), deplore that McClellan should have believed Lincoln capable of it, both conceding to McClellan the most exalted character, ability and patriotism. See McClure's Lincoln, etc. (page 208), and Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln (Volume VI, page 189, et seq.)

This letter will also appear in the Richmond Dispatch, as did that of the 14th January last.