The denial.
When the account of this alleged
Polignac mission was published in 1895, I gave it a brief contradiction in the press.
At that time
President Davis was dead, and, I believe, only two of his Cabinet still survived—namely,
Judge John H. Reagan, of
Texas, and
the Hon. George Davis, of
Wilmington, N. C. Judge Reagan, who, I am happy to say, still lives, who wrote me June 28, 1895, saying that ‘any measure of this importance would necessarily have been considered by the
Cabinet of the
Confederacy, and no such project was ever mentioned or hinted at in the
Cabinet.’
The denial of
the Hon. George Davis, ex-Confederate
Attorney-General in 1864, to whom I also wrote, is not less emphatic.
I append his letter:
Dear Sir,—After long years I am glad once more to hear from you. I have been confined for a long time with a lingering sickness from which I am not yet recovered, and so I am compelled to write to you by the hand of my daughter.
I never heard a word of the Poglinac canard, and I don't believe a word of it. I know that your relations with your chief,
Mr. Benjamin,
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were such that you would have known of it if it had been true.
My commission as
Attorney-General bears the date of the 4th of January, 1864.
With kind regards and much esteem, I am,
Yours sincerely,
