Oct. 13, 1863.
I am sorry to disturb George, — but Mosby is an honourable
foe, and should be treated as such. S. and I had various tilts on that subject
two years ago. I have not changed my opinion in spite of the falsehoods of
Beauregard and the perfidy of Davis or his War Department. We have acknowledged
them as belligerents, and we must treat them accordingly; we gain more by it in
our State questions than we lose by it in military respects.1
_______________
1 Mr. George William Curtis, Colonel Shaw's
brother-in-law, had evidently had his patience overtaxed by the recent outcrop
of barbarity at Fort Wagner, and had little left for guerrillas and their
methods. Colonel Lowell had something of the trait which his uncle, in the poem
about Blondel, gave to Richard Cœur
de Lion : —
“To foes benign, in
friendship stern.”
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 313, 444-5
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