Early text-books used in public schools grated on the Southerner; they were put out by Northern publishing houses and gave views of American history which he thought unjust and untrue. The "Southern Opinion" printed this, August 3, 1867: "In a book circulating in the South as history, this occurs: 'While the people of the North were rejoicing because the war was at an end, President Lincoln, one of the best men in the world, was cruelly murdered in Washington by a young man hired by the Confederates to do the wicked deed.' It calls Lee 'a perjured traitor;' says 'Sherman made a glorious march to the sea;' prints 'Sheridan's Ride' as a school recitation." To comprehension of the Southern mind as it was then and is now in some who remember, it is essential that we get its view of the "Ride" and the "March." "Have you seen a piece of poetry," a representative Southern woman wrote another in the fall of 1865, "called 'Sheridan's Ride'? If you can get it, do send it to me. I want to see if there isn't some one smart enough to reply to it and give a true version of that descent of armed ruffians upon store-rooms, stables, hen-roosts and ladies' trunks--even tearing the jewelry from their persons--even robbing the poor darkies of their watches and clothing. Not a single Confederate soldier did they encounter. They ought to live in history! My Vermont friend, Lucy Adams, says these things 'are not true, no one at the North believes them, they are impossible.' But we know they are true. I was very anxious to send you Sherman's speech at Cincinnati--perhaps you have seen it--in which he unblushingly sanctions all the outrages committed by his men. I really think some notice ought to be taken of it, but our papers, you see, are all ruined now; and in New York, only 'The News' dares publish anything true.... I have found a copy, but this says at 'Lancaster, Ohio'; perhaps he said the same thing twice; it was at the close of a grand speech: 'Soldiers, when we marched through and conquered the country of the rebels, we became owners of all they had; and I don't want you to be troubled in your consciences for taking, while on our great march, the property of the conquered rebels--they had forfeited their right to it.'"