“Although the language used by Mr. Pleasants may not be considered directly offensive, yet we are unwilling to allow him or others to make hypotheses in regard to our veracity. When we desire lectures on morals we hope to be allowed to choose our own preceptor. We certainly shall not apply to _him_!” In Mr. Pleasants’ rejoinder he again reminds the young men that their father and himself had been of the same mind on the Slavery question for twenty years: “The correspondent may have believed what he said, in ignorance of the facts, and may therefore be guiltless of premeditated injustice, but the editors who indorse his calumny by printing it without any explanation, either did know better, in which case their candor and liberality are compromised, or ought to have known better, in which case they themselves may say what responsibility they incur by printing an accusation utterly false in fact, and calculated to infuse the greatest possible prejudice against him respecting whom it is promulgated.” The answer of the _Enquirer_ was a sneer throughout: “We doubt whether he knows, himself, what principles he may be disposed to advocate. His most intimate friends are sometimes puzzled to understand his position.... If our correspondent ‘Macon’ wishes it, he will, of course, have the use of our columns, but if he will take our advice, he will let Mr. J. H. P. alone. To use an old proverb—‘Give the gentleman rope enough, and he will hang himself!’” In a long letter to a personal friend, but published in the _News and Star_—what would be called now an “open letter”—Mr. Pleasants sums up the points of the controversy, and calmly assumes the animus of the attack to be personal enmity, a sort of vendetta feud, against which argument is powerless: “Justice from the Richmond _Enquirer_ I have long ago ceased to expect. For more than twenty years I have lived under its ceaseless misrepresentations and malevolent misconstructions. I had hoped, when the former editor removed to Washington to receive the rich rewards of his devotion to party, to live upon better terms with his successors, and I have studied to cultivate better relations by respectful consideration and undeviating courtesy; but I have found that other passions besides the love of liberty are transmitted from sire to son.... Calmly reviewing this piece of impertinence, I should be of opinion that this assailant meditated fight, if I could think that a young brave would seek, as an antagonist upon whom to flesh his maiden sword, a man so much older than himself as I am, and with dependent children.” In allusion to a former altercation with “Il Secretario,” a “foe illustrious for his virtues and talents, whom this aspirant after knighthood” declined to encounter—the senior combatant concludes: “Battle, then, being clearly not his object, I must suppose that he meant no more than a little gasconade, and the recovery, at a cheap rate, of a forfeited reputation for courage.”