In his explanatory communication of yesterday's date, Valley Forge speaks
of many more papers "which are yet to come:" we suppose he means yet to be
published. If so, we feel constrained to say now, that we cannot publish
any thing more relating to the matter until he announces to us, at least,
his real name.
From the Evening Journal.
R. M. WHITNEY, Esq: Dear Sir,--I am pained beyond measure, at the situation
in which I have been so unfortunately instrumental in placing you. But for
circumstances _which I cannot possibly control_, I would promptly
communicate to you my name and residence. A pledge, rigidly exacted by my
venerable relative, Col. ----, and solemnly given by me at the time he
consented that I should communicate to you the letters of the late General
Smith, and the other papers with which he furnished me, that I should not
make either him or myself known without his consent, binds me as with links
of iron. Col. ---- is slowly recovering from the paralytic affection with
which he was seized on the 20th of this month; and let me assure you, most
sacredly and solemnly, that as soon as his health is sufficiently restored
to allow a conversation of any length to be had with him, I will not fail
to convince him of the propriety--of the _necessity_--of permitting me to
call upon you, or invite you to his residence, where, preliminary to my
taking the proper steps to convince the public of their authenticity, I may
exhibit to you all the writings which have been so exultingly
prounounced[TN] to be "audacious forgeries."
You do me but justice, when you say, that "a careful perusal of the letters
of Valley Forge, confirms the belief, that he is neither an impostor nor a
forger of letters." Why should I be? What motive could induce any rational
being to originate a _fabrication_ so sure to be detected? You will find,
ere very long, that I have given you nothing but the truth. Only _one_
liberty did I venture to take with any of the correspondence--that was from
considerations of delicacy, which I now believe to have been _fastidious_,
and to which, at the time, I reluctantly yielded. In Gen. Smith's letter to
Col. ----, dated Oct. 2d, 1832, I substituted a _blank_ for the name of
_Mrs. Ferguson_," which Gen. Smith gives as that of the lady from whom was
taken the letter of Governor Jonstone to Gen. Reed. This, the _only_
alteration I ever made, you must allow, was a pardonable error.
"Truth is mighty and must prevail;" and in this case, to the joy of your
friends, and the consternation of your enemies, it shall be signally
exemplified. _For the present_, let me entreat you to rest satisfied with
my assurances; assurances which will soon be most thoroughly redeemed; and
that you will desist from your endeavor to discover who I am--efforts which
can give you but vain trouble, which _must_ prove fruitless; for the
precautions which I have adopted for the preservation of my _incognito_, it
is impossible to overcome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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