A REPLY ΤΟ "A FOOL'S ERRAND, BY ONE OF THE FOOLS." BY WILLIAM L. ROYALL, OF THE NEW YORK PAR "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur." Third Edition. With sixty-four additional pages, containing Mr. Royall's Rejoinder to Mr. NEW YORK: E. J. HALE & SON PUBLISHERS, 17 MURRAY STREET. 1881. PREFACE. IN the following pages I have endeavored to write the truth, and I have written it without regard to the matter of whom it may hurt. I have said some hard things, and I have not attempted to soften their native ruggedness by sugar coatings. I look upon the book to which I have attempted a reply as a wilful, deliberate, and malicious libel upon a noble and generous people, amongst whom I was born and raised, and in full sympathy with whom I hope to live and die. I look upon its author as one of the most contemptible fellows of those who have libelled that people, and not at all less contemptible because highly endowed with intellect; but rather more so, because, with all the disposition towards grovelling malice which a weaker man could have, he has yet far greater powers to injure, and he has deliberately used those powers to their full extent. I have made no mealy-mouthed defence of the people of the South. It is not on bended knee and with cringing accent that, self-appointed advocate though I be, I have brought their cause before the world. I have attempted to speak for a race of whom the males are men, as I believe those men would have their race spoken for. M 6284 Writing in this spirit, I feel that those who do me the honor to read this essay are entitled to know something of who and what I am, in order that they may be the better able to judge what weight is to be given to what I say. As a young Virginian, I was a soldier in the Confederate army, from the beginning of the war to the end of it. After the war I practised law, in Richmond, Va., until January, 1880, when I founded a daily newspaper, called "The Commonwealth," and edited it until August 1, 1880, in a vain endeavor, along with the rest of the rebel element" there, to save my native State from the infamous brand of repudiation, which the Republicans and the scalawag native white population were seeking to put upon her. From the time that repudiation has been an issue in Virginia politics, I have been prominently connected with public affairs there. I mention these things to show that I have been in a position to know the temper and feelings of the Southern people. I do not perceive that anything further personal to myself would be interesting or useful to the public, and I shall, therefore, proceed with the work which I have undertaken. “A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools, REPLIED TO. CHAPTER I. A PRETENDER UNMASKED. THIS is a small book; but it would be difficult to find more malice in a large one. That it is written with great cleverness, it is needless to say. The popularity to which it has attained is the surest evidence of that. It pretends to be a picture of life and manners in tle Southern States. Those who know the people of those States know it to be no picture, but they recognize in it a grotesque caricature. It contains just enough of truth to give color, skilfully wrought into a warp and woof of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Manifestly, the writer has seen much of the life and ways of the people of the South, and he has learned much of those people. Instead, however, of using his knowledge to represent them fairly, he has used it to misrepresent them. Much as the writer has seen of the people of that section, he does not know them. He could not paint a picture of Southern life, if he tried-and his object has |