Note 21 — Chapter XII · THE STORY OF ESTELLE. (continued 2)

Should any person question the probability of the incidents in Vance’s narrative, we would refer him to the “Letter to Thomas Carlyle” in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1863. On page 501, we find the following: “Within the past year, a document has come into my hands. It is the private diary of a most eminent and respectable slaveholder, recently deceased. The chances of war threw it into the hands of our troops.... One item I must have the courage to suggest more definitely. Having bidden a young slave-girl (whose name, age, color, &c., with the shameless precision that marks the entire document, are given) to attend upon his brutal pleasure, and she silently remaining away, he writes, ‘Next morning ordered her a dozen lashes for disobedience.’” In a foot-note to the above we are assured by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields that the author of the letter is “one whose word is not and cannot be called in question; and he pledges his word that the above is exact and proven fact.”