May 22, 2014 - Sale 2351

Sale 2351 - Lot 20

Unsold
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
"THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HAS BEEN . . . FILLED WITH FALSEHOOD" (DAVIS, JEFFERSON.) VARINA HOWELL DAVIS. Autograph Letter Signed, "Jefferson Davis" on behalf of her husband, in purple ink, to Cherlotte E. Clarke, expressing the hope that Americans have grown tired of a diet of falsehood. 1 1/2 pages, 8vo, ruled paper; remnants of prior mounting along left edge recto (not affecting text), folds. "Beauvoir" [Biloxi], 29 December 1883

Additional Details

". . . I hope you are quite right in the supposition that times have grown better since Fennimore [sic] Cooper complained that the American public was unwilling to hear the truth. Since the date of his complaint, the receptive capacity of the American public has been so filled with falsehood that if, as you believe, facts have now become welcome, it must be they have tired of the food by which they have been surfeited, and it will be well indeed for all concerned if they will stick to the plain diet of undiluted truth. . . ."
In 1838, James Fenimore Cooper's The American Democrat was published; in it, Cooper argued that misguided public opinion eroded democracy.