[1861].
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Unbound. Single sheet folded, with two blank integral leaves. Creased from folding, else very good. No date or author, addressed on verso, to the "Editorships of the Portfolio." The unnamed author claims to have seen "in a number of the *Democrat* a letter to President Davis of the Southern Confederacy from a gentleman who had sent him a penholder made of one of the rafters of the house in which [Benedict] Arnold was born." The gentleman identified Davis as a kindred spirit to Arnold as a "blott on our Country." The note asks for an explanation, as she has been taught that Arnold was a traitor, and Davis a man revered. The last sentence of the letter switches from pen to pencil, where the author identifies herself as "A Little Girl." The letter references an open letter first published in an issue of the Norwich, Connecticut *Bulletin* in 1861 by editor and humorist Isaac H. Bromley. That piece was picked up by various newspaper across the nation in the following weeks and later published in *The Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellion* in 1873.
Item #358488
