Elberton Geo., 8th August, 1860.
Dear Sir: Your letter of the 31st ult. was received last Monday. It was not deemed by me obtrusive. It is true I did not ask for explanations but surely I never said I did not want them. Your conclusion that I did not desire explantions because I did not ask for them seems to me to be illogical. I desire a great many things that I do not ask for. I deemed you an old and valued friend. I learned you had treated me in a manner entirely incompatible with that friendship. I laid the case before you in a manner perfectly friendly, candid and respectful, and I still insist that it was all these. I did not say give me explanations, give me redress. This sort of demand precedes hostility. I felt no hostility and wanted no revenge; and I expressly stated that I was not demanding redress nor explanations, in order that you should not by any possibility mistake the true spirit and intent of my letter by construing it to be one in any event whatever looking to hostility. This is the whole reason and cause why I did not ask for explanations. Now if it be less respectful to you to leave it wholly to your own judgment and sense of justice to say what atonement or explanation shall be made for a supposed injury than to demand these a la mode, then have I offended on this point, and not without.
But you are careful to say you do not offer the remarks in your letter as explanations. Therefore I can only say if they had been so offered they would have been entirely acceptable and satisfactory. You further say you make them as vindications of yourself and character. To this I can only reply that your labor has been lost, for neither you nor your character ever needed any vindication to me. I hope you will excuse me for troubling you. I have been as short as possible and shall close by saying in truth and candor I can still subscribe myself truly your friend.
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Thomas W. Thomas, born 1822, died 24 Apr 1864, was a soldier, lawyer, and judge of Elberton, GA.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician who served as the vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. After serving in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, he won election to Congress, taking his seat in 1843. After the Civil War, he returned to Congress in 1873, serving to 1882 when he was elected as the 50th Governor of Georgia, serving there from late 1882 until his death in 1883.