Leicester Academy

 

April 20 – 1911.

 

Mr. Luther W. Hopkins,

Baltimore, Md.

 

Dear Mr. Hopkins:

                                    I want to thank you for your book, not simply for the copy itself, but for calling my attention to it. I read it nearly through the first time I took it up and I was very much interested. I have taken it up several times since with ever added pleasure. I have no doubt the boys in school will be delighted with it and I am waiting to see Mr. White before ordering a small supply for the school.

 

            Your book is especially interesting to me because it gives me an insight into the thoughts, ambitions, and motives of those on the other side. There has been too much of the "rebel" and "slave-driver" idea injected into the minds of Northern youths. They need to realize that you were fighting for a cause which you deemed as sacredly right as the ancestors / of these Northern youths did in the Revolution. Your book will help them realize this.

 

            And then as the son of one who fought against you, your book was interesting. For I am the son of a veteran. My father served in the 1^st Maine Heavy Artillery, Company L. He died as a result of complications arising from malaria contracted in the swamps of Petersburg, when I was ten years old. But I loved to hear him talk of the war.

 

            I shall try to read some of the other books you mention. I want to thank you most heartily for your gift and for your service to the cause.

 

Yours very truly,

John F. Hamlin.

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