Jany 24th 1863
Edmund Ruffin Esq
Dear Sir
Your letter of the 20th
has been recd. Both of your contribu-
tions have been recd by me and both
have been acknowledged in the papers
- the first in the Whig - the last in
the Enquirer: I enclose the slips
to you but will be obliged if you
will return them to me at your
leisure as I need them for refer-
-ence and have no duplicates . There
is a typographical error in the En-
quirer in printing you as Edmund
Ruffin Jr instead of Senr as I
had written it = I acknowledged
both these receipts in a letter to you
written Jany 3d & directed to you
at Petersburg which I suppose to
be your post office from the fact
that your last letter was postmarked
[page 2]
there
I shall be very grateful
to you for a copy of such parts
of your diary as relate to the
cause, and opening of the war
or for such notes in other form
as you can furnish = I have
endeavoured by earnest labor upon
the materials at my command
to be accurate but am fully
aware that errors are unavoidable=
a new edition of the history
is called for and as I have
made sufficient progress to furnish
a volume of good size, the publish
-ers would have put it to press some
weeks ago but for the difficulty
-almost impossibility of getting
paper = I hope to correct
in the next edition many
of the imperfections of my
first draft - Thus far I
have been agreeably disappointed
[page 3]
in this respect, for though I have
received some hundreds of letters
and mss on the subject, they
do not affect very materially the
accuracy of what has been printed=
Permit me to say that the notices
of yourself
to me due simply to Historic
truth - You appear again in
several scenes especially in the
field of Manassas
Very Respy & truly
R R Howison
Robert Reid Howison, author of a noted history of Virginia
MSS 3026
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