Your obedient servant,
Robert Toombs.
Camp Near Richmond, Va.,
July 12, 1862.
General: Your note of the 6th was received yesterday. I must again enter my protest against your second declaration that I reflected upon your brigade in the battle of Malvern Hill. Witnesses to our interview affirm that my remarks were entirely personal to yourself.
In regard to your demand for satisfaction, I construe it to mean either that I must apologize to you for the language used by me on the battlefield, or that I must grant you a hostile meeting. If the first interpretation be correct, I will state that I will make full, public, and ample concessions when satisfied that I did you injustice; and this I would do without any demand. I certainly thought that you had taken the field too late, and that you left it too early. You may, however, have done your whole duty, and held your ground as long as it was possible for a brave and skillful officer to hold it. If the facts prove this to be so, no one will be more gratified than myself, and my acknowledgment of error will be cordial and complete.
But if your demand means a challenge, its acceptance, when we have a country to defend and enemies to fight, would be highly improper and contrary to the dictates of plain duty, without reference to higher grounds of action. I will not make myself a party to a course of conduct forbidden alike by the plainest principles of duty, and the laws which we have mutually sworn to serve.
Yours truly,
D. H. Hill, Major General.
Brigadier General Robert Toombs.
Just what General Toombs replied to this is not known. The letter has not been preserved in this correspondence. It evidently declared that the explanation was not satisfactory. Major R. J. Moses, Jr., a member of General Toombs' staff, submitted in writing the following report of his recollection of General Hill's words to General Toombs at Malvern Hill:
Where is your brigade, sir? I told you that I wanted a fighting brigade, and your brigade will not fight. I knew it would not, and you are the man who pretends to have been spoiling for a fight. For shame! Rally your troops! Where were you when I was riding up and down your line rallying your troops?
Major Moses adds: