I have also read carefully the treatise prepared by you and which accompanies your report to the Governor. It shows very thorough and judicious investigation, and in my opinion very sound conclusions.
I fully concur with you in the conclusions stated in your report, as well as the reasons therefor which you have therein set forth in lucid statement.
I do trust that this valuable work which you have done will be properly appreciated, and that the errors which have so persistently appeared in the histories, particularly the school histories, will be duly corrected, so that the fallacy that the Battle of New Orleans was a useless battle and fought after the treaty of peace, will no longer be accepted by anybody, and that truth will be known by all.
Yours very truly, John H. DeWitt.
D-R
Tulane University, New Orleans, La., December 22, 1934.
My Dear Mr. Folk:
I have read with attention your excellent report on the Battle of New Orleans, to be submitted to the Governor of Tennessee, in conjunction with the report of our commission on the subject. I have ventured to indicate by question marks in two or three places phrases or statements which I think could be changed to advantage. These, however, are merely questions of verbiage, not of fact. In point of fact, I think you have made a most interesting and important assemblage of the essential points to be considered in connection with the Battle of New Orleans, and have shown conclusively that the opinion so frequently expressed by historians, that the battle was unnecessary, is a sentimental inaccuracy which ought to be corrected. You have done a useful and important piece of work, and I congratulate you upon its completion.
May I beg you to be good enough to favor me with a copy when the work is printed? I should like to prepare a review of it for one of our local newspapers.