Your communication demanding surrender of my command I acknowledge receipt of, and respectfully reply that we are prepared for the "needless effusion of blood" whenever it is agreeable to you.
I am very respectfully, your obedient servant,
John M. Corse,
Major General Commanding Forces U. S.
Let us investigate this matter.
The facsimile of my letter is true, no doubt about that; but we have also the facsimile of the reply made by Corse which was sent me, and by me never received; and in the face of that Corse "declared he never knew that I did not receive it, or that it was not delivered to Maj. Sanders, the bearer of the flag of truce," until so informed by Joseph M. Brown, whose guest he was when he came to Atlanta with the artist De Thulstrup to have the battle painted; and he further told him: "I took the note (French's) and read it. It made me mad, because from what I could see of his forces, and what I knew of mine, I believed that I had about as big a force as he; hence considered the summons a superfluous piece of bravado. I sat down on a log, and pulling my notebook out of my pocket, wrote the reply across the face of one of the pages, which I tore out and handed to my staff officer with instructions to take it back to the bearer of the summons."
Not finding Maj. Sanders, of course he returned in a few minutes and gave Corse the note.
Next William Ludlow (now a general in the United States army), in his address to the Michigan Commandery, Loyal Legion, at Detroit, on April 2, 1891 (page 20), says: "Corse did reply; he wrote his answer on the top of a neighboring stump."
Then Hedley (page 223) says of Corse: "His every pound of flesh and blood was that of a hero: his eye flashed as if lighted with a Promethean spark; and his chest swelled with angry defiance to the hideous threat implied in the summons to surrender! 'Capt. Flint,' said he, 'answer this!' so Capt. Flint seated himself upon a tree stump and wrote the reply."
I care not who wrote the reply to my note; I only desire to know who kept it concealed for over twenty years, and then produced it, and, together with mine, authoritatively gave them to Hedley to photograph and publish side by side.
If Corse had it hid away, or knew where it was, then he must have been mistaken when he declared to Joseph M. Brown that he never knew that I had not received it. Besides, that I received no reply was reported officially and well known.