1861

Adams, Henry. Letters to John Gorham Palfrey, 1861-1862. J. C. Levenson, et al., eds., The Letters of Henry Adams. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1982. 258-59, 279-81, 287. The birth of the most famous Smith debunking. Letters of Oct. 23, 1861, Feb. 12 and March 20, 1862, to Palfrey (see 1858) show Adams trying to pick up on Palfrey's intuition of "historic doubts" about the Pocahontas rescue. Adams is skeptical about a "sentimental attachment" to Smith: "Perhaps it was some wild-Indian semi-lunacy that drove her to it, for I confess I am very skeptical about any pure philanthropy in an Indian child that would drive her through a forest in mid-winter many miles in order to betray her father." "Unless someone else proves luckier than I, we must yield that the chances are in favor of Smith's turning out as powerful a liar as he was seaman. I fully expect that the ghost of John Randolf [Randolph] will haunt you and Mr. Deane [see 1860] and me for this impiety, but it wasn't my fault." "I hardly know whether I ought not to be ashamed of myself for devoting myself to a literary toy like this. . . . perhaps the thing is excusable, especially as it is in some sort a flank, or rather a rear attack, on the Virginia aristocracy. . . . if it weren't for you and Mr. Deane behind me, I hardly think I should dare to attack an article of American religious creed, so vital as this." The ultimate result is Adams' 1867 North American Review article that starts a controversy over the truthfulness of Pocahontas's famous rescue that lasted nearly half a century.
[debunking]