1867

Adams, Henry. "Captain John Smith." North American Review 104.214 (January 1867): 1-30. (Revised Chapters of Erie, and Other Essays. Boston, 1871.) (Revised again Historical Essays. New York, 1891.) [See Lemay 1992, 107, for omissions from Adams' original manuscript.] Building on Deane and spurred both by personal ambition to make a name for himself as well as conscious New England brahmin desire to attack the South in this Civil War era, Adams calls into question the Pocahontas rescue episode and through it the veracity of the Generall Historie and Southern history founded on it. Putting sections from the True Relation and the Generall Historie side by side, Adams states that "it is still perfectly clear that the statements of the Generall Historie, if proved to be untrue, are falsehoods of an effrontery seldom equaled in modern times" and accuses Smith of manipulating the history to increase his own reputation. This article touches off a debunking controversy that was especially hot in the late 19th century but still the subject of debate much later (see Lemay 1992) and never has quite disappeared from American consciousness.
[debunking]
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