1893

Poindexter, Charles. Captain John Smith and His Critics. Richmond, 1893. Finally Henry gets some help in the anti-debunking business. But in a strange way. Poindexter sees the True Relation as the problem, exactly the reverse of the debunkers. It is "fradulent," "a stock jobbing trick to boom the Virginia Company's shares" -- and may not even be by Smith. The Indians would never have treated a captive the way Smith describes in the True Relation. So how was he freed: "A woman's pity! Was it a savage girl's love? We do not say, but if so, it was a love not dishonoring her and not dishonored by him. She had never before seen such a man, of Godlike power, armed with the thunder and lightning of heaven, as the Indians believed, and of the prowess and bearing that more than realized the barbarian ideal of heroism." In the final analysis, though, the argument is a type of ad hominem: "men like Smith do not lie. They may have a streak of vanity, or what looks like it, and may be so headstrong in convictions as to incur charges of being conceited, but they do not lie."
[debunking]
[Electronic Version]