Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/439

 Notes and Queries. 429

will do so eventually. If I live in this country, as I expect now to

do, I shall feel it my duty to demean myself as a good and true

citizen.

Yours affectionately,

E. J, Hale, Jr.

Notes and Queries.

The term "Rebellion" as applied to our " war between the States" has been again and again repudiated by our most careful Confederate critics, and candid writers on the other side are coming to admit that the war was in no just sense a rebellion. We took oc- casion in our December (1883) number to protest against the use of this inaccurate and offensive term as the title of the publications of the " War Records Office," and this elicited from our friend E. L. Wells, of Charleston, S. C, the following well put comment. Our friend's point is decidedly " well taken " :

" I notice that in criticising the title " Rebellion " affixed to certain State Papers by Washington officials, you speak of the term as one which is as inapplicable to the popular movement of 1861 as it would be if applied to that of 1776. I should think there was this difference: The uprising of 1776, however justifiable morally it may have been, was legally a rebellion of disloyal subjects against their government.

" The war of secession, on the contrary, was in pursuance of legal right, and was not against a ' government ' at all, but was waged be- tween States or sectional populations ; therefore, whatever else it may have been, it certainly was not a ' Rebellion.' " Yours, very respectfully,

" Edward L. Wells."

"The Historic Apple Tree at Appomattox" has been so often shown to be a myth that we have been both surprised and amused at seeing the story recently revived in one of our Southern papers, whose editor gives the following version of it :

"We yesterday had a conversation with a gentleman who was pre- sent at the time the negotiations for the surrender were going on, in which he asserted most positively that these negotiations were carried on under a large apple tree in a farm-yard, and that, according to his