Copy.

Savannah, July 29, (1910)

Mr. Talcott H. Russell,

My dear Mr. Russell:

I have received and read the file of
letters, of Judge Howland, Gen. Gordon, Mr. French, Gov.
Baldwin, and your own. I am only a simple D.D. among
such honored names, but I think no one has a stronger sense
of the value of the Yale Spirit incorporated in men and
institutions, and of the value of that tablet or monument,
with Yale men, North and South, simple *untitled* names but
just men who fought their convictions out with Yale Spirit
to the death.

I, as a Southern man and the President of Yale men
here, returning the old stream back to Alma Mater, want to
see the solid south split and divided, I want it for the
sake of our country, for the sake of its future, for the
critical hours that may arise as they have in the past arisen,
and which may call for best men north and south. This tablet
will help me, will help Yale, will help the country, and there-
fore I do not want it anywhere hidden. I do not want men to
have to seek for it, as they do in the old universities of the
old world. I want it out in the open. I have no fear of
what Mr. French will do to it and for it, for we have his
work here - our last public monument to Gen. Oglethorpe.

Will you pardon this free expression of opinion,
standing against the many? But I want my boys, and the boys
I send to Yale to see this Yale history of her sons where they
will both run and read, and come home, as they do largely
already, not unmindful of Southern ancestry, but more mindful
of a larger country, a grander peril than any slavery domination;
and the great united forces - North and South - sons of men
whose names are cut on the tablet or arch, on the campus at
Yale.