I am not trying to be hard headed but neither did I tell a fib when I said this comment's authenticity is in doubt but some folks. I can't remember the source of this idea so I would like to find out if this is fact or myth. How could someone know what Lee said to Stockdale in private? Was Stockdale given to revealing things told him in confidence.

I know this quote gets a lot of exposure, especially on the internet. But that does not prove anything. I have Googled this quote with some success but everybody seems to list a different source and nobody has posted anything about either Lee or Stockdale writing it down. Maybe Lee was blowing off a little steam but why would he do that with Stockdale when all his surviving personal correspondence gives a completely different viewpoint. In "Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee" by his son Robert Jr. there is no mention of Stockdale. Certainly a man close enough to Lee to be entrusted with a secret of this magnatude would have exchanged something about it through the written word, would he not?

I am not trying to defend Lee or destroy anybody's image of him. But the comment just doesn't fit, either with his other comments, his lifestyle and advice to his own loved ones or the decision he had to make at Appomattox.