" Bok wrote to the great preacher,
asked him the truth of this report, and received this definite denial:
"My Dear Friend:
"No, I never did begin a sermon with the remark that "it is d--d hot,"
etc. It is a story a hundred years old, revamped every few years to suit
some new man. When I am dead and gone, it will be told to the rising
generation respecting some other man, and then, as now, there will be
fools who will swear that they heard it!
"Henry Ward Beecher."
When Bok's father passed away, he left, among his effects, a large
number of Confederate bonds. Bok wrote to Jefferson Davis, asking if
they had any value, and received this characteristic answer:
"I regret my inability to give an opinion. The theory of the Confederate
Government, like that of the United States, was to separate the sword
from the purse. Therefore, the Confederate States Treasury was under the
control not of the Chief Executive, but of the Congress and the
Secretary of the Treasury. This may explain my want of special
information in regard to the Confederate States Bonds. Generally, I may
state that the Confederate Government cannot have preserved a fund for
the redemption of its Bonds other than the cotton subscribed by our
citizens for that purpose. At the termination of the War, the United
States Government, claiming to be the successor of the Confederate
Government, seized all its property which could be found, both at home
and abroad.
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