The Sun

GEORGE D. WISE SPEAKS.

He Says he Won't Quarrel with Wm. Lamb, and then Calls him an Infamous Liar.

Richmond, Nov. 15.—Congressman George D. Wise of this district, whose supposed hostility toward Mayor William Lamb of Norfolk has been the subject of much newspaper talk, has written a card, which will appear in the newspapers here to-morrow morning. It is as follows:

To the Public:

The urgency of friends whose judgment I respect and my own taste have been averse to any notice of the statements in regard to myself attributed to William Lamb of Norfolk, in various newspapers recently published, but reiterated rumors of a contemplated duel between him and myself, accompanied by the assertion of gross insult offered by him to me, have been widely circulated to render it necessary for me, who, as a public servant, bear a distinct relation and responsibility to society, to publish this card.

It is not true, as stated in many newspapers, that I have ever had a quarrel with William Lamb. It is true, as I have discovered, not by application to himself, with whom I can have no communication, but to friends in Norfolk, whither I went for the purpose, that in a public speech delivered there during the recent canvass, he said that he had been told that I was guilty of immoralities which I will not undertake to repeat. This emanated from him, let it be added, without previous provocation from me, outside of my Congressional district, where my claims for Congressional honors were in no sense an appropriate subject for discussion. A discriminating public will hold me blameless when, under circumstances like these, and impelled by a supreme and righteous indignation, I depart from the even tenor of my way to declare the charge referred to utterly false and baseless, in whole and in part, the author of it an infamous liar, and the purveyor of the scandal to the public ear a filthy scoundrel fit only for the scorn and contempt of all honorable gentlemen.

I have stated that I have never had a quarrel with William Lamb, and I can have none with him, now or hereafter, because he is a blackguard in more senses than as a promulgator of a baseless scandal, and a coward in more views than in causing, as the report of his townsman has it, his own arrest to escape a duel which he pretended to accept. Respectfully, George D. Wise.