Eureka Daily Sentinel

An Extraordinary Admission.

In commenting on Mr. Secretary Sherman's refusal to positively deny the authorship of the damaging letter to Weber and Anderson, when a copy of it was handed to him on the witness stand, we suggested that Mr. Sherman was influenced by a wholesome fear lest the original, in his own handwriting, might be produced. In this surmise it appears we were correct. Mr. Sherman himself admits it! We confess we were hardly prepared for such an admission from his own lips; but his conduct has been such as to leave little room for surprise at anything he may do. Mr. Sherman's remarkable admission is made in the following words, in a conversation on Monday last with a reporter of the New York Tribune, founded by Horace Greeley, a journal entirely friendly to him:

"As to the criticisms of my conduct in not denying more strongly that I wrote the pretended letter, I only have to say that I denied it as strongly as any honest man could deny such an allegation, for no honest man could say, called suddenly as I was, and without knowledge of the testimony of Anderson, and in the face of assertions repeatedly made that the original letter and a photographic copy would be produced, that it was impossible that he had written such a letter."

That is it. Mr. Sherman was afraid of the original letter or a photographic copy. He admits it himself. Hence he dare not positively deny the authorship of the letter. Mrs. Jenks, more reckless of consequences, and more brazen than he, could swear to anything; but Mr. Sherman, for the best of reasons, as assigned by himself, dared not state under oath that he had never written such a letter.