This is one of many efforts of Paul Morphy's friends, business and casual associates attempting to put at rest the Northern newspapers' campaign of defamation. The Northern fanatics did claim that a defective “malady of mind” in Paul Morphy led to the untimely ruin of his chess and legal career. But that is not so. The record of Northerners, guilty for years of flagrant harassment was preserved. Morphy was threatened in 1865 by former associates in Washington, D.C., to “cut him so dead,” forcing the abdication of Paul Morphy from chess. THAT, is why Morphy retired.
Regularly, Northern Newspapers were unleashing an organized scourge of defamatory news reports about Paul Morphy. Made up. Fiction! I ask anyone of rational mind: How does one succeed in any business or professional sport when a national, organized smear campaign of spying, stalking, defamation, and even… foul “comedy” published in national newspapers, making light of one's “accidental” death, for years... 1873…1874…1875…1876…1877…1878…1879…1880…1881…1882…1883… right up until Paul Morphy's mysterious death in 1884… humiliating defamatory accusations to eternally ruin his good name.
Absurd claims are made from Northern Newspapers that Morphy has been committed to asylum … and even committed took his own life (1877) in an asylum! But official asylum records from New Orleans confirm it is untrue. Again and again, contemporary friends and associates of Morphy step forward, confirming the sordid reports are cruel, untrue accusation and exasperating to Paul Morphy!
One false report states Morphy never made it as a lawyer and lives in poverty … while another, with haughty self-righteous “unlike the Yankee” lives an idle life of leisure … then, in another reported claim is made that reports Morphy as deceased, while he yet lives! Then he is reported again alive, but an inmate in an asylum and on and on and on the circus of defamation went, round and round, a circle of madness targeting Paul Morphy from Northern Newspapers and their influence creeping nationwide, then, into international chess history books to bury the memory of the great man.
The Truth About Morphy. He Has Never Been Insane, But Is Still The Best of Chess Players. ([They dare not mention a thing about the Civil War.])
The Tennessean, Nashville, Tennessee, Saturday, May 05, 1877
— New Orleans correspondent of the New York Sun.
The Sun of the 24th instant contains a repetition of that off-told lie about the insanity of Paul Morphy— that he has not played chess for a long time, and so forth, ad nauseam. Will you have the kindness to publish the following, which contains all the facts concerning Paul Morphy with which the public have anything to do?
He is now practicing law in this city; and has never been insane, or spoke of in that relation by his family or friends.
As to chess, he is unquestionably to-day the best chess player in the world, although he does not play often enough to keep himself in thorough practice. He gives the odds of a knight to our strongest players, and is seldom beaten, perhaps never when he cares to win.
His disappearance from public view as a chess player has just this explanation—no more, no less.
“The publicity and lionizing which attached to him for a time, both in this country and Europe, were always distasteful to his family, and especially so to his mother. On his return from his European triumphs, he entered into an engagement with his mother never again to play for a money or other stake; never to play a public game or a game in a public place, and never again to encourage or countenance any publication of any sort whatever in connection with his name. This last clause in the agreement has been so strictly construed as to prevent any denial by him or his family of the numerous silly publications that have been made concerning him. It is now time, however, that the thing should be stopped.”
