To the Editor of American Heritage:

A propos of nothing at all except that I just thought of it, I wonder if this little bit of Civil War-iana would interest you.

It started back in 1903 when I was a chemist in the laboratory of the Virginia-Carolina Chemical Company in Richmond, and on Saturdays played on the Boston Heights team of the Tri-City semi-pro league. In our first game the opposing team’s first baseman was Jim Darby. I remembered him vividly on account of his spiking me—unintentionally. I still have the cleat scars. Next day I looked at the box score in the paper and said to a teammate: “They’ve got this guy’s name wrong. Enroughty. It was Darby.”

“Yes. That’s the way the nut spells ‘Darby.’ ”

“What?”

“That’s right.”

“I never heard of such damn foolishness.”

“Well, you’ve heard now.”

Being even that early a monomaniac on etymology, I began digging and here’s what I eventually unearthed. I really got several bites, some evidently no-goods, but this one, as I wrote Henry Mencken, the most likely one.

In the middle of the Eighteenth Century the ancient and honorable-but-dirt-poor Enroughty family of England found itself impaled on two equally distasteful horns of a dilemma. Some forty years before a perverted Enroughty female had committed the unpardonable crime of marrying a plebeian scrub—and, of all things, “in trade.” In other words, working for his living; repugnant to every true Enroughty. His name was Derby, pronounced, of course, Darby. The family gave him the same treatment as they did in similar case in The House Divided , snubbed him ferociously and erased the unrepentant Magdalene from the family roll.

And as in The House Divided the snubbed took ample and delicious revenge. When Darby died, a childless widower and worth a fortune, he left his money to the Enroughtys on condition that they change their name to Darby! And there they were. They just couldn’t miss that money—but to change the name; what a mess!

A meeting of the clans was called, and after long debate one member came up with a brilliant and life-and-face-and-name-saving device: “Let’s keep on spelling it Enroughty and pronounce it Darby.” Carried unanimously, and with wild cheers. So that was that.

What brings it into your field is that it is almost certainly the reason why Robert E. Lee didn’t capture the bulk of the army of George B. McClellan—that part of it which he hadn’t already killed or wounded—at the end of June in 1862. Want to hear about it? Well, here it is anyhow.

When McClellan started to retreat from the battle lines in front of Richmond to Harrison’s Landing on the James River, after losing the first of the famous Seven Days’ battles in late June, 1862, Lee was at once on his tail. McClellan of course was