Hayne, Macon, Jackson, Clay, Toombs, Stephens, Yancey, and Jefferson Davis suffice to show, although it will be observed that the claim Virginia can make to pride in this list is a very slight one. When the Civil War came, the race of great soldiers -in which Virginia can once more find occasion for just pride, Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, the two Johnstons, Stuart, Forrest, Longstreet, and many another - showed that the essential vitality of the Southern people had not only not decayed since the Revolution, but in some respects had been strengthened. Rich and poor alike joined in maintaining for four years what is perhaps the most heroic struggle in history. Yet the people who produced these statesmen and soldiers, who were unexcelled in those private virtues and manners which in the old adage "maketh man," made in seventy-five years so small a contribution to the literature and art and science and industrial improvement of the world, that they are often represented, erroneously, as exponents of a lower order of civilization than was to be found elsewhere in America.

It is needless to say that it was the presence of domestic slavery that gave a semblance of truth to this view of the Southern people. This inherited institution did indeed retard the South industrially and affect its mental development detrimentally in many ways. It sharpened the minds of Southern statesmen, but it kept them and the people they represented harping upon one topic, or, to put it more accurately, the defence they naturally felt called upon to make of what they regarded as property took precedence, after Soof every other public interest, and the inevitable result was a narrowing and hardening of the public mind and an inflaming of ublic heart. Such an epoch of strife could not be propitious development of creative literature, but that life in the Old was propitious to the development of character among the ed classes is equally obvious. No nobler man than Robert E. can be named in American history, and the characteristic seen at their height in Lee were abundantly illustrated by and women of his social class. In other words, the Old dominated by an aristocracy marked by many fine at resting upon slavery and the ownership of land as hus out of touch, not merely with the democracy of

the rest of America, but with the mixed civilization of Europe. There was, it is true, a democracy in the South, - especially in the mountain regions, and more particularly in the states of North Carolina and Georgia,—but it was the aristocracy that conducted the general political policy of the section and that represented it before the world. We need not dwell on the condition of the non-slaveholding whites and of the negroes, for it is now seen at a glance that the social structure of the South was an anachronism and that it would probably have been ended through war even if there had been no written constitution to afford points of contended interpretation. It is equally plain that the failure of the South to contribute greatly to literature, art, and science was due to no mental or spiritual defects on the part of the Southern people, but to conditions inseparable from a rural, aristocratic social system. Country gentlemen have in no age or land done much to aid the artistic and scientific development of the world, and the Southern planters were no exception to the rule. They had no great cities to attract and develop youths of promise; they were far removed from printers and publishers, and led a life not conducive to mental exertion; they had inherited in many cases a prejudice against writing for money as a profession for gentlemen. Hence it is no wonder that while Richmond and Charleston and New Orleans contained not a few citizens of culture, some of whom endeavored to write books and to publish magazines, no such literary development was possible in any of them as was seen in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Even the New South, with its greater activity and success in literature, has as yet no literary centre, and much the same condition of affairs prevails in the West.

But despite all obstacles not a few men and women in the ante bellum South devoted themselves to literature, and when one makes a close study of the work they did, one is on the whole rather surprised to find how much success was achieved by them. At the opening of the period there is little to chronicle save the writings of public men, which, though excellent in their way, did not often display the literary quality visible in the speeches of John Randolph of Roanoke. With Wirt and the cultured group of lawyers who

could be conducted in the South. In its pages Hugh S. Legaré, Stephen Elliott, Thomas Smith Grimké, and others of their cultured group found an organ for their thought. After Legaré abandoned literature, Simms labored zealously in the cause, and by his series of Revolutionary and Border romances and by his editorship of The Southern Quarterly Review, and above all by his hearty sympathy with all Southern aspirants for literary fame, he performed a work which it would be ungrateful for Southerners, if not for Americans, ever to forget. Just before the Civil War, young men who formed part of his coterie in Charleston, and had had advantages of education denied to him, collaborated in Russell's Magazine (1857-1860) and made it a credit, if a short-lived one, to its city and section. Two of these young men were the poets Timrod and Hayne, whose memories are cherished by the Southern people, and whose worth as poets is being slowly recognized by the country at large.

Meanwhile the other Southern states had produced writers who could not be wholly discouraged, even by the most depressing conditions. They were in many cases historians zealous for the fame of their respective commonwealths. Charles Campbell in Virginia (1807-1876) and Albert James Pickett (1810-1858) in Alabama may serve as examples. Professor George Tucker in Virginia and Judge Gayarré in Louisiana were historians of broader sweep and accomplished writers in other fields.2 Publicists and orators were, of course, produced in abundance, Calhoun easily taking the lead as a subtle expounder of the rights of minorities. The fame of these

1 The dates of the Review are 1842-1856. Simms took charge in 1849. 2 Writers of travels ought not to be overlooked. Probably the best-known Southern writer of this type was the celebrated Mme. Octavia Walton Le Vert (18101877), who was born in Georgia, but spent much of her life in Mobile. She was highly educated and brilliant, saw something of Washington society, and of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun; married Dr. Henry S. Le Vert, of Mobile, and became a noted figure in that city; travelled in Europe in the fifties and met many distinguished people; and, although opposed to secession, was active in her good services to soldiers during the Civil War. Her ebullient "Souvenirs of Travel," which she is said to have written at the suggestion of Lamartine, were issued in two volumes in 1857. They still retain some interest, though not nearly so much as the famous book which the talented Englishwoman, Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Butler), wrote about the South," Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation" (1863).

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old-time speakers - Hayne, Toombs, Stephens, Yancey, Sergeant S. Prentiss (of Northern birth) — is still fresh, but rather through tradition than through much reading of such of their speeches as are in print. There was also a small group of sociologists who wrote some very queer books,2 a larger group of defenders of slavery, among whom were to be found very able advocates like Professor Albert Taylor Bledsoe (1809-1877), and a commercial and the well-known De Bow's Review of New Orleans.3 industrial organ, More important to the literary student are minor poets like Philip Cooke of Virginia and James Barron Hope of the same state, Richard Henry Wilde, who is best credited to Georgia, A. B. Meek of Alabama, Albert Pike, born in Massachusetts but long resident in Arkansas, and quite a list of others, whose names will suggest themselves to persons familiar with Southern literature. And more important than these are the Southwestern and the Georgia humorists, who not only influenced the development of our national humor, but also pointed out the way to those writers of local realistic fiction who have contributed so much to the literary reputation of the New South. They begin with Judge Longstreet and William Tappan Thompson in Georgia and with Davy Crockett in Tennessee, culminate in Judge Baldwin the genial author of the “Flush Times,” and end for our period at least with the amusing yarns of "Sut Lovengood" (George Washington Harris, 18141868, an adopted citizen of Tennessee), and the funny lucubrations of "Mozis Addums" (George W. Bagby of Virginia, 1828–1883), and "Bill Arp" (Charles Henry Smith of Georgia, 1823–1903). Coarse and crude though some of this humor may appear to-day, it is one of the most characteristic and interesting products of the Old South, and, if space had permitted, it would have been more completely represented in this volume by the inclusion of selections the three genuine humorists last named.

of the writers named above were journalists at one time or any or in their careers, a fact which reminds us that the Old South

a brief account of Prentiss as a speaker, see Reuben Davis's "Recollections sippi and Mississippians" (1891), pp. 81-83.

for example, the large collaborated volume of essays entitled "Cotton is

he dates seem to be 1846-1864 and 1866-1870.

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