Georgia was the Southern State that led in this progressive work. Here the readjustment came sooner, by reason of the fact that a more democratic people lived there, and also that the burdens of reconstruction were less severe. Virginia gave to the nation at the time of the foundation of the republic a group of statesmen rarely excelled in the history of the world. South Carolina statesmen led in the movement towards secession, and her people were the first to make an aggressive movement in that direction. The leadership of the New South must be found in a group of far-seeing, liberal-minded, aggressive Georgians. The action of the State legislature in repealing the ordinance of secession and accepting the emancipation of slaves within one minute, was characteristic of her later work. In 1866, Alexander H. Stephens and Benjamin H. Hill — one before the legislature of Georgia and the other before Tammany Hall — sounded the note of patience, of nationalism, and of hope. "There was a South of slavery and secession," said the latter; "that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom; that South, thank God! is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words became the text of the now celebrated address of another Georgian who twenty years later, before the New England Club of New York, gave notable expression to his own ideals and those who had wrought with him in the genuine reconstruction of the South. Henry Grady, as editor of the Atlanta "Constitution", was, after 1876, an exponent of the idea that the future of the South lay not primarily in politics, but in an industrial order which should be the basis of a more enduring civilization. At his advice, as Joel Chandler Harris says, everybody began to take a day off from politics occasionally and devote themselves to the upbuilding of the resources of the State. Another Georgian, the late John B. Gordon, united with Grady and others in saying "a bold and manly word in behalf of the American Union in the ear of the South, and a bold and manly word in behalf of the South in the ear of the North." While recounting the last days of the Confederacy, he awoke in Northern hearts an admiration for Lee and in Southern hearts an admiration for Grant, and in all an aspiration towards nationalism.
Another Georgian, Atticus G. Haygood, — president of Emory College and afterwards bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, — voiced the sentiment of the liberal South with regard to the negro, in a book whose title, "Our Brother in Black", sufficiently indicates the spirit in which it was written. In a Thanksgiving sermon on the New South, delivered in 1881, he criticised severely the croakers and the demagogues who were endeavoring to mislead the people, and reviewed with sympathy the great progress that had been made since the war. He pleads guilty to the charge of having new light and is glad of it. He points out with keen insight the illiteracy of the masses of the Southern people and the lack of educational facilities. A movement for the development of a public school system in the South was led by J. L. M. Curry, a Confederate soldier of Georgia stock. He became an evangelist in the crusade for public education, announcing before State legislatures the principle upon which a true democratic order might be established. "I am not afraid of the educated masses," he said, in an address before the Georgia legislature; "I would rather trust the masses than king, priest, aristocracy, or established church. No nation can realize its full possibility unless it builds upon the education of the whole people."
By 1885 the forces that have here been briefly sketched were well under way throughout the South. Factories were prospering, farm products were becoming more diversified, more farmers owned their own places, a public school system was firmly established in all the leading cities and towns, colleges and universities — some of the strongest dating from the period just after the war — were enabled to increase their endowments and to modernize their work, the national spirit was growing, and a more liberal view of religion was being maintained. A day of hope, of freedom, of progress, had dawned.
It was natural that along with all these changes, and indeed anticipating some of them, there should arise a group of Southern writers. Indeed, immediately after the war there was a marked tendency in the direction of literary work — "an avalanche of literature in a devastated country." Magazines were started and books were published in abundance. The literary activity was due, no doubt, in the first place, to the poverty of men and women: some who would have looked down upon literature as a profession before the war were now eager to do anything to keep starvation from the door. Furthermore, there was a great desire among some people to have the Southern side of the war well represented before the civilized world. Hence arose innumerable biographies, histories, and historical novels, and hence the demand for Southern text-books.
It is clearly impossible to give any adequate sketch of this literary awakening, — if so it may be called, when contrasted with a later one. Of the magazines which were started, the most important were "Debow's Review", "devoted to the restoration of the Southern States and the development of the wealth and resources of the country," whose motto was, "Light up the torches of industry"; the "Southern Review", edited by Dr. A. T. Bledsoe and William Hand Browne and dedicated "to the despised, the disfranchised, and the down-trodden people of the South"; "The Land We Love", started in Charlotte, N.C., by Gen. D. H. Hill, and devoted to literature, military history, and agriculture; "Scott's Monthly", published in Atlanta, "Southern Field and Fireside", in Raleigh, and "The Crescent Monthly", in New Orleans; the "New Eclectic Magazine" and its successor, the "Southern Magazine", published by the Turnbull Brothers of Baltimore; and, as if Charleston had not had enough magazines to die before the war, the "Nineteenth Century", in that city. Most of these had but a short career, and none of them survived longer than 1878. There was in them a continual crying out for Southern literature which might worthily represent the Southern people. The response came, too — so far as quantity was concerned. One of the editors remarked that he had enough poetry on hand to last seven years and five months.
Of these magazines the most important was the "Southern Magazine", published at Baltimore from 1871 to 1875, — a magazine which came nearest filling the place occupied by the "Southern Literary Messenger" before the war. While it was somewhat eclectic in its character, — reprinting articles from the English magazines, — it had as contributors a group of promising young scholars and writers. The editor was William Hand Browne, now professor of English literature in Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gildersleeve, then of the University of Virginia, Professor Thomas R. Price, then professor of English at Randolph-Macon, James Albert Harrison, later the biographer and editor of Poe, and Margaret J. Preston were regular contributors. Richard Malcolm Johnston contributed his "Dukesborough Tales" to it. One of the publishers of the magazine, Mr. Lawrence Turnbull, visited Lanier at Macon in 1871 and became much interested in him. To the magazine Lanier contributed "Prospects and Retrospects" (March and April, 1871), "A Song" and "A Seashore Grave" (July, 1871), "Nature-Metaphors" (February, 1872), "San Antonio de Bexar" (July and August, 1873), and "Peace" (October, 1874).
Of the books published during this period, few have survived. John Esten Cooke's novels and his lives of Stonewall Jackson and Lee, two or three collections of the war poetry of the South, Gayarre's histories, the "War between the States", by Alexander H. Stephens, Craven's "Prison Life of Jefferson Davis", and Dabney's "Defense of Virginia" are perhaps the most significant. J. Wood Davidson's "Living Writers of the South", published in 1869, gives the best general idea of the extent and quality of the post-bellum writing. Noteworthy, also, is a series of text-books projected with the idea that the moral and mental training of the sons and daughters of the South should no longer be intrusted to teachers and books imported from abroad. As planned originally, the scheme called for Bledsoe's Mathematics, Maury's Geographies, Holmes's Readers, Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar, histories of Louisiana and South Carolina by Gayarre and Simms respectively, scientific books by the Le Conte brothers, and English Classics by Richard Malcolm Johnston.
So much needs to be said of the character of the literature immediately succeeding the war, if for no other reason, that it may be contrasted with the literature of, say, the period from 1875 to 1885. With the death of Timrod in 1867, and of Simms, Longstreet, and Prentice in 1870, the old order of Southern writers had passed away. By 1875 a new group of writers had begun their work, Paul Hamilton Hayne best representing the transition from one to the other. The younger writers either had been Confederate soldiers, or had been intimately identified with those who were. They began to write, not out of response to a demand for distinctively Southern literature, but because they had the artistic spirit, the desire to create. They were interested in describing Southern scenery, and in portraying types of character in the social life of their respective States. Unlike most of the literature of the Old South, the new literature was related directly to the life of the people. Men began to describe Southern scenery, not some fantastic world of dreamland; sentimentalism was superseded by a healthy realism. The writers fell in with contemporary tendencies and followed the lead of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who had begun to write humorous local sketches and incidents. With them literature was not a diversion, but a business. They were willing to be known as men of letters who made their living by literature. They stood, too, for the national, rather than the sectional, spirit. "What does it matter," said Joel Chandler Harris, "whether I am Northerner or Southerner if I am true to truth, and true to that larger truth, my own true self? My idea is that truth is more important than sectionalism, and that literature that can be labeled Northern, Southern, Western, or Eastern, is not worth labeling at all." Again, he said, speaking of the ideal Southern writer: "He must be Southern and yet cosmopolitan; he must be intensely local in feeling, but utterly unprejudiced and unpartisan as to opinions, tradition, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as well. Only let it be the work of genius, and it will take all sections by storm."
And it did take all sections by storm. Contrary to the idea which had prevailed after the war that Northern people would be slow to recognize Southern genius, it must be said that Northern magazines, Northern publishers, and Northern readers made possible the success of Southern writers. In 1873, "Scribner's Magazine" sent a special train through the South with the purpose of securing a series of articles on "the great South". While in New Orleans, Mr. Edward King, who had charge of the expedition, discovered George W. Cable, whose story, "'Sieur George", appeared in "Scribner's Magazine" in October of that year. Between that time and 1881 the magazine published, in addition to Cable's stories, — afterwards collected into the volume "Old Creole Days", — stories and poems by John Esten Cooke, Margaret J. Preston, Maurice Thompson, Mrs. Burnett, Mrs. Harrison, Irwin Russell, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Thomas Nelson Page, and Sidney Lanier. In an editorial of September, 1881, the editor, referring to the fact that no less than seven articles by Southerners had appeared in a recent number of "Scribner's", said: "We are glad to recognize the fact of a permanent productive force in literature in the Southern States. . . . We welcome the new writers to the great republic of letters with all heartiness." "The Century Magazine", the successor of "Scribner's", continued to be the patron of the new Southern writers. The number for April, 1884, contained Lanier's portrait as a frontispiece, a sketch of Lanier by William Hayes Ward, Thomas Nelson Page's "Marse Chan", an installment of Cable's "Dr. Sevier", Walter B. Hill's article on "Uncle Tom Without a Cabin", and William Preston Johnston's poem, "The Master".
"Harper's Magazine", in January, 1874, began a series of articles on the New South, by Edwin De Leon, and in the following year published a series of articles by Constance F. Woolson, giving sketches of Florida and western North Carolina. In May, 1887, appeared an article giving the first complete survey of Southern literature, which, according to the author, had introduced into our national literature "a stream of rich, warm blood." The "Independent", a paper which had seemed to Southerners extremely severe in its criticism of the life of the South, is especially connected with the rising fame of Lanier. The editor recognized his genius while he was still alive, after his death continued to publish his poems, and in 1884 wrote the Memorial for the first complete edition of his poems. Maurice Thompson, another Southern writer, became its literary editor in 1888.