De Bow's Review, the Southern Quarterly, and the Literary Messenger, were the most noteworthy exceptions. The business interests of the larger towns supported the first—which, indeed, drew part of its patronage from the North. Neither its great ability nor the taste of its clientele availed to sustain the second; and the Messenger—long the chosen medium of southern writers of all ages, sexes and conditions—dragged on a wearisome existence, with one foot in the grave for many years, only to perish miserably of starvation during the war.
But any regular and systematized periodical literature the South never had. The principal reason doubtless is, that she had not the numerous class of readers for amusement, who demand such food in the North; and of the not insignificant class who did indulge in it, nine-tenths—for one reason, or another, preferred northern periodicals. This is not altogether unnatural, when we reflect that these latter were generally better managed and superior in interest—if not in tone—to anything the South had yet attempted. They were gotten up with all the appliances of mechanical perfection; were managed with business tact, and forced and puffed into such circulation as made the heavy outlay for first-class writers in the end remunerative.
On the contrary, every magazine attempted in the South up to that time had been born with the seeds of dissolution already in it. Voluntary contributions—fatal poison to any literary enterprise—had been their universal basis. There was ever a crowd of men and women among southern populations, who would write anywhere and anything for the sake of seeing themselves in print. And while there were many able and accomplished writers available, they were driven off by these Free-Companions of the quill—preferring not to write in such company; or, if forced to do it, to send their often anonymous contributions to northern journals. These two reasons—especially the last—availed to kill the few literary ventures attempted by more enterprising southern publishers. The first of these two in a great measure influenced the scarcity of book-producers, among a people who had really very few readers among them; and even had the number of these been larger, it seems essential to the increase of authors that there should be the constant friction of contact in floating literature.
Good magazines are the nurseries and forcing houses for authors; and almost every name of prominence in modern literature may be traced back along its course, as that of magazinist, or reviewer.
The South—whether these reasons for it be just or not, the fact is patent—had had but few writers of prominence; and in fiction especially the names that were known could be numbered on one's fingers. W. Gilmore Simms was at once the father of southern literature and its most prolific exemplar. His numerous novels have been very generally read; and, if not placing him in the highest ranks of writers of fiction, at least vindicate the claims of his section to force and originality. He had been followed up the thorny path by many who stopped half-way, turned back, or sunk forgotten even before reaching that far.
Few, indeed, of their works ever went beyond their own boundaries; and those few rarely sent back a record. Exceptions there were, however, who pressed Mr. Simms hard for his position on the topmost peak; and most of these adventurous climbers were of the softer sex.
John Esten Cooke had written a very clever novel of the olden society, called "Virginia Comedians." It had promised a brilliant future, when his style and method should both ripen; a promise that had not, so far, been kept by two or three succeeding ventures launched on these doubtful waters. Hon. Jere Clemens, of Alabama, had commenced a series of strong, if somewhat convulsive, stories of western character. "Mustang Gray" and "Bernard Lile," scenting strongly of camp-fire and pine-top, yet had many advantages over the majority of successful novels, then engineered by northern publishers. Marion Harland, as her nom de plume went, was, however, the most popular of southern writers. Her stories of Virginia home-life had little pretension to the higher flights of romance; but they were pure, graphic and not unnatural scenes from every-day life. They introduced us to persons we knew, or might have known; and the people read them generally and liked them. Mrs. Ritchie (Anna Cora Mowatt) was also prolific of novels, extracted principally from her fund of stage experience. Piquant and bright, with a dash of humor and more than a dash of sentiment, Mrs. Ritchie's books had many admirers and more friends. The South-west, too, had given us the "Household of Bouverie" and "Beulah;" and it was reserved for Miss Augusta Evans, author of the latter, to furnish the only novel—almost the only book—published within the South during continuance of the war. The only others I can now recall—emanating from southern pens and entirely made in the South—were Mrs. A. de V. Chaudron's translation of Mülbach's "Joseph II.," and Dr. Wm. Sheppardson's collection of "War Poetry of the South."
This is not an imposing array of prose writers, and it may be incomplete; but it is very certain that there are not many omissions.
In poetry, the warmer clime of the South would naturally have been expected to excel; but, while the list of rhymsters was longer than Leporello's, the poets hardly exceeded in number the writers of prose. Thompson, Meek, Simms, Hayne, Timrod and McCord were the few names that had gone over the border. Up to that time, however, the South had never produced any great poem, that was to stand ære perennius. But that there was a vast amount of latent poetry in our people was first developed by the terrible friction of war.
In the dead-winter watches of the camp, in the stricken homes of the widow and the childless, and in the very prison pens, where they were crushed under outrage and contumely—the souls of the southrons rose in song.