A more radical poet was John Greenleaf Whittier, contributor to the National Era, a radical anti-slavery journal which first gave publicity to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous Uncle Tom's Cabin. Whittier's Ichabod, which appeared in 1850, and is already quoted in these pages, gave its author a devoted following among the radicals and hastened Webster to his grave. Mrs. Stowe's work was perhaps the most influential book ever written by an American, though it hardly ranks as literature. Of a similarly intense nature was James Russell Lowell, whose Biglow Papers of 1846 to 1857 unmercifully lampooned the party which waged the war on Mexico and ridiculed the leaders of the South and West. Succeeding Longfellow at Harvard, Lowell helped to establish in 1857 the Atlantic Monthly, which still remains the best of American magazines.
There was nowhere else in the country such a school of literary men as this of New England, though in Charleston William Gilmore Simms was still publishing historical novels, espousing the cause of Southern literature in Russell's Magazine, and stimulating the ambitions of young men. One of his pupils, Henry Timrod, whose At Magnolia Cemetery is likely to prove immortal, was worthy to be compared with Poe; and another, Paul Hamilton Hayne, certainly deserved a higher rank and a better fortune than either of these struggling poets has been accorded. But perhaps the most original writings of the time were those of a certain group of obscure men in Georgia and the lower South. A. B. Longstreet, the author of Georgia Scenes, William Tappan Thompson, of Major Jones's Courtship, and Joseph B. Baldwin, of Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi, struck a rich vein of ludicrous humor which Mark Twain worked out after the war.
In Richmond the Southern Literary Messenger was still the clearing-house for Southern writers, and De Bow's Review was eminent in the field of social and economic studies. New York City had, however, become the Mecca of the men who had manuscripts to submit. There the Harper Brothers published their Harper's Magazine, which went to 150,000 subscribers, we are told, each month, and the Knickerbocker Magazine, distinguished by the contributions of Washington Irving, the Nestor of American writers, tried to keep pace. Both the Harpers and the Putnams did an enormous business in books of all kinds, now that so many Americans had grown rich. Walter Scott's novels were imported for the South in carload lots, while Dickens's numberless volumes found ready sale in the East, thus showing the different tastes of the sections.
And the historians had increased their vogue with a people just beginning to realize that they had ancestors and taking a becoming pride in their early history. Bancroft's History of the United States was sold in all sections in a way that would astound present-day historians. Richard Hildreth, a sturdy partisan, added his six volumes to Bancroft's in 1849-54 by way of antidote; and George Tucker, of the University of Virginia, still further “corrected” the history of his country, the better to suit the tastes of Southerners. John L. Motley published his Rise of the Dutch Republic in 1856 at his own expense, and suddenly found himself one of the foremost historians of his time, his work being quickly translated into all the important languages of Europe. William H. Prescott, an older man and a greater historian, already well known for his Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, gave to the printer his Reign of Philip II in 1855-58, and easily maintained his supremacy in the field of history.
It was an aspiring generation that produced Poe, Hawthorne, Lowell, and the rest, and if one considers the character of American culture, its lack of unity, and the still youthful nature of its people, it is easy to understand the pride in its budding art and maturer literature, the sensitiveness to foreign criticism, the provincialism which demands attention and a “place in the sun.” Carlyle's scorn and Macaulay's contempt were indeed as irritating as they were unjust, for America had gone a long way since the rough backwoodsman, Andrew Jackson, came to the Presidency by almost unanimous consent in 1829.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
James Ford Rhodes in his History of the United States, vol. I, chap. IV, gives an account of social conditions in the South just prior to the war and, in vol. III, chap. XII, there is a similar picture of conditions in the North. McMaster's last volume describes the life of the people for this period. But I have found most valuable information in works of travel like F. L. Olmsted's A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856) and A Journey Through the Back Country (1863), W. H. Russell's My Diary North and South (1863), Sir Charles Lyell's A Second Visit to the United States (1849), Peter Cartwright's Autobiography (1856), and James Dixon's Personal Narrative (1849); and in John Weiss's Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker (1864); Beecher and Scoville's Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (1888); W. E. Hatcher's Life of J. B. Jeter (1887); T. C. Johnson's The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1906); and the valuable American Church History series (1893-97). On American sculpture Lorado Taft's American Sculpture (1903), and Charles H. Caffin's American Masters of Sculpture (1903), are useful and discriminating. Caffin has also written The Story of American Painting (1907), which is perhaps the best short account of the subject. For a good view of the literary and publishing interests of 1860, W. P. Trent's A History of American Literature (1903) is most valuable, and W. B. Cairns's A History of American Literature (1912) is likewise important. George H. Putnam's George Palmer Putnam: A Memoir (1912) and J. H. Harper's The House of Harper (1912) give important information about the rise of the publishing houses. Of course De Bow's Review, Resources of the South and West, and the Reports of the Census for 1850 and 1860 are indispensable.