Writing War and Reunion by Rogers Jeffery J.;

Author:Rogers, Jeffery J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Daily South Carolinian

January 25, 1866

(Article Two)

IN GLANCING over a certain wretched Northern literary paper, which is not worth while to name, we came across an editorial essay on the subject of American literature. There was little in the article that it would pay either to remember or repeat; but one sentence towards the conclusion contains a boast sufficiently common and popular at the North to justify us in making it the text of a few remarks, without reference to the petty source from which, in this instance, it emanates. The paper is not by us, so that we cannot give the exact words, but the substance is as follows. After much twaddle about what the country has already achieved in literature, the writer exclaims: “what is to prevent us from creating a still mightier literature, who, single-handed and with the world against us, have come out victors in a war which would have staggered and, perhaps, crushed any other nation upon earth?” Let the Southern reader note first the implication in this precious clause that American literature means Northern literature alone. It is the North which has achieved the wondrous deed of arms in question; it is the North, therefore, and not the South, which is to make its pen as illustrious as its sword. But let this point pass. We can afford to count ourselves out in a contest, the laurels of which are mostly borne off by such writers as constitute the editorial and contributional corps of Harper’s Magazine; pass, too, the exquisite logic which infers the ability to write fine poems or weave immortal fictions from military success. What is really most admirable, what claims our particular attention in the sentence under discussion is, the assertion that the North was overmatched in the late struggle—that the whole world was banded against her, and, consequently, that the whole world was upon the side of the South. Strange to say this statement is not now made for the first time by the nameless editor from whose columns we quote. There are a great many people at the North who believe, or pretend to believe, its truth. It has been iterated and reiterated a thousand times in rhetoric and song. HOWADJI CURTIS has, doubtless, dwelt upon it, and varied it, and decorated it in his own artistic but unscrupulous way. MR. SUMNER also has, probably, enshrined it in some of his favorite figures of speech. At least, if these two gentlemen have failed to avail themselves of the said statement; they have neglected a topic peculiarly suited to their powers, and not less in consonance with their habitual disregard to truth. How they could have enlarged upon the fact that it was the South which always fought its battles with a numerical advantage of five to one—that it was the South which levied its armies from almost every nation on the globe, and that it was the South which, with its immense fleet, sealed up the ports of the North and thus compelled the North to carry on the contest with its own poor resources alone.

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