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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR NOVEL, 1900 - 1910

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Birdie Ruth Travis

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THE AMERICA! CIVIL WAR NOVEL, 1900-1910

By
Birdie Ruth Travis

A.DISSERTIIIOI

Sub-itted to
Michigan State university
in partial fulfillment of the require-eats
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Depart-ant of English
1993

ABSTRACT
TEE AIERICAI CIVIL WAR NOVEL, 1900-1910
BY
Birdie Ruth Travis

Three men--Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, and
William Gilmore Simms--are responsible for developing the
formula for the Romance Novel in America during the
nineteenth century. By the 1840's European writers were
beginning to experiment with a new movement in literature
and art called réalisme. The flawless heroes and heroines
of the past were no longer acceptable, but this movement had
very little influence on American writers.

Sir Walter Scott's formula remained a major influence
on the historical romance in America during the nineteenth
century. By the time the Civil War began, critics and the
reading public in America had established the historical
romance as the acceptable form of literature. During the
decade of the 1860's, the romancers produced over two
hundred Civil War romances for the Beadle Dime Library, most
of which were ephemeral. The bulk of. this literature
reveals no critical attitude or commentary on war. Most of
the Revolutionary romances, as well as the early Civil War
romances, continued to follow Scott's formula with very
little innovation.

William Dean Howells, the editor of The Atlantic

Ion y, worked to discredit the Civil War romances by

promoting réalisme. His attempt to discredit the Civil War
romances created a fiery debate between the American
romancers and the realists that continued throughout the
latter half of the nineteenth century until the triumph of
realism in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Howells', James' and Twain's form for the novel became the
major influence for the standard novel. But Sir Walter
Scott's influence (Hi the historical romance continued into
the twentieth century until it was minimized by World War I
and the standard novel around 1926.

In the 1900-1910 decade of historical romances, many of
the romancers continued to write the "pure romances" while
others began to experiment with the old romance formula.
These experiments involved replacing the old style romances
of love, adventure, and violent action with the new style
romances of love, manners, and costumes.

This study is divided into three sections. Part 1
deals with the origin of the American Civil War Novel,
criticism, and structure. Part 2 is a narrative history of
the events and thoughts that constitute the historical
background in the novels. Part 3 is the narrative history
dramatized through character and plot, and an example of how
the novelists experimented with the old romantic formula to
generate new ideas for portraying war in a realistic manner,

making social criticism, and commentaries on war.

Copyright by
BIRDIB RUTH TRAVIS
1993

In Ila-ory of Ily Father,

Deacon Willie L. Travis

I would like to thank my Chairman, Professor Barry E.
Gross, and my Committee: Professors Jenifer Banks, Eric
Lunde, Lister Matheson, and Henry Silverman for taking on
this project; historical novelist Roberta Gellis for her
letters discussing the historical novel; Professors Jim
Seaton and Herman Struck for their critical readings and
suggestions; Professors William Johnsen, Victor Paananen,
English Department Chair, and Patrick M. McConeghy,
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, for their
support; Wanda Edwards, Assistant Director of Financial Aid,
the English Department's office staff: Loraine Hart,
Rosemary Ezzo, Sharon Tyree, and Shirley Kirkland for their
assistance; the Michigan State University Library Inter-
Library Loan Department for locating the materials I needed
to complete this project; Professors Ronda Glikin, George
Perkins and Fred Blum at Eastern Michigan University for
their encouragement; Mrs. Mildred Richardson, Mrs. Layla
Ahmad, Mrs. Vernell Jones, and all of my friends at Henry H.
North School for their interest, encouragement, and
assistance; Mrs. Mary Stokes, Mrs. Rosetta Roberts, and Mrs.
Clara Betty Anderson for their friendship; Pastors John
Black and Zadie Tyner, my intercessory prayer partners at
the Original Church of God No. 2, and Unity for their
prayers and their support; and my family for their patience
and loyalty.

vi

Chapter
I.
II.
III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.
IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1 The Civil as: level: Formative
Factors, Literary Trends

The Origin of the American Civil War Novel.

Some Definitions.

Literary Trends and Criticism, 1860-1925.

Formative Factors: 1900-1910 Decade.
Conventional Structure

Part 2 Historical Background in the levels

The Old Caste and Class System.
The Concept of Two Separate Cultures.

Part 3 The levelists' use of History:
1900-1910 Decade

Re-Creations of the Political Turmoil Through
Character and plot.

A House Divides: The War in the Novels.

North vs. South: The Soldiers.

Unconventional Soldiers: Spies and
Guerrillas.

Disenfranchised Soldiers: Mountaineers,
Negroes, and Women.

The "Artistic Quality" and Historical Value
of the Novels in this Study.

Bibliography

vii

Page
16
39
64

99
105

125
144

176
205
241

258

272

300
319

Introduction

Since the onset of the American Civil War, novelists,
historians, scholars, and the popular culture have been
fascinated with the events surrounding the war, and the
literature dealing with the war. Beginning with the decade
of the 1860's, large numbers of Civil War novels as well as
short stories have been published. The first cycle, 1865-
1884, was mostly a Northern wave that was forgiving, but
issued a "stern reproof to the Confederacy." According to
Bernard DeVoto, this cycle came "before the form of the
modern American novel was shaped by Howells, Henry James and
Mark Twain." Twenty years later, 1885-1895, the "Northern
Wave" was replaced by the second.*wave, "the glamorous
Southland." The third cycle, 1895-1925, includes two sub-
cycles: the first, 1895-1910, has often been characterized
as a minor resurgence of Civil War fiction, and the second,
1911-1925, "is devoted to the Southern Cause." The fourth
cycle, 1926 to the present, is still largely devoted to the
Confederacy, but the critics suggest the Civil War novel has
reached maturity and become "democratized."1

Although the general consensus among the critics about
most of the literature before the fourth cycle is that the
novelists had nothing new to contribute to the art of the
novel, they agree that the novelists were good storytellers.

The most successful Civil War literature written from

1

2

1860 to 1925 consisted of collected letters, personal
memoirs , diaries , autobiographical narratives , and
journalistic reports. Concerning this literature Edmund
Wilson wrote:

the peculiar fascination of this literature which

leads one to go on and on reading it is rather

like that of Browning's The Ring and the Book, in

which the same story is told 2from the point of

view of nine different persons.

The American Civil War novel has its roots in the
historical romance traditions of Sir Walter Scott. Sir
Walter Scott began his Waverley series in 1814. This series
began the vogue of the historical novel and provided the
form American writers had been searching for to express
peculiarly American scenes and new democratic ideas. But
the raw material needed a skillful American writer to
fashion the native subjects and Scott's formula into a
cohesive whole. James Fenimore Cooper was the first writer
to accept the challenge and succeed. One of his most
successful Revolutionary romances was The Spy (1821). In
1835, twenty years after Waverley, William Gilmore Simms
joined the ranks of the Revolutionary War romancers when he
published The Partisan (1835) and The Ye-assee (1835). Just
as Cooper had furnished the model for American romancers,
Simms established a model, based on Scott's formula, for the
Southern romancers.

Once the Americans mastered the formula, the historical

romance remained popular from 1821 until 1860 with only a

3
short period of calm. The Revolution remained the popular
subject, and the attitude toward war remained glorious,
heroic, patriotic, and romantic. By the time the Civil War
began, the critics and the reading public had established
the historical romance as an acceptable form of literature.

The second period of the historical romance extends
from 1860-1895. Although the influence of Scott, Cooper,
and Sims was still prevalent, the Revolutionary War was no
longer popular with the romancers. When the Civil War
started, the historical romancers began to use it as the
background for their romances. This new generation of
writers continued to use Scott, Cooper, and Simms' formulas,
but they began to modify the old ideas and stress new ones.
During the decade of the war (the 1860's), over two hundred
romances were published by the Beadle Dime Library, most of
which were of an ephemeral nature.

After the initial surge of this literature, the
reputable nineteenth-century novelists--William Dean
Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain--tended to shy away
from the subject. Howells as the editor of The Atlantic
Monthly committed himself to the magazine's political views
by supporting the move against the Civil War romances that
appeared during the 1860's. Although Howells worked to
discredit the Civil War romances, he did publish some short
stories from the civilian point of view which dealt with the

more realistic aspects of the war and the events that

followed.

When the War ended, the realistic impulse began to
appear in American literature, but the historical romance
changed very little. Only one novel written during the
decade of the 1860's has received critical acclaim. J. W;
DeForest's novel Miss Ravenel's Conversion (1867) has
survived as a minor classic mainly because the author
provided the first realistic approach to the war.

Between 1895 and 1905 the historical romance relived
another great rise in popularity that seemed to calm the
intensity of the debate between the romancers and the
realists. This new romantic revival, along with the
popularity of the historical romance and the increased
desire for reading material, elevated the high romance into
a popular success. The new excitement was ideal for the
romancers: all they had to do was find the appropriate
subject. Once again they turned to the Civil War. This
time the writers added the depiction of costumes and manners
to the old convention of narrating exciting stories of love
and adventure.

By 1900, the historical romance had become a popular
and economic success for its authors and publishers. But it
was a form still trying to perfect itself. It was neither
complete or mature.3 However, because of its popular appeal
even Howells had to say that he did not "wholly dislike

historical fiction," but he also claimed that "its immense

5
favor [was] abating." Howells was correct. The popular
demand began to decline after 1902, and by 1905, the era of
the historical romance was just about over. The reading
public was finally moving toward the more realistic novel.

The triumph of realism in the novel had a profound
effect on all American literature. Even the romancers began
to include some realism in their formula.

During the nineteenth century, the terms romance,
historical romance, and historical novel were loosely
defined and, therefore, loosely applied expressions of
common use. As a result, it is difficult to defend any
distinctions between the three terms, because for a long
time in America "the terms 'romance' and 'historical novel'
were practically synonymous."4

Distinctions began to appear during the latter years of
the 1920's and early 1930's when a renewed interest in
reading and a new interest in the past came *with the
economic depression. Novels like Willa Cather's 'Qggth
Cones for the Archbishop (1927) and Stephen Vincent Benét's
Jenn Brown's Body (1928) were forerunners of the new vogue
in historical fiction. With the appearance of Hervey
Allen's Anthony Adverse (1933), it was certain that a new
vogue of the historical novel was on.5

Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse (1933) began the popular

trend, and three years later Margaret Mitchell's first and

only historical romance, Gone With the Wind (1936),

6
confirmed the popularity of the new vogue. The Civil War
period once again became the most popular subject for the
new vogue of historical novels. Five Civil War novels made
the ten top best sellers list during the years of economic
depression: Caroline Miller's Lamb in His Boson (1934),

Stark Young's So Red the Rose (1934), Margaret Mitchell's

 

Gone With the Wind (1936), Laura Krey's And Tell Time
(1938), and Hervey Allen's Action at Aquila (1938). The
historical novel had never completely died out in America
since Scott and Cooper, but different cycles or periods had
brought inunense popularity. The 1930's and 1940's formed
another one of the popular periods.

The Civil War novels published during the 1930's were
not only popular, but they began to attract the attention of
the literary critics. The historical novelists had become
artistically and intellectually secure enough to break with
the old tradition of the historical romance to experiment
with the new thought in sociology and psychology. The
historical novels that included more realism, developed
characters, the use of the common soldier and the average
citizen as the hero, believable plots, historical atmosphere
and the authenticity of facts were increasingly called the
serious historical novel. "Many of the historical novelists
who elected the Civil War theme were destined to
produce works that would be veritable monuments of detailed

antiquarian research."6

7
After the decade of the 1930's, John Farrar identified
three categories of the historical novel: the period novel,
the historical romance or adventure novel, and the
historical novel. He suggested that the period novelist was
more interested in detailing his background and research
than in presenting the whole of life, the historical romance
or adventure novelist subordinated his setting and character
to plot and action, and the historical novelist was one who
integrated character and setting.7
After the decade of the 1940's, Ernest E. Leisy
identified the same three categories and added a fourth, the
costume romance. Leisy argued that the historical novel
"shows respect for historical fiction as art." He used
Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop (1921) as the
example. The romance of adventure, as written by Cooper
and Sims, placed too much emphasis on the action. These
kinds of novels were best illustrated at the turn-of-the-
century by Winston Churchill's Richard Carvel (1899) and
Mary Johnston's To Have and to Held (1900), and later in the
novels of Neil Swanson and Van Wyck Mason. The costume
romance, in Leisy's opinion, gave "too much attention to
'salad dressing.'" He used Robert Ruark's novel Grenadine
Etching, Her Life and Love (1947) as the example.8
Popular and contemporary historical novelist Roberta
Gellis identified three broad categories of the historical

novel: the costume novel, the historical romance, and the

8
serious historical novel.9 According to Gellis, the
costume novel, which has very little connection with the
period except for the costume, fulfills the needs of the

readers of escape literature.10

She used Georgette Heyer's
Regency novels as an example. The historical romance may or
may not center on a love story. "The historical events are
a loose framework around the fictional characters who live
their lives and have their own adventures."» But the
historical events always influence their lives. The novels
of Thomas B. Costain, Samuel Shellabarger, Frank Yerby, and
Noel Gerson represent examples of these types of historical
novels. The third category, and the most serious type of
historical fiction, Gellis called the historical novel.

This type of book uses real historical personages

as its characters. The plot and action of the

book are fixed on historical events and the

cultural and emotional attitudes and morf are

depicted with all the accuracy possible....
Robert Graves, Edith Pargeter, Sharon K. Penman, and Mary
Renault have written novels that represent some of the best
in this category.12

The American Civil War novel, because of the nature of
its conventions and the enormous output since the 1860's,
constitutes one of the many sub-genres that make up the
historical novel as a major genre. The Civil War novel may
fall under any one of the categories above, or it may

include conventions from all of the categories.

From 1860 to 1925, the Civil War novel is still

9
basically the nineteenth-century historical romance which
was heavily influenced by Sir Walter Scott. From 1926 to
1960, Sir Walter Scott's influence is minimized by World War
I and the standard novel. Bernard DeVoto suggested the
Civil War novel of the 1930's had reached maturity and
become democratized. The Civil War novel could be judged by
the same standards applied to any other novel.13

Most of the novels in this study may be identified as
turn-of—the-century historical romances--which. means that
they are still basically nineteenth century historical
romances based on the form Sir Walter Scott invented. But
they have been influenced by major literary trends such as
realism and naturalism and the new interest in sociology and
social criticism. Many of the novels are still the novel of
adventure, but the influences of the novel of manners and
the sociological novel can be identified.

The most frequent literary criticisms concerning the
Civil War novels, between 1860 and 1925, suggest that the
novels were too imitative, too romantic, and too
sentimental, a sub-literature that had nothing new to
contribute to the art of fiction. Ernest Hemingway wrote,

There was no real literature of our Civil War,

excepting the forgotten "Miss Ravenel's

Conversion" by J. W. DeForest, until Stephen Crane

wrote "The Red Badge of Courage.”

However, the last romantic ferment, that occurred during the

1900-1910 decade, is important to the literary history and

development of American literature.

10

A fascinating story emerges in the 1900-1910 decade of
Civil War literature from the firing on Fort Sumter at 4:30
a.m., April 12, 1861, through the long bloody war that
followed until Lee surrendered to Grant in the home of
Wilbur McLean in Appomattox Court House during the early
afternoon of April 9, 1865. The authors re-create the
passing of the old and the emergence of the new nation
fashioned in the image of its maker--Mr. Lincoln.

This decade of fiction has generally been skipped or
ignored by scholars with the exception of two dissertations-
-'Civil War Fiction, 1890-1920" by Ralph C. Most and "Gone
But Not Forgotten: The American Civil War Novels, 1900-
1939” by John Zubritsky. I decided to concentrate
exclusively on the 1900-1910 decade for this study.
Developing the primary bibliography for the dissertation
topic involved searching through the 1900-1910 section in
R. Glenn Wright's Chronological Bibliography' of English
nggggge Fiction in the Library of Congress 1865-1914 Vbl.IV
(1914) for entries with the subject heading classification,
"Civil War." Forty-six, titles were obtained from ‘this
section, and three additional titles *were» selected from
other sources. Since most of the novels were not in MSU's
Library, the books had to be secured through inter-library
loan. As I began to read the books, a group of recurring
themes began to impress me as possible chapter headings or

ideas to explore further: the origin of the American Civil

11
War novel; the structure of the Civil War novel, 1900-1910;
the old caste and class system; the concept that two
separate cultures existed in the nation before the war; the
fictional re-creations of the political turmoil; the war;
and the soldiers.

Once I began researching the topics by reading the
literary criticism and scholarly research--which also
included reading every dissertation related to the subject,
and as many secondary sources and articles that I could
possibly find--I decided that this fiction had some
significance for the study of American literature and
American literary history despite the unfavorable comments
by most of the critics.

Although the negative literary criticism of this
literature has merit, this literature was pivotal in its
experimentation. For the first time large numbers of
writers tried to incorporate the realists' theories into the
conventional romantic formula. Without this decade of
experimentation, there never could have been the fully
developed Civil War novel that followed during the late
twenties and thirties.

This study is divided into three sections. Part 1
deals with the origin of the American Civil War novel,
definitions, literary trends and criticism, formative
factors, and conventional structure.

Part 2 is the narrative history of the events, and the

12
social and political thought that constitutes the historical
setting and background in the novels. An understanding of
this body of fiction requires some familiarity with the
established historical facts and the political atmosphere of
the epoch.

Part 3 demonstrates how fiction and history work
together in the historical novel. It is the retelling of
the narrative history in Part 2 as it is dramatized through
the adventures, characters, and plots in the novels. It is
the romance of history: the blending of history and fiction
together to form a renewed experience in the national crisis
of the American Civil War.

This section also re-creates the novelists' imaginative
interpretations of the national crisis, how this crisis was
viewed by the different classes in the society, and how the
novelists experimented *with the old. romantic formula to
generate new ideas for describing war in a more realistic
manner, making social criticism and commentaries on war, and
dealing with subjects previous romancers would never have
used in their romances.

This is not a paper in historicism, genre, or the
theory of the historical novel. This paper traces the
origin of the American Civil War novel, the literary
history, trends, and criticism from 1860 to 1925. The focus
of this paper is the 1900-1910 decade of Civil War novels

and the examination of texts. The object of this study is

13
to assess the importance of this decade of Civil War novels;
evaluate how well the writers developed their novels; what
influence, if any, the battle between the romancers and the
realists may have had on their works; how they illuminated
history with their imaginative use of the facts; how
successful they' were in re-creating 'the single» greatest
event in American history, and what is the value of this

turn-of—the-century Civil War novel?

10.

11.

12.

13.
14.

14

Endnotes

Bernard DeVoto, "Fiction Fights the Civil War,"
Saturday Review of Literature XVII, 18 Dec. 1937, p. 3.

Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1962), pp. ix-x.

Russel B. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular
Arts in America (New York: Dial Press, 1970), p. 3.

MacKinlay Kantor, The Historical Nbvelist's Obligation
to _History (Macon, Georgia: Southern Press, Inc.
1967), p. 80

Harlan Hatcher, ”The New vogue of Historical Fiction,"
The English Journal Vol XXVI (December, 1937), p. 776.

Lawrence S. Thompson, ”The Civil War in Fiction," Civil
War History II (March, 1956), p. 91.

John Farrar, "Nbvelists and/or' Historian,” Saturdayj
Review of Literature XXVIII (February 17, 1945), p. 7.

Ernest E. Leisy, The American Historical level (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), pp. 18-19.

Roberta Gellis, How to Write Historical Fiction.
Audiotape no 18. Rec. Austin Writer's League Workshop.
(Austin, Texas: Davenport Productions, 1988).

Roberta Gellis, "Historical Novelists," in a letter
dated August 14, 1992.

Gellis, How to Write Historical Fiction. Audiotape no
18.

Gellis, How to Write Historical Fiction. Audiotape no
18.

DeVoto, pp. 15-16.

Ernest Hemingway, Introd., Men At War (New York:
Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1960), pp. 9-10.

Part 1 The Civil War Novel: Formative
Factors , Literary Trends

Chapter I

The Origin of the American Civil War Novel

The American Civil War novel has its roots in the
historical romance tradition of Sir Walter Scott. Four
decades after the Revolutionary War, Americans had written
very little about the War--main1y because the feeling
existed that American subjects were not sufficient or
dignified enough for literary treatment. But when the
country began to rise in international stature, following
the War of 1812, a national spirit began to develop along
with the desire to possess a native literature.1

During the decade following the War of 1812, the "Era
of Good Feeling," pride in the national growth and
confidence in the national integrity prompted repeated
urging from public platforms and the periodical presses for
a native American literature that would destroy the vestiges

2 The critics wanted to create a

of the colonial culture.
literature, peculiarly American, that used American scenes
and American subjects that would provide expression for
American ideals.3 They wanted a native literature that
would do for America what Scott had done for Scotland.

To those writers who were discouraged concerning the

suitability of American scenes for romantic literature,

16

17
there was constant urging and reassurance. To those who
claimed there was no antiquity, castles and dungeons in the
ruins, supernatural inhabitants, indigenous or exotic, no
enchanted forests or deserted mansions--all of the marvelous
ingredients that made up the older romances, "the North
American Indian was advanced as Distinctive Romantic
Material" along with the vast rivers, lakes and land that
were yet to be explored.4 By 1820, the "writers were
thinking of using the Revolution in fiction." Only a form
to cast the new material in was lacking.5

In 1814, Sir Walter Scott began his Waverley series.
He said he was interested in creating a national literature
that would do for Scotland what Miss Edgeworth's Irish Tales
had done for Ireland. But his audience surpassed Maria
Edgeworth's audience, "because he infused into his Scottish
Tales a romantic flavor which she carefully excluded from
her veracious portrayals of Irish character."6 And it may
be within reason to say that until Scott's historical
romances appeared, the world knew very little about
Scotland.7

When his historical romances reached the printing
presses, they were "produced with a celerity that startled
the literary world." The impact he made on the reading
public is hard to realize. He summoned "into the ranks of
novel-readers many persons who had formerly condemned the

novel as trash." He set an entire generation of Englishmen

18
and Americans dreaming about "the chivalries of a by-gone
age." His romances were like "transcripts from the life of
other times" that were embellished. with every romantic
tradition.8

Rowland E. Prothero wrote: "with the advent of Scott
the historical romance, as well as the novel, was firmly
established in literature."9 Harold Frederic said, "the
fictional side of English literature was in melancholy
ruins, when Scott came with his great talent to purify,
renovate, expand and build afresh."10 Marjorie Noel How
added that his influence both in England and on the
Continent cannot be over-estimated. "The leaders of the
French romantic movement," who sought their inspiration in
foreign literature, were greatly influenced by Scott's

example.

Dumas professedly wrote his romances in imitation
of Scott--a fact which is worthy of notice when we
remember the popularity of his tales in England,
and see how they“ have reacted upon English
historical romance.

Scott became the pre-eminent story-teller for England.
Alexander Dumas became the same for France.12

Scott's series provided the form American writers had
been searching for to express the peculiarly American scenes
and the new democratic ideas. By applying the same formula
Sir Walter Scott used to structure the Waverley levels, they

were able "to capitalize on the rich resources of history,

legend, and romantic scenery in the new world."13 Perhaps,

19
if it had not been for the appearance of Sir Walter Scott's
historical romance series, which not only celebrated
Scotland and its history, but inspired the American literary
ambition, there might never have been any lasting literary
examples of the young nation's beginnings.

As a result, Sir Walter Scott receives "the credit for
having developed, polished, and popularized the formula for
the historical romance--a formula which, directly or
indirectly, has influenced the world historical romance in
general and the American war romance in particular."14

Brander Matthews argued:

Although it is not difficult to detect here
and there in Scott's predecessors the more or less
fragmentary hints of which he availed himself, it
would be absurd to deny that Scott is really the
inventor of the historical novel, just as Poe wag,
afterward, the inventor of the detective story.

Marjorie Noel How wrote:

Sir Walter Scott may be called 'the father of

historical romance,‘ in that he was the first to

realise to the full the use which the storyteller
might make of a historical setting, yet history

and romance had been bound pp together since the

earliest days of literature.

Long before historical documents, chronicles, and
records were written, the bards kept the tales of the
ancient kings and the deeds of the past alive. Gradually so
many traditions were attached to the old tales that they
lost their historical origin and eventually became pure
legend. On the other hand, the earliest written histories

were filled with as much romance as they were history.

20
History continued to make its appearance in drama, poetry,
and eventually in the novel. But the mixture of history and

fiction in the novel had never reached an artistic level

17

until Scott created the historical romance. Rowland E.

Prothero wrote:

Early forms of fiction had shown little
constructive skill. Romance writers attempted no
plot; rather they piled incident on incident,
patched description to description, introduced
episode after episode, or strung adventure to
adventure like beads upon a thread. But there was
room only for accumulation. There was no analysis
of character; heroes or heroines were faultless in
virtue or full-blown in vice. Born into the world
demons or angels, they could not develop. The
fact that they loved or hated was relied upon to
interest the reader in the plots and counterplots
which assisted or retarded the climax. The
internal history of their minds remained a sealed
book; external events produced only outward
results; conversations consisted of narrative, or
rhapsodies 18on love, or stilted moral
reflections.

Scott's historical romances still turned upon struggle,
but incidents appeared in the form of adventure. There was
also the addition of internal action and the dramatic
development of character skillfully mixed with the
historical events. Henry Seidel Canby wrote, Scott's "great
discovery that fiction and history are interchangeable is a
basic patent, bound to reappear and reappear in the history
of literature."19

He enjoyed immense popularity in this country and
abroad. According to Russel B. Nye,

Scott made respectable fiction popular in the

United States, and popular fiction respectable ...
[his] tales of Ihistory, legend, adventure,

21

folklore, scenery, love, and pgfiriotism enthralled
the early nineteenth century.

His sales were probably greater in America than in any other
country, "because no royalties had to be paid to an author
who was not an American resident." As a result, "Scott's
novels could be sold more cheaply here than in England"--
which meant that his novels were within the reach of a large
number of Americans.21

His historical romances included many elements and
ingredients that he borrowed from contemporary and past
novelists. James D. Hart says:

Scott presented with a new vigor all the qualities
that had appealed to readers of earlier novels and
of his own narrative poems. Uniting the
attributes of prose and poetry, his historical
romances presented the pageantry of the past, the
adventure of heroic life, the beauty of spacious
scenery, and a dramatic conception of human
relations, all more exuberantly and firmly
realized ”‘2‘? in any other contemporary works of
literature.

Scott preceded Darwin and Freud, so his thoughts
concerning man and the nature of the soul were still noble.
He was not a great thinker or a psycho-analyst, but he was a
great story-teller. "Honor and chivalry were ... words of
profound depth and meaning to him .... He praised glory and
patriotism," and had "a passion for soldiers and valiant
deeds." He wrote, I am "a poor scholar, no soldier, but a
soldier's lover .... Never let me hear that brave blood has
been shed in vain."23

Sir Walter Scott created the technical structure for

22
the historical romance when he began his historical series
with Waverley or: Tis' Sixty Years Since (1814). His use
of "Tis' Sixty Years Since" suggested to the romancers the
time period the historical romances should be set in the
past. His formula blended historical events and periods
with fictional plots and characters set at least a half
century in the past. The romances turned upon some national
crisis as viewed by all classes in the society. There was
always at least one historical personage to a romance with a
minor role because the national crisis created a time when
ordinary men had to assume heroic stature, perhaps for the
first and only time in their lives.

Sir Walter Scott was not an analyst of character, he
was a novelist of action. His romances included fast-
moving action, adventure, conflict, suspense, the clash of
arms, and a romantic story based on the courtly love
fashion. He was always the omniscient author ready "to step
out of his story to editorialize and guide the reader."24

He created characters from all classes of society,
because his aim was social and dramatic contrast. The hero
and heroine were always aristocratic, flawless, and often
the image of the ideal. His aristocratic soldiers were
Olympian in their heroism and achievements on the
battlefield. The lower-class characters provided the humor
and realism.

He peopled his past with contemporary men and women and

23
made his romances appear as moving pictures from the past.
He used manners, dress, food, dialect, and local color to
distinguish between the classes,25 but he :never' claimed
complete accuracy of details. Concerning the actual in the
historical romance, Scott wrote,

it is true that I neither can nor do pretend to

the observation of complete accuracy, even in

matters of outward costumes, much less inzghe more

important points of language and manners.
He was more interested in telling a good story that was more
familiar and acceptable to his readers' taste, even if it
meant altering some of the actual history.

Although Scott was popular with the American reading
public, his political and social ideas had very little
effect on his American followers--except for those living in
the Old South. But his patriotic ideas and the national
features in his novels, which illustrated Scottish life and
manners, made a strong appeal to the American national
spirit. As a result, his romances provided the formula for
those writers who wanted to establish an American literature
with democratic ideas; and his Waverley series provided the
perfect example and showed them how it could be done.

Therefore, it was Scott "with his native backgrounds
[who] challenged [the] Americans to a consideration of their
Own literature and the prospects of these shores in romantic
Inaterial." And for a decade public platforms, critics, and

reviews, especially The North American Review, agitated for

native American romances in the manner of Scott's

24
romances.27

Once the romancers had Scott's ingredients, they
discovered that the Revolutionary War was the most suitable
material to use, because it portrayed the nation and its
people struggling through the most critical stage in its
young history. The subject had all the components needed to
create a novel based on Scott's formula. In any case, the
American mind was ready and receptive to the ideas of
romanticism; but the raw material needed a skillful American
writer to fashion the subject and formula into a cohesive
model.

James Fenimore Cooper was the first writer to accept
the challenge and succeed. Cooper had not written anything
during the first thirty years of his life. Apparently he
had never considered a career as an author. After the
customary years at school, college, and several years at
sea, "he married and settled down to the easy life of a
gentleman-farmer interested in various county activities."28

Cooper's daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, recounted the
story of how her father became a writer in the memoirs she
wrote for her nieces and nephews in 1883. Apparently one
evening, at Angevine Farm in Westchester, Cooper was reading
one of the new English novels aloud to his wife. After
reading several chapters, he threw the book down and

exclaimed, "I could write you a better book than that

myself!" Mrs. Cooper laughed at him, so he immediately

25
began to write his first novel, Precaution (1820). When he
was tempted to give up the story, Mrs. Cooper encouraged him
to complete the novel and. have it. published. Feeling
somewhat amused by his wife's suggestion, he decided to seek
the advice of his friend, William Jay.

When Precaution was completed, the Coopers decided to
visit the Jays in Bedford to let them decide if the novel
was publishable. Cooper said if they listened with
interest, he would have it published. The audience approved
of the novel without knowing who the author was. A friend
of the Jays, Miss McDonald, who was staying with them at the
time said the book was interesting, but it was not new. She
felt certain she had read it before. Cooper considered her
remarks a compliment since "he aimed at [a] close imitation
of the Opie School of English novels."29

When Precaution, a book written according to the
popular novels of the day, was ready for the printer, Cooper
decided not to wait to see how the book would be received
before he started writing The Spy. What is significant
about Cooper's first novel is that it created in him a
desire to write. "On June 12, 1820, he reported that he had
completed Precaution ... and by June 28 he had written sixty
pages of The Spy. His satisfaction with Precaution faded as
his appreciation of The Spy grew."3o

In a letter dated June 28, 1820, Cooper wrote: "The

task of making American manners and American scenes

26
interesting to the American readers is an arduous one."31
Shortly afterwards, he was not sure if The Spy was very good
or very bad. Then he regained his confidence and decided
that The m was so much better than Precaution that he
really did not care if it was published or not. Both books
were issued anonymously. The Spy was published as "by the
author of Precaution."

Cooper has been called the American Scott because his
first Revolutionary romance, The Spy (1821), proved so
successful. Before Cooper no American writer had been able
to demonstrate successfully how Scott's "formula [for] the
historical romance could be applied to American life."32
And no other American romancer since Cooper has been able to
rise to his eminence, despite the countless efforts of
writers of considerable talent.

The Spy (1821) "sold three thousand five hundred copies
in two weeks, another five thousand in the next two months,
and eventually a million copies over the next fifty
years."33 Cooper followed Scott's technique, but he
replaced Scott's monarchical ideas with American democratic
ideals. He charted the great American hinterland and found
it full of legendary material which provided the example for
an. endless series of .American. historical romances.
Following Cooper's success, American romancers either
patterned their fiction after Scott. or' Cooper, or they

borrowed from each other.34

27

Despite Cooper's success, it was twenty years after
Scott published Waverlgy (1814) before Southerners began to
write novels in the Scottian fashion. According to Clement
Eaton:

Southerners had, of course, read these captivating

novels about feudal times and probably had found

some justification for their own slave—based

society in the chivalrous society described by the

Scottish writer. Nevertheless, they themselves

were not stirred to write novels about their own

section until they became more self-conscious of
their regionalism, partly as a result of the
attack upon their society by the abolitionists and

the resentment arising from the nullification

controversy. The Southerners now had something to

write about--the plantation and the frontier--and

Sir Walter Scott had set 3tgiem an example of

dealing with native material.

William Gilmore Sinuns--novelist, poet, dramatist, and
historian, grew up listening to his father's tales of wild
adventure as he recounted his wanderings along the border,
fighting Indians and finally settling on a Mississippi
plantation. Simms, the most critically acclaimed Southern
writer of the nineteenth century, joined the literary ranks
of the Revolutionary War romancers when he published The
Partisan (1835) and The Yemassee (1835).

Just as Cooper had furnished the model for American
romancers, Simms is credited with establishing a model based
on Scott's formula for the Southern romancers. He had faith
in the richness of American subjects for romantic literature
--his novels about the Indians The Yemassee (1835) and The
_Cassique of Kiawah (1859), a romance set in an earlier

colonial period, and his Revolutionary series, beginning

28
with The Partisan (1835), re-affirmed his faith and provided
the example.

Once he adapted Scott and Cooper's formulas, he began
to glorify South Carolina "as the repository of all romantic

"35 and he created and established

and chivalric traditions,
the legend of the Old South. Eaton noted,

like his model, Sir Walter Scott, he tended to

portray the extremes of society, thus giving the

impression that Southern Society was composed
principallynof the gentry, the poor whites, and

the slaves.

Simms believed in the ‘value of fiction for social
history, so he prepared his historical romances with the
meticulous care of an antiquarian. He "insisted upon
precise history and [the] exact record[ing] of events."38
When he perfected the Southern model, Southern writers began
to incorporate Scott's aristocratic social ideas, in
addition to his technical features, into their novels.

The South was always considered "romantic" in nature,
while the North was thought to be more "realistic" in its
outlook. The North read Scott with great interest, but he
was the rage in the South. While the North disregarded his
aristocratic notions, the Southern mind was eager to accept
his notions of chivalry, feudalism, and fidelity to the past
and to an unchanging order of things. Instead of the
endless striving for perfection and the reform of society,

which were characteristic of the North, romanticism in the

South glorified the status quo of the slave-based plantation

29
society. As a result, Sir Walter Scott's historical novels

coincided perfectly with the Southern trend of thought and

feeling.39

Some literary critics and historians both credit and
blame Sir Walter Scott for the rise in romanticism and
Southern chivalry. According to Van Wyck Brooks,

.... the historical romances .... seemed to spring
so naturally out of the South; for to the martial
Southern mind the present was inglorious as
compared with the age of the Revolution .... Those
were the days of noble exploits, both military and
patriotic .... Southerners everywhere were full of
local and sectional feeling .... the passion for
Walter Scott was foreordained throughout the
South, for his note was loyalty to the soil, to
the family, to the clan. Scott pictured brave men
of heroic deeds and women devoted and pure, and he
spoke for an unquestioning fidelity to the feudal
past ape all the primary virtues of an unchanging
order.

More than any other section. of the country, the South
retained most of the conventions of English life; as a
result, it was much easier for the South than the changeable
North to contemplate the past in terms of Scott. Ernest E.

Leisy wrote,

the Scottish laird and the English baron were
readily replaced by the aristocratic planter, the
vassal and the serf by the indentured servant and
the Negro, while the Indian and the Mountaineer
took the role of the Highland outlaw. In reality
the planter was no baron, but a tobacco farmer,
his estate no principality, and his rambling
wooden house hardly‘ a mansion. Nevertheless,
William A. Caruthers in The Cavaliers of Virginia
and John. P. Kennedy’ in Swallow' Barn found it
natural to establish the Cavalier tradition for
the Old Dominion . John Esten Cooke
sentimentalized nabobs, baronial halls, and vast
estates. Thus, while the North during this decade
‘was preoccupied with internal improvements and

30

reform, the feudal South, with its planters
increasingly on the defensive, dreQTed over its
Scott of the days of a golden prime.

In Life on the MississipEl (1883), Mark Twain "blames
Scott for the benighted feudalism and reaction of Southern
life."42 H. J. Eckenrode says "Southern 'chivalry' and all
its attendant qualities sprang from Scott." He gave the
South its social ideal and his "romantic, dilettante theory
of life produced some meritorious results." But his
influence was not without its "virtues and vices":

the evil of his influence lies in the fact that he
did so much to put the South out of harmony with
the world by which it was surrounded. The South
had stood in the full stream of eighteenth century
life; it stood wholly aside from the nineteenth
century. The chivalric ideal served to check the
South's industrial development and social
progress. Romantic dilettantism in the course of
two generations curbed the energies of the
Southern people to a 493reat extent, and for this a
price had to be paid.

Both Mark Twain and H. J. Eckenrode suggested that Sir
Walter Scott was responsible for the American Civil War.
Mark Twain wrote:

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern
character, as it existed before the war, that he
is in great measure responsible for the war....
The Southerner of the American Revolution owned
slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War;
but the former resembles the latter as an
Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change can
be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's
influence than to that of any' other thing’ or
person.

G. Harrison Orians argued against their conclusions. He
acknowledged the popularity of Mark Twain's criticism, but

"as a historian [Orians believed Mark] Twain [was] suspect."

31
Orians is even more critical of H. J. Eckenrode's statement
that Scott turned

the South away from sound Jeffersonianism in the

direction of a caste system of distinct

aristocratic leanings, thus leading Southerners to

turn their backs upon democracy in the direction

of a beneficent feudalism which, in its clash4¥ith

Northern industrialism, led to the Civil War.

Orians believed Sir Walter Scott "may have been a decorative
influence in Southern life" but he was not "a dictating
force either in the preservation of an old order or in the
defense of Southern institutions."45

Once the Americans mastered Scott's formula, the
historical romance remained popular from 1821 until 1860.
The Revolution remained the popular subject, and the
attitude toward war remained patriotic and romantic. By the
time the Civil War began, the critics and the reading
public had established the historical romance as an
acceptable form of literature.

The second period of the historical romance extends
from 1860-1895. The new generation of romancers began
during the Civil War and continued long after the war had
ended. Although Scott and Cooper's influences were still
prevalent, the Revolutionary War was no longer popular with
the romancers. Once the nation began to war with itself,
the historical writers began to use the Civil War as the
background for their romances. They still followed Scott
and Cooper's formulas, but they modified the old ideas and

stressed the new ones.

32

As early as 1864, when the historical romance was
enjoying another surge in popularity, due to the Civil War,
Henry James indicated that he would not create a novel
based on Scott's formula. William Dean Howells, an
abolitionist, expressed concern for his brother and friends,
who were actively engaged in the war, in the letters that he
wrote from Venice between 1861 and 1865. He also wrote a
few poems and considered writing a novel about the early
days of the war in Ohio because, at the time, he regarded
the Civil War as a theme for literature. But when he
returned from Venice, he began an association with the
Atlantic Monthly as an editor that lasted until 1881. It
was during these years when he adopted the literary stand of
the Atlantic Monthly that he began to form his critical
theories of realism.46
Once the War was over, the realistic impulse began to
appear in American literature. The historical romance,
however, changed very little from the Revolutionary War
romances from 1821-1860.47 The first Civil War romancers
were Southerners who depicted the chivalric life in the Old
South that the Civil War had destroyed. They celebrated
their Southern war heroes and the sacrifices their people
had made. Although most of the romancers continued writing
about the glories and heroics of the war, a few writers--
John Esten Cooke, James K. Hosmer, Henry Morford, and John

W. DeForest--moved in the direction of réalisme, but it

33
would not appear in the Civil War romances until the 1880's
when Albion W. Tourgée, Harold Frederic, and Joseph Kirkland
began to reveal the more unromantic and unpleasant sides of
war in their fiction.

John DeForest's novel Miss Ravenel's Conversion (1867)
was completed during the autumn of 1865 and sold to EEEEEELE
New Monthly Magazine for one thousand two hundred fifty
dollars. The novel provided the first realistic approach to
the war, but Alfred H. Guernsey, the editor, always had
reservations about the novel's strong realism.48 When the
book was first published, it was not well received because
the readers preferred to keep their idealistic concepts of
war as glorious and heroic. DeForest's talent did not go
completely unnoticed: William Dean Howells acknowledged
the greatness of his novel.

After 1877, a new literary treatment of the war began.
A new group of authors began to portray the war and
reconstruction as one long conflict. "Only the political
extremists refused to join in the general desire for
reconciliation."49

The realism movement that began in Europe and America
as a reaction to the "falseness and sentimentality" the
realists thought composed the romance novels had very
little influence on the war romances of the 1880's and
1890's.50 During the 1880's the dime novelists were

publishing novels of adventure, about the Union army and the

34
Confederate army, that focused on national patriotism. Some
stories that were rejected during the seventies were re-
examined and published.

During the 1880's Charles King emerged as the most
prolific romancer. S. Weir Mitchell was the most realistic
writer, while Thomas Nelson Page became known as the writer
who established the gracious plantation style of living and
the stereotype of the faithful servant. Joel Chandler
Harris brought the poor man's view of the Civil War into his
novels, while George Washington Cable pioneered the Southern
style of disillusionment about the war.

By the 1890's, the romancers had throughly described
the Civil War in American fiction. According to Smith,

most of the battles and leaders had been

reproduced in its pages; most of the geographical

localities touched by war, North and South, had
been used for settings; the old plot patterns and
characters of historical romance had been
exemplified 5giver and over with a few democratic
innovations.
The tone of the romances remained patriotic and the realism
appeared only in the forms of geography, manners, and
military strategy.

When the literary giants shied away from the war
romances, the form suffered a decline during the years from
1870 to 1895. The bulk of the Civil War literature issued
at that time was in the form of collected letters, personal

memoirs, autobiographical narratives, and journalistic

reports and diaries. This Civil War literature is

35
considered the most successful.

One of these successful non-fiction works about the
war was published by Century Magazine. The series, Battle
and Leaders of the Civil War (1884-1887), was Robert
Underwood Johnson's idea. He originally planned the project
as a series of articles for the summer of 1883, but the
project eventually developed into a collection of personal
narratives. The four-volume collection was well received by
the North and the South, because it honored men from both
sides. In honoring the men from both sides, the collection
created a fraternity among the veterans that continued into
the twentieth century. Richard E. Danielson wrote: the
work represents one of the greatest "editorial conceptions
and performances in our history.... and it still stands

unique in breadth and depth of information."52

3.
4.
5.
6.

10.

11.

12.

13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.

36

Endnotes

John Sherwood Weber, "The American War Novel Dealing
with waolutionary and Civil Wars," M.S. PH.D Thesis,
University of Wisconsin, 1947, p. 76.

G. Harrison Orians, "The Romance Ferment After
Waverley," American Literature III (January, 1932), pp.
408-409.

Weber, p. 15.

Orians, p. 418.

Weber, p. 16.

Brander Matthews, "The Historical Nevel," Forum Vol 24
(September, 1897), pp. 82-83.

W. Macneile Dixon, "Our Debt to Scott To-Day," ggeen's
Qparterly no 4 XXXIX (November, 1932), p. 583.

Orians, p. 409.

Rowland E. Prothero, "The Growth of the Historical
Nevel," Quarterly Review Vol 206 (January, 1907), p. 52.

Harold Frederic, "On Historical Novels Past and
Present," Bookman 8 (December, 1898), p. 333.

Marjorie Noel How, Historical Romance in the
Nineteenth Century (London: University of London
Press, Ltd., c1914), pp. 23-24.

M. O. Smith, "Scott and His Modern Rivals," Qgeen's
‘gpggpgply'no 4 XXXIX (November, 1932), p. 607.

Weber, p. 16.
Weber, p. 16.
Matthews, p. 81.
How, p. 6.

How, p. 6.

Prothero, pp. 52-53.

19.

20.

21.

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

27.
28.

29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.

36.
37.
38.

39.

*5..-

37

Henry Seidel Canby, "What Is Truth?" Saturday Review of
Literature no 23 (December 31, 1927), p. 481.

Russel B. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular
Arts in America (New York: The Dial Press, 1970), p.
21.

James D. Hart, The Popular Book (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1950), p. 75.

Hart, p. 73.

Dixon, p. 583.

Weber, p. 19.

Weber, pp. 18-22.

Ioan Williams, ed., Sir Walter Scott on Nbvelists and
W (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, c1968), p.
Orians, p. 410.

Susan E. Lyman, "I Could Write You a Better Book Than
That Myself," New York Historical Society Quarterly

Bulletin no 4 XXIX (October, 1945), p. 213.

Lyman, p. 216.
Lyman, p. 214 .
Lyman, p. 223.
Orians, p. 411.
Nye, pp. 21-22.
Weber, p. 26.

Clement Eaton, The Mind of the Old South (Louisiana:
Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 250.

Weber, p. 50.
Eaton, p. 251.

C. Hugh Holman, "The Southern Nevelist and the uses of
the Past," Southern Humanities Review (1976), p. 2.

Eaton, p. 248.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.
46.
47.

48.

49.

50.

51.
52.

38

Van Wyck Brooks, The World of Washington Irvitg (New
York, 1944), p. 224.

Ernest E. Leisy, The American Historical Novel (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), pp. 11-12.

Weber, p.18.

Hamilton James Eckenrode, "Sir Walter Scott and the
South" North American Review Vol 206 (October, 1917),
p. 602.

G. Harrison Orians, "Walter Scott, Mark Twain, and the
Civil War," South Atlantic Quarterly no 4 XL (October,
1941), p. 342.

Orians, p. 359.
Smith, p. 21.
Weber, p. 80.

Gordon S. Haight, ed., Miss Ravenel's Conversion. By
William DeForest (New York: Rinehart & Company, 1955),
p. vii.

Rebecca Washington Smith, The Civil War and Its
.Aftermath in American Fiction, 1861-1899 (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1937), p. 27.

Holman, p. 366.
Smith, pp. 40-41.

Richard E. Danielson, "Reliving the Civil War,"
Atlantic Monthly 197 (June, 1956), p. 67. ‘

Chapter II

Some Definitions

In order to understand and appreciate the nineteenth
century literary thought and trends that influenced ‘the
structure of the Civil War romances in this study, some
literary terms have been defined in this chapter.

The great romantic movement in fiction started with Sir
Walter Scott. From the moment his artistic and epic-like
blending of fiction and history reached the literary world,
in the form of the historical romance, there has been some
form of controversy surrounding the historical romance.
Nineteenth-century historical romancers answered the critics
by trying to distinguish between the romance and the novel.
The differences between the two types of novels become much
more apparent and significant when the controversy between
the romancers and the realists begins.

In defense of the romance, Sir Walter Scott wrote that
Dr. Johnson defined the Romance as "a military fable of the
middle ages; a tale of wild adventures in love and
chivalry." Although Dr. Johnson's definition expresses the
idea of the word, "a composition may be a legitimate
romance, yet neither refer to love nor chivalry--to war nor
to the middle ages." According to Scott, the "wild
adventures" are the only essential ingredients in Dr.

39

40
Johnson's definition. He preferred to define the Romance as

a fictitious narrative in prose verse; the
interest of which turns upon marvelous and
uncommon incidents; being thus opposed to the
kindred term Novel, which Johnson has described as
'a smooth tale, generally of love'; but which we
would rather define as 'a fictitious narrative,
differing from the Romance, because the events are
accommodated to the ordinary train qf human
events, and the modern state of society.'

In the preface to The Yemassee (1853), William G. Simms

WI‘OLB 3

the modern Romance is the substitute which the
people of the present day offer for the ancient
epic. The form is changed; the matter is very
much the same; at all events, it differs much more
seriously from the English novel than it does from
the epic and the drama, because the difference is
one of material, even more than of fabrication.
The reader who, reading Ivanhoe, keeps Richardson
and Fielding beside him, will be at fault in every
step of his progress. The domestic novel of those
writers, confined to the felicitous narration of
common and daily occurring events, and the
grouping and delineation of characters in ordinary
conditions of society, is altogether a different
sort of composition; and if, in a strange
doggedness, or simplicity of spirit, such a reader
happens to pin his faith to such writers alone,
circumscribing the boundless horizon of art to the
domestic circle, the Romances of Maturin, Scott,
Bulwer, and others of the present day, will be
little better than rhapsodical and intolerable

nonsense.

The romance is of loftier origin than the
novel. It approximates the poem. It may be
described as an amalgam of the two .... It invests

individuals with an absorbing interest--it hurries
them rapidly through crowding and exacting events,
in a narrow space of time--it requires the same
unities of plan, of purpose, and harmony of parts,
and it seeks for its adventures among the wild and
wonderful. It does not confine itself to what is
known, or even to what is probable. It grasps at
the possible; and, placing a human agent in
hitherto untried situations, it exercises its
ingenuity in extricating him from them, while
describing his feelings and his fortunes in

41

progress.2

In the "Preface" to The House of Seven Gables (1851)
Nathaniel Hawthorne also made a distinction between the
romance and the novel. He argued:

when a writer calls his work a Romance, it need
hardly' be observed that he 'wishes to claim. a
certain latitude, both as to its fashion and
material, which he would not have felt himself
entitled to assume had he professed to be writing
a novel. The latter form of composition is
presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity not
merely to the possible, but to the probable and
ordinary course of man's experience. The former--
while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject
itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so
far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the
human heart-~has fairly a right to present that
truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of
the writer's own choosing or creation. If he
think fit, also, he may so manage his
atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the
lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the
picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a
very moderate use of the privileges here stated,
and, especially, to mingle the marvelous rather as
a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as
any portion of the actual substance of the dish
offered to the public. He can hardly be said,
however, to conunit a literary crime even if he
disregard this caution.

The roots of the historical romance can be traced back
to the fables, ancient epics, and medieval, chivalric
romances. History and fiction were once combined in the
form of fable. At that time, it was hard to distinguish
between what was fable and what was history, but when the
two separated, history became more accurate and fiction
became romance--fable based on fact. The historical romance
was an attempt to bring history and fable back together.

In these part fact and part fictional romances, there

42
is always a love story and exciting adventures set against
some historical background. The romance recreates some past
period or event either for the entertainment value of the
story or for the purpose of stimulating nationalism and
patriotism. How much fact—-historical events, personages,
scenery, the accuracy of these facts, or the amount of
history used in these romances-~is determined by the author.

The historical romancer differs from the historian in
that he uses the historical facts to stimulate his creative
imagination to renew the spirit of the past, while the
historian uses the same facts to stimulate his historical
imagination to recreate and interpret the past. Both seek
to recreate the past in an imaginative way, but the
novelist is allowed more creative freedom to particularize
historical events while the historian must contain his
imagination and make generalizations about the same
historical events.

Through the suspension of disbelief, the historical
romancer can recreate the spirit of the past, using invented
characters, to portray the lives, loves, adventures, and
heroic deeds of the men and women who lived through some
past national crisis or historical event.

As a master story-teller and a student of history, Sir
Walter Scott knew how far to take liberties with history in
the romance. He always managed to create the right balance

between history and fiction. He never made a historical

43
figure the central character in his stories. He always
invented his hero, entangling "the events of his life with
the public affairs of the time, usually weaving his
adventures in among those of some great actor in the drama
of history."4 In this way, he was able to give portraits of
historical characters, but the national crisis was always
viewed and experienced through the invented characters--
ordinary people who were able to rise to heroic proportions
during the times of crisis.

The war romance is a work of fiction set during the
years of a warn The plot, adventures, incidents, and
historical background surround the activities involved with
battles and campaigns. Sometimes the romance reveals the
nature of war and the effects of the war on the soldiers and
the civilian population. If there is a love story, it is
usually a sub-plot subordinated to the campaigns and the
hero's adventures during the war. When the war ends, all of
the plot complications and sub-plots are usually resolved.

Unlike the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, the
Indian Wars, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the
Spanish American War were not wars of national crisis that
required all of the nation's citizens to commit themselves
to the cause. Consequently, the passions in these romances
are not as fired as they were in the romances about the two
great wars that determined the image and nature of the

American nation, nor was the production as immense.

44

At the close of the Civil War, there was an enormous
production of Civil War romances. Despite the popularity of
these romances, when William Dean Howells joined the ranks
of the realists he began to formulate a campaign to
discredit them.

William Dean Howells' theory of realism called for "the
truthful treatment of material." Life should be described
as it is rather than as it should be, or as we would like
for it be. Unlike the romancers, whose central characters
were always aristocratic, the realists were democratically
oriented. They created middle-class characters, bourgeois
life and manners. They were more interested in the common-
place, the average and everyday, than the marvelous and the
uncommon events of life.5

The realists believed fiction should be simple, clear,
and direct prose instead of the lofty and sometimes poetic
and apical language found in the romances. They believed
fiction that represented life should "avoid symmetry and
plot," and that the focus of this fiction should be ethical,
with particular concern for the issues of human conduct. As
a result, the individual in the novel gained in prominence.
The emphasis shifted from writing a good plot, or telling a
good story, to the "verifiable consequences" of the
immediate conditions of mankind, his .actions, and the

consequences of his actions. Instead of searching for the

ideal, they examined the here and now, the commonplace, the

45
common actions of everyday middle-class life. The search
for the average replaced the aristocratic characters, the
extra-ordinary events, and the ideal.

With the rise of realism after the Civil War, and the
conscious decision of the literary giants not to write any
romances about the Civil War, the historical romance
suffered a decline in popularity during the years from 1870
to 1895. But a revival began in England during the latter
part of the 1880's when Robert Louis Stevenson began to
publish his romances of adventure.

Stevenson had mastered the art of story-telling. He
created an interest in the romance that the literary world
had not experienced since Sir Walter Scott. He became
Scott's successor. He provided new meaning for "the two
eternal types" that appear in fiction--the hero and the
wanderer--the hero in the novel of romance, who achieves by
mastering life by the superiority of his soul or body, and
the wanderer in the novel of adventure, who experiences life
and masters it by the completeness of his knowledge.6

Stevenson's aim was "to embody character, thought, or
emotion in some act or attitude that [would] be remarkably
striking to the mind's eye."7 He believed the triumph of
the artist should not be "merely [truth], but to be lovable;

"8 His creative

not simply to convince, but to enchant.
genius was seen at its best in the story of adventure,

"where the excitement lies in the hero's escape from

46

difficult situations--in the invention of unexpected 'ways

out.'"9

Efforts to make distinctions between the romance and
the novel continued during the 1890's when the debate
between the realists and the romanticists intensified.
Frederic Harrison referred to the novel as prose fiction and
the romance as prose romance. He explained:

The great advance in material comfort and
uniformity of life and manners dries up the very
sources of prose romance, even more than it ruins
poetry. The poet is by nature an isolated spirit
dwelling in an ideal world of his own. But the
prose novelist draws life as he sees it in the
concrete from intimate knowledge of real men and
women....

Comfort, electric lights, railway cars, and
equality are excellent things, but they are the
death of romance. 'The essence of romance is
variety, contrast, individuality, the eccentric,
the unconventional....

The novelist must draw from the living model
and he must address the people of his own age. He
cannot write for posterity, nor can he live in a
day-dream world of his own. The poet is often
lost to his own contemporaries.... But the
novelist must live in his generation, be of it
most intensely, and if he is to delight afloall,
like the actor, he must delight his own age.

Harrison believed the modern world created a differentkind
of romance. A romance of ordinary society in which the
shades of character and feeling replaced the "furious
passion or picturesque incident."11

F. Marion Crawford, romancer and critic, contributed in
some ways to the "new romantic era" when he began to define
the novel during the early 1890's. Crawford defined the

novel as "an intellectual artistic luxury." He believed the

47
novel should be

a story or romance, which in itself and in the

manner of telling it shall appeal to the

intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art

and shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use

to a man when he is at work, but may conduce to

peace of flgnd and delectation during his hours of

idleness.

Crawford suggested the point upon which people differed
was an artistic one. To prove his argument, he pointed out
that it was possible for "two writers as widely separated as
Mr. Henry James and Mr. Rider Haggard ... [to] find
appreciative readers in the same year of the same
century."13

Crawford's answer to the question what is a novel? is
perhaps his most critical definition. He wrote: "A novel
is a pocket-theatre." He tried to make little pocket-
theatres out of words because he believed: "A novel is,
after all, a play, and perhaps it is nothing but a
substitute for the real play with live characters, scene-
shifting, and footlights."14 In demonstrating the truth of
his definition he believed it would be difficult for the
words "romance" and "realism" to escape the "modern writer's
pen." In that "the realist proposes to show men what they
are; the romantist tries to show men what they should be."

Crawford believed the education of the novelist

is the experience of men and women which he has

got at first hand in the course of his own life

.... He can use nature and art only as a scene and

background upon which and before which his

personages move and have their being. It is his
business to present his readers with something

48

which I called the pocket-theatre, something which
every man may carry in his pocket, believing that
he has only to look in upon the theatre of the
living world. To produce it, to prepare it, to
put it into a portable and serviceable shape, the
writer must know what that living world is
He must have lived himself: he must have loved,
fought,lssuffered, and struggled in the human
battle.

Crawford expressed some hostility toward "the purpose-
novel." He described it as an

odious attempt to lecture people who hate
lectures, to preach at people who prefer their own
church, and to teach people who think they know
enough already. It is an ambush, a lying-in-wait
for the unsuspecting public, a violation of the
social contract--and as such it ought to be either
mercilessly crushed or forced by law to bind
itself in bligk and label itself "Purpose" in very
big letters.

The perfect novel should contain realism, romanticism,
and deal primarily with love.

For in that passion all men and women are most
generally interested it must be clean and
sweet, for it must tell its tale to all mankind,
to saint and sinner, pure and defiled, just and
unjust. It must have the magic to fascinate and
the power to hold its reader from first to last.
Its realism must be real, of three dimensions, not
flat and photographic; its romance must be of the
human heart and truly human, that is, of the earth
as we all have found it; its idealism must be
transcendent, not measured to man's mind but
prOportioned to man's soul. Its religion must be
of such grand and universal, span as to hold all
worthy religions in itself.

Crawford argued, why must a novelist be either a
realist or a romantist?

Or why should a good novel not combine romance and
reality' in. equal proportions? Is there any
reason to suppose that the one element must
necessarily shut out the other? Both are included
in every—day life, which would be a very dull

49

affair without something of the one a would be
decidedly incoherent without the other.

Brander Matthews was hostile toward romanticism, but he
seemed to have an affinity for the romance. He believed
"true romance, whether ancient or medieval or modern," was
direct, honest, and as sincere as the classics. In
contrast, romanticism is often insincere, generally
indirect, "and sometimes artistically dishonest." He
continued:

Romance never contradicts reality, whereas

Romanticism is in constant [discord], not merely

with fact, but even more with truth itself. The

elder Hawthorne was a writer of Romance and the
elder Dumas was a compounder of Romanticism ....
Romance is in the heart of man, and not in
the circus-trappings of pseudo-history. Romance
is in the nature of things young and eternal; it

is not 19 machine-made output of a fiction-
factory.

With the advent of scientific historicism, the
historical romance began to lose some of its associations
with the extraordinary, the supernatural, dungeons, castles,
and incident upon incident to concentrate more on the people
who achieved the heroics. This change, which occurred
mostly during the 1890's, created a closer resemblance and
association with the novel. Concerning this change, A. C.
Lyall wrote:

the Romance has by this time fairly become the

Novel--a tale of real life, adjusted to the actual

ordinary train of human events. And the same

rules prevail whether the scene be laid in the
reign of Queen Anne or of Queen Victoria; the plot

must be probable and circumstantial; the

fictitious incidents must be so interposed as to
supplement without superseding the delicate and

50
sparing use of history.20
Concerning the historical novel of the 1890's he suggested,
"we have the spirit and the theme which inspired both the
heroic myth and the mediaeval romance--the glorification,
almost the deification, of a famous warrior and leader of
armies."21

The "new romantic era," during the turn-of—the-century
decade directed the attention of the American critics and
romancers toward the idea of the historical novel as a
genre. In 1897 Paul Leicester Ford, a well known critic as
well as a romancer who had gained some popularity for his
Honorable Peter Stirling (1894) and his James lMeredith
(1899), was among the first romancers to move toward a
critical definition of the historical novel. In his
approach to a definition he said an essential
consideration, in light of the achievements of the past or
the possibilities of the future, "must be a decision as to
exactly what components go to constitute historical
fiction."

Though the term is one of common use, and in such

use seems sufficiently definite, analysis reveals

that it is a very loosely applied expression, and

that a satisfagtory definition is by no means a

simple matter.

As the movement toward realism gained in strength, many
of the romancers began to change their minds. Paul

Leicester Ford reviewed his stance toward the realists in

his approach to a critical definition of the historical

51
novel when he wrote:

la novel is historical or unhistorical because it
embodies or does not embody the real feelings and
tendencies of the age or generation it attempts to
depict, and in no sense because the events it
records have happened or the people it describes
have lived. That is, the events and characters
must be typical, not exceptional, to give it the
atmosphere which, to another generation, shall
make it seem more than a mere created fancy; and
just because it is so much more difficult to draw
a type than a freak, and because the exception
appeals to the literary mind so much more than the
rule, we have in every decade a great mass of
romance nominally describing the life of the
period, which, if read a few years later, is so
untrue to the senses as Eaally to seem caricature
rather than true drawing.

By the 1900's William Dean Howells was still engaged in
a hostile debate with the romancers, but it was obvious that
the historical romance had become a popular and economic
success for its authors and publishers. In the presence of
such success, Howells also began to think critically about
the historical novel. He wrote:

while the Gerolstein school of heroical romance
was almost wholly of English origin, the new
historical romance is almost altogether native
American. I can think of no new English
historical novel which has enjoyed the
overwhelming popularity of so many American
romances.... the answer to all criticisms of
manners, morals, costume, parlance, in the work of
the Gerolstein school, is that it is pure fake.
With historical fiction it is different and much
more difficult. The novelist is obliged to keep a
conscience so far moral that he may not commit the
solecisms he can help, or make the
misrepresentations that he is likely to be found
out in.... He is not so free as the heroical
romancer, and hardly even as free as the poor
realist who restricts himself to reporting what he
knows of life, and otherwise keeps off She grass
in the straight and narrow path of truth.

52

An article appeared in The Dial (1900) discussing
romantic fiction as the present vogue. The article
suggested that "the romance of adventure appeals to some of
our healthiest instincts." Both men and boys delight in
them because they like to follow the adventures of pirates,
read about shipwrecks, and follow the deeds of the heroes
who slay their enemies "and escape from the most desperate
dangers by feats of improbable prowess and display of
indomitable if not superhuman valor." Because they are so
far removed from the human experience, they bring delight.

Entertainment may not be the highest mission of

literature, but it is surely a legitimate object

for a writer to set before himself, and those

writers who offer entert ent ... will not find

their efforts unrewarded.

Charles Major, the author of When Knighthood Was in
Flower (1899), published an article entitled "What is
Historic Atmosphere?" (1900) which addressed how historical
atmosphere could be imparted to a novel and how it must, out
of necessity, present itself to the readers and writers of
historical fiction.

Major wrote that historical atmosphere is "the
application of realism to historical fiction." The realism
should be imparted by facts obtained from original sources
of history: chronicles, memoirs, and letters. These facts
may be revealed through costumes, manners, and language in a

way that gives color and expression to the story. The

reader should feel the effects of the realism. without

53
becoming conscious of the writer's intent. The greatest "of
all forms of evil that beset the historical novelist ... is
the temptation to display historical knowledge," but the
writer who engages in such display runs the risk of dulling
his pages.26

Charles Major believed in the science of history, or
the science of human conduct. Instead of glorifying kings
and mighty personages found in the historical records which
reveal very little about the thousands of ordinary human
beings who lived during some past historical period, Major
believed history could only be treated as a science "and not
as a mere entertaining array of facts." This could be done
only if the period and the facts were "studied from the
lower classes upward," and not from the top downward.27

Frederic Taber Cooper published an article in 1901
called "The Degeneration of the Historical Novel." The
popular thought in the literary world was that the average
person did not take his or her fiction seriously. The
readers wanted a story that would "take them out of
themselves" for the moment. But they had developed a taste
for good historical novels. Cooper wrote:

the only pity is that really good historical

novels are so rare.... it has grown far harder
than it used to be to produce the necessary
illusion. That part of the reading public which

has no use for the realistic novel nevertheless

has learned to demand that its historic romances

... shall all be documented path a care of which

Scott or Dumas never dreamed.

He suggested, a historical novel worthy of the name

54
should have "some great event for a background, like the
massacre of St. Bartholomew or the execution of Charles I;

and scenes like these, if they are to live, must be treated

on a rather big, rather Titanic scale." The works of Dumas
provided his example. He wrote: "with all his defects of
style and of method, there is ... something rather Titanic

about Dumas the Elder."29

In 1901, four years after Paul L. Ford's definition of
the historical novel, Professor Brander Matthews aligned his
position with William Dean Howells when he argued, "the
really trustworthy historical novels are those which were a
writing while the history was a making," preferring to use
Harriet Beecher Stowe's uncle Tem's Cabin (1852) and Charles
Dickens' The Pickwick Papers (1837) as examples.30

In 1902 Owen Wister complicated the problem. of a
definition for the historical novel even further when he
wrote:

We know quite well the common understanding of the

term "historical novel." Hugh gyppe exactly fits.

it. But Silas Lapham is a novel as perfectly

historical as is Hugh time, for it pictures an

era and personifies a type. It matters not that

in the one we find George Washington and in the

other none save imaginary figures.... Any

narrative which presents faithfully a dgy and a

generation is of necessity historical....

In 1904, Frederic Taber' Cooper re-defined the
historical novel as

one that contains an element of historic truth,--

either the spectacular events of the romance of

history or the less tangible social atmosphere of
the time,--and that this historic element is so

55

woven into the warp and woof of the story, so much
an integral part of the plot that no amount of
ingenious efiiting could hold the book together
without it.

Cooper also aligned himself with the realists when he added:
"It has been lately said, and very well said, indeed, by

Professor Brander Matthews that the best of all historical

novels is that which deals with contemporary history."33

During that same year (1904) British historical
novelist A.E.W. Mason suggested: "a novel is not historical

unless it deals with a period and personages beyond the

"34

personal memory of all people now living. In defense of

his position, he argued:

contemporary history is rarely correct in its
conclusions, because) of incomplete information.
The historical novelist, even more than the
historian, must give things time to settle, and
settle permanently, because he must ... deal with
the most agitated, the most dramatic episodes. If
he sets to work too soon, he may, even within a
few years, see his picture dwindle from historical
to semi-historical, 3gnd even to positively
worthless proportions.

Mason believed the time limit set in the past should depend
upon the individual's predilection.36

In 1908 a distinction between the romance type novel
and the realistic novel is still a concern for the critics.
Frederic Cooper argued "fiction is to the realist primarily
an imitative art; to the romanticist it is primarily a
creative art. To the realist, its predominant interest is

ethical; to the romanticist, it is chiefly aesthetic."37

In 1912 historical romancer A. C. Benson argued that

56
the romance "is a perfectly legitimate form of art." The
romancer's subject, in his opinion, is an ethical one. The
beauty he conceives is of a moral quality. In order to
develop this beauty, the romancer must approximate the
likeness of life and no more. He must create a hero who is
more than average--one who is capable of great physical
strength. With this strength, he must overcome a series of
obstacles so the reader can rejoice in his capabilities and
achievements.38

This romance here must be able to trample upon the
contrary forces of nature: "meanness, spite, avarice,
vulgarity, chicanery, [and] selfishness." Each of these
vices must be embodied in the human figure of a man or a
woman. These villains "must never be allowed to fall into
any unconscious nobility of action, they must never know
repentance, but only despair. Their only dread is the dread
of being found out."39

The dualism in man that calls for psychological
analysis is not a part of the romancer's creed. Character
is neither studied nor developed. In most instances, "the
hero and the heroine are the most colorless figures in the
whole story."40 The romance confirms the reader in
optimism, sweeping away his bewilderment and uncertainty.
No intellectual or critical judgments are required the
reader's experience is usually, escape, entertainment, or

enchantment.41

57
In 1914 Marjorie Noel How re-affirmed the basic
structure and thought concerning the old style romances of
Sir Walter Scott. She believed "there should be some
element of play in a romance."
... romance must sweep us away; it does not stop
to analyse; there is little complexity or
contradiction within its characters; it sets them
before us rather simply and clearly; there is for
the most part no very great contrast between the

outward appearance and the inner reality of a
character.

.... Sometimes the 'romance' takes the form of a
series of adventures loosely strung together;
sometimes, as in the case of some of Hawthorne's
tales, it embodies a striking situation; but for

the most part there is but little psygaological

change or development in the characters.

The romance always turns upon that which is marvelous,
or unusual to the modern reader. History provides the
material so the romancer can create those strange and
marvelous old worlds of the past. History records the
facts, but the novelists can use these facts "either in the
romantic or the dramatic manner." From the historical
records, the novelists can choose incidents that will
provide glamour and romance, or he may choose incidents that
"illustrate the problems of character he is working out, and
serve to lead up to his denouement."43

In 1924 H. Butterfield's definition of the historical
novel is probably the most poetic. He suggested that the
historical novel is an offspring of romanticism, a longing

for a past that can be retrieved only in chronicles. These

novels create romance around objects, places, people, and

58
historical events. "They have a basis in reality, and their
roots in the soil."44

He wrote that technically, the historical novel is a
form of fiction and a form of history. The marriage between
these two disciplines is what makes the historical novel an
unusual art form. Butterfield likened the historical novel
to an opera in which music, poetry, and drama melt into each
other to form a new art "with a purpose and an idiom of its
own." He continued:

.A historical event is 'put to fiction' as a poem

is put to music; it is tpgned into a story as

words are turned into song.

British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan published
an article entitled "History and Literature" (1924). In
this article he re-affirmed the importance of literature and
history working together. He suggested that the history
student of any period "should be brought up on the
literature of the age he is studying."

In an effort to distinguish between the contemporary
novel that achieves historical perspective with the passage
of time and the historical novel, he wrote that the
contemporary value of works of fiction by writers like
Homer, Chaucer, and the novels of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries provide

evidence of historical value with regard to the

life of the times which the authors lived. Such

novels become historical by the process of time,

but they were not historical novels when they were

written.... Historical novels proper are works of
fiction composed by modern authors in an attempt

59

to imagine48ast ages which the authors themselves
never saw.

In summary, Sir Walter Scott's artistic blending of
history and fiction in the form of the historical romance
caused controversy the moment it reached the literary world.
Efforts to defend the form in nineteenth-century America led
to a series of literary debates, discussions, and
definitions detailing the differences between the novel and
the romance. During the 1890's the romance began to lose
some of its associations with the extraordinary to
concentrate more on the people who achieved the heroics.
This created a closer association and resemblance to the
novel. As a result, the discussions concerning the
differences between the novel and the romance were
eventually submerged by the debates between the romancers
and the realists when William Dean Howells began to campaign
for more realism in the novel.

When the popularity of the historical romances created
the "new romantic era" in America, during the middle 1890's,
it directed the American critics and romancers toward the
idea of the historical novel as a genre. In 1897 Paul
Leicester Ford was the first romancer to move toward a
critical definition of the historical novel. His definition
encouraged the romancers as well as the realists to consider
the subject. The question what components should constitute
the historical novel encouraged further debates and

discussions between the romancers and the realists, when

60
each group began to define the historical novel according
to its theories.

These literary debates and new thoughts began to
influence the publishers and the novelists. The results can
be experienced in the 1900-1910 decade of Civil War
historical romances as the novelists began to experiment

with the various ideas, theories, literary trends, and

thought.

10.

11.
12.

13.
14.

15.

16.
17.

61

Endnotes

Sir Walter Scott, The Prose Warks of Sir Walter Scott
Vol II (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, [1841 ?], p. 27.

William Gilmore Sims, The Yemassee, ed. Joseph V.
Ridgely . (New Haven , Connecticut : Col lege and
University Press, c1964), pp. 23-24.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Beuse of Seven Gables Vol. IV
(New York: The Nottingham Society, 19?), p. 3.

Marjorie Noel How, Historical Romance in the
Nineteenth Century (London: University of London
Press, 1914), p. 11.

C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1980), p. 366.

Frederic Harrison, "The The Eternal Types in Fiction,"
Porn-.19 (March, 1895), pp. 45-46.

How, p. 41.
How, p. 5.
HOW, DO 420

Frederic Harrison, "The Decadence of Romance," Forum.15
(April, 1893), pp. 221-223.

Harrison, p. 224.

Marion Crawford, "Marion Crawford on the Novel," The
Critic 22 (January 7, 1893), p. 12.

Crawford, p. 12.

F. Marion Crawford, "What is a Navel?" Forum 14
(January, 1893), p. 595.

F. Marion Crawford, "Emotional Tension and the Modern
level," Fern-.14 (February, 1893), PP. 735-736.

Crawford, What is a Navel? p. 594.

Crawford, p. 597.

18.
19.

20.

21.
22.

23.
24.

25.

26.

27.
28.

29.
30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.
36.
37.

62
Crawford, p. 597.

Brander Matthews, "Romance Against Romanticism,"
Bookman 12 (January, 1901), pp. 464-465.

A. C. Lyall, "Dunlop's History of Fiction," my
Review Vol 178 (January, 1894), p. 48.

Lyall, p. 49.

Paul Leicester Ford, "The American Historical Novel,"
Atlantic Monthly LXXX (1897), p. 721.

Ford, p. 724.

William Dean Howells, "The New Historical Romances,"
North American Review CLXXI (1900), pp. 944-945.

"A Question of Literary Conscience," The Dial XXIX
(September 1, 1900), p. 116.

Charles Major, "What is Historical Atmosphere?"
Scribner's Magazine XXVII (June, 1900), p. 752.

Major, p. 752.

Frederic Taber Cooper, "The Degeneratimn of the
Historical Navel," Bookman 12 (January, 1901), p. 489.

Cooper, p. 489.

Brander Matthews, The Historical Navel and Other Essays
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901), p. 18.

Owen Wister, "To the Reader." In The Virginian (New
Jersey: Citadel Press, 1984), pp. vii-viii.

Frederic Taber Cooper, "The Historical Novel and Some
Recent Books," Bookman 18 (February, 1904), p. 618.

Cooper, p. 618.

A. Schadé Van Westrum, "Mr. A. E. W. Mason and the
Historical Navel," The Lppp Vol XXIX (November, 1904),
pp. 281-286.

Van Westrum, p. 282.
Van Westrum, p. 284.

Frederic Taber Cooper, "The Romantic Creed and Some
Recent Books," Bookman 26 (February, 1908), p. 668.

38.

39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.

45.
46.

63

A. C. Benson, "Fiction and Romance," Living 53 272
(January 13, 1912), p. 80.

A. C. Benson, p. 80.

Benson, p. 80.

Benson, p. 80.

How, pp. 34-35.

How, p. 46.

H. Butterfield, The Historical Novel: An. Essay
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, c1924,
Folcroft Library Edition, 1971), p. 42.

H. Butterfield, p. 6.

George Macaulay Trevelyan, "History and Literature,"
The Yale Review 14 (October, 1924), p. 119.

Chapter III

Literary Trends and Criticism, 1860-1925

Since the Civil War ended, it has been a recurring
theme and subject for American fiction. More than two
thousand Civil War novels have been published since the
1860's. Because of this enormous output, Bernard DeVoto has
suggested "that we may regard them as a wave or a cycle."
Although historically the historical novel has remained
conservative and conventional, this fiction has generally
conformed to the dominant literary trends and values of the
period in which it was written.1

In this chapter, a discussion of the literary trends
and criticism from 1860 to 1925 has been divided into three
cycles. Each cycle has its own literary trends, criticism,
and social thought. These factors either contributed to or
influenced the conventional structure of the Civil War novel
at the time it was written.

The political turmoil leading up to the Civil War and
the Civil War itself created a national crisis for all
classes of Americans living during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The crisis was constantly talked about
and written about in the form of histories, newspaper and
magazine articles, anecdotes, biographies, diaries, memoirs,

works of fiction, plays, and poems. The list of short
64

65
stories and novels beginning with the 1860's to the present
is extensive. There have been some excellent studies about
this body of literature, but it has generally fared poorly
with the critics and literary historians.

The historical romance was the form. most used to
express native themes and patriotic views in America during
the nineteenth century. The major novelists--Cooper,
Paulding, Kennedy, Simms, Hawthorne, Melville, Cooke, and
Stowe--as well as the minor novelists adapted some part of
the form in their writings between 1821 and 1860. By the
1840's most of the national themes had been expressed, so
the novelists began to adapt the historical romance to
sectional and geographical locations which allowed for more
historical atmosphere and authenticity. By the 1850's
Virginia and most of the states in New England had their
special novelists and chroniclers. They continued to follow
Scott's formula for action, adventure, and setting, but they
followed Cooper's example for discovering the native
characteristics and character types indigenous to their
particular regions. Bulwer Lytton, William Thackeray,
Charles James Lever, James Grant, George Payne Rainsford
James, and George Alfred Lawrence provided additional
influences when their stories of civilian life and. war
romances began to serve as models for the Americans.

The American romancers portrayed war as romantic and

patriotic. 'Their stories ‘were sentimental, as ‘was the

66
characteristic of all fiction at that time, but the past was
probably presented with more historical accuracy than the
domestic novels and the contemporary novels of manners.

By the 1860's the historical romance type novel was
well established as the form to express the national past,
some past historical struggle, national crisis, or sectional
as well as national themes. During the early years of the
1860's, the literary, social, and political winds were
beginning to change. As the national crisis approached its
breaking point, sectionalism and partisanship began to play
a dominant role in the historical romances. The increase in
literacy among the reading public, educated on the
McGuffey's Fifth Reader, created a desire for stories of
action, adventure, and suspense. Sometimes the demand
pushed the writers near absurdity.

The little books that were offered to meet the demand,
the Beadle dime novels, ranged from 25,000 to 30,000 words
and were "conveniently shaped for the pocket." According to
Harvey, "the literature was imperatively called for, and
administered in the shape of Sir Walter Scott's novels."
After a time they became an inseparable part of the young
boy's outfit (and to some extent the young girl's outfit) of
the period.2

Russel B. Nye wrote, the novels contained wild plots.
"Twenty deaths per novel was not unusual, and the formula

demanded at least one dangerous crisis per chapter." The

67
novels were bound in salmon-colored paper covers with lurid
illustrations which sold for the minimum price. Beadle said

his aim was to see how much he could give for a ten cent

cash sale.3

During the decade of the 1860's, the Beadle Dime
Library published over four million novels of romance and
adventure. The subjects included the Revolutionary War, the
War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War--two hundred of

these novels were Civil War romances--westerns, sea stories,

pirate stories, and city stories of high and low life.4

Russel Nye suggested:

The better dime novels rarely attained the level
of literary mediocrity, but they were highly
conventional in their regard for contemporary
standards of conduct. The action might be bloody
and the heroes rough-hewed, but the books were
resolutely virtuous. Erasmus Beadle's regulations
forbade 'all things offensive to good taste
subjects or characters that carry an immoral taint
... and what [could not] be read with satisfaction
by eve right-minded person, young and old
alike.‘

This literature when viewed in its entirety answered the
popular demand. It provided entertainment and escape.

Many of these novels were sent to the soldiers to help
alleviate the boredom between campaigns. According to
Harvey:

The Civil War, which started about three quarters
of a year after the advent of Beadle's novels,
opened a new and vast market for them. In their
leisure moments the soldiers craved cheap and
exciting reading. Beadle bundled it like bales of
hay and sent it to them in carloads. And, in
their rate of increase, ghe carloads kept step
with the expanding armies.

68
With at least a million men in arms, "the dime novel
provided exactly what the army camps wanted."7 The
Revolutionary War as the national crisis in the historical
romances had been replaced by the new crisis, the American

Civil War.
Literary Trends: 1860-1885

The first cycle of Civil War romances, 1865-1885, was
mostly a Northern wave that was forgiving, but issued a
"stern reproof to the Confederacy." This cycle occurred
"before the form of the modern American novel was shaped by
Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain."8

These Civil War romances, mostly of an ephemeral
nature, were often sentimental stories. war was viewed as
patriotic without any critical attitude or commentary toward
war. Each year, following the end of the Civil War, many
books were authored by both Northerners and Southerners, but
the novelists continued to express their sectional bias.
Many of these novels were in the form of the sentimental,
domestic type novel, while others ‘were sentimental
melodramas. In later years, the extended sectional hatreds,
fraternal strife, and partisanship would create enough
literary complications to prevent the Civil War romances

from reaching the same literary levels of success as the

Revolutionary romances.

69

After the Civil War, John Esten Cooke was probably the
most notable and accomplished writer who followed the early
nineteenth-century formula for the historical romance. His
career as a novelist and biographer of Jackson and Lee,
along with his service in the Confederate army, provided the
experience and background he needed for writing the Civil
War romances. The Scott-Carruthers-Simms formula also
molded his romances, but "the sensationalism of Bulwer, the
military gallantry of Charles James Lever and James Grant,
and the 'historic truth' of Miss Muhlbach, the German
fiction writer"9 provided a model and influence.

Cooke's first Civil War romance, Surry of Eagle's Nest
(1866), was popular in the North. Two plots are developed
throughout the novel that fall within the formula for the
romance: Surry's love for a woman engaged to a man she
hates, and the private feud of two men over the same woman.
Hilt to Hilt (1869), a novel that also romanticizes the war,
completes the memoirs of Colonel Surry started in Eagle's
M. Cooke said he did not like war, but his romances
generally focused on the more military aspects of the war.
War is a glorious and heroic adventure that can be justified
when all other means fail. War, as a result of the national
crisis, provides meaning to ordinary times when the purpose
unifies men to fight. Very little suffering as a result of
war is portrayed.

Cooke tries to create historical accuracy by quoting

70
from actual speeches, and using actual events supported by
footnotes. However, his basic aim was to present a work of
fictional merit. His novels were sectional, with most of
the Scottian formula for the historical romance in place.

During the 1860's the Civil War romances were not as
concerned with the war as with the morality of the war. The
focus is on the issue of slavery, union versus states'
rights, the concept of two separate cultures, and the
differences in the temperament between the Northerner and
the Southerner. The Civil War romances that were Northern
in origin between 1865 and 1885 continued to issue a "stern

reproof to the Confederacy."10

The earliest realistic attitudes toward the Civil war
in fiction, other than John DeForest's Miss Ravenel (1867),
were written by the 1860 popular humorists: Charles Farrar
Browne, Robert Henry Newell, Charles Graham Halpine
(pseudonym Miles 0' Reilly), David Ross Locke (pseudonym
Petroleum V. Nasby), and Charles Smith. During Mark Twain's
newspaper days he published two humorous works of wartime
fiction: "The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract"
(1867) and "The Siamese Twins" (1868). Other parodies
include Bret Harte's "Mary McGillup: A Southern Novel,
After Belle Boyd, With Introduction by G. A. Sala" published
in the Condensed Novels and Other Pagers (1867), which was
well known for its satirical parodies of famous authors and

attacks against Southern ideas of chivalry. Edward Everett

71
Hale anonymously published in the Gale (1866) "The
Skeleton in the Closet. By J. Thomas Darragh (late C. C.
8.)" where he proved the downfall of the Confederacy began
with the Southern belle.

These humorists wanted to tell the truth by ridiculing
the fanaticism, false pretensions, and excessive romanticism
of the day. Other writers, before 1870, who were less
humorous, but who used some threads of realism in their
fiction, include: Henry Morford's In the Days of Shoddy
(1863), John DeForest's Miss Ravenel (1867), and Rebecca
Harding Davis' short stories published in the Atlantic and
her novel, Waiting for the Verdict (1867), which used
realism in the use of setting and locality.

Writers using realism in the form of local color
include: John Townsend Trowbridge's (pseudonym Paul
Creyton), "Coupon Bonds" (1865), a story concerning the
conversion of Ma and Pa Ducklow to patriotism, and Sidney
Lanier's Tiger-Lilies (1867), a novel protesting literal
realism. Lanier rejected reality for reality's sake if it
was at the expense of truth. He said, "descriptions of eye-
witnesses may contain nothing but facts and at the same time

"11 His attitude toward war

express nothing but falsehood.
was realistic: a rich man's war is a poor man's fight. He
described the poverty war brings to civilians, the effects
of war on the soldiers in captivity, and the horrors and

brutalities of war without under-cutting the self-

72
sacrifices.

After the enormous outpouring of the Civil War romances
during the 1860's, most of the literary giants avoided the
form. As early as 1864 Henry James said he would not write
a novel in the Scottian tradition. In his first review he
wrote, "we write historical tales differently now.... The
task of the historical storyteller is, not to invest, but to
divest the past."12 James' younger brothers had served in
the union army, but he decided not to glorify the past or
deify dead historical leaders. Instead, in later years, he
expressed the psychological impact of war and his feelings
toward war in a prose work called Mates of a Son and Brother
(1914).

William Dean Howells, as the editor of the Atlantic
Month y, had his fill of the war romances and the Beadle
Dime Library publications, so he began working to discredit
the Civil War romances. But his desire to influence the
American writers to model their works after the realistic
movement in Europe failed to impress the romancers.
However, Howells did publish a few Civil War short stories
that focused on the civilian's point of view, or the more
realistic aspects of the war. Other than in the works of
the humorists, the only realism in American fiction during
this decade, except for the works mentioned above, appears
in the form of the short story.

By the 1870's large numbers of American writers were

73
still using the Civil War as the background in their
romances. Most of these romances were still sentimental.
However, Southern writers were producing very little despite
the section's desire to present their cause to the world.
What little that was produced used the Civil War as
background, but the novels were written mostly by ladies who
were learning the craft.

Between the assassination of Mr. Lincoln and the
election of President Hayes (1877-1881), most of the
literary works were influenced by the political climate.
The old partisanship continued to be expressed in the
literature, but the old humanitarianism of the 1860's for
the Negro as "man and brother" began to die during the
seventies, leaving the war as the most prominent theme.
Eventually the Civil War theme was replaced by the
reconstruction theme.

The most prominent writer to use reconstruction themes
was Albion W. Tourgée, an abolitionist, Union soldier,
school teacher, Judge in North Carolina, and author.
Despite the move toward reconciliation, he continued the
partisan struggle in his fiction. He wrote at least twelve
novels of significance. His first novel, Toilette (1874),
was republished in 1881 as A Royal Gentleman. The novel is
patterned after the old style romances. It makes use of the
ante-bellum and the wartime setting. The plot centers on an

octoroon and her unkind Southern master. Other novels that

74
deal specificallyr with. the .reconstruction 'themes include
gigs and Thistles (1879) and A Fool's Errand (1879).
Although F_i_gs and Thistles is not considered a Civil War
romance, it gives frank and realistic accounts of the Battle
of Bull Run. The sergeant describes his first experience in
battle as fearful and confusing, and his complete lack of
memory as to what transpired during the battle. This type
of description prefigures the many first time battle
descriptions in the Civil War historical romances during the
1900-1910 decade.

When the literary giants shied away from the romance,
between the years 1870 and 1895, the war romances suffered a
decline. The bulk of the Civil War literature published
around this period. was in the form. of autobiographies,
collected letters and memoirs. Some of the most
distinguished were John E. Cooke's Wearing of Gray (1867),
John William DeForest's A Union Captain's Record of the
Civil War (1868), Thomas W. Higginson's Arq Life (1870),
George Cary Eggleston's Rebel's Recollections (1874), and
Lew Wallace's Autobipggappy ([1900], 1906).

During the 1880's, the dime novelists were still
finding the war theme attractive despite the national spirit
of reconciliation. By 1883, they were pouring out
"thrilling tales of adventures in both armies .... Stories
were brought to light in the eighties that had been refused

by publishers in the seventies because of lack of interest

75
in the subject. Charles King emerged as the most prolific
romancer. He continued to use the traditional romance
formula to create sentimental and heroic adventures. He
recreated an adventure concerning the gallantry and manners
of a regular army officer, reconstruction in the deep South,
and romantic warfare. Some of his novels during this period
include: Kitty's Comest (1884), A War Time Wooing (1888),

and Between the Lines (1889).

Literary Trends and Criticism, 1885-1895

Between 1885 and 1895, the "Northern Wave" of Civil War

romances is replaced by the second wave: "the glamorous
Southland." During this second wave, many novels of
Southern sympathy were written. Many of these Southern

romancers had served in the Confederate army, so they either
glorified their courage or deified their Southern heroes.
This body of fiction is often called the literature of the
"lost cause." The ante-bellum period is always glorified as
the arcadia of chivalry that was disrupted by the war, and
how gallantly the Southerners fought with their military
leaders to preserve their way of life.

In 1880 Thomas Nelson Page "sold his first sketch of
war times to the Century Magazine, although it was not
published for four years."13 Page's stories followed the

long "established tradition of gracious plantation life."

76

His characters and plots remained conventional with "a
glamorous atmosphere that would be ultra-romantic if it were
not for the realistic dialect of the negroes." Smith says,

where the earlier writers had emphasized pride,

aristocratic luxury, and romantic adventure, he

[often] shows loyalty between master and slive, a

loyalty based upon mutual love and service.
Page established and provided the first literary creation of
"the faithful slave, a familiar type in romance" fiction.15

The poor man's concept of the war began to find its way
into American literature by way of Joel Chandler Harris'
fiction. As a young boy in Georgia, he had sat on a fence
and watched as General Sherman and his army marched by.
After his success with the Uncle Remus tales, he began in
1883 "a series of accounts of the war among the poor whites
of the Georgia mountains" which are among the most
convincing and realistic war stories. Smith says, "The
commonsense and humor of Harris stand midway between Page's
reverence for the Old South and the disillusioned view of
the war in the writing of George W. Cable before 1899."
Although Cable served as a young man in the Confederate
army, he "discerned weakness as well as picturesqueness in
southern life."16 One of his best war stories, "Carancro"
(1887), was "later incorporated into the long pastoral"
novel Bonaventure (1888).

Up to this point, William Dean Howells' move to create
realism in fiction has failed to impress most of the Civil

War romancers. However, there were a few realistic novels:

77
Henry Morford's The Days of Shoddy (1863), William
DeForest's Miss Ravenel's Conversion (1867), and Sidney
Lanier's Tiger-Lilies (1867). Other works which tried to
understand the psychological state of the soldiers include
Albion W. Tourgée's gigs and Thistles (1879) and S. Weir
Mitchell's In War Time (1884) and Roland Blake (1886).”

S. Weir Mitchell, a Philadelphia physician and a
follower of William Dean Howells, had spent considerable
time on the battlefield during the Civil War. According to
Smith, he was "the novelist who most successfully put into
practice the principles of realism as laid down by Howells
and James."18 His novel In War Time (1884) describes the
effects of the battlefield on a cowardly surgeon while
Roland Blake (1886) emphasizes the effects of war on the
hero and his confusion about whether to act with common
sense or to act as the romantic hero.

Despite the rejection of realism by the romancers and
the reading public, the movement toward realism was still
strong. Howells remained hostile to the romance and for a
time engaged in a gentlemen-of-letters debate with his
opponents. He had been the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic
Monthly from 1872 to 1881 and had gained prominence and
influence in American letters. When he began working for
Harper's Magazine in 1885, he took charge of the "Editor's
Study" and began to champion the theory of realism. As a

result, between the years 1885 and 1892, "the 'Editor's

78
Study' of Happer's Maggzine contained exposition and defence
of realism."19 Howells was stubborn and unyielding, but his
opponents were equally so. The debate became so intense
that Howells "severely arraigned [the] American critics for
bad manners, bad principles, and ignorance," in his June,
1887, "Editor's Study."20 Howells insisted that

the realistic novel depended for its effect upon
the faithful, almost photographic delineation of
actual life, with its motives, impulses, springs
of action laid bare to the eye, but with no
unnatural straining after the intenser and coarser
emotions of blood and fire, no intentional effort
to drag in murder, crime, or fiSEce interludes of
passion without adequate reason.

In an effort to satirize the American romancers who were
imitating the English style of romanticism, Howells says,

we have in America our imitators of that romance
and that criticism: poor provincials who
actually object to meeting certain people in
literature because they do not meet such people in
society! It is mostly these Little
Peddlingtonians, trying so hard to be little
Londoners, who do the crying out for the 'ideal'
among us: for the thing that they think ought to
be, rather than the thing that is, as if they,
peradventure, knew wgat ought to be better than
God who made what is.

In the following September, 1890, "Editor's Study," Howells
ridiculed the romantic readers who needed to have the
problem of a novel solved for them by a marriage or a
murder, who needed to be "spoon-victualled with a moral
minced small and then thinned.‘with. milk and. water' and
familiarly flavored with sentimentality or religiosity."23

When Howells published his Criticism and Fiction in

1892, which criticized many "classics," a concerted reaction

79
emerged. Herbert Edwards quotes the reaction of several
literary magazines; The Nation states:

The excitement, such as it was, of seeing an
author of position jeering at his predecessors,
pitying Scott, depreciating Thackeray, and in
general working himself up into a state of mind
whenever the poor 'classics' on their comfortable
upper shelves came into his thoughts, was amusing
for a while, but now it is an old story. There
are two leading ideas in the work: first, that
the critics are sorry fellows; second, that the
art of fiction is finer than it ever was before--
that is, provided it is practiced in Mr. Howells'
way.2

The Atlantic Monthly criticized Howells "for his
depreciation of the past, and his 'intemperate zeal'in the

advocacy of his theory" and added,

we are more disposed to think that what is
technically known as realism is a phase of
literature which corresponds with much that is
contemporary in science and religion, but that so
far from being the final word in literature, it
will simply make its confiribution to art and give
place to purer idealism.

The public's preference for the romance and its dislike for
the "melancholy of modern realistic novels" is reflected in
the following letter published in the May, 1892, issue of
The Atlantic Menthly. The reader says,

as another example of this school of fiction
writing whose aim is to depict life as it is, take
The House by the Medlar Tree. It is too unhappily
true to life to be tolerable reading for anyone
past youth who knows what trouble is, who does not
need and does not wish to have the woe of life
thrust upon his notice and pressed down into his
soul more than it already and inevitably is. For
my own part, I think that a preface by' Mr.
Howells, recommending a book for its realism, will
hereafter be enough to guard me against it. Some
may agree with him and prize such novels as
masterpieces of modern art, but is the depression

80

they produce a wholesome effect to receive from a
work of art? To read such books is gratuitously
to weaken one's vitality, which the mere fact of
living does for most of us in such measure that
what we need is tonic treatment, andzgiews of life
that tend to hopefulness, not gloom.

Amelia E. Barr, one of the prominent novelists and
critics of the day, voiced her disapproval of the heroines
portrayed in the realistic novels:

She is not a nice girl. She talks too much, and
talks in a slangy, jerky way that is odiously
vulgar. She is frank, too frank, on every subject
and occasion. She is contemptuous of authority,
even of parental authority, and. believes in. a
high-handed way about her love affairs. She is
alas! something of a free thinker. She rides a
bicycle, and plays tennis, and rows a boat. She
laughs loudly, and dresses in manly fashion, and
acts altogether in accord. with an epoch that
travels its sixty miles an hour. She is very
smart and clever, but in her better moments she
makes us sigh for the girls who thought their
parents infallible and who were reverent church
women--the girls who were so shrinkingly modest,
and yet so brave in emergencies--the girls who
were so fully accomplished, and so beautiful, and
who yet had no higher ambition than to be the
dearly-loved wife of a noble-hearte man and the
good house-mother of happy children.

Charles Dudley Warner, an earlier protest writer against the
realistic novel, said in The Atlantic Monthly (1883) that
the aim of the novel should be "to lighten the burdens of
life by taking us for a time out of our humdrum and perhaps
sordid conditions, so that we can see familiar life somewhat
idealised ...."28

Howells vigorously defended the authors who were
trying to incorporate the realistic conventions into their

fictions: Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Hamlin Garlin,

81
Harold Frederic, and Henry James. Of Lillie C. Wyman's
Poverty Grass, Howells said, "It is surely not a book for
those who would like fiction to make out that life is a
pretty play or an amusing game, and would have all sorrows
end well, that their sensibilities may* be tickled and
pampered."29 In his October, 1890, "Editor's Study" Howells
said it was a pity ‘that the popular readers preferred
Haggard and Kipling to the books of Frederic's that were
within their reach.

Of all the realists, Henry James received the severest
attacks for his lack of "pathos and power," "passion and
emotion," and "immorality," for his "lack of interest," and
for his "subtlety and circumlocution." James continued to
write according to the realist theories. He had the backing
of Howells and Garland, who also maintained that the novel
should not be escapist literature, but it should be faithful
to the commonplace rather than to the unusual, sugar-coated,
sentimental pictures of American life the romancers were
painting.

If the romantics thought the realists lacked pathos,
the realists engaged in a vigorous attack against the weepy
emotions and sentimentalism that so often characterized the
historical romance. In response to these attacks, Albion
Winegar Tourgée wrote:

Pathos lies at the bottom of all enduring fiction.

Agony is the key of immortality. The ills of

fate, irreparable misfortune, untoward but
unavoidable destiny: these are the things that

82
make for enduring fame. The 'realists' profess to
be truth-tellers, but are in fact the worst of
falsifiers, since they tell only the weakest and
meanest part of the grand truth which makes up the
continued story of every life. As a rule,
humanity is in serious earnest, and loves to have

its sympathy moved with woes that are heavy enngh
to leave an impress of actuality on the heart.

Literary Trends, 1895-1925

The third cycle of Civil War fiction begins in 1895
and ends around 1925. This cycle includes two sub-cycles:
the first, 1895-1910, has often been described as a minor
resurgence of Civil War literature, and the second, 1911-
1925, "is devoted to the Southern Cause."31

During 'the first sub-cycle, 1895-1910, according' to
Ernest E. Leisy, "by the middle nineties the novel vied once
more with the short story for public favor and in the
following decade won supremacy in the unprecedented vogue of

"32 Between 1894-1902, the novels of

historical romance.
high romance were the best sellers. In 1894 when the
ferment began, no one recognized it as anything unusual
because the historical romance, especially the rococo style
romance, had been popular in America for more than a hundred
years.

Publishers were quick to seize upon "the new romantic
era." The bargain book prices made it possible for more

Americans than ever to have access to reading materials--

which increased the popularity and immense sales of the

83
historical romance. In Golden Multitudes (1947), Frank
Luther Mott writes,

it was like the enthusiasm for Scott and Cooper

almost a hundred years before: the reader could

enjoy the thrills of romance and at the same time

congratulate himself that he was improving 3913

mind by storing it with history and biography.

Among the best sellers were Charles Major's When
Knighthood Was in Flower (1899), Winston Churchill's Richard
Carvel (1899), and Paul Leicester Ford's Janice Meredith
(1899). In later years Churchill would add The Crisis
(1901) and The Crossing (1904) to his list of best sellers.
Churchill's three books provided Americans with an epical
approach to America's development. Richard Carvel sold
approximately 736,000 copies while The Crisis, his Civil
War novel, sold 1,061,000 copies. The only other best
seller to rival Churchill's The Crisis was John Fox's The
Little Shepherd of Kingdom.Come (1903), which sold 1,100,000
copies.

The popularity of the historical romance in America
prompted one European writer to publish an article in the
May, 1900, issue of The Living_Agg entitled, "The Craze for
Historical Fiction in America," in which he observed:

in America the historical novel overtops every

other sort: it is making authors rich and turning

publishers into millionaires; the circulation it
counts not by thousands, but by hundreds of
thousands, and the man or woman who having omitted

to peruse it, cannot discuss it with fluency, is

thereby rendered an outcast .... America is a land

of sentimentalism. It is this deep-seated quality

which perhaps accggnts for the vogue of history in
American fiction.

84

Despite the severe criticism against realism, and the

popular success of the historical romance, Howells

continued to oppose the old form. In the North American
Review (1900), Howells wrote:

What is despicable, what is lamentable is to have
hit the popular fancy and not have done anything
to change it, but everything to fix it; to flatter
it with false dreams of splendor in the past; when
life was mainly as simple and sad-colored as it is
now; to corrupt it to an ignominious discontent
with patience and humility, and every-day duty,
and peace.

Howells' did not totally dismiss historical fiction, he
said:

I like it very much ... I like Goldsmith's "Vicar
of Wakefield, " Richardson ' 8 "Pamela" and
"Clarissa," Frances Burney's "Evelina," Maria
Edgeworth's "Belinda," Jane Austen's "Pride and
Prejudice," "Nerthanger Abbey" and "Emma," all of
Anthony Trollope's novels and most of George
Eliot's; my catholic affection for historical
fiction embraces even Fielding's "Tom Jones" and
DeFoe's "Roxana." These and the novels like them
are what Mr. Kipling has somewhere declared the
only historical novels, because, being true to the
manners of their own times, they alone present a
picture of the past, worthy to be called
historical. But I go farther than this .... First
and foremost among them is Tolstoy's "War and
Peace," which presents an image of the past that
appeals to my knowledge of myself and of other men
as unimpeachably true. There a whole important
epoch lives again, not in the flare of theatrical
facts, but in motives and feelings so much like
those of our own time, that I know them for the
passions and principles of all times .... For a
like reason our greatest romancer, Mark Twain, by
art as unlike Tolstoy's as possible, enables one
to have one's being in the sixth century with his
"Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court." He,
too, in an imaginative scheme as wildly fantastic
as Tolstoy's is simply real, is a true historical
novelist because he represents humanity as we know
it must have been, since it is humanity as we
know it is. His historical fiction is as nobly

85

anarchical as most historical fiction is meanly
conventional in the presence of all that wrong
which calls itself vested right; and the moral law
is as active in that fascinating dream world which
he has created as it is in this waking world,
where sooner or later every man feels its power.

I like Mark Twain's historical fiction above
all for this supreme truth, just as I like
Tolstoy's; but I am not above a more purely
aesthetic pleasure in such an historical novel as
Stendhal's "Chartreuse de Parme," though this was
written so near to the supposed time of the action
that it might be called reminiscential rather than
historical ....

It is by some such test that we are to know
the validity of any work of art. It is not by
taking us out of ourselves, but by taking us into
ourselves, that its truth, its worth, is manifest;
it convinces us by entering into our experience
and making its events part of that, if it does not
enter into our conscience and make its ideals part
of that. My grief with our new historical
romances is that they do neither the one nor the
other; and though it is not a serious grief, the
thing itself being so unserious, I must insist
upon it, for it is greater than any other feeling
I have concerning them. If one could go and
acquire a little inexperience, or a good deal; or
if one could rid one's self of one's moral sense
as easily as one sometimes defies it, perhaps one
might better enjoy those books; and I wish to say
here, while there is yet a minute, that their
badness does not seem wilful in any sort. In the
literary sort, though it is often so grotesque
and hopeless, it is at other moments relieved by
the distinct intention of art in construction and
treatment. One cannot say that there is ever much
more than the intention; but such an intention is
always respectable; and in some of the books there
is a real feeling for nature, jpoetically
expressed, though, so far as I have noticed, never
a real feeling for an nature. In that all the
rest fall below ....

Stephen Crane received a great deal of support from
Howells when he published Maggie# a Girl of the Streets
(1893), but when he published The Red Badge of Courag_e_

(1896), Howells was quick to condemn him for what he

86
believed was Crane's departure from a sincere endeavor to
portray life as it actually 18.37

In 1900, Howells said there are "clear signs that its
immense favor is abating; there are sullen whispers in the
Trade that the historical romance, as a 'seller,‘ has had
its day; and. a corresponding impatience in the simple-
hearted candor of those unliterary critics who feel duped in
having yielded to the temptation of reading a book because
everybody else was reading it."38

Howells was correct. The popular demand for the
historical romance began to decline after 1902, and by 1905
the era of the historical romance was just about over. The
reading public ‘was beginning' to prepare itself for the
"strenuous life" as writers moved toward realism. When
Frank Norris died suddenly in 1902, Howells chided the
American public for preferring rococo romances to the works
of Norris. Shortly afterwards, Norris' novel, The Pit
(1903), enjoyed a posthumous popularity. By March of 1903,
The Pit (1903), a realistic novel led the best seller lists.

The years 1903 to 1917 represent a period of social
criticism. Both the romance and the naturalistic novel were
submerged by the sociological novel and the problem novel
until America entered World War I.39 Concerning the decline
in popularity of the historical novel, Jeannette L. Gilder,

a contemporary critic, wrote

whether the historical novel has come to stay or
not it is for the historical novel to decide. It

87
will not stay simply because it is historical, but

it will stay if it is good reading. The public

does not care what a novel is called so long as it

is readable, or you might not think it readable--

but then you and I are not the great public, "hifih

is, perhaps a fortunate thing for most writers.

As the movement toward realism gained in strength, many
of the romancers began to change their minds. Paul
Leicester Ford, a well known critic and romancer, who had
gained popularity for his Honorable Peter Stirling (1894)

and his James Meredith (1899), reviewed his stance toward

 

the realists and said the characters and events in a
historical novel "must be typical, not exceptional, to give

it the atmosphere which, to another generation, shall make

it seem more than a mere created fancy ...."41

In later years, when Ellen Glasgow critiqued her novel
The Battle Ground (1902), she argued:

Although The Battle Ground is not a romance, it
is, nevertheless, the work of romantic youth ....
If I have dealt with the spirit of romance, it is
becauee one cannot approach the Confederacy
without touching the very heart of romantic
tradition. It is the single occasion in American
history, and one of the world, when the conflict
of actualities was profoundly romantic. For
Virginia, in that disastrous illusion, the
Confederagy was the expiring gesture of
chivalry.

Concerning the controversy between the romantics and
the realists, in 1908 Clayton Hamilton would write,

neither of the twoi methods is truer than the
other; and. both are great. when they' are *well
employed. Each, however, lends itself to certain
abuses .... The realist, on the one hand, may grow
near-sighted and come to value facts for their own
sake, forgetting that his primary purpose in
setting them forth should be to lead us to

88
understand the truths which underlie them .... The
romantic, on the other hand, because he works with
greater freedom than the realist, may overleap
himself and express in a loose fashion general
conceptions which are hasty and devoid of truth.

The second sub-cycle, 1911-1925, is "devoted to the
Southern Cause."44 Many juvenile action adventure type
historical novels were published during this period.
However, those romancers who wrote adult novels during this
sub-cycle were influenced by the interest in sociology and
the new criticism that began to prevail in American fiction
between the years 1903-1917.

According to Parrington, the new criticism was "the
first attempt to evaluate the new plutocracy in the light of
social well-being, and to adjust institutions to changed
conditions." This new criticism had three broad phases:
Political Criticism, the progressive movement; Economic
Criticism, the doctrine of economic determinism; and
Literary Criticism, "a rejection of the traditional
cultural ideals and standards--in particular the genteel
tradition."45 The new literary criticism, in later years,
would also include an attack upon the dominant middle-class
and the political democracy which included "its puritan
inhibitions, its bourgeois respectability [and] its optimism
and sentimentality."46

With the strong influences of sociology, the new
criticism, and "the incoming of old world thought," many

writers began to mix the new ideas with their old school of

89
thought. Among the romancers, the followers of both schools
included Winston Churchill and Mary Johnston.

Following the romantic ferment of the turn-of-the-
century, during the second sub-cycle, several of the
romancers began to write the action and adventure romances
for the young adults. Between 1914 and 1916, Joseph
Altsheler led the list with the Kenton series which included
eight young adult novels detailing the major battle scenes
of the Civil War. Between 1912 and 1918, Byron Archibald
Dunn wrote six books for his young readers which described
young soldiers from Kentucky and Missouri participating in
the major battles. Cyrus Townsend Brady, a traditional
adult romancer, wrote On the Old Kearsargg (1919), a
youthful story of two seventeen-year-old soldiers on
opposing sides who cross each other's paths several times
during the war. As in his other romances, this novel is
full of the romance of adventure. John McElroy, one of the
non-traditional writers, continued the humorous adventures
of Si Klggg (four books) between 1912 and 1916.

Mary Johnston emerges as the most prominent historical
romancer of adult fiction during this period. Although she
continued to write with most of the romantic formula in
place, she provided the most realistic experiences of the
Civil War in her novels. Her first novel during this
period, The Long Roll (1911), made the list of the ten top

best sellers for that year.47 This was the only Civil War

90
novel that made the best seller list between 1911 and 1933.

She uses the third. person narrator instead of the
omniscient point of view as the novel follows the beginning
of the war until after the death of "Stone Wall" Jackson.
The old triangular love plot is still in place, but with
significant variation. Two Southerners compete for the hand
of the Southern belle instead of the usual Northern suitor
versus the Southern suitor, the central character is not
involved in any of the love plots, and the story is
subordinated to the progress of the war.

General Jackson is idealized along with the Confederate
forces and the heroism of the Southern people. The war is
portrayed as a conflict between ideologies-~the industrial
North versus the agrarian South, and the common soldier
fights because he is loyal to his section. As with several
of the novels written. during the 1900-1910 decade, the
realism in her novels appears as she describes the soldiers
in battle, their fear of death, their gradual awakening to
the reality of battle, and the fact that men at war must
never think--they' must always act. according 'to instinct
instead of intelligence.

The most unromantic aspects of the war appear in the
horrors, destruction, suffering, and the finality of death.
But, like most romancers, she stops before taking the
experiment in reality too far, so that the romance can still

reveal the ennobling effects war can have on men. Her

91
second novel, Cease Firing (1912), follows the war from
Vicksburg (1862) until the surrender at Appomattox in 1865.

As in all romances, her novels are full of historical
detail, historical personages, and love stories. But what
is notable about these novels in addition to their
historical accuracy and realism is that the story is not the
most important element. The war and its effects on the
civilian population gain prominence.

During the early ‘years of this decade, the senior
romancer, S. Weir Mitchell, wrote a novel entitled Westwayp
(1913). Like his earlier romances, this novel continues to
follow the romantic tradition with its threads of realism.
War still has its ennobling effects on men, but it also
brings out the worst in mankind. As in his earlier novels,
the unromantic aspects of war are revealed in the soldiers'
experiences in battle, the suffering, the wounded, the human
waste, and the horrors of death.

James Lane Allen is probably the only writer, other
than Mary Johnston, to achieve some critical acclaim.
According to Weber, The Sword of Youth (1915) "demonstrates
how convincing a really successful idealistic romance can
be."48 The central character is Joe, a seventeen-year-old
Kentucky mountain youth, who runs away from home to join the
Confederate forces in 1863--leaving an embittered mother who
has already loss a husband and four sons in a war for which

she has no enthusiasm. When the mother becomes 111, she

92
sends for her son who deserts the Confederate army to heed
his mother's call.

The conventional code of Southern honor is worked into
the story as the young soldier must determine what is his
code of duty and honor. After he visits his mother, he
insists on returning to Lee's army where he encounters many
difficulties as he tries to return the night before the
surrender at Appomattox--even though he knows it is not
necessary for him to return. As expected, General Lee
pardons him when he learns of the extenuating circumstances.
The novel is sentimental, but at the same time it is a
psychological probe for values that possesses an atmosphere
of reality.

Between the 'years 1917 and 1924, there ‘were sharp
changes in the literary scene. When America entered World
War I, the "regimentation due to war psychology destroyed
the movement of social criticism which had dominated fiction
between 1903 and 1917." The problem novel became old-
fashioned almost over night. By 1919, a new literary
movement had begun: a resurgence of naturalism based on
psychology rather than economics; a new romanticism "seeking
ideal beauty as a defense against reality," and a new
criticism, the "revolt of the young intellectuals against
the dominant middle class and its Puritanism, its

V-"-<:torianism, and its acquisitive ideals."49

The new literary criticism influenced only a few of the

93

Civil War writers. Thomas Dixon wrote three books between
1914 and 1921 that continued his pro-Confederate views: The
Southerner (1914), an attempt to portray Abraham Lincoln as
a Confederate at heart; The Victim (1914), a portrayal of
Jefferson Davis; and The Man in Gray (1921), a romanticized
portrayal of Lee. Thomas Nelson Page contributed one book,
The Red Riders (1924), in which the events are centered
during the period of reconstruction in South Carolina. With
the establishment of the "defensive brigade" the old style
Southern traditions and ways of living are restored.

Despite historical romances of notable accomplishment
and worth since Sir Walter Scott invented the form, in 1928
Wilson Follett evaluated almost one hundred years of
literary effort in a rather biased and unfavorable
assessment. He wrote:

The whole range of historical romance--from its

modern inception in Scott, through its minor

renascence in Stevenson, and down to its enfeebled

and imitative, but once overwhelmingly popular,

revival at the hands of Anthony Hope Hawkins,

Stanley J. Weyman, Sir Gilbert Parker, Winston

Churchill, and many another--is practically

defunct as an invitation to the competent adult

reader, and at the same time most flourishingly
algae as a province of endless joy to children..

In summary, the Civil War novel from 1865-1895 was
idealistic, patriotic, sentimental, pronounced in its
Partisanship, and conservative in the use of the old
I'<>niantic conventions. The war romances were not influenced

by the theories of realism, although there were some vivid

94
portrayals of the war. Beginning with the 1860's, the
realism mostly appeared in the works of the humorists. But
instances of realism may be found in the works of Henry
Morford, John DeForest, Sidney Lanier, Albion W. Tourgée,
and S. Weir Mitchell.

During the 1870's the literary works were influenced by
the political climate. Reconstruction themes began to
replace the Civil War themes. When the literary giants
shied away from the Civil War romances, the form suffered a
decline between 1870 and 1895.

During the 1880's the dime novelists were still finding
the Civil War theme attractive despite the national spirit
of reconciliation. A renewed interest in the school of
local color also began to appear during this decade.

Between 1885 and 1895, the literature of the "lost
cause" began to appear. The ante-bellum period was
glorified, the Southern military leaders were deified, and
Thomas Nelson Page created the myth of the "faithful
servant." The romancers and the reading public continued to
reject William Dean Howells' theories of realism, but the
movement was still strong. Howells remained hostile to the
romances, the Civil War romances in particular, and for a
time engaged in a gentleman-of—letters debate with the
-r0mmncers.

The Civil War novel from 1895-1925 enjoyed its greatest

Pepularity. The old Scott, Cooper, Simm's conventions,

95
slightly modified with the influences of the new literary
trends, criticism, and thought, flourished as it never had
before.

In 1895, the novel vied with the short story for public
favor and won supremacy in the form of the historical
romance during the 1900-1910 decade. But the era of the
historical romance began to decline after 1902, and by 1905
the era was just about over. By March, 1903, a realistic
novel led the best seller lists.

Between 1903 and 1917, the historical romance and the
naturalistic novel were both submerged by the novel of
social criticism, social problems, and the sociological
novel. Many of the romancers were influenced by these
trends. This encouraged experimentation. Eventually these
influences began to work their way into the old conventional
formula of the 1900-1910 decade of Civil War historical
romances.

From 1911 to 1925, the Civil War historical romance "is
devoted to the Southern Cause." Most of the novels were
juvenile action, adventure type historical romances. The
romancers who wrote adult novels were influenced by the
interest in the sociological novel. Mary Johnston became
the most critically acclaimed historical romancer of adult

fiction during those years.

4.

6.
7.
8.
9.

10.
11.
12.

13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

13,

96

Endnotes

Bernard DeVoto, "Fiction Fights the Civil War,"
Saturday Review of Literature XVII, Dec. 1937, p. 3.

Charles M. Harvey, "The Dime Novel in American Life."
Atlantic (July, 1907), p. 38.

Russel B. Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular
Arts in America (New York: The Dial Press, 1970), pp.
201-205.

Nye, p. 202.

Nye, pp. 202-203.

Harvey, p. 40.

Nye, p. 201.

DeVoto, p. 3.

Rebecca Washington Smith, The Civil War and Its
Aftermath in American Fiction, 1861-1899 (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1937), p. 9.

DeVoto, p. 3.

Sidney Lanier, Tiger-Lilies (New York, 1867), p. v.

Unsigned Review of "Essays on Fiction," Nerth American
Review XCIX (1864), pp. 580-587.

Smith, p. 31.

Smith, p.37.

Smith, p. 29.

John Weber, "The American War Navel Dealing ‘with
Revolutionary’ and. Civil Wars," M.S., Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Wisconsin, 1947, p. 101.

Smith, p. 35.

19.

20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

31.
32.
33.

34.

35.

36.
37.
38.
39.

97
Herbert Edwards, "Howells and the Controversy Over
Realism in American Fiction," American Literature III
(1931), p. 240.
Edwards, p. 237.
Edwards, pp. 240-241.
Edwards, p. 241.
Edwards, p. 241.
Edwards, pp. 241-242.
Edwards, p. 242.
Edwards, p. 234.
Edwards, p. 244.
Edwards, pp. 244-245.
Edwards, p. 245.

Albion Winegar’ Tourgée, "The South .as a Field for
Fiction," The Forum.VI (December, 1888), p. 411.

DeVoto, p. 3.
Leisy, p. 15.

Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes (New York: R.R.
Bowker Co., 1947), p. 211.

E.A.B. "The Craze for Historical Fiction in America,"
Living Age CCXXV (May, 1900), pp. 523-535.

William Dean Howells, "The New Historical Romances,"
Narth American Review CLXXI (1900), p. 943.

Howells, pp. 945-947.

Edwards, p. 240.

Howells, p. 944.

Vernon L. Parrington, The American Novel Since 1890

(Washington: The University of Washington, 1925), pp.
16.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.
45.
46.
47.

48.
49.
50.

98
Jeannette L. Gilder, The American Historical
Nevelists," Independent LII (September-December,
1901), p. 2096.

Paul Leicester Ford, "The American Historical Navel,"
Atlantic Monthly LXXX (1897), p. 724.

Ellen Glasgow, "The Battle-Ground." In A. Certain

Measure (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,_l943),

pp. 3-25.

Clayton Hamilton, Materials and Methods of Fiction (New
York: Baker 8 Taylor Company, 1908), p. 39.

DeVoto, p. 3.
Parrington, pp. 16-20.
Parrington, pp. 16-20.

Alice Payne Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers 1895:1965
(New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1967), p. 107.

Weber, p. 176.
Parrington, p. 25.

Wilson Follet, "The Novelist's Use of History," The
Bookman no 68 (October, 1928), p. 157.

(n

Chapter IV

Formative Factors: 1900-1910 Decade
I

The formative factors and literary trends that
influenced the conventional structure of the 1900-1910
decade of Civil War historical romances, in part 2 of this
chapter, began in the 1880's with the renewed interest in
the romance and continued into the 1890's.

During’ this renewed interest and the literary
excitement that followed, the historical romance experienced
another great rise in popularity between 1895-1905. At
least half of the top best sellers between the years 1894 to
1902 were novels of high romance. This new romantic revival
and popularity of the historical romance with the American
reading public paralleled the renewed feelings of
nationalism and patriotism.

The real spirit behind the turn-of—the-century romances

1 He "was the only writer after

was Robert Louis Stevenson.
Scott to dedicate himself heart and soul to the service of
romance, and to become a complete master of the romantic
story." Life was romantic to him; he believed the aim of
the romance should be "to embody character, thought, or
emotion in some act or attitude that [should] be remarkably
striking to the mind's eye."2 His interest in the

a<1venturous and the remote captured the American

99

100
imagination. The excitement in his adventure stories was in
the hero's ability to escape from difficult situations, or
the unexpected way out.3

When Stevenson championed the cause against realism in
England, he sought to restore "the alliance between the
novel and the spirit of romance, and elevated the romance
perhaps more than even Scott to the level of great
literature."4 A Humble Remonstrance (1892) provided the
argument and Treasure Island (1883) the example.5

Carl Van Doren wrote: "within two or three years
after Stevenson's Kidnappgg (1886) and Rider Haggard's SEQ
(1886), history in the American novel assumed an importance
it had not had since Cooper and Hawthorne."6 Some of the
older, popular favorites by Sir Walter Scott were still
popular with the American reading public during the 1890's,
which probably encouraged many of the American romancers to
continue using the old formula, but Stevenson became the
vogue. Other popular favorites included George Eliot and
Charles Dickens while a growing interest in Leo Tolstoy was
enthusiastically encouraged by William Dean Howells.7

Thackeray's novels were equally as popular as Scott's
novels. His successful stories of love, manners, and
estate, as in Henry Esmond (1852), Vanity Fair (1848), and
The Virginians (1859), also encouraged many of the romancers

to replace the old style romances of love, adventure, and

violent action with the new style romances of love, manners,

101
and costumes.

The renewed popularity of the romance created the
literary storm during the nineties between the romance and
realism--the revival of the historical romance on one side
and the development of a sharper, harsher realism on the
other. Two works of criticism may have directly or
indirectly added to the strength of the storm: William Dean
Howells' Criticiem and Fiction (1891) and F. Marion
Crawford's The Novel--What It Is (1893).

In Criticism.and Fiction (1891), Howells set forth his
theories of realism--calling for minimized plots, the
avoidance of romantic distortion, aristocratic setting, the

8 He continued to

hero cult, and feudalistic trappings.
stress the ordinary even in its familiarity. Howells wrote:
"realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful

9 "The only genuine Romance (for

treatment of material...."
grown persons), [is] reality."10

In The Novel--What It Is (1893), Crawford aligned
himself with the romanticists. His theories of the novel
were a rejection of Howells' theories of minimized plots,
and commonplace characters in favor of color, action,

11 Crawford wrote:

adventure, plot, and character interest.
the novel "must deal chiefly with love, for in that passion
all men and women are most generally interested"; its first
object is "to amuse and interest the reader"; it is a

"pocket theatre" and the novelist himself is a "public

102
amuser."12

As the population began to increase, the reading public
also increased when the religious objections to the novel
began to disappear. With the increase in literacy, a desire
for escape literature that provided an education while being
entertained led to the age of "the best seller."

In seeking an appropriate subject, the romancers again
turned to Civil War. The country was at least a generation
removed from the war, so the renewed nationalism and
patriotism suggested that the nation was healing itself.
Besides, the country had experienced another war, the
Spanish-American War of 1898, in which both Northerners and
Southerners had fought together, so the Civil War could be
treated somewhat more objectively as a critical period in
the young nation's history.

Other factors influencing the popularity of the new
romances included the Cleveland administration, the recovery
from the panic of 1893, a period of economic distress and
general depression that caused the closing of many banks and
small town industries, and the Chicago World's Fair of 1893,
which was mostly an exhibition of America's achievements.
Although there were some foreign exhibits, the visitors from
home and abroad were astonished by the progress America had
made.

There was also an increased interest in education,

because most of the states had passed compulsory school

103
attendance laws by the 1890's. As a result, by the end of
the century the United States had. made "great strides"
culturally' and intellectually’ and. *was beginning' to
demonstrate its importance as one of the world powers. The
war with Spain was only one of several international
disputes from which the United States had emerged
Victoriously.13

However, the feelings of nationalism generated by the
Spanish-American War of 1898 created pride in the country.
Although the war only lasted about three months, it
increased the international prestige of the United States
and created a chauvinistic pride and a martial spirit that
made the romance and heroics of the past "peculiarly
palatable." Orians suggested:

There was the journey to free a 1and--and all at

once the bottom dropping out of the heightened war

emotion. Women wanted romance but were
disappointed at the external record of a few
months' war. It was a thwarted 1generation--and

the result was historical romance.

The desire for romance and the past naturally stimulated an
interest in history as a subject for fiction. The public's
reaction to the growing realism of the 1880's and 1890's,
the romancers' preference for a colorful past as an escape
from a realism they considered too dull and conservative,
and the new age of "the best seller," which was given a
boost by the passage of the International Copyright Act in
1891, all contributed to the continued popularity of "the

new romantic era."

104

When the age of "the best seller" began, "the improved
mechanics of book-making, the growing facilities for
distribution, the new methods of advertising" in addition to
the reproduction of newspapers and magazines in vast
quantities changed the book—making industry. Publishers
advertized books "like a soap or patent medicine for a few
weeks or months," and then dropped them. The plates were
sold to firms like Grossett & Dunlap, who issued a second
publication of the book in a cheaper edition and then
dropped it forever.

Unlike the older publishing houses and publishers, the
Fields, Osgoods, Harpers, Putnams, and Ticknors, who held
their books on the shelves for years--selling only a few
copies now and then to catalogue readers--the new publishing
houses cleaned house every publishing season. The unsold
copies "were disposed of as 'remainders' to companies
organized to peddle them out at cut prices--what was a $10
set last summer" later became a $3.50 bargain.15

These bargain prices made it possible for more
Americans than in any previous generation to have access to
reading material. The desire for more reading material and
the increasing popularity of the historical romance "was
like the enthusiasm for Scott and Cooper almost a hundred
years before."16

The publishing houses (Doubleday a. Page, Alfred Knopf,

Boni and Liveright, Harcourt and Brace), mostly founded by

105
college men who had trained in the older firms, moved
quickly to take advantage of "the new romantic era" (1894-
1905).

The old idea of a publishing house as a happy
family of authors and publishers associated to
advance the great cause of literature . .. . [had

given] way to the one idea of alpublishing
house organized for business only ....

II

Conventional Structure: 1900-1910 Decade

The Scott, Cooper, Simms' conventional structure
continued to have a major influence among the American
romancers and publishers during the first decade of the
twentieth century. With the Civil War as the subject of
their national crisis, the romancers continued to use most
of the old romantic conventions, but they also began to
incorporate some noticeable changes and variations into the
old formula. The most popular elements seemed to be the
stock, sentimental love plots, descriptions of actual
military encounters, the capture and escape episodes
utilizing suspense and fast-moving action, realism in the
form of local color and the use of lower class characters,
and the blending of history and fiction as a device for the
characters to interact with the historical figures and react
to the historical events.

The use of the old conventions was supported by the

106
publishers, but by many critics as well. Henry A. Beers
wrote:

The historical romance--an invention of Walter

Scott--is perhaps the nearest modern equivalent of

the ancient epic. The hand-to-hand combats of

Homeric heroes, the encounters of mediaeval

knights, are themes for the poet. The evolutions

of modern armiei8 find their more appropriate

vehicle in prose.
Concerning the Southern romances, Ellen Glasgow wrote:

There were no visible Southern critics; and had

there been, they would have repudiated any

novelist who had attempted to pierce, or even to

prick, the sentimental fallacy. In Southern

fiction there were many romances of the

Confederacy; but so far as I am aware, they had,

one and all, followed faithfully a well-worn and

standardized pattern. A gallant Northern invader

(though never of the rank and file) must rescue

the person and protect the virtue of 13 spirited

yet clinging Southern belle and beauty.
Both Northern and Southern romancers repeated this pattern
over and over with as many variations as they could imagine.

Despite the rigidity of the pure romancers, the
features of realism were beginning to find their way into
the Scott, Cooper, and Simms' formula. Most of the heroes
and heroines are still upper-class, flawless characters, but
this is no longer the rule. They continue to provide the
romance in the novels while the lower classes provide the
local color and realism, but this may vary also.

The love story is still based on the ideals of courtly
love. While the old romancers stressed love and adventure,
the new romancers stressed love, manners, and costume over

violent action. Love versus filial duty was one of the most

107
popular sub-plots. The young woman, who was usually
Southern, had to choose between loyalty to her family, the
Southern cause, and her Northern suitor. This plot varies;
sometimes the soldier must choose between his code of honor,
love, and filial duty. The triangular love sub-plot was
another favorite. The gentleman suitor versus the villain
also varied on occasion; sometimes the villain was a female.
With the closer interweaving of the history and fiction, the
love story runs parallel with the war action. As the war
comes to an end, the love plots are resolved. This is a
change from the previous romances--in which the plots were
loosely connected.

Unlike the historical figures in Scott's romances, who
usually have minor roles and are treated like gods, the new
romancers varied the size of the roles they created for
their historical figures. The increased roles inspired more
human treatment and critical commentary from the characters
as well as the narrators. In some of the purer romances,
the historical personages are still characterized with
reverence, but they are more human than godlike.

The approach to war is more realistic. Henry A. Beers
wrote: "we know too much about modern wars" to write epics.
"A certain unfamiliarity is necessary for picturesque
effect."20 Henry A. Beers recalled one of his elders

reading aloud from a newspaper report of one of

the battles of [the] Civil War. He said it would

be impossible for the future poet of the war to
deal effectively with the names of our

108
battlefields. 'What can he do with such names as

Bull Run, Pig's Point, Ball's Bluff, Paddy's Run,

and the like?‘ Possibly the remark was trivial,

possibly untrue. Thermopylae, after all, means

nothing more than 'hot gates.‘ But the point
illustrates thflstubbornness of modern warfare as

epic material.

In the newer romances, the 1900-1910 decade of Civil War
Romances, neither the war nor the battle scenes are treated
with as much glamor or idealization as they were in the pre-
Civil War romances. War is no longer a tale of heroic
adventure. The influences of the contemporary trends--
social criticism, sociology, and the theories of realism and
naturalism--are best experienced in the treatment of the
war.

The plots in this study, whether purely romantic or
realistic, can be traced back to the Scott, Cooper and
Simms' formula,~ although there is some evidence that
Winston Churchill's success with Richard Carvel and TE
Crisis provided a model for many of the novels that
followed- Novelists such. as Randall Parrish, .Blackwood
Ketcham. Benson, Charles King, Cyrus Townsend. Brady, and
George Cary Eggleston usually wrote the traditional
romances with almost all thee conventional structures in
place. For example, Parrish's two novels, My Lady of the
5955; (1904) and My Lady of the South (1909), follow most of
the conventions. The Civil War provides the action and

background for the plot development in both stories. Each

Story includes a series of familiar incidents: the courtly

109
love pattern, using the triangular love plot convention with
a resolution to the hero and heroine's complications once
the war is over, the use of lower class characters to
provide the local color and realism, the interweaving of
facts and fiction, minor roles for the historical figures,
descriptions of military encounters, and the use of capture
and escape episodes using violent, fast-moving action. The
action includes enough adventures and suspense to keep the
reader interested until the resolution despite all the
unlikely heroics and escapades. The primary emphasis is
directed more toward the development of the story than the
characters.

Ralph C. Most calls the basic Civil War novel plot the
Virginia conventional pattern and suggests all other plots
are a ‘variation of the Virginia theme, characters, and
setting» according to the writer's desired region and

location.22

For example, Blackwood Ketcham Benson's 91g
ggpire (1903), George Cary Eggleston's The Warrens of
Vipginia (1908) and Ellen Glasgow's The Battle-Gppppg
(1902) represent the Virginia pattern. Most of the
characters are from Virginia, and most of the action takes
place there. Usually, just before the war or during the
war, an aristocratic Northerner enters the Southern belle's
life. They fall in love, but she is torn between her love

for the dashing young Northerner and her loyalty to her

family and state. Once the war is over, the crisis between

110
the two lovers is usually resolved. Although this is the
standard formula for the love versus filial plot, this
formula may also vary. Sometimes the Virginian is a U.S.
officer who has decided to remain loyal, thereby incurring
the wrath of his Southern belle.

This pattern and its many variations may be repeated in
different localities and states. William Henry Winslow
follows the same pattern in Southern Buds and Sons of War
(1907). His characters are from Charleston, South Carolina,
where most of his action takes place. In The Honor of a
peg (1908), Libbie Miller Travers also uses this structure.
The southeastern part of Tennessee is her setting, but she
calls her heroine Virginia. Caroline Abbot Stanley'squgpp
Number Eleven (1904) incorporates this formula as she
introduces two aristocratic families located on the prairie
of Jackson County, Missouri.

The Virginia model gains more variation with the
introduction of the mountain people, outlaw bands, and
guerrillas. In Randall Parrish's My Lady of the North
(1904) and My Lady of the South (1909), both heroes have to
battle against a vicious group of guerrillas. In My Lady of
the South (1909), the hero finds himself in the midst of a

 

long-standing mountain feud and a murder mystery. Alice
MacGowan offers one of the best portraits of the mountaineer
and his battles with the guerrillas in The Sword in the

Mountains (1910) .

111

Another variation of the conventional formula is the
border state pattern. John William Fox provides an
excellent portrait of the mountaineer along with the brother
against brother theme in The Little Shepherd of Kigdom Come
(1903). Although the country as a whole witnessed a
traumatic era as the nation divided against itself, the
divided loyalty theme was often used in local settings such
as Kentucky, East Tennessee, Maryland, Kansas, and Missouri.
In With Lyon in ZMissouri (1910), Byron Archibald Dunn
portrays the border conflict between Kansas and Missouri and
takes the reader back as early as the John Brown raids.
Nathaniel Wright Stephenson's They’ That Took. the Sword
(1901) describes the conflict of brother against brother as
the Southern sympathizers become involved in the local
conspiracies and rebel activities to gain control of the
city government in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In the Knights in Fustian (1900), Caroline Virginia
Krout uses the same plot convention--except her location is
Crawfordsville, Indiana. In The Claybornes (1902) William
Sage describes a break. between brother and. brother' and
father and son; his location is Virginia. A similar break
occurs in Alabama between father and son in Cyrus Townsend
Brady's The Southerners (1903).

Cyrus Townsend Brady varies the theme somewhat in _A_
Little Traitor to the South (1904). In this tragic-comic

romance, the split occurs between a father and daughter. It

112

1,3 Admiral Vernon who remains loyal to the old flag while
his daughter moves to Charleston, South Carolina, to help
the Confederacy in whatever manner she can.

A further variation of the Virginia formula includes
settings and locations in the deep South. George Washington
Cable's setting for Kincaid's Battery (1908) is mostly in
New Orleans. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether's The Sewing of
Swords (1910) is also set in New Orleans; Samuel Jackson
Shields' A Chevalier of Dixie (1907) includes locations in
Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina. Fannie Eoline
Selph's novel M (1905) uses Texas for most of its
location, although flashbacks include New York, Georgia, and
Louisiana; and Emily Lafayette McLaws' The Welding (1907)
ineludes Georgia, Virginia, Washington, D.C., North
Carelina, and South Carolina.

The poor boy makes good theme adds a little variation
to the conventional plot formula in Rupert Hughes' novel m
W (1902), in John William Fox's The Little Shepherd
offiggciom Come (1903), and in Fannie Eoline Selph's 919—3
(1905).

Another variation introduces the female spy and
801~<1:ler. Caroline Virginia Krout uses a woman known as Mrs.
BC""193 of Ridgely, Indiana, in the Knight in Fustian (1900).
GeOlfge Washington Cable uses Charlotte Oliver, the famous“
fen)ele Confederate spy, in The Cavalier (1901); William Sage

11"tiroduces Regina Bowie in The Claybornes (1902); and in the

113
carlyles (1905), Constance Cary Harrison uses the infamous
Molly Ball--the woman who alerted the Confederates that
General McDowell would advance on Bull Run on the 17th.

William Isaac Yoppin creates a slight variation of the
female spy plot in A Dual Role (1902) when the Confederates
need someone to infiltrate the Federal camp. Hal Claybrook
makes himself up as a young lady and passes easily into the
Federal lines as Miss Hallie Clay, a music teacher.

William Isaac Yopp varies the formula again in A Dual
Role (1902) when he explores the nature of a mental disorder
in his heroine. Meriwether explores a slightly different
kind of mental distress in The Sewing of Swords (1910).
Hannah Parting experiences the "it"--some form of psychic
revelation she receives, without warning, that causes her to
90 into a trance. Joseph Alexander Altsheler experiments
with another form of mental disorder in Colonel John Greene,

an Old Confederate soldier in The Last Rebel (1900), who is

 

Btil-1 holding Fort Defiance in 1896 for the Confederates.

In Order Number Eleven (1904), Caroline Abbot Stanley
allows Louis Chandler to go permanently insane after she
Watc=hes her father killed on their front peach, and her
Young husband Beverely Trevilian die after suffering from a
9““ shot wound. Blackwood Ketcham Benson also uses the

me“tel disorder theme in Who Goes There! (1900). The hero,

 

Jones Berwick, suffers a severe fall as a young boy and

begins to have memory lapses. When the doctors begin to

114
approach his illness from a psychological point of view, the
young boy begins to respond.

Another variation using mental disorders portrays the
hero experiencing brain fever as a result of his war injury
or emotional fatigue--which usually resulted in some form of
delirium, hallucinations, or disorientation. The following
writers dealt with such disorders: George Washington Hosner
in As We Went Hatchinun (1900), Rupert Hughes in m
Whirlwind (1902), Fannie Eoline Selph's _Tgfl (1905), Cyrus
Townsend Brady's novels The Southerners (1903) and The
Patriots (1906), and Byron Archibald Dunn's With Lyon in
Iliasouri (1910).

Several of the novels depart from many of the
conventional structures. For example, Blackwood Ketcham
Bel'lson's 01d Squire (1903) is the romance of an old black
Virginia slave who calls himself a "Confeddick." Squire
rePlaces the traditional aristocratic hero and heroine as
the major characters when the action and adventure in the
°t°ry begin to follow him.

Joel Chandler Harris departs from the conventions in 93
mung of Occasions (1900) in that his novel loosely
cotuiects a group of short stories centered on the Civil War
and a Confederate spy network managed by Captain McCarthy in
a New York hotel. Within these five short stories--"In the
order of Providence"; "The Troubles of Martin Coy"; 'The

‘idnapping of President Lincoln"; and “The “in of Captain

115
‘cCarthyh-many of the historical romance conventions

appear, but the structure of the novel keeps them from being
as obvious; and unlike many of the romances, it not as easy
to predict the outcome of the plots. Other departures from
the traditional conventions include: Archibald McCowan's

The Prisoners of War (1901); Joseph S. Malone's Guided and

 

Med (1901); Blackwood Ketcham Benson's Bayard's Courier
(1902); Ellen Glasgow's The Battle-Ground (1902); and Upton
Beall Sinclair's Manassas (1904).

A few authors vary the traditional conventions by
taking the war on the water. This variation provides some
015 the best portrayals of the war in this study. In 1h_e
m Blockaders (1910), Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
exFlores the dangers and excitement of being aboard the
b10¢:kade runners as the ships drift slowly through the
b:l-Ofckades of guns and explosives. George Washington Cable's
gncnid's Battery (1908) re-creates Admiral Farragut's
military encounters against the city of New Orleans. Cyrus
Tow“Bend Brady's The Southerners (1903) describes Boyd
Peyton (a fictional, Southern navy officer) fighting against
his father and brother in the Mobile Bay. Brady explores
the mixed feelings each side feels as Southerner fights
against Southerner. A Little Traitor to the South (1904),
a130 written by Brady, is a pure romance that also provides

one of the most fascinating naval battles when General

BeQuregard sends the "David," a ship that has been down five

116
times, each time all of her crew--thirty men or more--have
perished, to torpedo the Union flag ship.

Only two juvenile plots are used in this study. Both
of these novels appear during the last year. They include
Byron Archibald Dunn's With Lyon in Missouri (1910) and
Everett Titsworth Tomlinson's The Young Blockaders (1910).

The following novels may use a few of the traditional
conventions, but they are not obvious or obtrusive. They
include Lydia Cope Wood's The Haydock's Testimony (1901),
which tells the story of Quaker resistance to slavery and
the Quakers' refusal to bear arms during the Civil War.
Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1900), John
MOElroy's Si Klegg, His Transformation Pro- a Raw Recruit to
_Q Veteran (1910), and Si Klegg Thru the Stone River Campaign
LN in Winter Quarters at Murfreesboro (1910) describe
Youthful romanticism and the gradual awakening to the
realities of war.

The setting in most of these novels creates a picture
015 Arcadia, similar to the descriptions in the pre—Civil War
litZarature. Most of the planters have acquired some high
military rank; they consider themselves cavaliers, descended
from some ancient aristocratic family in England. They live
in feudal splendor surrounded by multitudes of gentle,

1‘3":l.ng, doting slaves. Their stately mansions are filled
with furniture and finery brought from England; the ladies

a"Id gentlemen have cultivated all the social graces, and

117
they fill their leisure with dancing, gaiety, and flirting.
The men pride themselves on their honor codes and are touchy
about their honor. So on a rare occasion a duel, between
gentlemen, or a suggestion that the slaves should be freed,
may disturb the tranquillity of this man-made Arcadia.

This idyllic setting generally appears in the Civil War
novel involved in treating the social history of the pre-
Civil War South before the political turmoil and the Civil
War begin. Many of the novels in this study imply the
tranquil scene and begin with the political turmoil as a
disruption. Once the heated discussions begin to appear
everywhere, and everyone's emotions begin to run high on
town days, at picnics, on street corners, and at dinner
Parties in support of the Southern cause, the romantic
tranquility begins to assume historical atmosphere and the
aPE>-'l..i.cations of realism.

The traditional romantic formula calls for lengthy
descriptions of scenery which are best utilized by the
s‘c’uthern writers who describe the plantation setting and all
its trappings. On the other hand, the Northern writers,
Whose approach to scenery is generally more realistic, are
usually more concerned with getting their men into the Union
“my to put down the Rebellion instead of using long
narrations of scenery. Once the Northern officer begins to
ll‘°Ve South, he begins to encounter the conventional scenery

and the Southern heroine. Once the war is over, the reader

118
is often left with the impression that the Yankees invaded
the "garden" and disrupted its beauty and tranquility.

Virginia is the setting for the battle scenes,
geographical localities, and setting for most of the novels
in this study. Most of the authors deal with a particular
battle location instead of the entire war. Occasionally the
reader follows a hero through several different campaigns.
The author generally achieves this by having the hero serve
under several different battle leaders--which means the
reader may gain some historical insight into the
geographical settings and the character of such military
leaders as General Lyons, General Sherman, General Lee, and
General Grant.

Sometimes writers like Randall Parrish avoided any
effort to localize their settings and describe actual battle
scenes. Their characters are often on the battle scene
providing help in some manner during the great historical
moments such as the fall of Richmond or Appomattox. So
these authors had to find other ways to include the romantic
conventions of intrigue, adventure, capture, and escape.

The style used in the novels often depends upon the
author's point of view toward his material, and what his
approach to the material will be. Most of the Southern
writers have approached their material using all or most of
the romantic conventions. The language is sometimes poetic

and grand to match the grand heroics of the hero and the

119
courage of his heroine. When the writer begins to replace
some of the romantic conventions with realistic features,
the language becomes more prosaic, typical, and ordinary in
style.

The point of view is generally third person objective
with an occasional omniscient narrator, who intrudes into
the story at unexpected intervals to assist the reader in
interpreting the plot, a character's actions, or a scene
that he considers too sensitive or brutal for the reader's
taste and sensibilities. With this style of narration, the
reader is always aware of the author's presence--which can
be slightly annoying to the modern reader. As the novels
approach realism, the author's presence becomes less
obvious.

Many of the romancers continued to ‘write thex pure
romances, but most of the authors in this study made some
effort to combine character, plot, and historical fact into
one unit. Some were more successful than others. When the
combination of character, plot, and historical fact fails,
the romance becomes a loosely connected series of episodes
and adventures. The characters become types subordinated to
the plot as the plot develops independently. The plots are
never complicated or involved, so there is very little need
to develop psychologically motivated characters. These
kinds of stock characters usually end up providing the

action and reacting to the complications. As a result, the

120
reader can only make surface determinations concerning the
motivations behind their actions.

The women are generally the noble and true types; once
in a while there is a villainer. The women who are not the
heroines or villains are usually average and prosaic even if
they are considered aristocrats. In the turn-of—the-century
romances, the heroine's social class may vary, but she is
never typical.

The planter is always an aristocrat who has been reared
to the custom of command since he was a boy. He is
considered a natural leader. His speech is gentle; he shows
kindness to those he considers his equals and his inferiors
until his will is crossed. He is like a king with the
absolute power.

In keeping with the old romantic tradition, the poor
whites and Negroes are always portrayed realistically. Even
the writers who are moving toward realism tend to create the
romantic and aristocratic type heroines while their social
inferiors provide the foils, local color, background, and
realism.

Most of the critics have dealt harshly with many of
these writers because their plots are "well-worn," and their
characters are poorly developed types. But it is important
to remember that most of these writers were following the
romantic conventions required by the editors and publishing

houses. The romance convention had been established for

121
almost a hundred years; it was a proven "best seller." Very
few writers had the courage of DeForest and Crane.

Despite the romancers' adherence to the basic romantic
conventions, they were beginning to vary the formula by
stressing love, manners, and costumes over the love,
adventure, and violent action in the older romances. They
were also beginning to experiment with the contemporary
literary trends and thought. The result was an experimental
decade, and a Civil War historical romance in transition

that would eventually reach maturity during the 1930's.

3.
4.
5.

10.
11.

12.
13.
14.
15.

122

Endnotes

John Weber, "The American War novel Dealing with
Revolutionary' and. Civil Wars," M.S., Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Wisconsin, 1947, p. 105.

Marjorie N. How, Historical Romance in the Nineteenth
Century’ (London: University of London Press, Ltd.,
1914), p. 41.

How, p. 41.
Weber, p. 105.

Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Humble Re-onstranceJ' In
Memories and Portraits (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1892), pp. 275-299.

Carl Van Doran, The American Novel, 1789-1939 (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1940), p. 215.

Alexander Fodor, "The Acceptance of Leo Tolstoy in the
United States,” Research Studies 45 (June, 1977), p.
77.

G. Harrison Orians, A Short History of American
Literature (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1940), p.
241.

 

William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 73.

Howells, p. 103.

Vernon L. Parrington, The American Novel Since 1890
(Washington: The University of Washington Book Store,
1925), p. 13.

Orians, p. 251.
Orians, p. 240.
Orians, p. 250.
Fred Lewis Pattee, The New American Literature, 1890-

1930 (New York: The Century Company, 1930), pp. 236-
237.

16.

17.
18.

19.

20.

21.
22.

123

Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes (New York: R. R.
Bowker Co., 1947), p. 211.

Pattee, pp. 236-237.

Henry A. Beers, "Literature and the Civil War,"
Atlantic Monthly 88 (December, 1901), p. 752.

Ellen Glasgow, "The Battle-Ground." In A Certain
Measure (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1943),
p. 11.

Beers, pp. 751-752.
Beers, p. 752.

Ralph C. Most, "Civil War Fiction, 1890-1920.” Diss.
University of Pennsylvania 1951, pp. 32-33.

Part 2 Historical Background in the Novels

Chapter V

The Old Caste and Class System

The Virginia gentleman did not come from the English
gentry, but from the merchant and trade class; some were
laborers, peasants, indentured servants, and convicts who
re-created themselves as a result of the conditions in the
colony. The economic conditions in the colony that created
the Virginia gentleman eventually created four different
classes--the poor-whites, the servants and slaves, the
yeomanry, and the ruling planter class. Most of the early
settlers started on an even footing, with the exception of
the merchants and tradesmen. Usually, the merchants came
with enough money to purchase large tracts of land, slaves,
and indentured servants to produce the large tobacco crops
needed to reap large financial profits. They considered the
life of the English country squire ideal, so once they
settled on their plantations they began to imitate the life
of the country squire. Once they acquired land, they began
to call themselves "gentlemen" and to display their
ancestor's family coat-of-arms, or an acquired coat-of-arms,
as proof of their claim to gentle blood.

The first generation of planters had the business
instincts of the merchant. They amassed wealth and produced
sons to carry on their names. Once they were wealthy enough

125

126
to call themselves "gentlemen," they began to assume certain
civic duties and responsibilities. The colony expected them
to serve as members of the House of Burgesses--the ruling
Council of the colony. The larger their plantations and the
more slaves and herd they owned, the greater was their power
and influence.

Membership on the Council meant the planter was among
the hierarchy of governmental officials. His election to
the Council provided him. with further opportunities to
increase his wealth and to achieve the social status
equivalent to a titled aristocracy. In The First Gentlemen
of Virginia (1940), Louis B. Wright says that a seat on the
Council "gave the privilege of writing 'Esquire' after one's
name and commanded the deference of all lesser folk."1 As
early as 1674, the members of this "gentlemen" class were
"conscious of their superiority, and diligent to see
that the lower orders of society observed distinctions in
rank."2

When James Bullock, a tailor from York County, entered
his mare in a horse race for two thousand pounds of tobacco
against a horse owned by Dr. Matthew Slader, the justices
fined him one hundred pounds of tobacco because racing was
"a sport for gentlemen only." In 1662 William Hatton
discovered he had committed an unforgivable offense when he
called

the justices of the peace of York County a
lot of 'coopers, hog trough makers, peddlers,

127
cobblers, tailors, weavers, and not fitting to sit
where they do sit.’ Because he had reflected upon
the social status of the genSlemen of the county,
he was made to eat his words.
"Deference was demanded and generally received as a right by
the upper classes." The "gentlemen" were quick to invoke
the law against some "rude yokel" who failed to show the
respect he should to his superiors, or some common fellow
who forgot himself and became "impudent toward his
betters."4

By the later years of the seventeenth century, the
Virginia aristocracy had evolved into a small ruling class,
totalling fewer than a hundred families, which monopolized
the public offices, controlled the economic life, and
dictated the religious and social order of the colony. It
was not long before some of the families began to look upon
their membership on the Council as an inherited right and
began to rule the colony as if it was their divine right.

The chief planter in each county inherited the
military and. naval command. of his jurisdiction and ‘was
conferred the title of "Colonel." In each company, the
other planters assumed the duties and responsibilities of
the captain. The colonel drilled the men in peace time and
led them in times of war. In addition to these duties, he
managed the department of law enforcement; the sheriff,
commissioners, and officers of the court were also chosen
5

from the ranks of the wealthier planters.

Besides the planters' civic and military

128
responsibilities, they also functioned as the religious
leaders of the colony. Although they were not the
exemplars of religious piety, "they looked upon religion as
necessary to decent and respectable living and as essential

"5 Most of the great planters were

to a well ordered state.
Orthodox Anglicans who "labored to maintain conformity in
the colony." Since the planters controlled the church, they
elected representatives from the best planter families to
serve as vestrymen and church. wardens. These elected
officials took their religious duties and responsibilities
seriously. They had to protect the public and private
morality of the people. They presented the offenders of
decency to the county courts. They were strict about seeing
that the "laws requiring church attendance and Sabbath
observance were observed." They presented the clergymen to
the governor for induction into the church. "They served as
deacons and read the prayers when the church was without a
minister." Many planters held prayer services in their
homes "and acted as the spiritual as well as the secular
head[s] of [their] communit[ies]." Even the most hard-
swearing, hard-drinking, slave-driving planters showed some
reverence for religion.7

Wealth not only determined one's political influence,
but one's social status. No one cared if a gentleman's son

sired a family; it was more important to have enough capital

to purchase large tracts of land and bring servants over.

129
The later generation of nineteenth-century gentlemen
considered trade distasteful, but their forefathers
considered it a blessing. By the end of the seventeenth
century, few titled aristocracies in the world had as much
power and prestige as the Virginia aristocrats.

Since the colony lacked the proper educational
facilities, many of the planters sent their sons to Oxford,
Cambridge, Edinburgh, or Aberdeen to acquire the instincts
of the English gentleman. "The culture, the ideas and
habits [acquired there] by the young Virginia aristocrats
exerted a powerful influence upon [the] society in Old
Dominion."8 In Virginia they created a Guild of Gentlemen
emphasizing manners, polished speech, grace and dignity of
deportment; a Code of Conduct: truth and honor; the
Cardinal Virtues: fortitude, prudence, temperance, justice,
liberality, and courtesy; the duel as the proper way for
gentlemen to defend their honor; an appreciation for the
politer graces: hospitality, dancing, the ability to
converse with occasional references to the classics; some
degree of proficiency in the gentlemen sports (fencing,
riding, horse racing, cockfighting, the hunt, fishing,
swimming, card playing) a taste for elegant homes with
lavish furnishings, library collections with books suitable
for the taste of a gentleman, lavish flower gardens and
orchards.

These gentlemen farmers were still business men, but

130
they did not have the talent for close bargaining that had
characterized their fathers. Although they often conceived
of creative and bold business ventures, they did not meet
with the same success as their fathers, who had been more
concerned with personal profit than honor, who had used
their positions to gain advantage and to increase their
wealth.

The third generation of Virginia planters modeled
themselves on the Cavalier. They were well educated--more
than likely they had been educated in England or Scotland.
They had inherited princely fortunes and were living in
elegant homes that equaled the gentry in any section of the
Old World.

By the time this generation were masters of the
plantations, the use of the overseer had become widespread
and popular--especially on the larger plantations. The
overseer managed the general business of the plantation as
well as the field hands, which meant that this planter,
unlike his father and grandfather, had much more leisure
time. With this leisure time, he often developed a fondness
for gambling and play, which coupled with his mismanagement,
often kept him in debt. In many instances, he had to
mortgage his slaves, silverware, and a few of his other
plantations to cover his debts. Like his father and
grandfather, however, he was still the leader of the colony.

He served in the House of Burgesses, and distinguished

131
himself as a soldier when he commanded a few regiments in
the French and Indian War. This third-generation aristocrat
was cultured and well educated; he was a politician as well
as a soldier, but his fortune was beginning to decline.

By the nineteenth century, the Virginia gentlemen
believed they had descended from the Cavaliers. Men like
Robert E. Lee personified the gentle breeding and the Code
of Chivalry. Many of the business deals that made the first
generation of planters wealthy would have been completely
unacceptable to men like George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. The first generation of planters paid little
deference to women, but the later generations paid high
homage to women and nothing was more important to them than
their honor--—not even their life. According to Thomas

Nelson Page,

to be a Virginia gentleman was his first duty; it
embraced being a Christian and all the virtues
.... He was fully appreciative of both the honors
and the responsibilities of his position. He
believed in a democracy, but understood that the
absence of a titled aristocracy had to be supplied
by a class more virtuous than he believed any
aristocracy to be. He purposed in his own person
to prove that this was practicable. He
established the fact that it was. This and other
responsibilities made him grave. He had inherited
gravity from his father and grandfather. The
latter had been a performer in the greatest work
of modern times, with the shadow of the scaffold
over him if he failed. The former had faced the
weighty problems of the new government, with many
unsolved questions ever to answer. He himself
faced problems not less grave. The greatness of
the past, the time when Virginia had been the
mighty power of the New WOrld, loomed ever above
him. It increased his natural conservatism. He
saw the change that was steadily creeping on. The

132

conditions that had given his class their power
and prestige had altered. The fields were worked
down, and agriculture that had made his class rich
no longer paid. The cloud was already gathering
in the horizon; the shadow already was stretching
towards him. He could foresee the danger that
threatened Virginia. A peril ever sat besidg his
door. He was 'holding the wolf by the ears.’

Mary Boykin Chestnut thought less of them:

This race have brains enough, but they are not
active minded. Those old revolutionary
characters--Middletons, Lowndeses, Rutledges,
Marions, Sumters--they came direct from active-
minded forefathers, or they would not have been
here. But two or three generations of gentlemen
planters and how changed the blood became! Of
late, all of the active-minded men who sprang to
the front in our government were the immediate
descendants of Scotch or Scotch-Irish; Calhoun,
McDuffie, Cheves, Petigru--who Huguenotted his

name , but could not tie up his Irish . Our
planters are nice f el lows , but slow to move;
impulsive but hard to keep moving . They are

wonderful for a spurt, but that lets put all their
strength, and then they like to rest.

This inactive, introverted Hamlet has appeared in Southern
American Fiction since the nineteenth century. His long
history extends back from Poe's Roderick Usher to
Faulkner's Quentin Compson III. One of the latest and most
popular versions of this Hamlet appears in Margaret
Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (1936) as the genteel Ashley
Wilkes.11

The Virginia middle class developed in much the same
way as the aristocracy and also evolved as a result of the
romantic, social and political conditions within the
colony. The members originated from servants who had

completed their term of indenture, and a few freemen of

133
humble origins who had found the economic conditions in
England unfavorable and the wages too low to sustain
themselves. Also included in this class were bankrupt
Englishmen trying to escape the debtor's prison, political
prisoners, and some criminals.

The peasant immigrants were rough and ignorant, but if
they were industrious, they could take the fifty-acre-per-
family-member land grant--which could become a tract of land
of five hundred acres--and develop a farm that would provide
a much more prosperous living than they had ever known in
England. In fact his acreage often totalled more than the
acreage of the landed gentry estates in England.

The indentured servants's term of indenture usually
ranged from four to seven years unless he was a criminal--
then his term of indenture was for life. Once the servant
had served his term, he often secured land and began raising
his own tobacco crops--which meant the planters were
constantly in need of workers. Laborers were scarce but
land was cheap and in abundance. Very few men in the colony
were willing to work for hire when they could easily buy
their own farms and raise their own tobacco. According to
Thomas Jefferson wertenbaker, the colonists could not make
the native Americans toil in the fields; they had

too warlike and hold a spirit. Destruction would

have been more grateful to them than slavery.

Their haughtiness and pride ‘were such 'that in

their intercourse with the English they would not

brook the idea of inferiority. No thought could
be entertained of making them work in the

134
fields.12
So as early as 1620 the planters were asking the London
Company to send over laborers instead of artisans and
tradesmen. Once the company yielded to the planters'
demand, a steady stream of laborers sailing from the mother
country to Virginia continued for more than a century.

The development of the Virginia middle class is best
understood when it is divided into four distinct periods.
The first period, 1607 to 1660, represents the formation
years. Free immigrants of humble means, who were escaping
unfavorable conditions in England, brought tracts of land
along with those men who had entered the colony as servants
but had gained their freedom once their term of indenture
had expired. The two groups gradually emerged as a class of
small independent farmers.

The second period, 1660 to 1676, represents the period
of oppression. Under the leadership of William Berkeley,
the executive of the colony, the people were overburdened
with heavy taxes levied by the Assembly for the repair of
forts, the development of manufacturing, and the building of
new houses which seriously retarded the small farmer's
progress. The Navigation Act of 1651, a law aimed at the
Dutch carrying trade, which was so extensive that it had
aroused England's jealousy, caused serious economic problems
for Virginia. The Act prohibited the importation of any

products into England or its territories in any vessels

135
except English vessels or the vessels of the nation that the
products originated from. Adherence to the Act, cut off all
Virginia's trade with the other countries except England and
her colonies. Since the law forced the colonists to sell
all their crops to England, an immediate glut in the tobacco
market followed. The tobacco crop began to pile up in the
warehouses, which caused an alarming drop in the price of
tobacco. This caused the planters to lose their profits to
such an extent that many were ruined. Great suffering and
discontent was all about the colony, and the small, middle-
class farmer was the most affected. This period ended when
Bacon organized "the down-trodden commons of the colony" and
rushed into battle in all parts of Virginia against their
oppressors. The small farmer's uprising was called Bacon's
Rebellion.

The third period, 1676 to 1700, represents the period
of growth. Many of the wealthy planters, who were also
discontented with the governor and his friends, joined with
the small farmers to fight for their rights in the House of
Burgesses. They elected their' representatives to *watch
closely the expenditures of the Assembly and to block all
the Council's efforts to impose heavy and oppressive taxes.
As a result, the middle-class began to increase in numbers
and prosperity.

The fourth period, 1700 to the Revolution, marks a

division in the class. At the beginning of the eighteenth

136
century, the New World could boast that their people were
economically better off than the people of Europe. There
was no lower-class to compare with the vast numbers of
economically deprived peasants in Europe. All the whites in
the Virginia colony, except for the free men who lacked
industry and the indentured servants, lived in middle-class
comfort and ease until the introduction of slavery in the
colony.

Once the planters, who could afford to buy slaves,
achieved the prosperity that resulted from the lowered cost
of labor--they could cultivate the land much more cheaply
than they had ever been able to do with the indentured
servants and the hired help, so the large, prosperous middle
class began to divide. Those middle-class farmers who could
afford to buy slaves became prosperous enough to become
members of the gentleman class and serve in the House of
Burgesses. Those who were unable to compete with the free
labor market prices either moved to the frontier for a fresh
start or remained to help make up the class known as poor-
whites.

The poor-whites discovered they were in competition
with the Negroes. The increase in tobacco production
lowered the price, which made their small tobacco crop less
and less profitable. Once the slaves began working the
land, they were no longer able to work for hire, "for no

freeman could toil side by side with negroes, and retain

137
anything of self-respect." Occasionally the planters hired
them to work as the overseers on the larger plantations, but
there were not enough of these positions to accommodate the
growing class of poor-whites. By the dawn of the
Revolution, a clear distinction had emerged between the
small, independent middle-class farmer and the poor-white.
A Frenchman traveling through Virginia at the time of the
Revolution described the poor-whites:

I saw poor people for the first time since

crossing the ocean. In truth, among these rich

plantations, where the negro alone is unhappy, are
often found miserable huts, inhabited by whites,
whose wan faces ragged clothes give testimony

of their poverty.

With the use of slaves in the colony, a notable change
began to occur in the middle-class farmer's character.
Previously the small farmer had maintained a "bond of
fellowship with the indentured field worker that kept him
humble because indenture had been the source of his origin
into the colony before he became an independent farmer."

But once the slave was the sole source of field labor,

Wertenbaker says,

every white man, no matter how poor he was, no
matter how degraded, could now feel a pride in his
race. Around him on all sides were those whom he
felt to be beneath him, and this alone instilled
into him a certain self-respect. Moreover, the
immediate control of the negroes fell almost
entirely into the hands of white men of humble
means, for it was they, acting as overseers upon
the large plantations, that directed their labors
in the tobacco fields. This also tended to give
to them an arrogance that was entirely foreign to
their nature in the 17th century.

138
Once the transatlantic slave trade began to increase
near the end of the seventeenth century, between 1660 and
1725 there was an exodus of poor-whites from the Old
Dominion. As late as 1730, the poor-whites were still
pouring into the western part of North Carolina. In the
History of the Dividing Line (1841, 1929), which was written
in 1738, Willian Byrd records his experiences as he surveyed
the fifteen mile Disputed Bounds between Virginia and North
Carolina. Within this area, he discovered the
frontiersmen, whom he called the "lubbers." He described
them "as a group of runaways from Virginia, lazy,
irreligious, filthy, and diseased."15 He ridiculed the
whites who had adopted the Indian ways; he called them the
"hermits" and "wanton females" because they lived in bark
houses and subsisted on a diet of fish. He said the
"indolent wretches" let their hogs and cattle run in marshes
and drown. In the pines beyond Dismal Swamp they, "like the
Wild Irish, find more pleasure in Laziness than Luxury":
When
Indian Corn is of so great increase that a little
Pains will subsist a very large Family with Bread,
and then they may have meat without any Pains at
all .... The Men, for their Parts, just like the
Indians, impose all the Work upon the Poor women.
They make their wives rise out of their Beds early
in the Morning at the same time that they lye and
Snore, till the Sun. has run. one third. of his
course, and dispersed all the unwholesome Damps.
Then, after Stretching and Yawning for half an
Hour, they light their Pipes, and, under the
Protection of a cloud of Smoak, venture out into

the open Air; tho', if it happens to be never so
little cold, they quickly return Shivering into

139

the Chimny corner. When the weather is mild,
they stand leaning with both arms upon the corn-
field fence, and gravely consider whether they had
best go and take a Small Heat at the Hough, but
generally find reasons to put it off until another
time.

Thus they loiter away their Lives, like
Solomon's Sluggard, with their Arms across, and at
the rgnding up of the Year Scarcely have Bread to
Eat.

The Southern poor-whites around Dismal Swamp,
are devoured by musketas all summer and have
Agues every Spring and Fall, which corrupt all the
Juices of their Bodies, give them a Cadaverous
complexion, and besides a lazy, creeping Habit,
which they never get rid of.
Byrd says their custard complexions made them look like
ghosts, and their constant diet of pork caused them to
suffer from "the country distemper." Of their religious

habits, he says

one thing may be said for the Inhabitants of that
Province ... they are not troubled with any
Religious Fumes, and have the least Superstition
of any people living. They do not know Sunday
from any other day, any more than Robinson Crusoe
did, which would give them a great Advantage were
they given to be industrious. But they keep so
many Sabbaths every week, that their disregard of
the Seventh Day has no manna}; of cruelty in it,
either to Servants or Cattle.

The North Carolina poor-whites, also known as the "tar
heels," repeated themselves all over the frontier South. In
South Carolina and Georgia, they were either pushed back
into the pine barrens by the planters or they settled there
to escape malaria. Instead of tar heels, they became known
as the "sand-hillers," crackers, white trash, "taller-face

po' buckra" and "pineywoods tackies." In French Louisiana,

140
they were called cajun. In Alabama and Mississippi, they
crowded into the uplands and became known as "hill-billies."
In other sections of the country, the "rough poor people"
also had nicknames. In Missouri and California they were
called Pikes, in Ohio the "buckeyes," and in Indiana the
"Hoosiers." Eventually the natives of many states adopted
the nicknames, but not in most of the Southern states.
Instead the planter's scorn, the slave's ridicule, and the
frontiersman lack of interest in humble labor created an
image of him in the popular mind of trash.

By the nineteenth century, the image of the Southern
poor-white had been established. One hundred years after
Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, the poor-white began to
appear in American Literature again. When Northern and
British travelers observed him in the South, they discovered
his conditions had changed very little. In Mrs. Basil
Hall's The Aristocratic Journey (1931), a collection of
letters written to her sister in England during her fourteen
month sojourn in America with her husband and daughter in
1827, she describes the nature of the people in the new
country. In a letter dated February 13, 1828, she describes
the poor-whites they discovered as they traveled through the
Pine barren and Swamp country of North Carolina:

The white population over that part of the country

through which we have passed is almost as wretched

in appearance as the black and, in my opinion, far

more degraded, not one of them, as far as we have

been able to learn, ever works The houses
they live in are the most wretched hovels I ever

141
saw in my life ... and the people themselves look
squalid and miserable19 Their manners we found
gruff and uncivil ....

In 1860, a Southern planter expressed the average planter's
opinion of the poor-white when he said

there is no longer any possible method by which

they can be weaned from leading the lives of

vagrom-men, idlers, squatters, 20 useless to
themselves and the rest of mankind.
The general feeling was that the "lubbers" were the dregs of
the race--the planters began to call them poor-white trash.
When the Northern and British travelers discovered the
"clay-eaters" and the "dirt-eaters" during their visits in
the South, they agreed.

Because the planters supported private tutors and
academies and opposed public education, the poor-whites
remained illiterate. They remained poor because the self-
sustaining plantations denied them the opportunity to work:
"They were ashamed to do the humble jobs that had become
'nigger work. "' They supported the planters in their own
oppression because they longed to own a Negro and emulate
them.21

The Negro slave, who was also degraded, ridiculed the
poor-white because he identified with his master. The poor-
white felt his white skin made him better than the slave.
These feelings caused the slaves and the poor-whites to
develop a contempt for each other. This division and hatred

between the two most degraded people kept the planters

secure in their power to keep them both oppressed.

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

10.

11.

12.
13.
14.
15.

16.

17.
18.

142

Endnotes

Louis B. Wright, The First Gentlemen of Virginia
(California: The Huntington Library, c1940), p. 54.

Wright, p. 59.
Wright, p. 59.
Wright, p. 59.
Wright, pp. 52-53.
Wright, p. 66.
Wright, pp. 66-67.

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, The Shaping of Colonial
'Vigginia (New York: Russell and Russell, c1958), p. 109.

Thomas Nelson Page, Social Life in Old Virginia (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897), pp. 45-46.

Mary Boykin Chestnut, A Diary From Dixie ed. Ben Ames
Williams (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1982), pp. 237-2380

Willimm R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee (Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, c1979), pp. 160-162.

Wertenbaker, p. 157.

Wertenbaker, p. 211.

Wertenbaker, p. 213.

Shields McIlwaine, The Southern Poor-White From
Lubberland to Tobacco Road (Oklahoma: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1939), p. 4.

William K. Boyd, Introd., William Byrd's Histories of
the DividinLLine Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina
(Raleigh: The North Carolina Historical Commission,
1929), p. 92.

Boyd, p. 74.

Boyd, p.72.

143

19. Mrs. Basil Hall, The Aristocratic Journey (New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931), p. 204.

 

20. McIlwaine, p. xxii.

21. McIlwaine, p. 34.

Chapter VI

The Concept of Two Separate Cultures

Following the execution of Charles I, the English Civil
War, the rule of Oliver Cromwell and the Restoration, the
idea that the Puritan and Cavalier had re-established
themselves in the new world prevailed throughout the
nineteenth century. In The Colonial Cavalier (1895), Maud
Goodwin says, "the types, broadly classed in England as
Puritan and Cavalier, repeated themselves in the New World."
The Puritan emigrants settled in Connecticut and along the
Massachusett's coast and eventually developed into what came
to be known as the strong, hardy, religious, well educated,
money conscious New Englanders. The men who pioneered the
trails further South and settled in the Southern colonies of
Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas liked to think of
themselves as Cavaliers. Although most of them were not
Cavaliers by blood, or even loyal to Stuart's cause, they
were "Cavalier in sympathies," in their general view of
life, in their "virtues and vices"1 and in all things
English.

In The Crisis (1901) Winston Churchill says, the old

 

city of St. Louis became "the principal meeting place of the
two great streams of emigration which [had] separated
since Cromwell's day." During the conflict between the

144

145
states, many of the old conflicts between the Royalists and
the Roundheads were renewed (p. 521).

Thomas Daniel Young and his co-authors suggest in 11112

Literature of the South (1968) that the large numbers of New

 

Englanders migrated from East England, "a region settled by
the Danes," while the early Southerners were either from
the ranks of the Cavaliers or from that region of England
that was still predominantly Celtic. As a consequence, the
authors conclude, the "differences in origin and background
to some extent brought" about the temperamental and cultural
differences between the two sections.2

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker refutes these ideas in The
Shaping of Colonial Virginia (1958). He says,

the old belief that the Virginia aristocracy had

its origin in a migration of Cavaliers after the

defeat of the royalists in the British Civil War

has been relegated to the sphere of myths. It is

widely recognized that the leading Virginia

families--the Carters, the Ludwells, the Burwells,

the Custises, the Lees, the Washingtons--were

shaped chiefly by conditions within thg colony and

by renewed contact with Great Britain.
The aristocracy in Virginia was not transplanted from the
English aristocracy. Those colonists who managed to gain
property, wealth, and status by serving in the House of
Burgesses were not aristocrats, although they longed to be.
They came largely from the middle-class in England, although
a few may have had some connection with the squirearchy due
to the English law of primogeniture, which required the

English country gentlemen to leave their eldest sons their

146
estates so that the English aristocracy could maintain
itself generation after generation.

They sent the second sons to Oxford or Cambridge to
prepare for a profession such as divinity, medicine, or the
law. The third sons were usually apprenticed with a local
surgeon or apothecary while the fourth sons were sent to
London to learn weaving, watchmaking, or some similar trade.
The gentry's exclusion of the younger sons from a share in
the paternal estates forced them to enter the professions or
trades. Thomas Wertenbaker argues,

it was the educating of the youngest sons in the

trades that gave rise to the close connection

between4the commercial classes in England and the

gentry.
The younger sons' entry into the trades also meant that many
merchant families were related to the gentry, some as far
back as the third or fourth generation; for example, a
merchant's great grandfather may have been the younger son
of a squire. Since the merchant families did not own
estates, they could not call themselves English gentlemen,
but they continued to cling to the family's coat-of-arms.
This is why some of the immigrants who migrated to Virginia
possessed their family's coats-of-arms. There were also
very few duels fought during Colonial Virginia--a fact which
suggest there were very few English gentleman living in the
colony. The duel was the accepted way to settle disputes

among the English gentleman; and it was a gentleman's duty

to refuse a challenge from a non-gentleman.

147

Governor Francis Nicholson ridiculed the pretensions of
the leading planters who claimed distinguished lineage in a
letter to the Lords of Trade in March 1703:

'This generation know too well from whence they

come and the ordinary sort of planters that

have land of their own, though not much, look upon
themselves to be as good as the best of them, for

he knows, at least has heard, from whence these

mighty Dons derive their originals ... and that he

or his agfestors were their equals if not

superiors.‘

On the other side of the Potomac, Henry Callister made
similar charges against the pretensions of the wealthy
Marylanders:

'Some of the proudest families here vaunt

themselves of a pedigree, at the same time they

know not their grandfather's name. I never knew a

good honegt Marylander that was not got by a

merchant.‘

According to Wertenbaker, the merchant families that settled
in Virginia, "still looked upon the life of the country
squire as the ideal existence." Consequently, once they
acquired land and settled on their plantations they began to
call themselves gentlemen and imitate the life style of the
English country squire.

Among the original settlers in Jamestown in 1607,
thirty-five men were called gentlemen out of a hundred and
five men. This group included so many gentlemen because the
London Company wanted to send desirable men to the colonies;
so they encouraged several men from "good families" with

education to seek their fortunes in the new world. Many of

them were men of ruined fortune seeking a quick way to

148
wealth.

Once it became known in England there were no gold
mines but only wealth by the sweat of one's brow, the
"spendthrift gentlemen ceased coming to the colony."l7 The
First Supply of immigrants arrived in 1608, and out of a
hundred and twenty persons, thirty-three were gentlemen.
After observing the so—called gentlemen, Captain John Smith
said the men "were worthless in character, more fitted 'to
spoyle a commonwealth than to begin or maintain one.'" The
Second Supply had twenty-eight gentlemen out of a total of
seventy men. The Third Supply of immigrants, along with The
Second Supply, were similar in nature to their predecessors.
Captain John Smith called them a "lewd company" with "many
unruly gallants packed thither by their friends to escape il
destinies."8

These gentlemen did very little to aid in the
development of the colony; most of them perished from
starvation, disease, or the tomahawk within a few months
after their arrival. In October, 1609, there were five
hundred persons alive in the Virginia Colony, but by May of
the following year, all but sixty had died.9

As the years began to pass, the influx of the
"dissipated gentleman began to wane." The London Company
began to send over men who were more suited to the arduous

tasks of "clearing woods, building huts and planting corn.

Their immigrant vessels were now filled with laborers,

149
artisans, tradesmen, apprentices and indentured

servants . " 10

Among the many thousands of Englishmen who
left the mother country to re-establish themselves in
Virginia, Wertenbaker says,

there were no dukes ... earls, rarely a knight, or

even the son of a knight. They were, most of

them, ragged farm.‘workers, deserters from. the

manor, ill paid day laborers, yeomen who had been
forced off their land by the enclosures, youthful
tradesmen tempted by the cheapness of land or by

the opportunities for commerce, now and then a lad

who had taken a mug of doctored grog and awakened

i? find himself a prisoner aboard a tobacco ship.

In 1624 when James I took the charter from the London
Company, the colony was composed of indentured servants and
"freemen of humble origins and means." With the London
Company's downfall, it became the "economic forces alone"
that determined "the character of those" who re-established
themselves in the Colony of Virginia.12

In 1619, the Virginia colony had been in existence for
only twelve years when a captured Dutch war ship, commanded
by an Englishman, landed on the shores of colonial Jamestown
with twenty Negroes as a part of its cargo. The Captain and
his crew were in need of supplies, and the planters were in
need of workers. The Englishman sold the twenty Africans to
the Virginia farmers for fixed terms of labor in exchange
for fresh food and water.

These Africans were not slaves in the manner that the
term was later used; they were indentured servants. By

1640 the status of the Negroes coming to the colony would

150
change from "indentured servants" with limited rights to
slaves with no rights. The planters had discovered that
Negro slave labor was most profitable: unlike the Indians
and white servants, Negro runaways were easily spotted; they
were not Christians, so they were not exempt from severe
punishment; Negro children automatically inherited the slave
status of their mothers, which insured the planter of a
constant labor supply; the Negroes were skilled farmers and
craftsmen who were quick studies for the additional skills
they needed to know; and there were very few legal
prohibitions to the enslavement of the Negroes--the English
law of protection did not extend its legal arm to
"foreigners." In 1661 the Virginia legislature voted to
legalize Negro slavery. In 1665 "when the British
government placed restrictions on the sale of white
indentured servants, the demand for African slaves became
more insistent."13

The slave trade continued to increase in Virginia
during the eighteenth century "until a single man was able
to supervise the cultivation. of huge areas of land."14
According to Young, the yeoman farmer who was unable to
compete with the slave labor system "degenerated into 'poor
white trash,‘ or moved his family westward, or bought one or
two slaves and tried to become self-sustaining."15 With the
growth of slavery, the planter aristocracy created itself.16

As the slave trade increased, many colonists began to

151
question the morality of one man holding another man in
bondage. The Society of Friends (The Quakers) led the
opposition to slavery. As early as 1657 and later in 1676,
the English Quakers urged the Americans to end their sinful
practice of slavery. The earliest known American protest
against slavery occurred in Germantown, Pennsylvania in
1688. The second Quaker American protest occurred five
years later when George Keith presented the first printed
protest. The third occurred in 1700 when Judge Samuel
Sewell, Quaker from Massachusetts, published The Selling of
Jeseph (1700, 1907). In 1775, Benjamin Franklin helped to
organize the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the first of
its kind to exist in the American colonies.

When the American Revolutionary War began, several all-
Negro companies and free Negroes and slaves fought beside
the colonists in almost every battle from Lexington and
Concord in 1775 to Yorktown in 1781. The Rhode Island Negro
Regiment distinguished itself at the Battle of Rhode Island
in August, 1778 and at Point Bridge, New York in 1781.
Peter Salem and Salem Poor, both from Massachusetts, were
honored for their heroism at Bunker Hill, and many other
Negro soldiers 'were cited for their' bravery' during the
Revolution.

The colonists' victory over the British caused many men
to question if they had the right to keep men slaves who had

helped them win their freedom. So many Negroes were freed,

152
some were manumitted after the planter's death, and others
were allowed to purchase their freedom. As a result, there
were more than fourteen thousand free Negroes in the Union
of American States.

The mood in Virginia, after the American Revolution,
was for democratic reform. But Virginia's society still
prided itself on its resemblance to English society. Men
like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson questioned the
right to hold men slaves, but they were afraid to abolish
the institution” Because of slavery, a tremendous gap
developed between the planter class and the populace, who
were "rough and uneducated," and an even greater gap
developed between the populace and the slaves. Jefferson
tried unsuccessfully to persuade the populace that they
needed schools and an education for their development; but
their lack of interest, behavior, and general conditions
eventually discouraged Jefferson from encouraging the
development of manufacturing in Virginia because it would
result in the gathering of the populace in the cities.

Thomas Jefferson, the provincial country’ gentleman,
found "the atrabilious philosophy of New England ...
intolerable."17 He believed the "cities, manufactures,
mines, shipping and [the] accumulation of capital led ... to
corruption and tyranny," but those who labored in the "earth
[were] the chosen people of God "18 Without churches,

schools, universities, domestic markets, manufacturing,

153
shipping, or a representative literature, the Virginians
concentrated their creative energies in the law and
politics.

Virginia produced some of the best political minds in
the nation. Thomas Jefferson emerged as the intellectual
leader of Virginia, and Virginia emerged as the political
and intellectual center of the South. The United States
Government would eventually discover it was "powerless to
enforce its theories," while Virginia had all the power."19

The prevailing mood in New England after the Revolution
was conservatism in politics and religion. Conservatism
became the mark of respectability. The oligarchy supported
it, and the people supported the oligarchy. After the
French Revolution in 1793, the New Englander looked upon the
results as "bloody and blasphemous" and labeled democracy as
the cause.20 Every man who called himself a follower of
Jefferson's democratic reform was considered undesirable in
New England society.

As conservatism reached its peak in New England, the
Southern states were embracing Jeffersonian Democracy--
even Charleston, South Carolina deserted the Federalist
principles in the 1800's to help elect Jefferson. During
the month of May when Jefferson's election to the presidency
became certain, the New Englander's bitterness became
intense. For the first time,

the clergy and nearly all the educated and
respected citizens of New England began to extend

154

to the national gayernment the hatred which they
bore to democracy.

From President Monroe's administration (1817) to the
close of President Tyler's term (1845), every section of the
country prospered. Manufacturing prospered in the
Northeast; the vast wildernesses in the South and Southwest
were transformed into large plantations; and in the West the
frontier advanced farther, increasing the number of
prosperous farms. This expansion effected the four problems
which had constantly plagued the voters and their leaders:
The protection of American industries by a tariff; internal
improvements; the sale of public lands, the second United
States Bank; and before the close of the period a fifth
problem--slavery--would become the burning issue.22

By 1790 slavery was dying out in New England. The
Southern states failed to abolish slavery, but it was
generally felt that the unprofitability of slave labor would
gradually cause it to die out there also. Few Americans
could foresee the strong hold slavery would have on the
South. With the invention of the "cotton gin" in 1793,
increased cotton production and profits increased the demand
for more slaves. After 1800, those planters who had
cultivated rice, indigo, and tobacco turned to cotton
growing. Eventually cotton production became so important
to the wealth of the South that the Southerners began to
say, "Cotton is King."

The pattern of normal development in the South "was

155
dramatically altered at the beginning of the" nineteenth
century before the eastern part of the section was
"thoroughly populated" or "well explored." In 1803, Thomas
Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from France
which consisted "of enough land to double the territory of
the original thirteen colonies." Since this land extended
from the Mississippi to the Rockies, a large section of the
land was adjacent to the South which meant there was an open
invitation to exploration. The results of this purchase
"were tremendous both over a long period of time and

"23

immediately. Daniel Young says

the Northeast, fearful of the increasing political
power of the South, threatened secession, and
sectional bickerings over slavery in new
territories grew more violent as more land was
added. There was, a great migration to the new
territory after the War of 1812, and man§4of the
older communities decreased in population.
After many of the counties "in South Carolina lost half of
their people, it became increasingly apparent that the
Louisiana Purchase had added more than size to the United
States: It had added local and sectional problems."25
In 1807, Congress passed an Act prohibiting the African
slave trade after January 1, 1808, but the dealers still
managed to smuggle almost 300,000 slaves into the United
States between 1808 and 1861. When Congress passed the law
in 1818 to enforce the Act of 1807 and later declared in
1820 that the act of smuggling slaves into the country was

piracy--an offense punishable by death--the slave-trade

156
slowed down, but it did not stop. Rather, it caused many
cotton-growing planters to turn from cotton plantations to
slave-breeding farms for more profit and many of the slave-
traders to kidnap free Negroes and sell them into slavery.

As the South developed its slave population and
agrarian economy, the North was becoming increasingly
industrial, providing tens of thousands of new immigrants
arriving on its shores with jobs. As the South continued to
increase its slave population, the North increased its
factories and mills. The North had large populations of
Germans, Irish, and French Huguenots, but by the 1860's the
South's white population remained almost pure British
stock. Their attitude toward the color line was Anglo-
Saxon, and their labor system had been transplanted from the
British system of medieval feudalism to the New World and
re-made into the Southern plantation system.

Living in rural isolation, the planter became quick
tempered and autocratic; Wertenbaker says

this haughtiness was chiefly the result of the

life upon the plantation. The command that the
planter possessed over the lives of scores of
servants and slaves could not fail to impress him

with a fefiging of his respect for his own
importance

As early as the seventeenth century John Bernard, the
traveller, observed the planters' haughtiness and said: "He
is doomed never to hear himself contradicted, never to be
told unwelcome truth, never to sharpen his wits and learn to

control his temper ...."27

157
Once the colonial "cavaliers" established themselves as
little kings in their little rural kingdoms, a system of
"enduring cultural differences" began to emerge. This
system included the cult of chivalry, with its minor cults
of manners, women, military affairs, Greek democracy, and
flamboyant oratory. Its trappings included the duel, the
horse in the hunt, the tournament, the race; romantic place-
naming; heraldry and ancestry, and lavish hospitality.28
Since slavery provided a free source of labor and a
quick source of wealth, it perpetuated the plantation
system and the plantation system perpetuated the rural
society. Cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, and hemp, all
produced by slaves, were staple Southern crops that could
only flourish well in the South. Since the Western market
of wheat and pork was domestic, and the South was dependent
on the North for manufacturing and industry, the South had
to utilize the foreign markets to sell their crops. By 1860
two-thirds of the United States' exports consisted of cotton
grown in the Southern states, and the North, especially New
York, was reaping large profits from their sales. Instead
of using bankers, the planters used factors--commissioned
merchants who served as agents and middle men. This system
tended to accentuate staple crops rather than
diversification, which resulted in a cycle of debts even for
the "great planters."

Once the North began to reap huge profits from the

158
Southern exports, disputes about the tariff and internal
improvements began to emerge. The industrial Northeast, the
agrarian South, and the free farming West all had sharp
economic and political differences from the very beginning.
The Southerners wanted free trade with Europe while the
Northeast wanted the Federal government to place a
protective tariff on foreign imports in order to give them
the advantage in the American markets. The free farmers of
the West were divided in their opinion. Sometimes they
voted with the South and sometimes they voted with the
Northeast.

By the 1840's the three sections of the country--the
Northeast, the Northwest and the South--were gradually being
reduced to two sections--North and South. But each section
continued to maintain its own economic interest independent
of the other sections. The Northeast maintained its
industry and overseas commerce, the Northwest maintained an
economy in the interest of the small farmers, and in the
South, the wealthy planters maintained the agrarian economy
and controlled the political thought. In 1839, in. an
autobiographical letter, William G. Simms expressed his
political views, which were kin to the average Southern
planter and politician's views. He said:

[I am] a Democrat of the Jackson school and a

state rights man, Opposed to tariffs, banks,

internal improvements, American Systems, Fancy

Rail Rflgds, Floats, Land Companies, and
humbugs.

159

Since the Southern economy was based on slavery, and
slavery had disappeared in the Northeast, and the Nbrthwest
Ordinance had prohibited it in the North Western territory,
the Southern states were set apart from the rest of the
nation. By the 1850's, the two sections were in constant
economic disputes. As the deputes magnified, the antagonism
became increasingly' bitteru The North. began to attack
slavery, and the South began to take offense.

The Southerners watched the North grow more productive
in its industrialism. They watched its complex financial
and transportation systems develop as its cities began to
manifest this wealth. As the Northern wealth and population
continued to climb, the South remained static. The South
had very little immigration, very few well-established
cities, low factory output, and even lagged behind the newly
settled West in manufacturing. As a result, Southerners
began to fear that a Northern majority would eventually pass
legislation that would ruin the South. Compromise after
compromise was proposed, but each new compromise brought a
new set of problems--and the question of slavery could never
be compromised.

During the 1830's and 1840's, "the Great Reform
Movement"--the woman's movement, the abolition of slavery,
phrenology, Emerson's transcendentalism, and a host of other
isms--was engaging the minds of the industrial-minded

Northerners along with the ideas and customs the Old World

160
immigrants were bringing into the country. Once the North
embraced the more practical aspects of education for its
people, it began to rationalize the Bible and embrace other
denominations while the South became increasingly
conservative.

South Carolina became the cradle of Conservatism in the
South. In the upper country of South Carolina, mostly
settled by the Scotch, the yeomanry resided. They were
democratic in practice, but they were "more conservative in

"30 From

thought [than] the most aristocratic Europeans.
these people John Caldwell Calhoun, the "heir" after
Jefferson in the leadership of Southern political thought,
emerged.

Most Southerners were protestants like all other
Americans, but as the need to defend slavery emerged, the
South began to take measures to block the reform ideas from
entering the Southern states. By the 1830's and 1840's,
"Southern protestantism had become thoroughly
conservative."31 Jeffersonian liberalism, which had been at
the center of Southern thought during the early years of the
nineteenth century, was beginning to fade into the
shadows.32 The clergy' began to embrace "a narrow' and
literal interpretation of the Bible, just as the politicians
had turned to a narrow and literal interpretation of the

Constitution."33 The idea of slavery moved from a necessary

wrong that should be corrected some day to "a positive good"

161
in the best interest of the slaves. In this same
conservative vein, Southern protestants moved toward
religious fundamentalism and emotional revivals.

Once the conservative ideas and thoughts were well
established in the South, the leadership began to banish all
of the anti-slavery Societies and Women's groups--for
example, the Grimké sisters of Charleston, South Carolina
eventually discovered it would be in their best interest to
move North. As a result, those cultural values that the
Southerners had once shared with the rest of the country,
such as freedom of speech, the right to dissent in politics
and religion, and the toleration of the opinions of

"34 were sacrificed in their zeal to protect and

outsiders,
defend slavery. The "reform and change" that had manifested
itself during the days of Jefferson "became dangerous" words
"in the South of John C. Calhoun."35

In Romanticism and Nationalism.in the Old South (1949),
Rollin Osterweis calls the South's drastic measures to
protect the new conservative thought the Southern
"intellectual blockade." While the North was continuing its
reform movements with fervor, Southern writers like George
Fitzhugh were launching "attacks against the abundance of-
isms and -ologies ... in the North."36 According to
Osterweis, the intellectual blockade

cover[ed] the postmasters who pruned abolitionist

literature from the United States mail in

Charleston and elsewhere. It embrac[ed] the
editorials and book reviews of Southern

162
periodicals, which help build the protective wall
against equalitarianism, feminism,
transcendentalism, soWlism, fanaticism--and
above all, abolitionism.
As a result of the blockade, the Southerner was increasingly
isolated within his isolation from the rest of the world.
Living in isolation in the rural South with only his
plantation and the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott to
engage his imagination, the planter began to imagine
himself a chivalric knight and lord of the manor, and he
embraced the cult of chivalry and all of its trappings with
enthusiasm. In the Memorials of a Southern Planter (1965),
Susan Dabney Smedes says, "no life was more independent than
that of a Southern planter before the war. One of the
Mississippi neighbors said he would rather be Colonel Dabney
on his plantation than the President of the United
States."38

When cotton growing started to spread West, the
Southern planters wanted to carry slavery into the area with
it. And the question of whether the new territories should
be slave or free pushed the question of slavery into the
national political arena. If a new state petitioned the
Congress for admission to the Union, the question on the
floor of Congress was always, should the state be slave or
free.

In 1820, when Missouri petitioned for statehood, eleven

free states and eleven slave states existed in the Union.

Since many of the settlers in Missouri were planters from

163
Southern states who had brought their slaves with them, they
believed Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state.
But congressmen who wanted to stop the spread of slavery
beyond the Mississippi voted against Missouri's admission to
the Union as a slave state. The debate might have lasted
for years because Missouri needed the consent of both houses
to enter the Union, but Maine, once a part of Massachusetts,
petitioned about the same time as Missouri to enter the
Union. Finally, an agreement known as the Missouri
Compromise was reached--Maine was admitted as a free state,
Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and the remainder of
the Louisiana territory north of the 36 30' parallel would
remain forever free. Between 1830 and 1840 three
territories were admitted as free states, and three as slave
states. However, in 1850 another crisis emerged that almost
destroyed the Union, but after nine months of debate,
Senators Henry Clay of Kentucky and Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois, arranged an agreement called the Compromise of
1850. This compromise allowed California's admission into
the Union as a free state; declared that the residents in
the territories of Utah and New Mexico should decide the
question of slavery for themselves and "enter the Union
'with or without slavery, as their constitution may
prescribe at the time of their admission'"; abolished the
slave trade in the District of Columbia; and enacted a

strict Fugitive Slave Act that gave federal officials the

164
authority to return runaway slaves to their masters and
imposed heavy penalties on anyone who tried to prevent the
enforcement of this law.39

Despite compromise after compromise, the South began to
move toward nationalism. The idea of Southern nationalism
developed in South Carolina during the 1850's; According to
Rollin Osterweis,

it lay rooted in the adventures of the American

colonies themselves in 1776; in the Lockian

philosophy of Thomas Cooper; in familiarity with

the political devices suggested by the one time

American nationalist, John C. Calhoun; in the

Tariff and Nullification episode between 1827 and

1833; in the problems produced by the territorial

acquisition of the Mexican war; in the various

Southern economic conventions, down to and

including the 40historic Nashville meeting of

November, 1850.

The South Carolinians were intellectually and politically
talented, they had wealth, they were independent thinkers,
they had produced fiery periodicals, and they were anxious
to lead. When the South began looking for leadership during
the 1850's, South Carolina was ready.

Three South Carolinians--Thomas Cooper, an Englishman,
the elder Langdon Cheves, and John C. Calhoun--were credited
with creating the concepts of secession and Southern
nationalism. As early as July 2, 1827, Thomas Cooper said
it was "time for South Carolina 'to calculate the value of
the union.'"41 Langdon Cheves contributed to the growth of
the national idea when he presented a plan for solving South

Carolina's problem after the nullification controversy over

165
the Tariff Act of 1828. He wanted the entire South to act
together, and he argued that nullification by a single
state was impractical. He believed that the problems of the
tariff went beyond South Carolina's borders and that "the
entire South would suffer from its blighting effects" if

they did not act together.42

Cheves suggested that
representatives from each Southern state gather for a
convention and offer the National Congress an ultimatum:
"Either abandon the protecting policy or take the
responsibility for the formation of a Southern
Confederacy."43

That same year, John C. Calhoun contributed to the
philosophy that led to the idea of Southern independence,
and the political device the South could use to defend
itself against the Northern majority in the Federal
Government. He argued that a state had the right to
nullify, or declare invalid, any federal laws it believed
unconstitutional, and, most important, that it had the
right to secede. Calhoun's position concerning
nullification, states' rights, and secession was not new.
The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 contained
similar views, and during the War of 1812 some New England
Federalists spoke of nullification and secession, but their
arguments were not as well developed as those of John C.

Calhoun.

Southern opposition to the tariff laws was always

166
strong, because they believed the tariff not only favored
but enriched the New England manufacturers. The next
nullification crisis threatened to destroy the Union when
the Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1832. The South
Carolinians, led by Vice President John C. Calhoun, held a
convention that "declared the Tariff Act null and void and
forbade the collection of the tariff duties in that state"
after February 1, 1833.44

The convention--believing Jackson would stand with them
because he was Southerner--warned, if the Federal Government
tries to enforce the tariff laws, it will be grounds for
South Carolina to withdraw from the Union. When President
Jackson heard the ultimatum, he stood firm and declared:
The Union must be preserved; nullification under the
constitution is impossible; the federal law will be
enforced; any resistance to the law will mean treason; and
if force is necessary, I will "send forty thousand men to
compel obedience to the law."45

Privately, President Jackson threatened to hang John C.
Calhoun. Then he sent a warship, with reinforcements to the
forts in Charleston Harbor, and told them he stood ready to
lead an army. To a citizen from South Carolina he said:

Please give my compliments to my friends in your

state and say to them that if a single drop of
blood shall be shed there in opposition to the
laws of the United States I will hang the first

man I lay my hands on engaged in4guch conduct upon

the first tree that I can reach.

Jackson's firmness seemed to settle the nullification crisis

167
and quiet the talk of secession for a while. John C.
Calhoun resigned as the Vice President, but the South
Carolinians sent him back to Washington as their Senator.
The effort to encourage the Southern states to act as a
bloc led to the November 14, 1850, Nashville Convention. At
this convention, Langdon Cheves made his bid for the united
secession of the slave-holding states "and painted the
picture of 'one of the most splendid empires on which the
sun ever shone.”47 In order to support his bid, he
asserted that all Southerners were of "gentle descent

48 The group from South

all of the same blood and lineage.
Carolina considered themselves South Carolinians rather than
Americans and despised the Northerners as a race of inferior
men. By 1851 Southern nationalism prevailed in South
Carolina. Between 1852 and 1860, South Carolina's politics
were controlled by the Southern nationalists--Butler and
Robert Barnwell--both powerful successors to John C. Calhoun
and Cooper.

As the political turmoil neared its breaking point
during the 1850's, Northerners and Southerners alike were
saying they' were different and that two distinct
civilizations had emerged in the nation. In I'll Take My
Stand (1930), Lawrence Frank Owsley says

the two sections clashed at every point. Their

economic systems and interests conflicted. Their

social systems were hostile; their political
philosophies growing out of their economic and

social systems were as impossible to reconcile as
it is to cause two particles of matter to occupy

168
the same space at the same time; and their
philosophies of life, growing out of the whole
situation in each section, were as two elements in
deadly combat. Whasgwas food for the one was
poison for the other.
The Congress made every effort to compromise the political
and economic differences between the two sections, but after
each new compromise a new crisis was created once a new
region of the Louisiana Purchase was settled. Thomas Daniel
Young says, "there could hardly have been a Civil War had
the Louisiana Territory not been acquired."50

From the inception of the American Government to the
secession of the Southern States, the conflict between the
States was inevitable. The struggle was implicit in the
constitution, but the founding fathers evaded it in the
interest of forming the Union. Fearing a strong national
government would cause a breech between the North and the
South and bring an end to the national agenda, in 1787 the
framers made certain concessions concerning states' rights
and nullification and certain agreements regarding the
economic and political differences between the industrial
Northeast and the agrarian South in order to bring the two
sections into the Union. As a result, the issue of
nullification and secession became a moral question instead
of a legal one, their economic and political differences
continued to plague them, and the question of slavery became

the bone of contention--an issue that could never be

compromised.

169

When the Constitution was adopted, slavery was legal in
all of the original thirteen states. Many of the framers
strongly opposed slavery, and no one opposed slavery more
than some of the leading men of Virginia, but they believed
the Union was too important to be placed in jeopardy by a
quarrel over slavery. Consequently, many of the patriots
were encouraged when the Massachusetts' Constitution of 1780
abolished slavery in that state and in the same year
Pennsylvania provided for gradual abolition. In 1799, New
York followed Pennsylvania's example and by 1827, New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey had
abolished slavery following their example, but slavery
retained an iron grip in the Southern states for the next
sixty years.

The final crisis began in 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska
bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by opening the
way for slavery to enter the free-farming West and climaxed
with the election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of
the deep South. For the first time in the history of the
Union, the fire-eaters and the opponents of compromise
controlled both sections. The moderates on both sides lost
their voice as the extremists gained momentum in their call
for war. Eventually everyone's emotions got out of hand.
South Carolina seceded from the Union and her sister states
followed. When the South Carolina secession convention

convened in December, 1860, the delegates realized that the

170
former talk concerning states' rights was merely a mask for
the "Southern rights" they were really thinking about.51
Although the Confederate constitution sanctioned the States'
rights principle, Ulrich Phillips says this was

a mere saving of face .. .. it was not by chance

that Timrod wrote in 1861, 'at last we are a

nation among nations.‘52

The slave population had increased from 700,000 in 1790
to approximately 4,000,000 in 1860. About one fourth of
these slaves worked on plantations with fifty or more
slaves. These plantations were usually located in the lower
South where the soil was more suited for the production of
cotton and other crops. On the eve of the Civil War, three
fourths of the white families in the South had neither
slaves nor incomes dependent upon slave labor. The ten
thousand planters who owned fifty or more slaves represented
only a small minority in the South, but they held extensive
political power and influence, vested economic interest, and
the leadership of the South.

Most of the people, North and South, were not
interested in war. As the political crisis raged and the
fire-eaters continued to exchanged threats, President
Lincoln remained calm until he was awakened from his slumber
at 4:30 a.m. on the morning of April 12, l861--some said by
the signal gun of the war. When the nation awakened that

morning, Mr. Lincoln called for 75,000 men to enlist for a

period of three months to put down the rebellion. The South

171
had fired on Fort Sumter and the North was incensed. They
had finally awakened from their slumber and were ready to

fight back.

13.

14.
15.
16.
17.

18.
19.
20.

172

Endnotes

Maud Wilder Goodwin, The Colonial Cavalier (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company, 1895), p. 9.

Thomas D. Young, Floyd C. Watkins, and Richmond C.
Beatty, The Literature of the South, (Illinois: Scott,
Foresman & Company, 1968), p. 3.

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, The Shaping of Colonial
Virginia (New York: Russell 5 Russell, 1958), p. i.

Wertenbaker, pp. 24-25.

Wertenbaker, p. ii.

Wertenbaker, p. ii.

Wertenbaker, p. 6.

Wertenbaker, pp. 7-8.

Wertenbaker, pp. 7-8.

Wertenbaker, pp. 8-9.

Wertenbaker, p. vii.

Wertenbaker, p. 9.

Louis B. Wright, The First Gentlemen of Virginia
(Charlottesville: Dominion Books, The University Press
of Virginia, 1964), p. 45.

Young, p. 3.

Young, p. 3.

Young, p. 3.

Henry Adams, The United States in 1800 (New York:
Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 103.

Adams, pp. 105-106.
Adams, p. 102.

Adams, p. 59.

21.
22.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

29.

30.
31.

32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.

38.

39.

40.
41.

173
Adams, p. 59.
Charles A. Beard and William C. Bagley, The History of
the American People 2ond ed. (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1935), p. 271.
Young, pp. 3-4.
Young, pp. 3-4.
Young, p. 4.
Wertenbaker, p.57.
Wertenbaker, pp. 57-58.

Rollin Osterweis, Romanticism and Nationalism in the
Old South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p.

 

96.

Clememt Eaton, "The Romantic Mind." In The Mind of the
Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Paperbacks, 1964) ,

 

p. 260.

Adams, p. 110.

Carl N. Degler, "Nerthern and Southern.Ways of Life and
the Civil War," in The Development of American Culture,
ed. Stanley Cohen and Lorman Ratner (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1983), p. 118.

Osterweis, p. 21.

Osterweis, p. 21.

Degler, p. 118.

Degler, p. 118.

Osterweis, p. 22.

Osterweis, p. 22.

Susan Dabney Smedes, Memorials of a Southern
Planter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 102.

Rayford Logan and Irving S. Cohen, The American
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), p. 91.

Osterweis, P. 133.

Osterweis, P. 140.

42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.

so.
51.
52.

174

Osterweis, P. 145.

Osterweis, P. 145.

Beard and Bagley, p. 281.

Beard and Bagley, p. 281.

Beard and Bagley, p. 281.

Osterweis, P. 148.

Osterweis, P. 134.

Lawrence Frank Owsley, "The Irrepressible Conflict." in
I'll Take My Stand, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (Baton

Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1980), pp. 61-
91.

Young, p. 4.
Osterweis, P. 153.

Osterweis, P. 154.

Part 3 The Novelists' Use of History: 1900-1910 Decade

Chapter VII

Re-creations of the Political Turmoil
Through Character and Plot
This chapter dramatizes the political turmoil discussed
in the narrative history as the two sections approached the

1 It is the romance of history: the

national crisis.
blending’ of fictional plots, characters, and their
adventures with history in. ways that do not alter the
established historical interpretations. The results: the
re-telling of history through character and plot, and a
renewed experience in the national crisis of the American
Civil War.

The idea of Southern nationalism and the formation of
the Confederacy was profoundly romantic. It was an impulse
full of daring dreams, passions, and an over-estimation of
strengths and possibilities. According to Rollin G.
Osterweis, "the idea of Southern Nationalism emerged about
1850 out of an experience mainly native and nonromantic.
During the ten years before the war, it took on a
distinctive, romantic coloration."2 Ellen Glasgow says "it
[was] the single occasion in American history ... when the
conflict of actualities was profoundly romantic. For
Virginia, in that disastrous illusion, the Confederacy was
the expiring gesture of chivalry."3

Since the idea of the Confederacy personifies the

176

177
romantic mood, most novelists did not recreate the emotions
and the spirit of the times in the realistic tradition of
Howells, James and Twain. Since this first decade of the
twentieth century is characterized by the triumph of
realism, it is not surprising that some of the romanticists
experimented with the formula by including degrees of
realism in their novels, while others continued the
traditional romance of history.

Byron Archibald Dunn's With Lyon In Missouri (1910),
Upton Sinclair's Manassas (1904), John Fox's The Little
SheLherd of Kinggom Come (1903), Emily Lafayette McLaws's
The Welding (1907), and Rupert Hughes' The Whirlwind (1902)
blend fact and fiction as they comprehensively detail some
of the political turmoil and violence that occurred in
different regions during the decade prior to the November,
1860 secession convention. All four of these novels are
written in the romantic tradition, but they also deal with
many of the social issues and criticisms that the adventure
novel or the pure romance novel did not deal with. 7

When the five novels begin, the protagonists are twelve
years of age or younger, but they already show signs of
leadership ability, stamina, and courage. Unlike many of
the previous romances, they are not all rich from
priviledged backgrounds. John Fox's Chad Buford grows up
poor in the mountains, Rupert Hughes' John Meade must

overcome poverty and an abusive father, Emily Lafayette

178
McLaws' David Twiggs decides at an early age that he does
not want to follow in the tradition of his ancesters; he
wants an education. Byron Archibald Dunn's Lawrence
Middleton is the son of a well educated-Northern
abolitionist minister; they are neither poor or wealthy.
Upton Beall Sinclair's Allan Montague is the only one who is
a Southern aristocrat: His father shares the profits of a
large Mississippi plantation with his uncle, and both of
these men are conservative in their views toward maintaining
slavery and the Southern traditions.

Each of these novels treat some social issue in a
critical manner. In his preface to With Lyons In Missouri
(1910) Dunn states that the book deals with the struggle to
hold Missouri in the Union. The action begins four years
prior to the political intensity for secession when the
border ruffians, armed mobs, and John Brown raids are at
their peak. The dramatization of this civil strife, which
eventually influenced Kansas' political future and entry
into the Union as a free state, sets the stage for later
confrontations between the citizens of Missouri in their
fight to remain loyal or to secede.

The story begins early in October, 1856 on the banks of
the Platte River with an infuriated mob preparing to tar and
feather a man they believe is an abolitionist in the
presence of his twelve year old son. The struggle by the

boy and his father to free themselves from the mob

179
dramatizes the inhumanity of men when they let their
passions govern their actions instead of the laws. The boy
is thrown into the river when he tries to defend his father;
and his father is tarred and feathered. Instead of hanging
him after the tar and feathering is finished, the mob ties
him to a log and throws him into the river to die of
exposure. The boy rescues his father and comforts him
until he regains the will to live. Although he is only
twelve years old, his courage and strength in the face of
adversity saves them both and characterize him as the
budding romantic hero.

When Upton Beall Sinclair begins Manassas (1904) ten
years before the Civil War his protagonist, Allan Montague,
is also twelve years old and as conservative in his views
toward slavery as his father and his uncle. When his father
tells him they must change climates for the sake of his
health, Allan is upset that he will have to leave the South
and move to Boston. He fears that his Northern cousins are
"abolitionists."

One day as Allan is sight seeing on the streets of
Boston he meets Levi Coffin, the founder of the "Underground
Railroad." Coffin argues against slavery in such a way that
Allan feels as if his universe has been turned upside down
and shaken vigorously. Then he hears a lecture by Frederick
Douglas on "the question." It is the first time he has

heard an ex-slave's view of slavery, and he never forgets

180
it.

When Allan is eighteen years old and in his second year
at Harvard, his father tells him it is time for them to go
home. Allan parts with everything except his books and his
repressed thoughts on the "question." He has adjusted to
Northern culture and thought and is as reluctant to leave
Boston as he was to come.

When they return to the South, Allan sees the
plantation system and slavery differently. He no longer
sees beauty or glamour at Valley Hall. He sees the shame
of slavery beneath the surface. Through Allan, the reader
is able to see the brutality of slavery and its effect on
the people who perpetuate it.

John Meade (The Whirlwind), David Twiggs (The Welding),
and Chad Buford (The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come) all
display features of the budding romantic hero, but in
different ways. They must spend their youth fighting for an
education and overcoming the handicaps of poverty. Because
John Meade has lived in a free state, he rejects slavery as
an institution. Chad Buford has had some experience with
slavery but is not entirely convinced that it is wrong.
David Twiggs' parents worked as hired hands on a large
plantation, but he never expresses any views for or against
slavery.

When the war comes, all five young men are old enough

to enlist in the armed services. The two young men from

181
priviledged backgrounds, Allan and Lawrence, fight
passsionately to end the institution of slavery, but Chad
and David are guided by the loyalties of their hearts.
Although Chad Buford is not convinced that slavery is wrong,
he fights for the Union for love of country and patroitism.
When the spirit of rebellion spread in the Kentucky
"settlements," and the National storm was brewing, Chad
Buford was in the hills and had no prejudices, antagonisms,
or grivances to help him decide which side to join. If he
fought against the Union, he would strike at the heart of
all that was best in him--the Spirit of 1776, the same
spirit that gave birth to the Nation. Like Chad Buford,
David Twiggs does not fight to abolish or maintain slavery
and has friends on both sides.

Prominent historical figures--Levi Coffin, Frederick
Douglas, John. Brown and .Alec Stevens, the Senator from
Georgia--appear in these novels before secession. Although
Stevens, Coffin, Douglas and Brown represent different
political views and approaches toward the question of
slavery, their characterizations leave the reader feeling
compassionate toward each of their views. Each of these men
work passionately for their cause, but none approaches the
deity and martyrdom of John Brown.

In With Lyon In Missouri (1910), Dunn says Brown's face
gleams with a fanatical fire; in Manassas (1903), the people

call him "Old Brown of Kansas" (p. 217). In The Welding

182
(1907), J.E.B. Stuart knew him in Kansas and refers to him
as "Old Ossawatomie Brown" (p. 173).

In With Lyon In Missouri, the Doctor aims a gun at
Brown, but "not a sign of fear did Brown show." Brown looks
at the doctor and says, "I am not afraid of death ...." (p.
73). When Brown is told his fanaticism will hang him
someday, he answers, "as God wills" (p. 74).

In Manassas Brown is in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania when

 

he reveals to a small group of men, which includes Allan
Montague and Frederick Douglas, a plan that he has never
told anyone before. He says, "the Lord had revealed it to
him that they would prevail--" (p. 211). Douglas tries to
talk him out of the plan, suggesting it would not be an
attack against the South but an attack against the Federal
Government, and warns Brown that he will be surrounded and
cut off within six hours, but Brown answers,

'Let them capture me .... it might very well turn

out that I should prove to be worth more for

hanging than for any other purpose?‘ (p. 216)
When the old man turns to Douglas and asks if he will go
with him, Douglas answers, "for such a purpose as that ...
one will be as good as twenty" (p. 217).

In The Weldigq (1907) McLaws begins her portrayal of
Brown with Lieutenant J .E.B. Stuart and Colonel Robert E.
Lee leading an attack against him and his men in the

Harper's Ferry engine-house. Stuart estimates that Brown

probably has only a handful of men with him. He says Brown

183
"is so sure that God Almighty has appointed him to
exterminate slavery that he never considers the odds against
him" (p. 175).

John Brown in With Lyon in Missouri (1910) is in
Kansas. There he evokes images of the fanatical saint in
the 'wilderness, John the Baptizer, but unlike John the
Baptizer, who used water as the symbol for cleansing the
soul, John Brown uses blood to cleanse the sins of slavery.

In The Welding (1910), John Brown is in Virginia. There the

 

image of the fanatical saint changes to martyr. During his
trial, "if he had any fear, any misgivings, he did not show
it" (p. 179). Brown is described as "weak and haggard" with
swollen eyes "from the wound in his head" (p. 179). Before
the hanging Brown must wait fifteen minutes before "the
fatal drop," yet, "in all that time he [gives] no sign of
fear. He [stands] like an intrepid soldier in position,
upright and motionless" (p. 181).

The trial scenes, Brown's testimony, and his hanging,
evoke images of and parallels to the trial and execution of
Christ. Christ became the Sacrificial Lamb so that men
could be made free of sin and Brown becomes the sacrificial
lamb so that the slave and his master can be made free of
the sins of slavery. In this deification, John Brown is
made larger than life, in keeping with the romantic

tradition of deifying historical figures.

184

The Political Moves Toward Secession

As the political climate moves toward the boiling point
during the latter part of the 1850's in the novels, most of
the authors re-write the established history without any
major changes. The romanticists select actual events that
will either motivate their characters into action or provide
enough complications to advance the action in the novels to
a conclusion.

The old court day, which functioned in the Southern
towns as a meeting day for the men to gather, discuss
politics, and listen to the politicians debate the issues,
is used in the novels to heat up the debate over the
question of slavery and secession. Another important time
for such gatherings and political discussions was after the
aristocratic dinner parties when the ladies left the room.
Since the majority of the plantations existed in isolation
and in rural communities, these were ways the planters kept
current concerning the political affairs. The authors'
portrayals of court day and the aristocratic dinner parties
suggest these events did much to cement the solidarity of
the Southern planters in the move toward secession.

In The Blue Cockade (1905) Flora McDonald Williams
uses Court day, when all the farmers are gathered together,
to create tensions. The Court day she details is slightly

different from the others because the political leaders are

185
making speeches and discussing the 1860 presidential
campaign. The discussion sets Johnathan Wilder, a poor
white originally from Pennsylvania, apart from the larger
planters; and as a consequence, apart from his son, Jacob.
Johnathan Wilder chides his son for saying Mr. Lincoln is
the abolitionist candidate ready to free the slaves when he
is elected.

As a young boy, Jacob worked as a hired hand for
Colonel Mitchell during the busy season. Since the two men
often worked together, they developed a high regard for each
other. During one of their many conversations, Jacob
discovered a much warmer nature in the Colonel than in his
parents, so he began to absorb the Colonel's thoughts and
political ideas. Since Colonel Mitchell and Squire Miller,
both members of the gentleman class, had tutored Jacob in
the Southern mind since he was a boy, they are anxious to
hear his opinion concerning the political speeches and the
1860 presidential election.

After a probe of Jacob's views concerning the planters
living in the border states who would like to be rid of
their slaves but won't be pushed into it by the
abolitionists, and the famous slave marts in Boston and New
York, neither Colonel Mitchell or Squire Miller is
dispointed. when Jacob laughs and. answers, "Our' Northern
brothers should remove the beam from their own eyes before

they display such intense solicitude in our behalf" (p. 15).

186
The men know Jacob's father will vote Republican, but the
Squire believes Jacob will do his own thinking. The Colonel
is not as certain, but he says "[Jacob] is made of different
stuff from his old daddy. [He] has all the instincts of a
gentleman" (p. 15).

In John William Fox's The Little Shepherd of Kingdom
C3 (1903) passions and tempers heat up across the South
during the court days, but the national storm is much more
threatening. The Underground Railway is busy assisting
black flight, John Brown is raising his head, the fictional
character old Brutus Dean, General Dean's brother, is
publishing his abolitionist paper in Lexington, Kentucky
the aristocratic seat of the state, Lincoln and Douglas are
exciting the West, Phillips and Garrison are thundering in
Massachusetts, and the South is flashing back scornful
challenges and threats. "In no other State in the Union was
the fratricical character of the coming war to be so marked
as in Kentucky, in no other State was the national drama to
be so fully played to the bitter end" (p. 188).

While the national storm is becoming more threatening,
Chad Buford, the 'young' protagonist, is in the Kentucky
hills. When Chad returns to the "settlement" to attend
college, he expresses excitement about the political
climate, but the school-master expresses gloom. On the
evening Brutus Dean is scheduled to speak, Chad and Caleb

Hazel, the Northern school-master from the Kentucky hills,

187
watch a mob destroy Brutus Dean's printing press and leave
his office a shell.

Some time later General Dean invites Major Buford and
Chad to one of his dinner parties. After the dinner, the
talk turns to politics, the election of Lincoln, slavery,
and disunion. Richard Hunt says if Lincoln is elected, no
power but God can avert war. Three out of the five men had
fought in the Mexican War, and they hope war can be avoided.
The General believes most Kentuckians want to stay free of
war; the lawyer has a similar view. He says, "The fanatics
of Boston and the hot-heads of South Carolina are making the
mischief" (p. 218). Chad, whose loyalties are to the Union,
and Harry Dean, who had been tutored by his abolitionist
uncle, both grow white when the lawyer adds that New England
began with slavery and only gave it up when the market price
of slaves fell to a sixpence a pound in the Boston markets.

Chad speaks first. He argues that slavery does not
have anything to do with it, but Harry insists that slavery
has everything to do with the "question." The Major looks
bewildered, the General frowns, and the keen-eyed lawyer
says, "The struggle was written in the constitution-~the
framers evaded it" (p. 220).

In The Welding (1907), as the comet of secession

 

travels across the South lighting every hamlet, village,
town, and county, men like Stephen Douglas and "The Great

Commoner of Georgia," Alec Stevens, follow in its trail

188
trying to dim the light. Stephen Douglas travels from town
to town making speeches telling the people that slavery is
not in danger; and that they should stand by the Union.

Alec Stevens and the Honorable Robert Toombs severed
their friendship because Toombs wants to leave the Union if
Lincoln is elected, but Alec Stevens says no. Alec Stevens
and Bob Toombs have been like brothers since they were young
men, but the political turmoil divides them. After David
leaves the site of John Brown's hanging to return Georgia,
he discovers that Georgia is as divided as the Democratic
Party. With the break in the friendship between .Alec
Stevens and Robert Toombs, David is able to see the bitter
struggle that is to come when households will divide against
itself, brother will turn against brother and friend against
friend. When David and Alec Stephens discuss the crisis,
Mr. Stephens says,

'One of the most dangerous features of this frenzy

for secession is the spirit of presumptuous

boastfulness that seems to possess the people ....

The fire-eaters and the newspapers have convinced

them that as a people we are invincible and that

the North is afraid to face us. It is not true;

you know it is not true?‘ (p. 201)

As the presidential election nears, the South becomes more
excited. The older men "who had watched the course of the
fiery planet before said it would pass its perihelion and
fade rapidly out of sight." Mr. Stephens had also watched
the comet before, this time he sees a different light: "The

bloody glare of war" (p. 202).

189

As the Christmas season approaches in The Blue Cockade
(1905), the Colonel's daughter, Belle Harvey, is about to
make her entrance into society with a party at Belmont,
composed of her friends and her brother's friends who have
all just arrived from the University of Virginia for the
occasion. The issue of conversation among them is secession
and war. All of them are wearing the "blue cockade" and
dreaming of glory on the battlefield. They speak of war and
its preparations as an heroic venture. Mr. Appleton, the
only Northern friend of Belle's brother from the University,
joins in the discussion. He wears the tri-colors for the
old Union and says that it won't be long before South
Carolina comes back into the Union. When Belle's admirer
joins the party, he tells them the war fever is running high
among his friends at college.

In With Lyon in Missouri (1910), the Missourians are
experiencing great apprehensions. They are surrounded by
three free states so if war comes they expect to be overrun
with hostile troops composed of neighbor against neignbor,
brother against brother and father against son. Claiborne
F. Jackson, elected Governor on the Douglas ticket, is
proving to be as ardent a secessionist as Jefferson Davis
and is doing everything possible to drag Missouri out of the
Union while keeping up the pretense of compromise.

Luther Glenn, from Georgia, visit St. Louis to convince

the Missourians to secede with the rest of the Southern

190
states. Governor Jackson receives him with open arms and
invites all of his friends together for the meeting. Glenn
describes the dream of a Confederate empire that leaves them
breathless. He tells them the defeated North will divide
itself into three or four different sections which will
weaken it substantially, and the South will be able to
enforce any demands we want. The South will claim Kansas
and all the territory west of Kansas to the Rocky Mountains.
We will take Cuba and Mexico, and we will cultivate this
vast domain and legalize the African slave trade. The
Southern empire will rival Rome in her palmiest days, so how
can Missouri afford to sit back and not take part in the
making of this dream? Governor Jackson and his friends "saw
the vision in all its glory, and it swept them from their
feet" (p. 211). After Luther Glenn's visit, Governor
Jackson becomes more determined than ever to take Missouri
out of the Union.

When James Buchanan is elected president in 1857 in
With Lyon in Missouri the South is happy. In 1861 when Mr.
Lincoln is elected president in The Welding, they call it
"the fatal result" (p. 202). McLaws says:

By this choice the North had spoken; the South was

quick to reply. It came as with one voice, a

mighty cheer for a Southern Confederacy. The

people had been educated; the leaders were
prepared.

South Carolina, whose education had. begun
earliest, was quickest to respond In other
cotton states the papers, when announcing the
returns from the election, called meetings of
citizens to take action upon it.

191
In Savannah, birthplace and home of
conservatism, the citizens of Chatham County
packed a public square. They declared by
resolution that the election of the black

Republican, Abraham Lincoln, ought not to be

submitted to. (p. 202)

Governor Joe Browm begins to take immediate action for
the protection of Georgia. One of his first steps is the
purchase, in England, of two little gunboats, ‘which he
stationed at the mouth of the Savannah River, ten thousand
pairs of blankets, and ten thousand pairs of shoes (p. 203).
Then he assembles a group of prominent Georgians, some for
secession and some against it, to address the legislature on
the subject of calling a secession convention.

When Alec Stevens receives his invitation to address
the legislature, David thinks this means that Governor Joe
Brown is not as rabid a secessionist as the people think.
But Alec Stephens replies, "he's on the fence ...." (p. 203)
Mr. Stephens knows South Carolina will secede and that the
other cotton states will follow, but he believes there is
still a fighting chance to save Georgia. The Legislative
speeches begin on a Monday night with Tom Cobb as the
speaker. He is oppose to calling a convention and demands
that the Legislature "declare the state out of the Union
without waiting to hear from every cross-roads and grocery"
(p. 204). His supporters give him a cheer, and the tide of
secession begins to rise in Georgia. The next night, the

Honorable Robert Toombs speaks. He paints a glowing picture

of Greece and Rome in the height of their power and tells

192
his listeners that Greece and Rome's "fall and. present
degradation were due to their cowardice in not defending
their liberty" (p. 204). Toombs boldly demands secession
and declares, that "if the State of Georgia remained in the
Union he would draw sword against her" (p. 204). When he
completes his speech, the fervor for secession beams as
bright as the comet traveling across the South.

The following night Alec Stephens arrives with David,
his adopted son, to a packed building. The people come from
every county in the State, every cotton state, and from many
states in the North and West to hear Georgia's greatest son.
Mr. Stephens's speech consumes two hours, but the crowd sits
spellbound. His aim is to allay the strife and appeal to
their reason. Concerning the issue of Mr. Lincoln's
election, he argues

'The first question is, shall the people of the
South secede from the Union in consequence of the
election of Mr. Lincoln. My countrymen, I tell
you frankly, candidly and earnestly, that I do not
think they ought. To make a point of resistance
to the government, to withdraw from it because a
man has been constitutionally elected, puts us in
the wrong. Whatever fate befalls this country,
let it never be laid to the charge of the people
of the South, and especially to the people of
Georgia, that we were untrue to our national
engagements. Let the fault and the wrong rest
upon others ....

The applause came like a whirlwing ....

He assured his listeners that even if Mr.
Lincoln meditated wrong towards the South or its
peculiar institution, having a Democratic Senate,
his hands would be tied. The South must wait
until he gave it some reason to disrupt the Union.

He took the speeches of the younger Cobb and
of Mr. Toombs, and one by one he showed their
fallacies. Greece and Rome lost their liberty

193

from internal dissension. He favored the call of
a convention of the people. Let the Legislature
follow the legitimate object for which it was
elected. They must not forget that the people,
whether they dwelt in palaces or came from the
cross roads and groceries, were the sovereign
rules of Georgia--the Legislature merely ‘their

servant.
When he took his seat his breach with Toombs

was healed, the billows of secession had rolled
back and he had won the battle. A convention of
the people was called. For the first time in many
a weary day the people of Georgia, with the load
lifted from their hearts, went home to sleep. (The

Welding, pp. 204-207)

On December 20th, 1860, the South Carolinians gather in
Charleston to hear Chancellor Inglis, Judge of Chancery,
report The Ordinance of Secession. Upon hearing the news
cheer after cheer goes into the air, and new palmetto flags
begin flying. Every man wears a palmetto cockade in his
hat, and every woman wears a palmetto cockade on her bosom.
The wealthy citizens open their cellars and distribute their
choicest wine among their "humbler neighbors," and during
the evening every man in Charleston has champagne with his
dinner.

The next morning, a tired set of Georgia men meet at
the Charleston depot to take the early train back to
Augusta, Georgia. Their conversation parallels the
political turmoil among Southerners concerning secession.
The elder Judge Courtney shakes David's hand and says:

'Mark my word, my boy .... for every drop of wine

there'll be two drops of blood; for every bonfire

there'll be a burning house. And you'll live to

see it.' (p. 212)

The Judge turns to the other young men, Fulton and Hazard,

194
and tells them I came to Charleston on business:

'Had I known of this performance I should never
have come a step. I understood that this
convention of traitors intended to meet in
Columbia.‘ (p. 212)

Decatur Fulton answers, "why, haven't you heard? ....
There's smallpox in Columbia" (p. 212). The Judge says it
would have been better if they had stayed and caught
smallpox than give the whole country the hydrophobia.

Before David leaves the group, the Judge says tell Alec
we are looking for him to save the state of Georgia. "He's
the only man who can do it. Tell him I said so" (p. 213).
Decatur Fulton also has a message to send. He says,

'you tell Alec Stephens for me ... that the minute

men of Augusta are laying for him. They say that

he not only converted Joe Brown and the

Legislature, but made Bob Toombs turn his coat.

Tell Alec that the talk down here is that he's

working for a place in Abe Lincoln's cabinet.‘
(p. 213)

Judge Courtney argues: It would be the best selection
Lincoln could make, and it will save Georgia from secession.
The younger men smile but disagree. Decatur Fulton says

seriously:

'Howell Cobb is coming home, you know, and he is
hot for secession. If the Legislature had
listened to him they would have taken the state
out without waiting to call a convention.‘ (p.
213)

The Judge replies:

'Which shows how little regard he has for the
rights of the people, sir. We beat you fire-
eaters in the Legislature and we'll beat you in
the convention if you don't trick the people,--if
you don't trick the people, I say, sir!‘ (p. 213)

195
As David's train departs for Georgia, the men are still
talking. "Before he reached Belair, they had separated
never to meet again as friends" (p. 213).

Although Mr. Stephens knew from the beginning that "the
fight against the secession movement was a forloan hope," he
he did not hesitated to lead it (p. 214). The last speech
he makes before the convention is "the eloquence of despair"
(p. 215). He and Johnson have prepared a substitute for the
ordinance of secession, hoping to buy some time until the
frenzy for secession passes. He warns,

'this step of secession once taken can never be

recalled Pause, I entreat you, and consider
what reason you can give that will satisfy even
yourselves in your calmer moments. What reason

can you give to ‘your fellow’ sufferers in the
calamity that will inevitably bring upon us? What
reasons can you give to the nations of the earth
to justify it? What interest of the South has
been invaded? I challenge an answer.‘

.... 'When we of the South demanded the
slave-trade, did they not 'yield 'the .right for
twenty years? When. we asked a three--fifths
representation in Congress for our slaves, was it
not granted? When we demanded the return of
fugitive slaves, was it not incorporated in the
Constitution and again strengthened by the
Fugitive Slave Law in 1850? When we asked for
more territory, that we might spread the
institution of slavery, did they not yield us
Louisiana, Florida and Texas? Again, gentlemen,
what have we to gain with the General Government?
We have always had control. We have had a
majority of the Presidents chosen from the South.
We have had sixty years of Presidents to their
twenty-four. We have had eighteen Judges of the

Supreme court to their eleven . We have had
twenty- four Presidents of the Senate to their
eleven . The South has had eighty-six foreign

Ministers to the North's fifty-four. We have had
a vast majority of the higher officers of the Army
and the Navy, while a large majority of the
soldiers and the sailors have come from the North.

196

Again look at another item, a fraction over three-

fourths of the revenue collected for the support

of the Government has uniformly been raised by the

North. Now, I declare here what I have often said

before, that this is the best and freest

Government, the most equal in its rights, the most

just in its decisions, the most lenient in its

measures, and the most aspiring in its principles

to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven

ever shone upon. For you to attempt to overthrow

such a government as this is the height of

madness, folly and wickedness, to which I can

never lend my sanction nor my vote.‘ (pp. 215-216)

David describes the events: The fire-eaters listened
and never attempted to answer his challenge or refute his
argument on a single point; they could not, so "they were
wise; they held their peace" (p. 215). The people of
Georgia voted the State out of the Union by a margin of
almost three to one.

On January 20th, 1860 Georgia, following the example
of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama,
secedes from the Union and declares itself the "Independent
Republic of Georgia, North America." It happened just as
Judge Courtney predicted; "the fire-eaters tricked the
people by a heresy." The younger Mr. Cobb, in his speech
before the Georgia convention declared, "we can make better
terms with the North out of the Union than we can if we
remain in it" (p. 214).

Tom Cobb's speech was able to do what all of the fire-
eaters' disunion speeches had failed to do; it "defeated
Alec Stephens and deluded the people of Georgia into voting

for secession." In despair David says,

197
that insidious heresy had the sound of reason and
spread like wild-fire. The secessionists
throughout the South adopted it as their war-cry,
and it gained more votes than all the disunion
speeches since the days of Calhoun.‘ (p. 214)

Once the Ordinance of Secession passes, Mr. Stephens signs
it and pledges to "work for its success as earnestly as he
... worked for its defeat" (p. 216).

Unlike Charleston, there is no great rejoicing in
Milledgeville. When it becomes evident that the Ordinance
will pass, the leaders of the movement become solemn. The
next morning after the Ordinance of Secession is declared,
the leaders remind David "of a set of mischievous boys, who
having set fire to a broom sedge, are frightened when it
passes beyond their control" (p. 217).

In The Claybornes (1902), William Sage sets political
scenes in Richmond, Virginia during the spring of 1861.
Judge Clayborne is one of the cooler heads on the floor of
the Virginia Legislature; but his old childhood friend
Colonel John Bowie, a native of South Carolina, who moved
with his daughter to Virginia three years earlier, is one of
the hottest-headed fire-eating men in the South. His
persistant cry is for "slavery and no compromise, secession
and fight" (p. 2). His daughter, Reginia Bowie, is as hot-
headed and rebellious as he is.

Despite his neighbors, Judge Clayborne maintains his

stand against secession. He holds "the state for the Union

until the final die [is] thrown" (p. 3). When Virginia

198
votes to join the seceding states, Colonel Bowie holds out
his hand to his old friend and asks, "Now Clayborne, where
do you stand?" Judge Clayborne covers his old friend's hand
with his own and answers, "With you to the death John

Bowie" (p. 3).

"The Pain of Secession"

As the authors deal with secession, they approach the
material with sentimentality and emotional intensity. The
immediate reaction of most of the older fictional
characters, as well as some of the more prominent historical
figures, is one of intense pain and sorror. The older men,
especially those from Virginia, had not only helped to guide
the Union along its rocky but steady course, but had
defended her as their fathers had before them. It is not
easy for them to switch from the old flag they had watched
grow star by star to the new flag, but the gentleman's code
of conduct says they must.

In The Welding (1907), Georgia's passage of the
Ordinance of Secession leaves Mr. Stephens feeling he has
failed in his duty to Georgia. David describes Mr. Stephens
in "the room.over the gate" praying on his knee:

'Never shall I forget the anguish of his upturned

face, of the intertwined fingers of his poor,
frail hands.'

'He was praying for forgiveness from having
deserted Georgia, having refused a re-election to
Congress. He had seen the danger ahead but he had

199
thought of his own. comfort, had. given up .his
desire to spend his last days in peace, and so had
shirked his duty to Georgia.‘ (p. 217)

In With Lyon in Missouri (1910) the Germans are not
sympathetic to the secessionist fervor which causes a tidal
wave of insults and insenuations against them. Carl Mayer,
one of Lawrence Middleton's German friends at the academy,
decides to leave when he is no longer able to tolerate the
insults hurled at the German people. The secessionist
feelings of hatred toward the Germans become increasingly
intense. They denounce them as atheists, haters of God,
religion, and the Catholic Church. As a result of the
charges, they are able to turn a large number of the Irish
in the city to the Confederate side, but not all (p. 157).

In The Whirlwind (1902) Rupert Hughes foreshadows the
breakup of the Union in the breakup of a long standing
friendship between Colonel Darr and his Southern friend
Colonel Muir. When Colonel Muir and his daughter, Alabama
June Muir, are visiting with the Darr family John Mead
observes the Southern Colonel strike Dan, his slave, over
the head with a wooden cane and is disturbed by the sight.
John does not understand why a giant like Dan allows an old
man like the Colonel to beat him.

The men in town have told Dan not to go back to chains
and slavery. Dan asks John to explain the meaning of the
Fugitive Slave Law and the Dred Scott Decision to him. As

John explains the laws, Colonel Darr listens and is

200
impressed by John's passion and understanding of the laws.
Colonel Muir challenges John, and the argument
escalates when John tells the Colonel that the South has had
its way about slavery for the first half century of the
Republic while the North has hemmed and hawed under the name
of compromise but that a new generation is coming. Colonel
Muir calls John a "damned abolitionist" and orders Colonel
Darr "to turn that insolent cub off his premises" (p. 143).
Lucy Darr takes John's side and says, "I am an abolitionist,
too. And who's going to drive me out?" (p. 144) Alabama
Muir rushes to her father's side and says we should pack.
"Ah know we can't feel at home among people with such
peculiah notions, come, Fatheh! (p. 145) John apologizes to
Lucy, but she tells him she is proud of him, and Colonel
Darr shakes his hand warmly and says, "Don“t worry, John.
It had to come" (p. 146).

Their sections, their parishes and their heredities
were wedging the two old. ancient chums apartq Before
parting for good, Colonel Darr and Colonel Muir make up.
They had been friends too long to let the busting up of the
Union come between them. As Colonel Muir enters the train,
his tears blind him. He is filled with such distraction and
grief that he waves farewell and bends his gaze in the wrong
direction.

As the train pulls away, Colonel Darr leans heavily

upon John's arm and tells him that he and Colonel Muir had a

201
long stormy scene after he left and that the South is
determined to end the bickering over slavery by seceding.
They think they have every constitutional right to break the
Republic in two and that the North should let them go in
peace. They are preparing to fight if necessary.

In Manassas (1904), when the news of Senator Sumner's
alleged death by Brooks of South Carolina reaches Valley
Hall, everyone laughs and is joyful except the ladies and
Allan. Their behavior unleashes the thoughts he has
repressed since his chance meeting with Levi Coffin. In
disgust he calls them cowards and tells them it's horrible
to strike down a helpless, unarmed man. Within in the
moment his hot tempered cousin Randolph leaps forward with a
knife, but his uncle throws his arm in front of his son and
asks Allan if he is mad.

Allan has commited the unpardonable sin by striking out
against the core of Southern tradition not only in the
presence of his family, but in the presence of guests. He
would have to leave, if it had been among family members, it
would have been different. But having your neighborhood
discussing the fact that you have an abolitionist living in
your house is unforgivable. The break up of the family over
politics is hard for Mr. Handy to understand. He regarded
the slavery question as "froth stired up by the
politicians." He says:

'These fellows were struggling for power, you see,
and trying their best to outdo each other; and all

202

the troubles of the time were due to the fact that
foolish people took them seriously. ' (p. 172)

In The Blue Cockade (1905), Flora McDonald Williams
describes the little town of Winchester as one whose narrow,
old-fashioned streets had often resounded "to the martial
tred of the brave minutemen of Revolutionary fame" (p. 16).
When South Carolina secedes from the Union, the men who
loved the Union of their Revolutionary fathers received "the
news with unfeigned sorrow" (p. 16).

In The Patriots (1906) Cyrus Townsend Brady dramatizes
the pain of secession felt by the older and the younger
generation. During the secession fever, all the Southerners
except Phillip Grafton leave Harvard in the middle of the
semester. Despite the insults from the departing
Southerners, Grafton stays to finish school. After his
graduation on July 17, 1861 he returns to his Virginia home
distraught over having to choose between his patriotic
Northern fiancee and his sense of duty and honor to the
South.

Judge Lewis, who had been elected again and again to
the United States Senate and would have been re-elected
until he died if a paralytic stroke had not cut him down ten
years earlier, buries himself with his granddaughter in
Vallewis, his ancestral plantation on the James River, a few
miles from Richmond. When the news of the Fall of Fort
Sumter comes, the old. Judge *watches mistily' as Ariadne

strikes the old flag from the staff and raise the new flag.

203
She had not fought for that flag as he had and her father
had. She had not seen it grow star by star. Later, she is
sorry for her actions when she sees the heart-break on his
face. That evening at the dinner table as Ariadne and
Phillip toast the Confederacy, the old Judge toasts Virginia
as the state of his birth. As he hesitates, "two tears
[trickle] softly down his cheeks. 'God save the United
States!‘ he [mutters] as his head [falls] forward on his
breast" (p. 32).

The emotional pain displayed by Judge Lewis is common
to all the novels that treat the secession movement. It was
painful because their loyalty to the Union created conflicts
with their duty to the state--the state was older than the
Union. As the Nation was rending apart, so was the heart.
The older men had fought together with the Northeners in the
Mexican War as their fathers had fought with them in the
Revolutionary' War. Secession not only created the War
between the States, it tore families, friends, and

relationships apart.

204

Endnotes

See Chapter VI, The Concept of Two Separate Cultures
for a review of the political turmoil and the events
leading up to the national crisis.

Rollin Osterweis, "South Carolina and the Idea of
Southern Nationalism." In Romanticism and Nationalism
in the Old South. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1949), P. 133.

Ellen Glasgow, "The Battle Ground." In A Certain
Measure. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,

1943), pp. 24-25

Chapter VI I I

A House Divides : The War in the Novels

"War is hell," General Shaman said. The American
Civil War made many rich and ruined others, but whatever the
circumstance, it subsequently changed the lives of everyone
who lived through it.1 Yet the sacrifice of lives and the
loss of property brought about a moral solution--a new
nation based on freedom.

Writers of Civil War romances portray this sentiment
with varying degrees of success. Although many writers
continued to use the old formulas, other romancers included
some of the horrors of the battlefield and other unpleasant
aspects of war, the interruption of love, home, and family
life, the loss of fortunes, and the destruction of property.

George Cary Eggleston, one of the more popular
romancers, served as a soldier in the Civil War. In his
novel The Warrens of VirLinia (1908), two old veterans of
the Mexican Campaign, Bill Griffin of the North and Buck
Warren of the South, discuss war as a profession. Griffin
says,

'I don't like war. I hate and detest it, as

every good soldier does. It is the abomination of

desolation. It is legalized slaughter, not very

far removed from murder. It is the costliest

thing, too, in which men can engage. One campaign

in the field destroys more than human labor can

make good in a decade of years. Byron is right

205

206
when he says 'War's a brain-spattering, windpipe
slitting art,‘ but that isn't half the story. It
is a widow-making, orphan-creating, home-
destroying, hate-breeding art. Pestilence itself
is greatly to preferred.‘ (pp. 60-61)

The "courtly" Buck Warren agrees but adds, "it is to be
remembered, also, that war breeds the manly virtues of
courage, self-sacrifice, endurance, and--" (pp. 60-61) Bill
Griffin interrupts him:

'It does nothing of the kind'.... 'It gives

opportunity for the exercise and exhibition of

those qualities, but it doesn't create them. They
were existent in human nature before war came to
challenge them. Women do not make soldiers of
themselves, and yet women have those qualities in

a far greater degree than men. Especially they

excel us in the courage of endurance-—a far higher

and more difficult form of courage than that of

doing daring, as you and I very well know, Buck--

as every soldier who ever went through a campaign

knows.‘ (pp. 60-61)

Although Eggleston includes these realistic passages,
his novel is still a war romance. When the call to arms
comes, it is not questioned by either side: It becomes a
matter of one's duty to heed the call. Despite Eggleston's
knowledge that war is horrible, it is still portrayed as
heroic: There are captures, escapes and occasional deaths.
The plot includes the old triangle love plot with one suitor
from the opposing side. In this instance, however, the
villain suitor is a Southerner, so the heroine must decide
between love for her Northern soldier and her patriotic duty
to her family and her country.

During the Civil War’ at least 10,000 battles were

fought along a thousand mile front, and more than three

207
million soldiers enlisted to fight during the course of the
war.2 With its ironclad naval fighters, complex battle
strategies, sophisticated spy networks, and modern weapons
like the Spencer carbine repeaters, the Henry lever-action
carbine repeaters, and the machine guns, it was the first
modern war. It was also the bloodiest war in the history of
the nation: More than six hundred thousand men died during
the four years of fighting.

Its fratricidal nature pitted brother against brother,
father against son, neighbor against neighbor, slave against
master, and countrymen against countrymen. The war became a
test of wills, might, and determination. Each side replaced
its loses until it became a war’ of attrition, then. a
capitulation, and finally a dictated peace.3 The use of
modern weapons and stratagems made the war less the
adventure many romancers portrayed it as, and opened the
way for discussions on the morality of war--war is an
adventure verses a moral opprobrium or, in war's defense,
war is immoral but sometimes it brings about moral
solutions.4

The war did not stay within limited boundaries. It
moved into the civilian boundaries and population, sometimes
destroying the lives of innocent children as well as other
noncombatants. When a ball exploded in his summer kitchen,

Wilbur McLeans moved his family from his house at Bull Run

to Appomattox for the duration of the war, believing that

208
Appomattox was out of the way of battle. Later he would
say that the war began in his front yard and ended in his
front parlor.5

The conventional enthusiasm for war still existed in
the fiction of this decade, but often a more experienced and
sobering voice calms the enthusiasm. Frequently, the
maturity comes after the character has experienced some
tragic circumstance during a battle or observed the horrors
of destruction and death on the battlefield. The more
romantic ideas of war are usually expressed by the untried
soldiers and the younger Southern men and women. The more
experienced voices are usually the men who fought in the
Mexican War.

In With Lyon in Missouri (1910), Byron Archibald Dunn
recreates the activity in Camp Jackson as General Frost
begins to move his State Guards into the Camp. The rebel
soldiers make a grand appearance for the secessionist
sympathizers as they ride by waving their flags. The young
women scatter flowers about them and become so excited that
their throats end up sore from cheering. The young, rebel
females visit the Camp for four days. One of the young
ladies tells Benton Shelley; a.*wealthyy young, boastful
soldier, that she is eager to see a battle. Clasping her
hands, the romantic young’ Miss says, "It. must be just
grand" (p. 232). Overhearing them, a gray-haired gentleman

says, "my dear young lady ... if you should see one battle,

209
you would never want to see another. I know, for I served
through the Mexican War. I fear and tremble when I think of
what is coming (p. 232). Benton Shelley is not persuaded:
"I don't think of dying, it is the glory of war I am after"
(p. 233).

In The Sowing of Swords (1910), Hannah Parting watches
a battle in the front yard of the Catoosa plantation outside
the city limits of New Orleans and concludes: "Oh, God
[may] my mortal eyes never look on the like again! Were
they human or fiends, those frightful faces?" (pp. 334-335)

In The Sword in the Mountains (1910), Champ Seacrest
searches for his friend after the Battle of Chickamauga. He
enters the church, and discovers it is full of "mangled
fellows." He sees the blood stained, aproned surgeons

intent on the awful work. Piles of naked and

bloody members--hands, feet, arms, and legs--lay

about the church, and the rude pulpit at its upper

end was turned for the moment into a receptacle

for basins, bottles, rolls of bandages, and

medicine cases. (p. 289)
When Champ finally locates his friend, he discovers Jose has
lost both hands; and his head and face are completely
bandaged with only his eyes showing. He recalls the days of
their flaming patriotism "when they were all enlisting--
young Texan hotheads," and feels a bitter impatience: "It
seemed a Pharisee's treachery to the man on the cot" (p.
292).

Lieutenant Pitcher of the Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry

(Southern Ends and Sons of War, 1907) expresses a similar

210
concern for youth who are enthusiastic to enter the war:
'The youth of both sections are eager to fight.

They are excited by patriotic speeches, waving

flags and martial music, and rush into the service

to die of disease, or to be killed in battle. War

is cruel, terrible! It is but the apotheosis of

murderers.‘ (p. 140)

In The Southerners (1903) by Cyrus Townsend Brady,
Colonel Peyton and his oldest son Boyd try to calm the
enthusiasm for war of his younger children and their
friends. Boyd tells his family he has seen a lot of gun
fire and hopes they will never have to see war. His father
agrees and says: Although people say the Mexican War wasn't
much, it was enough to make me never ‘want to see or
participate in another war. Unlike most Southerners, the
Colonel knows the Yankees will fight because he saw them in
the Mexican Campaign. Boyd agrees with his father: "Indeed
they will, father, and they will fight hard too" (p. 87).
But Willis Peyton is not persuaded:

'the harder the better . .. and the sooner the

better, too. Hurrah for the South, say I! We'll

make a new republic with the corner stone that the
black man is to be forever and forever a slave.‘

(p. 87)
In They That Took the Sword (1901) by Nathaniel Wright,

immature Everard Kainson is passionately for the rebel cause
while his brother and uncles are for the union. Everard has
imagined the heroics of war but not death. He thinks of war
as a game. Eventually his youthful notions about spying
almost causes the court martial and hanging of his brother

for treason.

211
Willis Peyton and Everard Kainson both change their
attitudes and enthusiasm for war. Willis Peyton matures
when he discovers that the last shot he fired from the
"Tennessee" seriously wounded his brother. When he observes
his brother lying unconscious with a skull fracture and
severe concussion, a deep groan comes from his lips. "It
had never been his brother before, but somebody else's--
there was a difference ...." (p. 371) Everard Kainson
matures during the nine days before his brother's trial for
treason. The impending trial and execution also sobers the
entire Kainson family. Thomas Kainson says, "This battle in
which I have ruined my own son has soured me for the rest of
my days" (p. 259). Colonel Golding says civil war in Ohio
is awful. None of us realized it when we went into it.
The first Battle at Bull Run, which was fought on July
21, 1861, is a favorite among the novelists. This battle
alerted the North as well as the South to the seriousness of
the task at hand. The Confederates had established their
capital in Richmond and had selected the strongest body of
soldiers and officers available to them to defend it. The
Confederate capital, with its close proximity to Washington,
posed a constant threat to the United States Government.
Mr. Lincoln was aware of the danger, but he also knew that
the U. 8. regular army was ill prepared to meet the threat
since so many of the army's ablest men had defected to the

South. As a result, the regular army found itself with

212
thousands of men who were eager to volunteer their services
but were without any training or previous experience.

Before the men could be trained properly, the Northern
people demanded action, and the cry was "on to Richmond."
The U.S. Government tried to meet the public's demand by
ordering General McDowell to attack General Beauregard's
position in northern Virginia. On the day of the attack,
the Union army fought well for many hours, but was
eventually driven from the field. It was during this battle
that General Thomas J. Jackson of Virginia, also known as
"Old Blue Light," won for himself the infamous title
"Stonewall" Jackson for his fierce and unwavering stand
against the Union army. Jackson's stand was the example the
Confederate officers used to fire the Confederate forces.
In the fiction, General Thomas J. Jackson never has anything
to say, the officers simply point to him and say to their
troops, look there is "Jackson standing like a 'Stonewall.'"

The Union attack. at. Manassas--the fighting' and 'the
retreat--is a rich source of material for novelists who
wanted to characterize the fear of the untried soldiers and
the new recruits. Watching their comrades die on the
battlefield and seeing the destruction of property, they
begin to realize that war is not the romantic adventure
they had imagined.

In most of the previous romances, there is never any

sign of fear on the part of the soldiers as they entered a

213
battle despite the overwhelming odds. Approximately twenty
years after he published. Miss Ravenel (1867), DeForest
compared his novel with the newly translated version of Egg

and Peace (1867). Despite his bold new treatment of war, he

 

admitted he held back:

I tried, and told all I dared, and perhaps nearly

all I could. But there was one thing I really did

not dare tell, lest the world should infer that I

was naturally a coward, and so could not know the

feelings of a brave man. I actually did not dare

state the extreme horror of battle, and the
anguish with which the bravest soldiers struggle
through it ....

In The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Stephen Crane
carried the idea of fear and the extreme horror of battle
into the roots of réalisme. Although the novel pleased
many critics and ex-soldiers, William Dean Howells thought
it could have gone even further. Howells had focused all of
his energy toward making réalisme the dominant literary
foam for American fiction, so he felt some irritation when
he discovered one of his favorite pupils had not adhered
completely to the ideas of réalisme.

In the beginning of the novel the hero expresses some
of the same youthful notions concerning war as heroes in
previous war novels. He thinks war is glorious and dreams
of becoming a hero like any other youth or untried soldier.
When his first battle (Chancellorsville) finally comes, he
panics and runs like all the other soldiers. His fear leads

him into a kind of wilderness where he comes face to face

with death and the fear within himself. His tour through

214
the wilderness goes beyond réalisme into a kind of sur-
realism and naturalism.

But Crane does not take the experiment any further and
allows the hero to re-define himself. During the next trial
by battle, he not only fights like a wild cat but he picks
up the flag when the flag bearer falls and rallies the
panicking soldiers on to victory. Henry turns out to be the
kind of hero he always dreamed he would be. When he goes
home he no longer feels that war is glamorous, but he does
feel like a man--one who has been tried by fire. In the
end, Henry feels good about himself, and Crane ends the
novel on a peaceful note, thus re-joining the ranks of the
romanticists.

The first battle of the untried recruits whether it was
first Manassas or many of the unnamed first battles
occurring in the West or the deep South provided enough raw
material for the romancers to experiment creatively with the
new realists' theories concerning the .actual feelings a
soldier experiences when he is about to enter his first
battle. The Red Badge of Courage provided the model.
Henry's first battle is of consequence to the realists,
because he experiences fear and runs. It is this
description that sets this novel apart from all the other
war romances during this period. His meaning is explicit:
War is not a game of heroics with god-like soldiers who can

perform all kinds of exceptional feats on the battlefield

215
without risk to their lives and the lives of their comrades.
Fear, cowardice, horror and death are real possibilities on

the battlefield.

Descriptions of the War From the
Individual's Point of View

In Who Goes There (1900), Blackwood Ketcham Benson
takes his readers to the battlefield of the first Manassas
as a regiment of fresh recruits are about to charge the
Rebels. As they prepare to fight, Jones Berwick's thoughts
are full of wars and battles; then he begins to think of the
Indians. His Colonel rides to the front, orders "the colour
bearers twelve paces to the front, and the battalion to
present arms." He draws his sword, salutes the flag "and
cries, Die By It!" At that moment, a mortal cold goes to

the marrow of Jones Berwick's bones:

'my comrades' faces are white as death .... The
dust is so dense that I can see nothing in the
front but we are moving. Smith drops; Lewis
falls to the rear; the ranks are thinning; elbows
touch no longer ... our paces quickens ... a
horrid impatience seizes me ... though the smoke I
see the cannons ... faster .... I see the rebel

line--A tempest breaks in my face--

'Surrender, you damned Yankee!’

I am running for life--a mass of fugitives
around me--a disorderly mob I look behind--
nothing but smoke .... I begin to walk.

The army was lost; it was no longer an army.

.... a man of our company passed me--Edmonds.
I called to him, 'where is the company?‘

'All gone,‘ said he; 'and you'd better get
out of that, too, as quick as you can.‘ (pp. 5-
18)

216
Jones Berwick's behavior and that of his comrades differ
from that of the traditional romantic heroes. They are
afraid because they know death is a real possibility. When
fear becomes the ruling emotion of the individual soldier or
a company, the company commander loses his control. The
lack of control causes confusion, and this confusion leads
to the "disorderly mob" of running men that Jones Berwick
describes as his company abandons its first fight at
Manassas.

In Manassas (1904), Upton Beall Sinclair describes a
similar experience at First. Manassas, but he takes the
reader much further as Allan Montague (the central
character) tries to reconcile himself with the conflicting
emotions he is experiencing during his first battle of the
war.

Allan Montague and his cousin Jack are new recruits in
"The Cambridge Tigers." Both of these young men are eager
to do their duty, but on the day of the battle, Jack
freezes. Allan urges him forward, but as soon as the two
start to move forward Jack falls. When Allan sees his
cousin's neck bone sticking up and his jaw dangling in
front of it and blood gushing up the middle like a fountain,
he turns and runs away.

As he runs he begins to see many of the horrors of war.
There are wounded horses, one with its entrails bulging out.

One soldier takes refuge behind a tree and is killed

217
instantly by a cannon larged in the same tree. In the home
of a "poor white," he discovers a wrinkled bedridden woman
who has been accidently shot. In the midst of these
disturbing impressions, he begins to focus on two kittens,
not over six weeks old, playing by the fireplace. As he
finds himself fascinated by the playful kittens, suddenly
everything seems to fade into nothingness.

Sergeant Schlemmer tries to stir him into action again
but the fear Allan has experienced has disabled him
physically as well as mentally. He forgets that his gun
must be loaded before he can fire it. When he finally
remembers how to reload the gun, he feels a hand on his
collar and a familiar voice yelling in his ear: "What's the
matter with you? You're firing up into the sky!" (p. 401)

Allan tries to regain his composure, because he resents
being called a coward. Yet he cries with horror at the
slaughter he sees on the battlefield. As he tries to move
ahead again, a mass of fire looms just ahead and the
Irishman next to him vanishes: "He flew into pieces." The
blast blows Allan backward and shatters his eardrums, but he
continues to move forward. Soon afterwards, he feels a
crash on his head and staggers for a while wondering if he
is dead or alive.

When he regains consciousness everything is still. As
he crawls in a zigzag path between the dead men, he

discovers that one of the men is Sergeant Schlemmer. As he

218
moves forward, he hears gobbling sounds like a turkey; it is
a man without a jaw or mouth. Where his face should be,
there is a great large hole. Allan thinks it must be a
demon calling out to him and following him. He runs for
another half mile until he is exhausted. When he sits down
to see if the thing will follow him or reappear, he begins
to find battle things. Someone had taken flight, but who?

There is nothing romantic about Allan's first battle
experience and Allan does not behave like the romantic hero
found in the older romances. His reaction to death and the
horrors of war is the same as that of the common soldier.
He does not achieve the heroics of old, nor does he get
another chance to redeem himself: The novel ends when Allan
learns the issue of the battle.

When first Manassas is over there is no illusion about
what happens when men abandon political solutions to take up
arms. Death is horrible to see and it can provoke a series
of disturbing emotions when it happens only a few inches or
feet away. Adthough Manassas is listed among the turn-of-
the-century war romances, it bears little resemblance to the
old or new romances except for its historical atmosphere:
The novel has many historical figures with minor roles.
Also there is one escape episode when a run a way slave
tries to find his way to freedom. Its inclusive features
from both the romantic formula and the realists' theories,

prefigures the mature American war novel which begins after

219
World War I.

In The Welding (1907), Emily Lafayette McLaws creates a
similar situation for David Twiggs Hamilton at Manassas.
This is also David's first battle since leaving Charleston,
South Carolina as a member of General Beauregard's staff.
As David's regiment prepares for the Battle of Manassas,
some of the soldiers discuss being afraid and wonder who
will run. David wonders if he will be afraid, or if he will
run. "He had heard of such things in men who had never been
suspected of cowardice" (p. 274).

As his regiment moves closer to the sounds of battle,
David begins to feel "cold chills chasing each other up and
down his spine" (p. 276). As they' cross the "smoke-
infested fields with shells bursting about them"
David begins to dread the next shell. He hears Bubber
muttering, 'oh, ye're in for it now, little Dutchy. But ye
won't run, no, ye won't run. Ye'll stan' yo' ground with
the best of 'em'" (p. 276). When the smoke clears, David
takes one look at the Army in blue swarming the field in
front of them,

and instantly loses concern for himself. He

[becomes] not a man but a member of his regiment,

a part of the army of the menaced South. He could

no more have fled than his arm could have torn

itself loose from his body.

There were dead men in their path, sprawling

in strange attitudes as if they had been dumped

down from the sky. He felt no horror of them, had

no fear of a like fate. (p. 276)

David fights but he is in a daze similar to Allan

220
Montague in Manassas (1904). At the sight of the swarm of
men in blue, David begins working his "weapon like an
automaton. He [finds] the task strangely exhilarating."
But he begins to think, something that is detrimental to a
soldier. His thoughts are everywhere, he begins to see and
hear things as if he is in a daze. He sees a

struggle between Lieutenant Courtney and the tall

blacksmith, who at first volley had thrown down

his gun and rushed screaming from the ranks. He

[sees] the man at his right drop down like a

bundle, [knowing] that he never stirred. (p. 277)

As the heat of the battle begins to envelop him, "his
eyeballs [are] red-hot marbles. The sweat that [streams]
from his body [blisters] his skin. He feels a rough hand
pawing at his shoulder. 'Quit shootin', you dammed fool,
you! Ain't you got sense to see they're all gone?" (pp.
277-278). David stares in the officer's face in
bewilderment. When he recovers, he observes the regiment
sprawled on the ground. "They reminded him of the Greenwood
pack after an all night fox-chase" (p. 278). The
battlefield is deserted except for the dark bundles dropped
here and there in little groups. "They remind him of debris
left on the shore after a storm" (p. 278).

There are sudden cries of amazement from the regiment
when the blue begins to swarm again into masses out of the
distant woods. The officers start "after the regiment again

like sheepdogs, nipping them here and shoving them there."

The blue "sprang forward like an enraged beast." The

221
officers scream orders and "[strike] about them with their
swords and their fists, pounding every man within reach,
swearing long purple-black oaths." At the sight, David is
speechless with horror.
That earlier panic [grips] him. The cold shiver
that [ran] down his spine attacks the whole
regiment. With a sound like a groan they [turn]
and [join] in the stampede. (p. 279)

A mounted officer rides among them. David stares at him as

if he is a ghost. He waves his sword over the heads of the

fleeing troops:

'Look at the Virginians, men! Look at the
Virginians!‘ he shouted, pointing with his sword
up the hill.

'There is Jackson's brigade standing like a
stone wall.

'Rally behind the Virginians, men! Let us
determine to die here, and. we shall conquer.
Follow me.‘ (pp. 279-280)

McLaws takes the reader to the battlefield and
describes vividly the dangers there and the fear the
soldiers experience, but she stops there. The soldiers feel
fear, and even run for a brief moment, but they are guided
back and the hero performs his duty despite his anxiety.
The instant McLaws says, "he could no more have fled than
his arm could have torn itself loose from his body" we know
that David, the natural gentleman of this novel, is also the
romantic hero. The fact that he experiences fear and panic
and runs for a short time is the theory of realism creeping

into the old romantic formula.

In The Battle-Ground (1902), Ellen Glasgow also mixes

222
realism with the old romantic formula as she describes Dan
Lightfoot's attitude before his first battle at Manassas.
Like all raw recruits, he is anxious and impatient to get
his first battle started. As he thinks of the end to which
he is marching, it brings

a quickened exhilaration of the pulses and an old
engraving of 'Waterloo,‘ which hung on the dining
room wall at Chericoke. That was war; and he
remembered vividly the childish thrill with which
he had looked up at it. He saw prancing horses,
the dramatic gestures of the generals with
flowing hair, the blur of waving flags and naked
swords. (p. 258)

As they move closer to the battle, Dan's regiment begins to
form a line. As the line nears the ravine, a stream of men
approach them and pass slowly to the rear.

Some [are] on stretchers, some stumbling in
the arms of slightly wounded comrades, some ...
merely warm and dirty and very much afraid. One
and all advised the fresh regiment to 'go home and
finish ploughing.‘ 'The Yankees have got us on the
hip,‘ they declared emphatically. 'Whoopee! it's
as hot as hell where you're going.‘ (pp. 266-267)

Suddenly' a boy’ with "a blood-stained sleeve" waves his

shattered arm in the air. He laughs deliriously and says in

a voice from the deep South, "Don't believe them, friends,

it's glorious!" When the boy falls forward on the grass,
the sight of the soaked shirt and the smell of
blood turns Dan faint. He [feels] a sudden
tremor in his limbs, and. his arteries [throb]
dully in his ears. 'I didn't know it was like
this,‘ he muttered thickly. 'Why, there're no
better than mangled rabbits--I didn't know it was
like this ....' (p. 267)

As Dan approaches the battlefield, he regains his composure.

Suddenly a shell rips up the ground in front of him,

223
flinging clods of earth in his face. A fence is scattered
beneath the fire, and a long rail is sent flying across the
field. "For an instant he [hesitates]; then something like
a nervous spasm [shakes] his heart," and he is no longer
afraid. As he moves closer he wonders, "If this was a
battle, what was the old engraving? Where were the prancing

horses and the uplifted swords?" (p. 270)

Descriptions of the War From the
Collective Point of View

War as it actually exist on the battlefield in all its
unpleasant aspects is best described from the individual's
point of view when the authors want to describe the horrors
of war. When they want to show the heroics of war, the
unpleasantness is best described from the collective point
of view. Such descriptions as: "The incidental slaughter
of the battlefield," or’ death. as "the fortune of ‘war"
lessens the severity of war and death as a consequence of
war. The horrors of the battlefield are never completely
realized, and the war experience is never immediate.

In Si Klegg (1910), John McElroy describes the
destruction on the battlefield in Tennessee after the Army
of the Cumberland confronted the Confederate forces from the
collective point of view. The date is January 1, 1863; the
setting is on the banks of Stone River. He says: On this

"Gloomy New Year's Day--The Two Armies Lie Frowning at Each

224

Other."
The mutual slaughter of the two armies had been
inconceivably awful--inexpressibly ghastly,
shuddering, sickening. They had pounded one

another to absolute exhaustion, and all that
sullen, lowering, sky-weeping Winter's day they
lay and glared at one another like two huge lions
which had fanged and torn each other until their
strength had been entirely expended, and breath
and strength were gone. Each was too spent to
strike another blow, but each too savagely
resolute to think of retreating. (p. 96)

The passage details the determination of the two opposing
armies, but it does not describe the individual soldier's
feelings, impressions, or reactions after the battle. Their
courageousness is collective, and the effect of the war on
the individual soldier is minimized.

When he describes the Union artillery battle, he says:
The cannons began "belching savagely into the flanks of the
horde of rebels" (p. 112). Fifty eight guns lined the high
banks and

thundered until the earth shook as with the ague.

A deluge of iron swept the fields where the mighty

host of rebels were advancing. Tops were torn out

of the trees and fell with a crash, fence-rails

and limbs of oak went madly flying through the

air, regiments and brigades disappeared before the

awful blast.

For a few minutes Si and Shorty stood
appalled at the deafening crash and the shocking
destruction. Then they saw the rebels reel and
fly before the tornado of death. (pp. 112-113)

Again the description of the mass destruction is collective.
None of the gory' details of death. are described ‘which
lessens the severity of the war and death as consequence.

In later descriptions, however, McElroy does take the reader

225
to the battlefield with Si and Shorty's regiment, and the
descriptions become more realistic and dramatic.

In The Welding (1907) McLaws also uses the collective
method to describe the two armies at the Battle of
Gettysburg. She says they were like: "Two mighty wild
beasts roaring and spitting at each other, preparing for the
death grapple" (p. 321). In describing the Confederates'
charge at Seminary Ridge she says: They moved forward with
waving flags and banners flying like they were soldiers on a
holiday parade.

The Union batteries opened and the shrieking

shells mowed down the gray line. But on it moved,

living men closing up ranks in dead men's places,
leaving behind scattered rows of bleeding bundles-

-the driftwood of a battle. (p. 321)

The battleground becomes a wasteland, but the barbarity of

war is lessened and the unpleasant aspects of death are not

as revealing.

The Game Motif

Several authors use the game motif to describe the
nature of war, but this is not the best metaphor for the
realists because it makes light of the seriousness of war.

In The Whirlwind (1902), Rupert Hughes uses the game
motif in a conversation between John Mead of the Union army,
home recuperating from a serious injury sustained at Wilson

Creek, and uncle Elkanah concerning battle tactics and

226
stratagems. John is a seasoned soldier who speaks from
experience when he says war is largely a matter of luck:

'The best general is the man who is the best

guesser. A good general ought to win at poker

without any trouble. War is a game of blindman's
buff, in a dark cellar at midnight, with bandages

on the eyes of the players. (p. 325)

John also thinks "war is a regular grab-bag": If you come
out empty-handed, with a prize, or if you get all of your
fingers back is a matter of luck (p. 325).

In The Warrens of Virginia (1908), George Cary
Eggleston takes the notion of war as a game farther than
most of the authors. He describes the military
confrontations between two old veterans of the Mexican War
as if they were playing a game. Eggleston says that since
Bull Run was the only major battle fought during the first
summer of the war, men like Colonel Griffin of the Union
army and Colonel Warren of the Confederate army had to make
soldiers out of the mostly volunteer armies by practicing
them in fighting.

He describes the first summer of the war as mostly
picnicking on an elaborate scale that varied from time to
time by "considerable incidental slaughter." The two old
soldiers would meet frequently, and on occasion would
"assail each other's quarters and leave laughing notes of a
saucy sort for each other" (p. 106). Once in a while they

would meet in a sterner fashion--leaving dead men stretched

along the Northern fields of Virginia.

227
George Cary Eggleston was a soldier in the Army of
Northern Virginia and was well acquainted with war in all
its unpleasant aspects, but he continued to use the romantic
formula to describe war. He speaks of death as "incidental
slaughter," or a fierce skirmish as meeting in a "sterner
fashion." His use of adjectives that. describe ‘war in
general terms weakens the severity of war. War becomes a
game and death an occasional consequence of war.

In The Welding (1907), David Twiggs Hamilton observes

 

his regiment sprawled on the ground and is reminded "of the
Greenwood pack after an all night fox-chase" (p. 278). In
The Battle-Ground (1902), as Dan Montjoy's regiment begins
"The Day's March" for the Battle at Bull Run, he has the
"odd feeling that it [is] all a great fox hunt they" are
about to start upon; that they waited only for the eager
calling of the hounds" (p. 258). When the fighting begins,
the fury of the game [sweeps] over him and
[arouses] the sleeping brute within him. All the
primeval instincts, throttled by the restraint of

centuries ... [awake] suddenly to life and [turn]
the battle scarlet to his eyes. (p. 271)

Effects of the War on the
Civilian Population

In 1863, the words of John Brown were echoing through
the land. The war had become a "bloody affair" for the
nation. After three days of fighting at Gettysbury (July,

1863) nearly forty thousand men lay wounded or dead.

228
Following the fall of Vicksburg, the bloody Battle of
Chickamauga was fought (September, 1863), followed by the
Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge near
Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The people turned to religion. Mr. Lincoln began to
believe he was an instrument of the Lord. General Lee
expressed the same thought. Mr. Lincoln said: It has
become painfully clear that the entire country must atone in
blood for the wickedness of slavery. The South for
maintaining it; the North for its complicity.7

As the two amiss became more resolute, the
unpleasantness of the war began to move into the civilian
population. In The Battle-Ground (1902), Ellen Glasgow
describes the effects of war on the civilians as the ragged
Confederate army pushes on to Maryland, "lean, sun-scorched
[and] half-clothed." They are hungry, marching in borrowed
rags, fighting ‘with the 'weapons of the enemy, fevered,
dirty, sick with the diseases "that follow ... green food,"
and choking with the hot dust from the turnpike. Stragglers
drop by the roadside like leaves (p. 331). Dan Montjoy (the
hero), Pinetop (the mountaineer), and Jack (the aristocrat)
decide to scout the rich farm land for food. Down a narrow
country lane, they discover "a large frame house well hidden
from the road." The woman standing at the door thinks one

of the men are her husband and calls out to them. When she

discovers they are soldiers, she tells them they are welcome

229
to the little they have. Suddenly a frightened child in the
corner of the room lets out a frightened cry, "It's my
supper--I want my supper." The woman tries to comfort the
child: "Hush, dear ... they are our soldiers." The child
repeats "Our soldiers" and stares with its thumb in its
mouth and tears on its cheeks (p. 338). Dan looks at the
woman and the child for a moment:

The ‘woman holding the child in her arms, and

biting her thin lips from which hunger had drained

all the red. There was scant food on the table,

and as his gaze went back to it, it seemed to him

that, for the first time, he grasped the full

meaning of a war for the people of the soil. This

was the real war; not the waving banners, not the

bayonets, not the fighting in the ranks. (p. 338)

Dan tells the woman she has mistaken their purpose; they are
not as hungry as they look. Bowing in his ragged jacket, he
tells her they came to see if she needed them to guard her
smokehouse and that his colonel hopes her family has not
suffered at their hands.

In m (1905) by Fannie Eoline Selph, in Vicksburg
the long siege and the constant shelling by General Grant
caused the near-starving civilian population to evacuate
their homes and move into caves. Some families moved their
entire households into the cave surrounding themselves with
their furniture, rugs, and slaves in attendance.

In The Sword in the Mountains (1910), after the charge
up Mission Ridge, Alice MacGowan describes a disturbing and

bleak scene and a chilling account of what happens when the

destruction extends into the civilian population.

230
An immature and headstrong Sally' Belser' allows the
nurse to take her small children to the river where the
soldiers are stationed with guns going off at unexpected
times. When the shelling by the Union army and return fire
by the Confederates begins in earnest, Sally's children are
killed. This incident and her husband's death cause Sally
to have an emotional breakdown which Alice MacGowan
describes in painful realism.
Her manner is composed when she greets her visitor.
But there is a "queer little smile twisting her lips," and
the twin spots of red on her cheeks stand aloof "from the
pallor under her eyes." (p. 246) Her appearance, unusual
behavior, and the "cracked falsetto imitation of her usual
high-pitched giggle" causes Evelyn Winchester to back away
from her. When Evelyn asks about the children Sally laughs
in her high-pitched giggle:

'Oh, when you see how I've managed about that,
you'll say I'm a little too smart for anything,‘
Sally Belser crowed, laying upon the young girl's
arm a grasp that hurt. 'Come in here. I want to
show you.‘

'Sally!‘ cried Evelyn, wincing, pulling back.
'I came down to help you with the children.
Mother wasn't at home. Oh, these are awful times!
Poor Sally, let me help you.’

'You help me--you silly thing, jeered Rhett
Belser's wife, a strange light dancing in her
eyes. 'Baby! why your own mother wouldn't let you
have a little bit of rouge to improve your looks.
Now I understand just what use to make of a touch
of color. You heard about the children, did you?
Well, we fixed them all up; but they looked so bad
I knew Rhett would find out first thing as soon as
he saw them. The children--that's the only thing
on earth ever made him fuss at me; and I wouldn't
let him know for the world about this shell

231

business, and how badly it's turned out.‘

As she spoke, she was dragging Evelyn by the
wrist into that down—stairs bedroom which in old-
fashioned Southern houses is assigned to the
mistress and serves also as a family sitting-room.

Outside, men shouted and ran, there was the
clang of metal on metal. Upon the great bed were
two little mounds of white, where mother and nurse
had made seemly the remains of Peach and Honey,
composing and straightening the small bodies as
best they might, spreading over them the clean
clothing which could not be put on.

'I would't let Rhett know for anything in the
world,‘ Sally continued, still in that high,
strained voice. 'But I can always fool him, if I
have a little time. He'll never guess. He'll
never find out--the way I've fixed it.'

Like one in a nightmare, Evelyn Belle looked
down on the small faces. Then she dropped to her
knees beside the pillow. The crazed mother had
tinted the sunken cheeks of death to a ghastly
mockery of baby health.

'He'll be here in a minute,‘ Sally went on,
twisting her little claw-like hands together; 'but
he'll never find out. He'll think they're asleep-
-just asleep. It only took a touch of rouge--a
little touch of rouge--oh, my God!’

Evelyn Belle looked up at the distorted
countenance above her and realized that she had a
mad woman to deal with. In the turmoil of that
panic-stricken town, it was likely that nobody
would come to their help, yet she sent out one cry
before she grappled ‘with the flailing' arms of
Rhett Belser's widow. (pp. 247-248)

In The Whirlwind (1902) by Rupert Hughes, the civilians
in Atlanta abandoned their homes when the city became a
major military camp and headquarters for General Sherman and
the Union Army (September, 1864). They decided to endure
rather than surrender to defeat.

In Southern Buds and Sons of War (1907) by William
Henry Winslow, when Lieutenant Pitcher (of the Ninth
Pennsylvania) tries to ascertain a Confederate lieutenant of

Cavalry and a colonel of militia from Colonel Monk's house,

232
a militarily inactive Georgia planter, he is wounded and
captured. When Colonel Monk admonishes Lieutenant Pitcher
for attacking private houses, he answers:
Foraging is permissible to all armies, and
destruction of property is justifiable, when it
will injury the enemy. Men in arms against the
Government forfeit their rights in property, and
we may destroy it if we please. Civilian
sympathizers with rebellion, are protected in
person and property unless guilty of treasonable

acts. These are Uncle Billy's orders and they

have to be obeyed.
.... [Your army has] pillaged and burned

whatever [it] could. I remember the havoc of your

advance to Gettysburg, and the burning of

Chambersburg. (pp. 127-128)

Two months after the fall of Atlanta (November, 1864),
General Shaman began his "March to the Sea." With only
twenty days rations and his food supply and communications
cut off, his 60,000 man army had to subsist off the land.
He said war is cruel, but the crueler it is, the sooner it
will be over. The Union army must make war on the rebels so
terrible that generations should pass before they think of
making war again.8

On December 22, 1864, General Sherman presented the
city of Savannah as a Christmas gift to Mr. Lincoln. But
after nearly five years of bloody carnage and blood soaked
battlefields, Mr. Lincoln believed the Lord was still at
work in the land. He said: "The judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous." May this war end. But he feared it
would not end until two hundred fifty years of unrequited

toil by the bondsman was destroyed, and every drop of blood

233
drawn by the lash was replaced by the blood drawn by the

sword.9

Criticism.of Government Officials, the Generals,
Industry, and the War

Along with the unpleasantness of war and its effects on
the civilian population, many of these writers include frank
criticism of the ineptness of government officials running
the war, the generals fighting the war, and the barbarism
that accompany all wars. The severest criticism is aimed at
corrupt politicians and would be politicians who are in the
war for political gain. Industry also receives its fair
share of analysis and criticism.

In Si Klegg (1910), as the 200th Indiana tramples
through the mud Southward from Nashville, Si Kleggs says to
his partner Shorty, "they say that this is to be a sure-
enough battle and end the war" (p. 15). But Shorty answers:

'This war ain't goin' to end till we've scuffed

the top off all the roads in Kentucky and

Tennessee, and wore out God's patience and all the

sole-leather in the North. I believe it's the

shoe makers that's runnin' this war in the

interest 0' their business. (p. 15)

In The Whirlwind (1902), after three years in the
lawless wilderness with Sherman on his march to Atlanta,
John Mead discovered that

warfare had ceased to be warfare; it [had] become

a daily job for monthly wages. Excitement was

part of the stupid business; the risk of life was
the routine; going to battle was merely opening

234
shop; the lonely bugle sighing out 'taps' to the
stars was only the clock for putting up the
shutters; a shell that struck at the feet and did
not explode, a bullet that killed the next man, or
took a button off his own coat--he put it down to
profit and loss. (p. 356)

In The Warrens of Vigginia (1908), George Cary
Eggleston uses Dr. Pelham to comment on the barbarity of
War. Dr. Pelham is angry because the blockade has
effectively prevented the Confederacy from getting quinine
from France, England, or Germany. He says: we call the
Indians barbaric because when they win a fight, they brain
and scalp all the wounded, but we can't get quinine to save
lives while the laboratories are full of it in New York and
Philadelphia. Women passing from the North to the South are
arrested for trying to bring some South.

In Southern Ends and Sons of War, (1907) Dr. Owens is
called to treat Lieutenant Pitcher's wound. Pitcher says,
this is luxurious when compared to a field-hospital. Dr.
Owens is acutely aware of the human suffering that occurs
during a war:

'Yes, indeed! the agonized faces, the
writhing bodies, the cries and groans, the fetid
smell, the soaked ground, the piles of amputated
limbs, the stiffening corpses, the array of
instruments on the operating table, and the

surgeons with bloody arms and aprons, bustling and
butchering; all these fill a man with disgust and

horror.'
'You have been there, Doctor!‘
'I have, indeed! When I think of the

peaceful parades, flag presentation, picnic
bivouacs, martial music and partisan harangues, to
induce men to enlist to be slaughtered like
innocent sheep, it makes me believe civilization
is a veneer over barbarism, and Christianity, a

235

cloak for hypocrites. (p. 133)

Government officials criticize the generals for not
winning the war as fast as they would like. In The Iron
Brigade (1902), after the disaster of First Bull Run, the
nation realizes that the South is in earnest and that it
will require a thoroughly organized and disciplined Northern
army to subdue the rebellion in the South. Generals
McDowell, Pope and Sigel are retired in favor of George
McClellan. As the new commander of the army, McClellan
drills the regulars and the volunteers for five months until
he creates a well organized fighting machine. He renames
the machine The Army of the Potomac. The troops love him;
the Army of the Potomac belongs to him--it is his creation.
Although McClellan organized the greatest army in the world,
he does not move. Rumors begin about the nation's Capital
that McClellan has strong sympathies for the South. When
McClellan is questioned about his inactivity, he argues that
the cavalry is too wearied and broken down to accomplish
anything. But Mr. Lincoln asks, "What has it been doing to
so fatigue it?" (p. 256)

Charles King, the author of The Iron Brigade (1902),
was a general during the Civil War and understood the
frustrations and difficulty of trying to win a war in the
field while the government officials tried to run the war
from their offices. In the novel when General Lee decides

to change his military stand from the defensive to the

236
offensive, General Hooker resigned his command and said:

'No man could plan and fight a war with a string

to his shirt-tail and Stanton and Halleck a-pull

at the string.‘ (p. 295)

When Lee is beaten at Gettysburg and slowly retires
his army back to Virginia, the Army of the Potomac is
criticized because it seems to follow Lee at a respectful
distance--content to let the erring brethren go in peace.
But Mr. Lincoln had no rebuke for Meade; he was content with
the victory. "The plum was so ripe," was all that the
patient President could say, "it seemed a pity not to seize
it" (p. 335).

After "another winter closes in on the [two] armies in
Virginia, with the same old stream--the Rapidan--for their
dividing line," Mr. Lincoln decides that he, Halleck, and
Stanton have tried "bossing" the armies in the field without
success long enough, and now it's time to return the whole
thing over to a single manager. General Ulysses S. Grant
comes to Washington and is made Commander of all Armies of
the United States.

In True Love Wins (1901), W. M. Kennedy criticizes the
Confederate government and Jefferson Davis. In March 1864
when General U.S. Grant is made Commander of all the Armies
of the United States, Kennedy says, Grant was not sure what
plan to pursue. But Jefferson Davis soon relieved him of
all doubt as he toured the Southern States taking the public

into his confidence and fully explaining the Confederate

237
plan of campaign. Grant simply waited to see the plan
inaugurated and then he

assigned Sherman and Thomas their respective
commands. To the former the Army of the Ohio,
which was to penetrate into the enemies' country,
thus drawing away their attention from Richmond
and preventing them from sending reinforcements to
General Lee near Richmond. To Thomas he assigned
the Army of the Tennessee, with its base at
Nashville, to hold the State of Tennessee for the
Union. He himself with the Army of the Potomac
started out to capture Richmond, fighting the
Battle of the Wilderness. (p. 227)

In The Countegpart (1909), Joseph Hornor Coates allows
his characters, Colonel Harewood and. Evelyn. Preston, to
criticize the Confederate government officials and their
political ideas. Colonel Harewood says: It's been plain
for sometime; Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and afterwards
Chattanooga have really finished us. I

Slavery's gone and I'm not very sorry for it, the
doctrine of State sovereignty and peaceable
secession's gone, too; we knocked the bottom out
of that when we arrested those North Carolinians
who wanted their State to secede from the
Confederacy. And as to our old doctrine of a
man's allegiance to his State, it was a Virginian
who fired the first shot at Fort Sumter while his
state was still in the Union.

.... The simple truth is we wanted to fight,
we appealed to arms; and if we lose, it seems to
me babyish to make excuses and try to justify it

'The real cause of the war is slavery, but
when we enlist Negro troops and General Lee
proposes to free them it's useless for us who are
slaveholders to try to hold on to slavery. We are
in the minority, anyhow. Not four hundred
thousand of us in the whole Confederacy, and the
rest are fighting to help us hold to our property.

.... Some of them have found it out, you see,
and the desertions from Lee's Army are weakening
it more than battle losses; he's had to issue a
general order about it. The Bureau of

238

Conscription says there's a hundred thousand
deserters from our armies now out. (pp. 266-268)

Among the rank and file, the men were saying, "pears to me
this here is a rich man's fight!" (p. 268) Concerning the
ineptness of the government, Harewood says:

A 'Virginian should have been. President. of ‘the

Confederacy; there wouldn't have been so many

blunders and such mismanagement.‘ (p. 273)

These novels are different from the nineteenth century
war romances. The criticism is frank, the hero and heroine
are not perfect beings, and war is not always portrayed as
glorious. The corruption and ineptness that accompany every
war is brought out into the open for the reader to criticize
and analyze. This includes government officials, soldiers,
politicians, and private industry.

The old enthusiasm for war still exists, but it is
expressed mostly by young, untried soldiers. There is less
devotion to the abstract ideas of duty, honor, and glory,
but the reader is aware that these ideas are still part of
the gentleman soldier's code of conduct. The descriptions
of battle scenes are increasingly realistic with much more
graphic detail of the horrors of war than there was in the
earlier romances. The authors show the effects of the war
on the common soldiers as well as the civilian population.

The hero shows fear on the battlefield, he sustains
wounds in the battles, and suffers physical pain outwardly,

but he does not die. The only hero who dies in this study

is Paul Ladue in The Iron Brigade (1902). The hero is

239
beginning to think about the causes of the war and the
morality of the slaughter he sees. There is concern for
the soldier's state of mind as he enters a battle as well
as how he performs during the battle. Although there are
few instances of psychological probing of actions or
thoughts, which would slow down the action, there is
distinctly' more character' development and the one-
dimensional characters seem to belong to the past.

The novels are still action and adventure oriented,
because their aim is still to tell a good story. Although
the hero takes on more human characteristics, he is still
considered above the common soldier and his conduct during
the course of the war is usually outstanding. There are
still numerous capture-and-escape episodes and love plot
complications caused by the war that are usually resolved
when the war ends.

Because of the experimentation with the romantic
formula during this decade, later novelists did not feel
compelled to create godlike heroes and heroines with
aristocratic backgrounds and felt secure in exploring the
actions and motives of the common soldier, and the effects
of war on the common citizens. Even though most of the old
romantic formula is still in place, most of the romanticists

in this decade were affected by the theories of realism.

2.
3.

5.
6.

240

Endnotes

"The Cause 1861," dir. Ken Burns, The Civil War, PBS,
September 23, 1990.

"The Cause 1861," dir. Ken Burns.

"Civil Wars," narr. Gwynne Dyer, War. David Katz, host
instructor, War-A Second View, PBS, WKAR East Lansing,
Michigan, September 27, 1986.

David Katz, War-A Second View. (September 27, 1986)
"The Cause 1861," dir. Ken Burns.

W. D. Howells, "Editor's Study," Harper's Magazine,
LXXIV (May, 1887), P0 9870

"A very Bloody Affair--l862/ Forever Free--1862," dir.
Ken Burns, The Civil War, PBS, September 24, 1990.

"War Is Hell--1865/ The Better Angels of Our Nature--
1865," dir. Ken Burns, The Civil War, PBS, September
27, 1990.

"A very Bloody Affair--1862/ Forever Free--1862," dir.
Ken Burns.

Chapter Ix

Nbrth vs. South: The Soldiers

The concept of two separate cultures, and the old caste
and class system, discussed in Part 2, are best personified
in the characterization of the two opposing soldiers. Most
of the romancers characterize the soldiers by mixing the old
romantic formula of the gentleman soldier and the new
realistic theories of the common soldier. The gentleman
soldier begins to take on more human characteristics: he
thinks, he experiences fear, suffering, death, and the
horrors of war. His behavior does not always conform to the
gentleman's code of conduct. Sometimes he is a spy, or he
may be morally corrupt. Sometimes he is fighting for his
own personal, political, or economic gain rather than for
love of country. Depending on the author's origin or point
of view, the Northern soldier or the Southern soldier is the
villain, but from both points of view the Northern soldier
tends to be more realistically drawn while the Southern
soldier continues to lean more toward the old romantic ideal
of the gentleman soldier.

The Northern soldier, mostly called "Yankee" but
sometimes referred to as the Union soldier, generally
displays enthusiasm for the cause, but it is not the

sentimental patriotism found in the old romances. He is

241

242
there to settle the rebellion in three months and go back to
his farm or his business. He is unskilled in the martial
arts and has probably never heard of West Point or similar
military academies. He has a determined spirit, and if he
decides to enter the fight, he is usually there for the
duration.

Most of the authors describe the Northern soldiers as
farmers, mostly from the Midwest, small businessmen and
laborers from the East, foreign soldiers, guerrillas and
Negroes. He is never described as a gentleman soldier; he
is most frequently portrayed as an average or common
soldier. In The Sword in the Mountains (1910), Alice
MacGowan compares the Northern soldiers and the Southern
soldier:

Through all these ghastly activities of war--

killing, maiming, burying, healing--the newcomers

had set up industries in which the spirit of the

Northerners almost instantly became apparent. The

virtues of the Southerner were along those lines

of progress marked by destruction. He was a

fighter, an aristocrat, and the most destructive

wing of his army was its most marvelously
successful--the cavalry. The ideals of the North

were wholly constructive, its middle class was its

strength--according to the Southern belief it had

no aristocracy. Be this as it may, the town which

fell into the hands of the Federals was being put

into new and valuable shape with astonishing

celerity. (p. 307)

General Grant, the most prominent Northern soldier as a
historical figure in this decade, is also described as the
average soldier with common sense. In The Warrens of

Vigginia (1908), George Cary Eggleston says Grant is a man

243
of common sense without any illusions. In The Patriots
(1906), Cyrus Townsend Brady calls Grant "the inexorable
rock of an indomitable determination" (p. 334). In Lhe
Sword in the Mountains (1910), MacGowan says,

The man on whom the safety of Chattanooga now
depended was a fighter. His tactics was apt to be
of the simplest, and his system was one which well
earned him the name of The Great Hammerer. It was
never his method to strike a feeble or glancing
blow. He gathered his forces for a battle with
fair deliberation, delivered his stroke as heavily
as possible, and followed it so long as there was
strength in his arm to do so. (p. 328)

During the first year of the war, in The Little Shepherd of

Kingdom Come (1903), John William Fox reveals a tolerant and

 

understanding Colonel Grant. During the political turmoil
in With Lyon in Missouri (1910), Byron A. Dunn reveals a
kind and considerate Colonel Grant, but during those times,
very few people paid heed to the name of Ulysses S. Grant.
Despite this general view of the Northern soldier in
the literature, many wealthy and socially prominent Northern
soldiers were considered a part of the gentleman class. In

Manassas (1904), Upton. Sinclair' describes the' "Cambridge

 

Tigers" as "an unusual aggregation of soldiers There
were a few mechanics and clerks among them, of course, but
for the most part they represented the wealth and culture,
the bankers and business-men and professors, of the
collegetown" (p. 342). When these wealthy Northern soldiers
are the central characters, the novelists portray them as

realistic in matters concerning war, business and romance.

244

John McElroy's Si KlquLyHis Transformation Fran a Raw
Recruit to a Veteran (1910), and Si Klegg Thur the Stone
River Campeign and in Winter Quarters at Murfreesboro
(1910) were first published as sketches in The National
Tribune. McElroy believed that every veteran who had served
in the Union army and carried a musket had similar
experiences to those of Si Klegg and he "respectfully
dedicated his book to the rank and file of the grandest army
ever mustered for war." With these sketches, McElroy severs
all ties with the popular tradition of the war romance.
Although there is a romantic element, it does not intrude or
become central to the development of the story.

His central characters, Si Klegg and his partner
Shorty, are enlisted men from middle-class farm America,
privates in the Union army; the highest rank Si Klegg ever
achieves in these novels is corporal. They are patriotic,
but it is not the patriotism found in the old romances.
They don't see war as glorious, but they would not run from
a fair fight. They are there to get the job done and return
home as quickly as they can to their comfortable farm lives
in Indiana.

McElroy describes their experiences as raw recruits in
basic training, their adjustments to the life in camp, their
first military encounters, and their achievements in "petty
larceny." When the Colonel announces that the Army of the

Cumberland will retire in camp around Murfreesboro until the

245
spring to rest, refit, and prepare for another campaign,
descriptions of army camp life become humorous as $1 and
Shorty search for materials to build their winter quarters.
The novel becomes light, entertaining, and full of comedy
and satire. The comedy that results tends to lighten the
more serious aspects of the war that McElroy vividly
depicts.

When Si's father, Deacon Josiah Klegg, decides to visit
his son in camp the reader begins to realize how the men
have re-adjusted their civilian code of conduct to survive
the inconveniences of army life. When the Deacon arrives at
the camp, after an exhausting train ride with a rowdy group
of soldiers, he is jailed for treason. The inmates, an even
rowdier group of soldiers, hold a mock trial, find him
guilty of treason and decide to hang him.

After Si and Shorty rescue him from the jail, he begins
to discover a "wonderfully new and strange world" (p. 191)
around him:

Their' dress, their' manners, their' actions, the

ways in which they were busying themselves, had

no resemblance to anything seen on the prosaic

plains of the Wabash in his half-century of life

there. The infantry sweeping over the fields in
endless waves, the dashing cavalcades of officers

and staffs, the bewildering whirl of light

batteries dazed him. Even Si awed him. It was

hard to recognize in the broad-shouldered, self-
assured young soldier, who seemed so entirely at

home in his startling surroundings, the

blundering, bashful hobbledehoy boy of a few

months before, whose feet and hands ‘were

constantly in the way, and into everything else
that they should not be. (p. 192)

246
The Deacon discovers that Jed Baskin, a minister's son, is
not only playing eucher and gambling but stealing, that the
storekeeper is selling whiskey to the men disguised in cans
labeled cheese, molasses, and peaches, and that his own son
may be engaging in petty larceny. To his own dismay he
finds himself swearing and wondering, "What'll we do with
them when they git back home?" (p. 209)

One evening, the Deacon loses all of Si and Shorty's
cooking utensils and equipment. The boys are unable to
contain their laughter (p. 211). Si and Shorty had been in
the army long enough "to regard everything that was not held
down by a man with a gun and bayonet as legitimate capture"
(p. 128). They tell the Deacon not to worry as they unroll
their overcoats in a way that would be suspicious to another
soldier.

Within a short time the boys are able to produce enough
utensils to prepare the lavish. meal they had. carefully
rolled in their army overcoats: "A small sugar-cured ham, a
box of sardines, a can of peaches, and a couple of fresh,
soft bread developed" (p. 212). A change from the usual
hard tack, pork and coffee. The Deacon is immediately
suspicious, but Si says, "eat what is set before you, and
ask no questions, for conscience's sake, Pap That's
what you used to tell me" (p. 213). The Deacon answers,
"Si, the receiver's as bad as the theif. I won't touch it"

(p. 213)

247

Si argued if the food spoiled "that'd be a sin." The
Deacon is extremely hungry, the meal is appetizing, and

the argument was sophistical. I'll take it, Si,

said he with a sigh. I don't wonder that the

people down here are all rebels and all that sort

0' thing. It's in the air. I've felt my

principles steadily' weakenin' from the time I

crossed the Ohio River. (p. 214)

McElroy's sketches of army life are comical and
entertaining, but they also reveal a side of army life that
would not be tolerated in civilian populations. But these
soldiers are being asked to adjust to extra-ordinary
circumstances for the love of country, so the old rules of
social conduct can no longer apply: they are isolated from
the civilian community, living an almost animal-like
existence, and killing for honor and glory in the name of
patriotism. John McElroy does not condemn their behavior
or condone it, but he does applaud their bravery and their
service to the Union army.

In The Whirlwind (1902) by Rupert Hughes, John Mead is
a mixture of the old Sir Walter Scott formula of the romance
hero and the new realistic theories. John is not from an
aristocratic family; his early life is filled with struggles
and uphill battles. The first time we meet John Mead, he is
a stowaway on the back of a run-a-way carriage. His feet
are dirty, his back is red with welts and his clothes are
more like rags with holes in them. The aristocratic woman

riding inside the carriage observes the boy and decides he

must be the son of a drunkard and shiftless brute.

248

John learns at an early age the power that exists in
literature and decides he wants to go to school. But school
costs money, and money is something unheard of in the Mead
household. With the support of his mother and his neighbor
uncle Elkanah, John is able to overcome some devastating
obstacles, eventually graduate from school, become the
town's school teacher during the day and study the law at
night and on the weekends.

It is his education in the law that starts his
elevation from the baseness of his early life, but his
career does not begin until the war starts. John knows that
success in the nfllitary will give his law career the boost
it needs, so his motives for heroics on the battlefield are
not all altruistic or patriotic. His heroics on the
battlefield move him rapidly up the military chain of
command, and he becomes the youngest general in the Union
army.

In Atlanta, with General Sherman before he begins his
infamous "March to the Sea," John visits his aristocratic
friends: Alabama June Muir and her aunt, Mrs. Peyton. Mrs.
Peyton complains about the poverty in the South the war has
created:

Oh, Kyunnel Mead, there's no use of ouah denyin'

that yo'-all have defeated us .... The old days

of the So'th are oveh The best families,

that have reared gentlemen of culture and leisure,

and of refinement, will have to stavue, or descend

to trade or manual labouh, and every kind of
degradation. (p. 367)

249
John argues that the old South believed that idleness, a
profession or the management of a large estate were the only
fit occupation for a gentleman but that God's gentleman, the
world's gentleman, and the gentleman of progress and
achievement

is the man that is willing to work, and wants to

work, and does work; the man that is ashamed to

have anyone work harder than he does, is ashamed

to be idle, ashamed to let anyone else lift a

heavier weight, or turn out a better job than he

himself can; ashamed to let anybody else do his
work for him, unless at the same time he is doing
something else still more important, and is paying

the other fellow a proper wage and a proper

respect. (p. 368)

The two concepts of the gentleman--"the true gentleman"
of hereditary rank, privilege, and wealth and Jefferson's
"natural gentleman" who possesses talent and virtue--have
appeared in American Literature for nearly two centuries.
James Fenimore Cooper believed that "justice and democracy
demanded the practical recognition of the innate
aristocracy of talent and intelligence."1 Mark Twain

attacked Sir Walter Scott as dangerous to American

readers for his 'deference to hereditary rank,‘ to

the prejudice of 'mere feudal and conventional

laws, which had their origin in force, and are

continued by prejudice and wrong.‘
Scott's romantic hero is the gentleman soldier who comes
from hereditary rank based on a feudal monarchical system.
High birth, which means privilege and property, is
essential. In many of the old romances, only the knight or
the aristocrat is capable of the heroics and ability John

Mead displays on the battlefield. Men from John's

250
background were servants.

As Rupert Hughes chronicles John Mead's life from his
early struggles through his later successes in the law, the
military, the U.S. Congress, and the Senate, John Mead is in
direct contrast to Sir Walter Scott's concept of the
romantic hero, or the true gentleman on the battlefield.
John's accomplishments are the result of his innate talent,
intelligence, and. determination to lift. himself and. his
mother out of their baseness. John Mead, like Abraham
Lincoln, represents the classic example of the Jeffersonian
and Cooper's natural gentleman.

The Southern soldier, mostly called "Reb" or "the
Rebel," is the antithesis of the Northern soldier. In Eye
Southerners (1903) by Cyrus Townsend Brady, Boyd Peyton is a
Southern officer in the Union navy who remains loyal to the
old flag. Although he is fighting for the North, however,
he is the embodiment of the Southern hero in romance
fiction.

A graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis,
Maryland, he has just returned from a three-year cruise in
the European and North African waters. His physical
appearance immediately betrays him as a Southerner. His
appearance is gentle and his aspect is dreamy. Upon
meeting him the first time, one would think he was a poet,
an artist, a musician--anything rather than a man of action.

His movements [are] easy and graceful. He [holds]
his head high, and [has] about him that air of

251
inborn authority peculiar to the Southern
slaveowner and gentleman, which his naval rank and
position had served to emphasize. (pp. 6-7)

Boyd was away at sea when the political fever was
following the comet of secession across the Southern States.
When he is asked to join the Alabama battery, he begs his
family for time to think it over. Boyd's father becomes
upset at his hesitation and his need to think things over,
but he understands. He tells Willis, his younger son, that
it is a serious thing for those of us who have fought under
the Union flag to turn against it. Willis is excited by
the thought of war, but Boyd and his father know that war
can be horrible, and they know the Northerners will fight
hard. When Boyd leaves the dinner table Willis says,

If I know [Boyd] he'll never be false to his idea

of duty; but the trouble is, what is his idea of

duty? That's the point of the argument. (p. 91)

Boyd's hesitation and indecision convinces his family
and the people in his community that he is with them. When
the local Light Infantry comes to his house to make him
their captain, Boyd tells them that he would give his life
for them, but he cannot give up his honor. He argues:

I am an officer--with a magnificent gesture he

lifted his hand to his cap and removed it--of the

United States .... I have sworn allegiance to the

U.S. I must be faithful to my duty. Here is my

Commission as ensign, here are my orders to report

at Washington at once. I must go! I cannot be

your captain, gentleman, much as I appreciate the

high honor, because I must serve the U.S. (pp.

157-158)

The people want to mob him, but Colonel Peyton stops them:

252
"The contempt of friends, the hatred of acquaintances,
repudiation by his father and mother, and by those who love
him will be enough" (p. 158).

The Southern soldier is generally based on the old
formula for the romantic hero unless he is a Southern poor
white or a mountaineer. He is usually from the top rung of
the social ladder. His neighbors call him an aristocrat
while he thinks of himself as a cavalier. He is either the
master of a large cotton, sugar, or tabacco plantation, or
he will inherit the family plantation one day. He can be
quick-tempered and dangerous, but he is usually
characterized as mild and gentle. He is skilled in the use
of weapons and can handle himself well in either the hunt or
the duel. He is proud of his ancestors and can usually
trace their gallantry' as soldiers back to the .American
Revolutionary War. Attending the military academy is
essential to the members of his class, so he has probably
graduated from west Point or a similar institution. He is
full of pride and is passionately patriotic. As an officer
and a gentleman, he is always brave and gallant on the
battlefield. Although he has been known to experience fear
before his first battle, his inherent pride, instilled in
him after many years of conditioning, enables him to
discipline himself against any emotion or action that will
bring dishonor to himself or to his ancestors. In the

tradition of the old romances, the blood of his ancestors

253
will not allow him to run.

Some of the authors extend this pride to the entire
army. In John William Fox's The Little Shepherd of Elysium
Cem_e (1903), when one of the soldiers says there is no
discipline in the Southern army, Richard Hunt, a Southern
officer from Kentucky says, "They don't need it, they are
born fighters. Pride and patriotism keep them true" (p.
276) . In The Patriots (1906), Cyrus Townsend Brady says
that the Army of Virginia surpassed its opponent in one
thing: "The quality of its leadership" (p. 70). On the
slope of Seminary Ridge, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Brady
says, "The valour they showed marked them as gods rather
than men" (p. 92).

A similar quality is frequently attributed to General
Lee. Sometimes he is characterized as almost godlike, and
his soldiers almost worship him. This godlike description
of a historical figure was a standard in the earlier
romances, but as realism became more mainstream, these
figures also began to take on more human characteristics.
With the exception of Mr. Lincoln, General Lee is the only
historical figure in this decade who is still characterized
with reverence.

In The Patriots (1906), we are told that Lee's greatest

 

fault is his undue leniency. When Grafton is detailed to
take an urgent message to General Stuart, he stops to

protect his wife from a band of guerrillas. In choosing

254
chivalry over his duty as an officer in the Confederate
army, the Federal officers must arrest him when they drive
off the guerrillas, and his wife must get the message to
Stuart to protect his honor. When Grafton admits to General
Lee what he did and says I would do it again, General Lee
understands and excuses Grafton's behavior, but he puts up
his hand and says reprovingly,

there speaks the Cavalier .... It's not the way
battles are won and causes established. (p. 300)

The Southern hero prizes his honor and what he
considers his duty above all else, including the love he
feels for his family and his sweetheart. In The Patriots
(1906), Ariadne says, "You don't know the gentlemen of
Virginia ... they prize honor above everything; even love."
(p. 138)

In The Welding (1907), General Lee takes an emotional

 

and torturous walk through the streets of Washington D.C.
one night as he tries to decide if he should fight for the
principles he believes in or fight for what he believes is
his duty. In the end, he decides it is his duty to defend
Virginia.

Each soldier must decide according to his conscience
what his duty is. Lee resigned his commission in the Union
army, but Admiral Farragut and Boyd Peyton in _Tge

Southerners (1903) and Gordan Clayborne in The Claybornes

 

(1902) decide it is their duty to remain loyal to the old

flag because of their solemn oaths of allegiance to the

255
United States to defend and protect the Union. Gordan
Clayborne tells his father and his brother: "I was
educated at West Point. I have taken an oath of allegiance
to the Government. I must not violate it" (p. 11). Gordan
Clayborne's younger brother, Clifford, challenges him to a
duel and says: "By God, sir, I would violate it if it came
in conflict with my duty to my State" (p. 11).
Concerning duty and friendship: In The Welding (1907),
Jack Clinton, the Union soldier, tells his friend David
Twiggs, the Confederate soldier, that he prays to God they
never meet until the war is over. But David answers: we
will both do our duty "whether we come face to face or never
meet" (p. 265).
In The Battle-Ground (1902), Ellen Glasgow follows the

basic formula for creating the Southern gentleman, but her

hero is more human than most . Dan Light foot has been
pampered and spoiled: The Northern concept of the work
ethic is not a part of his code. He is use to having
others do for him. He is not entirely free of class

prejudice, although he is sympathetic to the plight of the
slave. He would rather have joined the cavalry instead of
the infantry, but he refused to ride on the Government's
"hacks" (p. 251). His friend, Bland, says, "so you came
into the infantry to get court-martialled" (p. 251).

Dan argues that he didn't join the army "to be hectored

by any fool who comes along." He says, that fellow Jones

256
thinks because he happens to be Lieutenant that
he's got a right to forget that I'm a gentleman
and he's not. (p. 251)

Glasgow remarks that during the early years of the war in
the Army of Northern Virginia, "the question of rank
presented itself only upon the parade ground, and beyond the
borders of the camp a private had been known to condescend

to his own colonel." As the Governor explained,

A gentleman fights for his country as he pleases,
a plebeian as he must. (p. 308)

When Dan complains to the Governor about military etiquette
the Governor listens and says laughingly, "show me a
volunteer and I'll show you a grumbler" (p. 308).

As the war drags on much longer than anyone imagined,
Dan's matures. He learns to do the things that he must do.
Near the end of the war the Governor tells Dan his Colonel
"gave [him] a fighting record that would do honour to the
Major" (p. 307). The Governor is eager to compliment Dan
after remembering his mental state after First Manassas.

Dan was appalled at the killing and the number of dead
men, and dying men left on the battlefield. And even more

appaled when he heard the] Colonel call it a "glorious

victory." The Governor was observing Dan and understood.
He said:
It's your first fight ... and you haven't learned
your lesson as I learned mine in Mexico. The

best, or the worst of it, is that after the first
fight it comes easy, my boy, it comes too easy.
(p. 273)

257

Endnotes

1. Edwin Harrison Cady, The Gentleman in America (New
York: Syracuse University Press, 1949), p. 54.

2. Cady, p. 115.

Chapter x

unconventional Soldiers: Spies and Guerrillas

The unconventional soldiers were as necessary to the
armies as the officers and the men in the ranks. The spies
were usually enlisted soldiers who worked for both armies.
All armies and generals used them but it was a precarious
enterprise. If they were caught and found guilty, the
sentence was "an ignominious death [by hanging] and a

"1 Sometime the guerrillas held regular

tarnished name.
enlistments, but this was the exception. Most of them were
not amenable to army' discipline or regulations. Their
activities usually extended beyond their military duties to
crimes and outrages against the civilian population.

Because of the sentence of death and dishonor
associated with spies they were rarely romantized although
in The Spy (1821), James Fenimore Cooper took issue with the
dishonor attributed to the spy:

He who fights, kills and plunders is honored; but

he who serves his country as a spy, no matter how

faithfully, no matter how honestly, lives to be

reviled, or dies like the vilest criminal! (p.

324)

In The Crisis (1901) Winston Churchill says:

Balzac remarked, 'to be a spy was to be a

patriot.‘ [But] heads are not so cheap in our

Anglo-Saxon countries; passions not so fierce and
uncontrollable. (p. 358)

258

259
In this decade of fiction, the adventures of the spy are
romanticized in only two novels: With Lyon in Missouri
(1910) and in the Knights in Fustian (1900).

In With Lyon in Missouri (1910) by Byron Archibald
Dunn, Guilford Craig, the son of one of the wealthiest men
in Missouri decides, to become a spy for the Union army.
Guilford is young, has just read a book about spies and
thinks, "it's just grand" (p. 180).

Guilford detests slavery because of the harm it brought
to Hannah, his foster slave mother. He wants to do the
South all the harm he can to avenge her death. Unlike most
spies, Guilford spies not for self-gain or for love of
country.

When Guilford discusses his plans with Lawrence
Middleton, the romance hero of the novel, Lawrence's
immediate response is, "That's dangerous business .... What
put that in your head?" (p. 180) To Lawrence, "the word
'spy' had a hateful sound. It meant deceit, falsehood" (p.
179).

Guilford's information proves valuable for Frank P.
Blair and General Lyon because the leaders of the Southern
sympathizers confer with his father and speak openly before
him. Guilford tells Lawrence, "You ought to hear me hurrah
for Jeff Davis, and curse the Yankees!" (p. 183) Lawrence
shivers at the thought of Guilford's duplicity.

With Lyon in Missouri (1910) falls under the juvenile

260
novel series about the Civil War, so it doed not express the
harsh judgments usually made against spies. Guilford is
successful in helping General Lyon and in avenging Hannah's
death. The novel's romantic hero is Lawrence Middleton, not
Guilford, although his various disguises and narrow escapes
are adventurous, entertaining, and romanticized.

In Knights in Fustian (1900), treason dies hard in
Indiana. During the years 1863-1864, the mid-land states,
especially Indiana, saw the rise of the Knights of the
Golden Circle and the Copperheads, organizations which
encouraged treason against the Union government, its war
with the South and the draft.

Oliver Tapps is a special agent to the governor.
Although he is not the romance hero of this novel, he
becomes a hero of sorts when he helps expose the leaders of
the Knights of the Golden Circle. As a peddler, he is
somewhat reminiscent of Harvey Birch, the peddler in The Spy
(1821). Like Birch, he makes rounds to all the farms and
gathers information without alerting a great deal of
suspicion.

This novel does not follow the basic romance formula in
that its hero and heroine are not wealthy* aristocrats.
Frank Neal is considered 'upper' middle class by’ midland
standards. Lucetta Whittaker shows great ambition and
potential, but she is the product of shiftless parents. A

love interest plot runs simultaneously with the spy plot,

261
but neither interferes with the other. There are no real
battles.

When the Home Guard faces the potential uprisers, the
uprisers surrender. Most of the uprisers are unsure why
they are there and are completely unaware of the criminal
intent of the copperheads. It is called a bloodless victory
for the Home Guard, and the spying is justified from the
view-point of the Union supporters. The news of Mr.
Lincoln's assassination brings with it the realization of
the true meaning of domestic treason, and the influence of
the Knights of the Golden Circle in Indiana is broken.

In The Warrens of Virginia (1908), the spy episode is
less romanticized. Edgar Burton's superiors send him on an
errand to obtain a message from a Confederate spy, to
determine if the spy can be trusted. To Burton's surprise,
the spy is Alfred Blake, the man who challenged him to a
duel and called him a spy before the war. When Burton
receives the information he says, you are a man of capacity,
but it's a pity you are such a scoundrel. Blake argues:

I didn't inherit a plantation, I wasn't born in

the aristocracy of Virginia. I've got my way to

make. I'm a lawyer, you know, but I haven't any

aristocratic clients. (p. 195)

After Burton returns to headquarters, he asks General
Griffin if he trusts Blake. General Griffin answers, "no."
By profession he is a liar, traitor and a scoundrel. He's a

spy on both sides that's why the rebels let him come into

our lines and we let him go into theirs. Yet the lives of

262
several men were lost on both sides that day so a spy of
questionable reliability could bring a message to the Union
forces.

Alfred Blake's characterization is a mixture of good
and the weaknesses of humanity. He is not the romantic hero
type. As a lawyer, Alfred Blake was trying to make his way
in the world before the war by marrying someone like Agatha
Warren, Colonel Warren's daughter. When this failed, he
looked for other means. Blake placed his ambition and his
desire for success above the gentleman's concept of duty and
honor, characteristics that were essential to the social
class he wanted to enter. As a result, a talented young
man's desire for success drives him to turn against the
home of the woman he said he wanted to marry and the flag he
promised to protect and defend.

The romance hero of this novel is Edgar Burton, a
wealthy Nertherner. Most of the central characters are of
the planter aristocracy. The setting is in Virginia. The
usual historical characters--Mr. Lincoln, General Grant, and
General Lee either--have minor roles or they are mentioned.
The realism in this novel centers around the friction

between the professional classes and the planter's class.

The Guerrillas

James Fenimore Cooper's descriptions of the skinners

263
in The Spy (1821), have probably served as the model for
guerilla activity in American fiction. Cooper described
the skinners as "miscreants who plunder between both armies,
serving neither" (p. 287). A British officer argues: "The
rascals change sides so often, that you may as well count
their faces for nothing" (p. 374). Cooper's distaste for
them is obvious. He calls them nothing

more than savages; men who, under the guise of

patriotism, prowl through the community, with a

thirst for plunder that is unsatiable, and a love

of cruelty that mocks the ingenuity of the Indian-

-fellows whose mouths are filled with liberty and

equality, and whose hearts are overflowing with

cupidity and gall--gent1eman that are ycleped the

Skinners. (p. 283)

In the preface to The Patriots (1908) Cyrus Townsend Brady
quotes Dr. Samuel Johnson remark: "Patriotism is the last
refuge of a scoundrel" in reference to the guerrillas.

In this decade of fiction, the writers emphasized the
guerrillas' unauthorized activities, and crimes and the
atrocities they committed against the opposing army and the
civilian population. Historical figures like Kirby Smith,
Morgan, and Mosby are the exceptions. Guerilla outrages and
crimes against the civilians are never associated with these
men, although they are historically known for the havoc they
caused the Union army. In the fiction, they have a kind of
honorary status. They are not godlike figures like Mr.
Lincoln, or held in the same kind of reverence as General

Lee, but they are held in awe above the ordinary soldiers.

The guerrillas are often brutal in their crimes,

264
destruction of property, and outrages against women. They
are employed by both the Union and Confederate forces and
are usually rejects or deserters from both armies. Sometime
they are called ruffians, bushwackers, jayhawkers, or
outlaws depending on what part of the country they are
operating in. Their basic function is to cut the opposing
side's lines of communications, destroy their bridges and
railroads, and either capture or torch their supply wagons.
The outlaw bands, who are without any discipline or
accountability, are the ones who commit crimes against the
civilians.

In Old Squire (1903), Blackwood Ketcham Benson portrays

 

Mosby of Virginia, the historical figure most used in the
novels that use Virginia for setting and historical
atmosphere. He is described as thin and wiry with a sandy
beard. He shades his face with a soft black hat curved by a
great ostrich plume. He "is partisan, yet he is in
legitimate service" (p. 81). Mosby directs his enterprises
"against the Federals' lines of communications, in order
that a feeling of insecurity might prevail throughout their
army ...." (p. 81)

His band gathers at his call by night to overwhelm the
Federal outposts and "by day ... scatter and return to their
homes" (p. 3). His men never number more than two thousand.
Most of them are either lost from their regiments, or on

furlough because of illness or wounds. Some have left their

265
regiments, and a few maybe deserters from the Federal army.
He is generally successful with his small band of men where
larger numbers failed "because of the coherency of his small
body which would be composed of his best and most
experienced men" (p. 313).

In The Claybornes (1902), the notorious Union guerilla

 

is "Dad" Williamson. unlike some of the other guerrillas,
he is presented as an amiable, old father-like figure, but
he is feared by his enemies:

Pitted against men as reckless and fearless as

themselves, they fought the war out in their own

sweet way. Armed to the teeth, they never laid
their weapons aside during day or night ....

Williamson and his band slept in their boots with

their rifles by their sides, and cut up their

fried pork with their bowie-knives .... His name

was notorious in Richmond as a bushwacker and

Federal scout, and there was a price set upon his

head. This fact added to the fun. (p. 142)

In The Patriots ( 1906) the Union cavalrymen are so
disgusted by the guerrillas' behavior that an officer says,
"Those cattle disgrace our ranks. They're not enlisted, not
amenable to any orders, under no discipline, cowards!" (pp.
223-224)

In My Lady of the North (1904) Randall Parrish adds
comedy to his novel each time Jed Bungay, the little
mountaineer from the Virginia mountains, and his wife Maria
confront the guerrillas.

The most famous historical guerilla in these novels is
Jessie James. In Order Number Eleven (1904) by Caroline

Abbot Stanley, a young Jessie James describes a murderous

266
attack on a group of jayhawkers to Virginia Trevilian, the
heroine of the novel, as "glorious" (p. 273). The author
says,

Jessie James! It has been heard many times since

then, to the detriment of the State's good name,

but it was no more that day than John Smith. The

bandit of later years was a beardless boy, fresh

from the corn-field and the plow. He was taking

his first lessons in crime. (p. 273)
Between Quantrill and his guerrillas: "Wild Bill" Anderson,
Cole Younger, Jessie James, and the Jayhawkers, the
civilians along the prairie of Missouri had so much trouble
that Union and Confederate sympathizers had to forget their
prejudices and work together to survive.

In The Sword in the Mountains (1910) Jim Ed is a

slender boy of sixteen or seventeen, clad in

ragged gray, and with a seraph's face which held

the haunting beauty of some wretched girl mother--

the type familiar to anyone who knows the

characteristic scapegrace of the Southern rural

community. His cap set rakishly on his shapely

head his laughing, reckless, light blue eyes

kindled to fires of wanton deviltry, the village

terror was raised by the strange exigencies of war

to a power before which were tried the issues of

life and death. (p. 193)
It is Christmas Eve and the boy is anxious to see a
hanging. The leader of the guerrillas, the "bully in a
small mountain town, a purveyor for the most part, of stolen
meat," (p. 194) is leading the guerilla band to Vespasian
Seacrest's house, in Lookout. Mountain, to hang him. for
escaping from the Confederate forces. The boy watches "with
mounting impatience":

Some of Wheeler's Cavalry a piece back on the

267
road, and if they get up here they'll take this
business out of our hands and not let us have any
of the fun. I'll bet they lug the old skeezicks
on to headquarters. Hurry up. I want to see him
stretch hemp. I ain't never seen a hangin' yet--
we shot the other ones.‘ (pp. 194-195)

When the preparations are ready for the hanging, not
one of "that desperate band--men who made a pastime of
murder, and found pity not even for their own woes--" is
"willing to let his horse be used as a party to the
execution" (p. 197). When they decide to use Jim Ed's
colt, he yells indignantly

'I ain't got much religion about me, but I don't

ride no horse that helps kill a man Hit's
plumb bad luck. You take your hands off 0' my
nag, or I'll let daylight through ye.‘ (pp. 197-
198)

Vespasian's son, Champ Seacrest a Texas Ranger, appears
with his friends. The guerrillas' duty was to take
prisoners to the Confederate headquarters, not execute them.
The leader of the band is knocked over, and Champ frees his
father. Jim Ed begins "to curse with enthusiasm first the
man who had interfered in the fun, then his own leader" (p.
204).

When Vespasian returns to the mountains, he is a
Federal soldier. He describes to Delora and Salomy Jane
with "gusto perhaps more pardonable in him than in another"
(p. 235) how Wilder's men, Union soldiers, wiped out the
guerilla band that tried to hang him on Christmas Eve. In
protest Salomy Jane says:

'That little Jim Ed Provine ain't to exceed

268
seventeen years old,’ ....
'No, nor he never* will be .now,’ supplied

Vespasian cheerfully. 'And that's a good thing.‘

(p. 235)

In The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903), "the
Rebel sympathizers must pay for guerilla outrages" (p.
176). Previously only chivalry had been shown to the women
and children in Kentucky; but when the "active war [was]
over . . . every county [was] ravaged by guerilla bands and
their ranks [were] swelling with Confederates, particularly
those in the mountains" (p. 180).

Crimes and robbery are frequent occurrences. Daws
Dillon, becomes terror in the mountains and the Bluegrass.
Eventually a confrontation in the mountains occurs between
the Yankees, Rebels, and Daws Dillon's guerilla band that
pits brother against brother.

Chad Buford dreaded the confrontation with the young
men he grew up with in the mountains and the "settlement"
while Harry Dean was fearful of a confrontation with his
brother Dan Dean. But the Dillon twins, Yankee Jake and
Rebel guerilla Jerry, were actively searching for each
other.

The struggle in the Cumberland Mountains is fierce.
Dan finds himself in a struggle with a yankee who throws him
a knee-trick like his brother Harry use to try on him when
they were boys. Something about the yankee snaps and they

fall. Dan gets his knife and yells hoarsely, "surrender!"

and lifts his knife above the yankee's breast. The yankee

269
turns his face towards the fire, and Dan cries with horror.
He throws his knife away and springs to his feet. The
yankee opens his eyes and smiles faintly as he says,

'why, Dan, is that you? .... I thought it would

come . . . . ' The fratricidal war was being fought

out that daybreak in one little hollow of the

Kentucky mountains, at it's worst .... (p. 359)

Twenty yards away in another hollow, Rebel guerilla Jerry
and Yankee Jake, aware that they are blood brothers, are
still seeking each other's life in mutual misconception and
mutual hate.

William G. Kennedy's True Love Wins (1901) is the only
romance in this study that attributes some of the features
of the romantic hero to a guerilla leader. The author
describes a battle between Mercedos, the guerilla leader and
George, his Northern rival at Lookout Mountain in a chapter
entitled: "Battle of Lookout Mountain, and Duel Among the
Clouds" (p. 207).

Mercedos, finds himself trapped between an overhanging
ledge of rock and a spur of the mountain twenty feet below
and cries to his men, "Follow your leader. We die, but
never surrender!" He leaps, lands safely on the ledge
below, and the cry goes out, "Red Cap's men never surrender"
(p. 214).

As the last man disappears over the ledge, the Union
troopers give a shout of admiration for the daring act.
They rush to the side of the ledge, expecting to see them

dashed to pieces on the rocks below. But when they see that

270
the daring act has been successful, they raise their hats
and give a deafening cheer. Not caring to risk their lives
in pursuit, they stand and watch the guerrillas as they
disappear down the side of the mountain.

One of the troopers raise his carbine to shoot, but the
Captain strikes it from his grasp and says, I will "shoot
the first man who [draws] head on them, even if it [is my]
own brother. They have earned their liberty, and, by God,
they shall have it" (p. 214). As the guerrillas disappear
from view, the Captain exclaims: "Would to God I had an
Army of just such men. I would conquer the world!" (p. 214)

Mercedos, the leader of this guerilla band, is an
aristocratic Mexican whose mother was from South Carolina.
When talk of war between the states became serious, he
organized a guerilla band to help the Southern forces. The
plot centers around Mercedos' efforts to win back the
affections of a young lady either by treachery or force.
The real war in the novel develops when Mercedos discovers
that the lady has fallen in love with a Nerthern soldier.
The actual Civil War provides the background for the action,
adventure, capture, and escape episodes. By the novel's

end, he has taken on the features of the romantic hero.

271

Endnotes

James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy (New York: The Heritage
Press, c1963), p. 299.

Chapter KI

Disenfranchised Soldiers: Mountaineers, Negroes, and Women

The economic conditions in the colonies that created
the planter class, the small farmer, the poor-white, and the
slave system resulted in a caste and class system that
encouraged prejudice and withheld certain privileges and
rights from the mountaineers, poor-whites, Negroes, and
women.1 In keeping with the realists' theories--the new
influences of naturalism, the sociological novel, the novel
of social problems, and social criticism--some of the
romancers began to incorporate the social issues confronting
the period into the old romantic formula.

The treatment of the mountaineer as an individual and a
soldier, in this decade of Civil War romances, usually
involves some inference to the old caste and class system.2
Although by mountain standards mountaineers maintain a
comfortable existence, they are considered poor-whites by
the populations in the settlements. The reader gets to know
the pain this system caused Chad Buford from the Kentucky
mountains in The Little Shepherd of Kingdom.Come (1903), the
hostilities it engendered in the mountaineer Vespasian
Seacrest as a boy in the Tennessee mountains in The Sword in
the Mountains (1910), and the indignities it caused Pinetop,

a volunteer from the mountains of Virginia, when he joined

272

273
one of the more aristocratic regiments in the Army' of
Northern Virginia in The Battle-Ground (1902).

The mountaineers usually appear as types in the
literature of local color. But Vespasian Seacrest in 11112
Sword in the Mountains (1910), Pinetop in The Battle Ground
(1902), and Chad Buford in The Little Shepherd of Kingd_om
gepe (1903) transcend the inarticulate stereotype and
surface portrayals of the mountaineer to reveal a sensitive
and heroic side.

In The Little Shepherd of Kimdom Come (1903), John
William Fox compares the mountaineer's culture with the
"settlement of Old Kaintuck," and the natural gentleman with
the true gentlemen. The romance hero of this novel is young
Chad Buford, who is unaware that he is different until he
visits the "settlements."

The first description of Chad is Major Buford's, a man
Chad later discovers is his kinsman. Looking at Chad the
Major sees "shades of Dan'l Boone!" He is a miniature
pioneer with a long riffle and flintlock laying across his
lap. In contrast to Chad, the Major could have been a stout
squire straight from England--axcapt for the long stem pipe
full of corn-cob and a slight tilt to the brim of his
slouched hat which was only seen on the heads of
Southerners.

Believing Chad may be a descendant of his grandfather's

only brother, Chadwick Buford, the Major invites Chad to

274
live with him. Chad finds life quite pleasant with the
Major. The two quickly develop a mutual affection for each
other--espacially after Chad discovers the Major's fondness
for Ivanhoe and The Talisman. But, although everyone treats
him with kindness, prejudice is never far from the surface.
He admits with frankness that he is a waif, a woodscolt, so
people think of him as "poor white trash." But the Major's
influence and protection keeps their harshness in check.

Eventually the prejudice against Chad sends him back to
the mountains. As he travels toward the mountains, people
are kind to him and let him stay over night. The last home
is dark and crowded with children slovenly dressed. The
coarse food is strangely disagreeable to him. The strange
new shock meant the hills and home.

Chad Buford, who had spent all of his life in the
mountains, had no knowledge of class distinctions, or of the
differences between the two cultures. He remembers hearing
old Joel Turner refer to the Dillons as "white trash," but
he had never heard "poor" used with the term until he
visited the "settlement." It is not until Chad Buford lives
with the Major that he begins to discover his speech is
"quaint," his dress is different, and that the uncertainty
concerning the legitimacy of his birth can make the
difference between acceptance and rejection. Chad had known
hunger, abandonment, and loneliness, but he had never known

the rejection he experienced in the "settlement." No one in

275
the mountains cared who he was, they simply looked upon him
as one of "the wandering waifs that one finds throughout the
Cumberland, upon whom the good folks of the mountains do not
visit the father's sins" (p. 5).

The Major discovers Chad is his kinsman, with the help
of an octogenarian, and Chad learns that his mother was a
legitimate wife. At the moment of discovery, the author
says, Chadwick Buford, gentleman, after the lapse of three
fourths of a century comes back to his own. It may take
three generations to make a gentleman, but one is enough if
the blood is there, if the heart is right, and if the brain
and hand come under early discipline.

Chad makes a success of his opportunities, with the
help of Calab Hazel, the New England school master, and the
Major. When the political storm divides the sons of
Kentucky and sends them into two different political camps,
Chad heads for the banks of the Ohio and the recruiting camp
of the Fourth Ohio Cavalry; Although he joins as an
enlisted man, he advances rapidly up the military chain of
command.

Alice Mac Gowan's Vespasian Seacrest in The Sword in
the Mountains (1910) is an older mountaineer who has been
aware of the class distinctions and the term "poor white
trash" used by the people in the "settlement" for most of
his life. He is, however, self-sufficient, and there is no

indication of need or want. He is considered prosperous by

 

276
mountain standards; his living conditions are comfortable,
he has abundant live stock, fertile crop fields, a well-
built log cabin, and well-made homespun clothes. But he is
looked down upon because, instead of owning slaves, he does
his own labor.

Vespasian is an abolitionist, who has never been afraid
to voice his views.

He had resented the oppression of the aristocracy

above him. His brother might truckla to the

slave-owning class, might seek to align himself
with it; Vespasian, embittered, held scornfully
aloof from those to whom any man who did not own

slaves was a "poor white." (p. 425)

Only the woman close to him, Delora and Salomy Jane, know
the tender side of his nature. In the presence of the
aristocratic Mrs. Winchester and her daughters, he is at his
worst.

Haughtily conscious that this woman and her like

considered him a brute, the old mountaineer

traversed his own. breeding to live up to her
expectations. He [keeps] his hat on in her
parlors, and [answers] the few and simple
questions she [puts] to him with surly
brusqueness which contrasted with the frank,

unaffected bearing of Captain Gilbert (p.

256)

He is able to resist the draft into the Rebel army and
successfully escapes to join Mr. Lincoln's man in blue. As
the Federals grow in power and influence in Chattanooga,
Vespasian's character also grows. During the fall of '63 to
the and of the war, Vespasian becomes almost rich. "He had
acquired a share in a store on Market Street where a pair of

shoes sold for twenty-five dollars, and any suit of clothes

 

277
would bring fifty" (p. 353).

When the Federals arrest his Confederate son, Champ
Seacrest, for spying, Vespasian must make the difficult
decision to betray Mr. Lincoln's army to save his son from
hanging. It is an agonizing decision for Vespasian because,
during the two years he has worn the blue, he had matured
into his best: "A late flowering and an austere one, yet a
genuine coming into his own" (p. 424). Vespasian Seacrest,
the burly mountaineer from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee,

contamptuously classed as "poor white," long

hated, threatened, and exacratad as an

Abolitionist, called traitor, outcast, scoundrel,

and finally hunted down for his life, was come to

be a trusted soldier of Abraham Lincoln. (p. 425)

He helped the Federals re-establish the old flag; and he
was useful in advancing the plans of "Father Abraham--the
Great Chief--" a man Vespasian always considered a mountain
man, with whom it seemed, "he had more intimate connections
than with those nearer at hand" (p. 425).

Once Champ is safe, the thought of his betrayal to Mr.
Lincoln brings a "groan [to Vespasian] that [is] almost a
sob" (p. 425). He tells Salomy Jane,

If they hang me for what I done, it would be no

more than right, I reckon. That's not what hurts-

-hit's to think that I should have gone back on

the uniform I wear--me, a soldier of Abraham

Lincoln, getting a rebel prisoner off--that's

what's a-griavin' me. (p. 426)

In the Battle-Ground (1902), the aristocratic Dan
Lightfoot, comes to know at first hand the pain the system

that has provided him with a life of leisure has caused the

278
mountaineer and the Negro. Glasgow says,
Until knowing Pinetop he had, in the lofty
isolation of his class, regarded the plebeian in
the light of an alien to the soil, not as a victim
of the lavish society in which he himself had
moved; a society' produced by 'that free labour
which had degraded the white workman to the level
of serf .... In his sympathy for the slave ... he

had overlooked the white sharer of the negro's
wrong. (pp. 384-385)

Slavery had been an equal menace to men like Pinetop, but
when Virginia called, they left "their little cabins in the
mountains" and "tied the flint-locks upon their muskets and
fought uncomplainingly until the and" (p. 385). It was not
the need to "protect a decaying institution, but the
instinct ... to defend the soil" (p. 385). At first Pinetop
doesn't see how he is going to fire his musket: if they
came after the slaves he thought let them have them. Then
it comes to him in a flash: "Them folks have sat thar feet
on ole Virginny and they've got to take 'em off damn
quick!"
What I can't make out for the life of me ...

is how those boys from the other states gave that

licks so sharp. If I'd been born across the line

in Tennessee, I wouldn't have fired my musket off

to-day. They wan't a-sattin' thar feet on

Tennessee. But ole Virginny--wall, I've got a

powerful fancy for ole Virginny, and they ain't

goin' to project with her dust, if I can stand

between. (pp. 281-282)

Dan likes Pinetop he says, "there's no ruffling him."
He decides to teach him to read during their rest periods.

"Some of the [aristocrats] raised a row when he" joined the

company, but Dan's friend says, "where every man's fighting

 

279

for his country, we're all equal" (p. 255).

The Negroes

Since Cooper created the first black prototype, Caesar,
in The Spy (1821), there was very little change or growth in
the Negro as a character until Thomas Nelson Page created
the "Faithful Servant" during the latter part of the 19th
Century. Once the "faithful servant" image became popular,
the Nagro's role in American fiction increased
significantly. His character gained another dimension, but
it was simply a new stereotype based on the old one. Even
B. K. Benson's central character Squire in Old §gpire, 222
Romance of a Black Virginian, (1903), exceptional as he may
be, follows the basic stereotype of the male Negro slave.

Page was only seven years old when the war between the
states began. He was not old enough to experience slavery
or realize the sordid sides of slavery, so he created a
romanticized version of the Old South by using the ex-slave
to express the fictional legend of a past splendor. In
Images of the Negro in American Literature (1969), Theodore
L. Gross says,

His best stories--'Marse Chan,‘ 'Meh Lady,‘ and

'Ole 'Stracted'--recall the allegedly’ congenial

race relations which existed 'befoah the war,‘

when, from the point of the Negro, 'dyar warn' no

trouble nor nuthin'.'

Page's characterization of the "faithful servant" type

280
became a favorite with both Northern and Southern writers.
The favorite reconstruction formula became the Negro who
"alleviated his ex-master's poverty" or, if he experimented
with freedom, he quickly returned to his master, content to
remain a slave for the rest of his life. The noblest of all
the "Faithful Servants" was the one who refused to accept or
attempt freedom under any circumstances. Theodore Gross
argues,

If one were to judge the pre-war status of the

Negro from the fiction of [the Reconstruction

authors, Northern and Southern] one would be

convinced that the colored 4 man enjoyed rare
security in ante-ballum times.

For many years into the twentieth century, the faithful
servant characterization remained the most popular way to
portray the ante-ballwm Negro and the ax-slave. Even Afro-
American novelists like Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Charles
Chasnutt portrayed the myth of the "faithful servant" in
their stories that recreated the Southern plantation
traditions.

Novelists usually included at least one in every
Southern home. They were usually selected from the group of
house servants and they always placed the master's interest
above their own. If they were women, they had nursed two or
three generations of the master's family. If they were men,
they accompanied their masters, or their masters' sons to

the war as body servants or cooks with specific instructions

to watch out for their masters-~something most of them did

281
at the risk of their own lives. If their masters were
wounded or killed, it was their responsibility to see that
their bodies were returned home for burial.

In this body of fiction, the authors create an array of
faithful servants, most of them untempted by freedom. In
Order Number Eleven (1904), the faithful servants are Mammy
Dilsay and her husband Uncle Reuben. Mammy Dilsay is
vaguely reminiscent of Dilsay, the faithful servant in
William Faulkner's The Sound in the Fury (1929). In E
Carlyles (1905), they are Phoebe and Britannicus, In Te_xas_
(1905), they are Mammy Jane and her husband Uncle Tom. In

The Patriots (1906), they are Asa and Aunt Dessy. In The

 

Little Shepherd of Kixgdom Come (1903), Mammy Ailsie serves
the Dean family while her husband, Tom, works as the
coachman for Major Buford. The author tells us that Tom was
more tempted by freedom than his wife, but he remained on
the place, too old to take root somewhere else. All of
these "Faithful Servants" follow the same basic formula.
There are only three novels in this study--Manassas (1904),
Southern Buds and Sons of War (1907), and The Sowing of the
_Sgpgq (1910)--that reveal the disturbing side of slavery.

In The Battle-Ground (1902), Dan takes Big Abel to the
war with him. When it is Dan's time to split logs, he
assigns the task to Big Abal because he had come "out to
kill man, not to cut wood" (p. 248). As Dan watches Big

Abel splinter the logs with "powerful strokes brought into

 

282
play [by] the Nagro's splendid muscles," he says, "Big Abel
could whip us all, Bland, if he had a mind to" (p. 248).
Bland is a little irritated that Dan passed his work on to
his servant:

I worked like a darky hauling yesterday . . . but

when your turn comes, you climb a woodpile and

pass the job along. When we go into battle, I

suppose Dandy and you will sit down to boil

coffee, and hand your muskets to the servants. (p.

248)

Big Abel watches over Dan as if he were his nurseling.
He prepares his food, keeps an ample supply of bedding
available for his comfort, and protects his property. One
evening after a battle when Dan does not return to camp, Big
Abel goes searching for him on the battlefield. When he
finally locates Dan and discovers he is wounded, he picks
him up and carries him in his arms like a baby until he
finds the camp hospital. Sometime later Dan says, I should
have lost my very identity but for you, Big Abel,‘ he
observed gratefully, as he glanced round at the property the
Negro had protected (p. 280).

In Old Squire (1903), Benson does basically the same

 

thing in his creation of Old Squire, the faithful servant,
who attends his master's son during the war. Squire is
successful in his responsibilities until May 11, 1864 when
General Sheridan confronts General J .E.B. Stuart at Yellow
Tavern, six miles north of Richmond.

The fighting is fierce. The First of Michigan leads

General Custar's charge followed by the Fifth of Michigan.

283
Stuart's cavalry manages to hold off the Union cavalry, but
the First Virginia is in disorder, the ground is "spotted
with its best," and General Stuart is fatally wounded.

Joe Lewis looks for Squire to tell him their friends
are wounded. Squire goes looking for his young master
through a hail of bullets flying from both directions.
Eleven o'clock that evening General Sheridan and the Union
Cavalry march away from the battlefield. At sunrise, they
bury a soldier, and another body at the soldier's feet. And
Joe Lewis stands alone, weeping bitterly.

This scene takes place a year before the end of the
war. But, this description of the fall of old Squire and
his young master is a powerful image of the fall of slavery,
a decaying institution long outdated, and a social class
that believed it was born to a life of leisure by divine
right.

Old Squire is the most romanticized faithful servant in
this decade of fiction. The entire novel centers around his
loyalty to his master and Confederate friends during the
war. He never thinks of his own freedom and proves he is
more than shrewd when pitted against the Union troopers.
When Dr. Lacy, a Union physician, meets Squire for the first
time he calls him "a very ignorant old man." Usher, one of
Mosby's man and a friend of Squire, corrects him and says
that he is "the shrewdast old chap in the Confederate

States!" (p. 84). Later Dr. Lacy changes his opinion and

284
refers to Squire as a very remarkable man.

Squire's loyalty to the Armstrongs is the priority of
his life. He has been conditioned to place their needs and
the safety of their lives above his own life. This novel
affirms slavery and attempts to show the affectionate side
of slavery. B. K. Benson said that the novel was "not to
defend slavery--but to do justice to slaves" (p. vi).

It was decided at the beginning of the war by the North
and the South that it would be a white man's war. There are
no plots that include Negro soldiers in major or minor
roles, although Negroes participated in the Civil War as
enlisted soldiers in large numbers. After the Massachusetts
Fifty-Fourth Regiment was acknowledged by Mr. Lincoln for
its bravery at Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863, thousands of
Negroes enlisted in the union army as active soldiers. In
these novels the Negroes wear the blue uniform, but they are
never seen in active combat.

In The Sword in the Mountains (1910), the Negro as a
soldier is acknowledged: "When the negro troops came, a
folk unused to handling money, they made a purchasing class
to enrich any merchant" (p. 354). When Champ Seacrest
returns to Chattanooga, he discovers a little town bursting
with activity:

Everything assumed an air of brisk prosperity

brought down from Iowa and Pennsylvania, from

Michigan and New York. (p. 352)

"Indeed, the blue was everywhere, even on the backs of

285
negroes; and this, from the first time he saw it, had been a
wonder to the Texan" (p. 447).

In 12522 (1905) by Fannie Salph the heroine passes a
Negro soldier on the street after the war. It is Dick, a
former slave wearing a new uniform of blue and carrying a
gun; he tips his soldier's cap politely and passes on.

When the Negroes are too old to leave the plantations
and join the Union army as active soldiers, they are willing
to aid the Northern soldiers in anyway that they can. In
Southern Ends and Sons of War (1907) Pearson, a Confederate
soldier, discovers the Negroes are aiding the enemy when
they take him into their cabin and feed and comfort him.
The Negroes apologize for saying they' can't 'wait until
"Marsa Linkim" comes except one old man, whom Pearson
threatens. Undaunted and unafraid, the old man answers, "0,
Missus knows--an de obersear's done gone away, an' I's too
old tar change my 'pinions sah (p. 39).

While the North was enlisting Negro soldiers by the
thousands, the South continued to use them as laborers to
dig braastworks and trenches, or if the plantar carried his
servants to war with him, they cooked for him and did his
share of the camp work. In The Sowingiof Swords (1910) the
Texan says: "If the white men of the South can't do their
own fighting they'd submit to the yankees and be done with
it" (p. 95).

The closest a novel with Southern sympathies comes to

286
involving a Negro actively in the war is Blackwood Katcham
Benson's Old Squire, The Romance of a Black Virginian,
(1903). Because the Union troopers underestimate Squire's
shrewdness, he can scout for his friends, aid them in their
military activities, and help them escape from capture
throughout the war. He also cooks for them and nurses them
when they are wounded. When his young master is wounded at
Gettysburg, he refuses to leave him when the Confederates
begin their retreat. Old Squire calls himself a
"Confaddick," but B.K. Benson says,

Squire was no Confederate--he was simply an

Armstrong, a humble member of a family whose heads

had been gods and goddesses from their birth, his

*hierarchy of palpable divinities to whom he and

his father and his children's children were bound

by a fate whose justice was unquestioned and

unquestionable. (p. 62)

In The Warrens of Virginia (1908), Alfred Blake, the
Confederate spy, reports to Edgar Burton that General Lee
has asked Mr. Jefferson Davis to enlist Negroes as soldiers.
Lee has asked for a hundred thousand to a half million of
them and he is likely to get them. The Negroes would prefer
to win their freedom in the South, and it will mean trouble
for Washington. When Burton asks if the white soldiers will
revolt, Blake says no. They'll kick like steers for a
while, but they'll soon see that a reinforcement of a half a
million young Negroes means victory for them.

Besides, they're soldiers now The Army of

Northern Virginia is a fighting machine. They

have stop thinking. They have left all that to
General Lee. What he thinks they think. What he

287

orders, they are ready to do. Whatever he says
they approve. (p. 194)

General Grant did not believe that the Confederate
Government would arm Negroes. But years after the war was
over, he said that there was a sufficient enough possibility
of that happening to prompt him to hasten his plans.
Fearing a half million Negroes added to Lee's fighting force
would mean a new war, caused him to begin his final and
decisive campaign two weeks earlier than he had originally
planned.

The Women

Like the enlisted soldiers, the women in this decade of
fiction are a mixture of the romance formula and realism.
The Southern heroines continue to follow the old romance
formula. They are loyal and often show as much courage and
enthusiasm for the cause as the men. Sometimes the
enthusiasm is childlike in the beginning without any
awareness of the consequences of war. Women's issues and
the question of gender equality become apparent. Waiting
anxiously at home was the most difficult work of the war for
the most courageous of them.

During the early months of the conflict, the women's
enthusiasm and passion for the war manifested itself in
their abilities to inspire the man on to the battlefield.
In The Southerners (1903), Mary Annan becomes the symbol of

the South that confuses Boyd Peyton for a time until he

288
realizes that his duty and his honor lie in keeping his oath
of allegiance to the Union. In With Lyon in Missouri
(1910), on the day General Lyon marches his seasoned looking
soldiers to capture Camp Jackson, some of the Confederate
sympathizers contemplate surrender but a man says:

What! surrender without firing a gun? That would

be a disgrace. The woman of the city would rise

in wrath, and denounce Frost and his entire

command as arrant cowards. (p. 237)

In The Battle-Ground (1902), when the Confederate
soldiers march through the flat country to make their "Last
Stand," the women run "weeping to the doorways, and wave
empty hands" as they pass by. A girl "in a homespun dress,
with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair [brings]
out a wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and [passes] it
along the line."

'Fight to the and, boys,‘ she cried defiantly,

'and when the and comes, keep on fighting. If you

go back on Lee, there's not a woman in Virginia

will touch your hand.‘ (p. 406)

In The ‘Welding (1907), Margaret tells her' Northern
cousin and sweetheart Jack Clinton that if he doesn't fight
for the South she will have nothing to do with him. In Eye
Patriots (1906), all the Southerners leave Harvard in the
middle of the term except Phillip Grafton, who stays on to
complete his law degree. His fiancee, Kathleen of Old York
in Pennsylvania, assumes his sympathies are with the Union,

but when she discovers that he is still loyal to Virginia,

she is filled with anger. Kathleen tells Grafton, "I will

289
tear you out of my heart the same way you have torn your
country out of your heart" (p. 16). In The Welding (1907)
after the firing on Fort Sumter Annie Laurie says, "David
... my detestation of slavery and my love of the American
flag are woven in every fibre of my being" (p. 250). I
cannot change to your way of thinking.

George Washington Cable creates one of the few female
villains in Kincaid's Battery (1908). Flora Valcour, an
aristocratic young women living in New Orleans with her
grandmother, is not the heroine of the novel, but she is the
major complication along with the war, that keeps the hero,
Hilliary Kincaid, and the heroine, Anna Callender, apart
until the conclusion of the novel. When Kincaid and his
battery gather in Congo Square to board the freight train
for Virginia, many of the woman begin to cry in anguish.
Flora says:

Oh, let any woman cry who can ... I wish I could!
and verily spoke the truth. (p. 154)

Flora has no interest in the war except in how it will serve
her interest. She wants to be the mistress of the Brodnax
estate and does not care how she manages it, even if she has
to betray her people.

The question of women's rights and equality becomes an
issue for many of the women in this decade of fiction. The
fighting spirit rages just as high in their bloodstreams as
in the man. Consequently, these women find it difficult to

stay at home. The novelists are sympathetic to their

290
circumstance, but there is never any real acknowledgement of
equality between the sexes, although several authors show
that women were more than just knitters of yarn. In T_hg

Claybornes (1902), the rebellion

 

raged fiercely in the bosom of Regina Bowie; it

shone in her eyes, it tingled to the very tips of

her fingers as she struck out notes of defiance to

the North. Had she been her father's son, Colonel

Bowie would have had a son outrivaling him in hot

impetuous zeal for the cause. (p. 2)

In Knights in Fustian (1900), Mrs. Bowles is as much a
rebel and a copperhead as the men. She is an independent
woman, the kind men hate and women envy. She is deeply
involved with the men and their activities. Part of her
responsibility is to entertain the men's wives with the
pretext of making a quilt. To do this, she must tolerate
their gossip about their neighbors and rid them of their
"insatiable curiosity and eternal questioning" while their
husbands are meeting secretly to plan their rebel
activities. When the treasonable activities of the Knights
in Ridgely, Indiana are finally exposed, the Knights escape
to Canada, but old Mrs. Bowles stands her ground, defying
everyone from the constable to the governor. Mrs. Bowles'
loyalty to the cause is not the childlike enthusiasm most
often displayed by the younger inexperienced heroines. Her
enthusiasm is a mature passion and a dedicated
determination.

In The Patriots (1906) women are told "to suffer and

give no sign is the heroism of woman" (p. 164). In

291
Kincaid's Battery (1908) at a planning session in 1862 to
raise money' to buy' weapons for' General Beauregard, the
gathered woman are told that it is a gentlewoman's war.

In the Knights in Fustian (1900), women are told they
do not have the courage to take up martial arms, but Lucetta
Whittaker helps Tapp, the governor's spy, escape from the
Knights when they begin to suspect his mission.

Frank Neal, the romance hero, tells Lucetta Whittaker,
the romance heroine that he does not think war is a woman's
business. She replies,

There was never a war women did not feel

patriotism or enthusiasm for the cause. Women

play the cruelest part in a war. To receive the

dead and bury them from sight; to see the danger

and ruin that threatens all around and feel that

we are powerless utterly! (pp. 215-217)

The conflict between the two lovers is not resolved until
she makes it clear to him that he has ridiculed her ideas of
duty, impeached her loyalty, insulted her womanhood, and
cheapened her patriotism.

Frank is sorry for the anguish he causes her, but it is
not certain that he has changed any of his opinions. Frank
believes a women's mind ceases to develop after she reaches
the age of eighteen. He does not think a women's mind is
equal to men's but he believes women should be educated.
After the war, he wants to study law and become a part of
the national legislature and he knows that an educated wife

will fit well into his ambitious schemes for the future.

In The Whrrens of Virginia (1908), Agatha Warren, the

292
daughter of Colonel Warren, "was accustomed to leave all
questions of final, definitive decision to the superior
judgement of her masculine relatives" (p. 94). When the war
comes and she is left alone with a young brother not yet in
his teens, she discovers she can run the plantation as
efficiently as they did.

In The Battle-Ground (1902), in Chapter V, entitled
"The Woman's Part," Betty and her sister, Virginia, watch
the Governor's regiment as it marches down the street near
Manassas. For the moment she wants to go with the army.
She believes her courage will "[flutter] upward as bravely
as the flags."

It was not the sound. of the cannon that she

dreaded, nor the sight of blood--these would have

nerved her as they had nerved generations back--

but folded hands and the terrible patience that

are the woman's share of the war. The old

fighting blood was in her veins; she was as much

the child of her father as a son could have been;

and yet. while the great world over there 'was

filled with noise, she was told to go into her

room and pray! Why, a man might pray with his

musket in his hand, that was worth while. (p. 286)
Ellen Glasgow tells us that Betty is made of the stuff of
soldiers. But the society tells Betty that she must adhere
to the gentlewoman's code of conduct.

In The Sword in the Mbuntains (1910) the aristocratic
Jerome Winchester's daughter becomes over-wrought when the
desperateness of the war becomes to much for her. She says,

'This war has done dreadful things to people--

perfectly loathesome things! It's like a

hideous nightmare .... I wish I were a man, so I
could have gone and fought and got killed--as

293

father did.‘ (p. 312)

Some women demonstrate courage and loyalty. In
Southern Buds and Sons of War (1907) by William Henry
Winslow many Southern women "mistook treason for courage"
(p. 311). In The Little Shepherd of Kingdo- Cme (1903),
Margaret Dean refuses to take down the rebel flag and must
be warned not to provoke the Federal authorities. In fig
Crisis (1901), Mr. Lincoln says Southern women have helped
prolong the war about three years. "And yet we must save
them for the nation's sake." (p. 494)

In The Patriots (1906), Ariadne displays unusual
courage when she saves her husband's honor and General Lee's
Army by getting a message through to General Stuart.
Grafton tells her that the fate of the Confederacy depends
on her. Ariadne conceives a plan that successfully gets her
into the Federal lines and eventually to Stuart.

In With Lyon in Missouri (1910), when General Lyon
captures Camp Jackson and the Union soldiers are ordered to
fire on an attacking mob, panic and fear begins to spread
over the city of St. Louis. Fearing the Dutch soldiers will
kill them, the secessionists begin leaving town in a frenzy.

When Lawrence Middleton arrives at his home, he finds his

uncle packing. But his aunt Clara is not in favor of
leaving. She says it is too much like cowardice;
Southerners would not do this. Lawrence says, I am glad

Southern women are not in the army; if they were, there

294
would be no hope for the Union.

Only two women in this decade of Civil War fiction have
regular army enlistments: Colonel Regina Bowie of Virginia
in The Claybornes (1902), and Private Martha Parting of New
England in The Sowingggf Swords (1910).

Major Regina Bowie, also known as Flora Dowd, the
Confederate spy, holds a commission in the Confederate army
signed by President Davis "for valuable service."
Passionately for the South, she will stop at nothing to aid
its cause. The famous bushwacker Ned Williamson is looking
for her because she is riding his horse. He says, she has
played old Ned in more ways than one" (p. 162). The
Union army is looking for her; General Grant says she "has
caused more havoc than a troop of horses."

In The Sowing of Swords (1910), Martha Parting is a
private in the Union army, but she is not romantized. None
of her comrades know she is a woman.

When the Union and Confederate forces confront each
other on the Catoosa plantation just outside of New Orleans
Hannah Parting, the New England governess, learns about a
Union boy who fought like a lion. The surgeon sends for
Hannah because the Union boy wants to speak to the Northern
governess. He says, the boy would rather die than lose his
arm.

When Hannah enters the room, she discovers the boy is

Martha Parting, her sister. Martha says if there had been

295
love in our home I would not have run a way.

I never left home because of the poverty or the

work. I was strong and did not mind work. I fled

from the eternal sermons, the horrors of Jonathan

Edwards. (p. 347)

Hannah wants to call the preacher, but Martha says,
"no" the preacher is Jermyn. When I ran a way, I went to
Jermyn's house. He is father's twin. It was the same
Jonathan Edward sermons and long prayers morning, noon and
night--and between the two preachers and another man, "I
fell into the pit" (p. 346).

Hannah leaves the room for a moment to find the
preacher. When Jermyn enters the room, Martha reveals her
identity, lifts the cord, which is tying the artery off in
her arm, and drops it on the bed. Suddenly a gush of blood
rushes out of her arm in a torrent, and she falls back
lifeless.

The last time Hannah saw Martha, they were on the same
steam boat headed for New Orleans. Martha was accompanying
a Union officer. When they reached land, Martha hailed a
carriage and told the coachman to "drive on!" when Hannah
called out to her. In dismay Hannah pondered:

And this was my sister, this painted and bedecked

creature, this woman of pious Puritan parentage,

this one of Ebenezer Short's brightest Sunday-

school scholars! (p. 191)

Many Southern women demonstrated their support for the

cause and the war by becoming spies for the Confederacy.

Unlike the men, who spied, there are no dishonorable

296
associations with the women. 'Their' episodes are
romanticized and viewed as heroic adventures for woman.

In The Carlyles (1905) the infamous Molly Ball alerted

 

the Confederates to the date the Union army planned to
invade Virginia for the First Bull Run. Charlotte Oliver of

Mississippi in The Cavalier (1901), has close ties with the

 

Confederate camp in Copiah County, Mississippi. She is
married to a man who shows sympathies for the Union and has
no idea that his wife is also known as Coralie Rothvelt, the
notorious Confederate spy.

In The Counterpart (1909), Evelyn Preston, a young
woman from a prominent family in Washington, is the rebel
spy. She makes her tours of the Union camps to gather
information and sympathizers to aid her cause. In M
(1905), Texas Marshall smuggles medicine and other supplies
through the Union lines when she learns her father is ill in
the Confederate services at Vicksburg. In The Master of
Warlock (1903) Agatha Ronald develops an efficient spy
network composed mostly of women who smuggle information and
medicine into the Confederate lines.

Middle-class women, poor~whites, and Negro slaves are
the most realistic characters. In The 4§word in the
Mountains (1910), Salomy Jane is the hired help for
Vespasian Seacrest, the mountaineer, and his young son Champ
Seacrest. She is the white image of the "Faithful Servant."

She shows no outward courage, but is capable of great

 

297
physical and emotional strength when she must protect Mr.
Seacrest or her nurseling.

Salomy was never at a loss with men; she might

have been a wife of long years and the mother of

many sons, to judge by her familiarity with the

point of view masculine, her absolute wantonness

in serving it. (p. 218)

Sappho, the black "Faithful Servant" in The Warrens of
Virginia (1908), "owned the Warren place and its people ...
[she] had been Mammy to everybody" (p. 99). Like all

faithful servants, Sappho rejects freedom. She argues:

I never seed a free nigger in my life dat wasn't
hungry an' ragged an' desrespectable. (p. 299)

In My Lady of the Worth (1904), Maria Bungay displays
the same kind of courage and stamina that Mrs. Bowles shows
in Knights in Fustian (1900). But her episodes of courage
provide the source of comedy in this romance, because she is
a poor mountaineer from Virginia.

In The Welding (1907) the final resolution to the
national crisis nears as the Union army approaches Richmond.
The historical romance nears its turn when Mrs. Peter
Marschalk evaluates the Confederate dilemma. She says:

Honey I ain't had no hope for our cause--not sence

I went t' Andersonville.... I knowed that day the

South warn't a-goin' to whip.... The Lord's been

a-fightin', but sence Andersonville he hain't fit

for the South. (pp. 347-348)

With the approaching evacuation, the flight. of 'the
Beverly slaves across the lines, and the increased

excitement in the Confederate capital, Mrs. Peter Marschalk

was in her element. Her directions were to! move the

298
aristocratic Beverly women out of the path of the Union
army. As the women collected their valuables, Mrs. Peter
Marschalk, a woman accustom to work, assumed all of the
responsibilities. There was work to be done and she did it.

There are only two women in this study who remained
openly unreconstructed: Regina Bowie in The Claybornes
(1902), and old Mrs. Bowles in the Knights in. Fustian
(1900). In The Southerners (1903) Cyrus Townsend Brady
added all Southern women to the unreconstructed class of
prison guards, politicians, non-combatants, and contractors.
He says those who

held and nourished the rancor, and forgive me--to

this class maybe added the woman. They are the

only unreconstructed class today. For this there

was a reason. The hardest of humanity's task is

waiting while others act. To sit passive at home
while the struggle is waged abroad ... (p. 191)

299

Endnotes

See Chapter V, The Old Caste and Class System for a
review of the economic conditions in the colonies that
eventually created the planter class, the small farmer,
the poor white, and the slave system.

See Chapter V.
Theodore L. Gross, ”The Negro in the Literature of the

Reconstruction,” in Images of the Negro in American
Literature, ed. Seymour L. Gross and John Edward Hardy

 

(Chicago: The University'of’Chicago Press, 1969), p. 74.

Gross, p. 77.

Chapter XII

The "Artistic Quality" and Historical value
of the levels in this Study

The American Civil War novels of the 1900-1910 decade
were written primarily the same as nineteenth-century
historical romances. The novelists were influenced by the
debates between the realists and the romancers, the new
thoughts in the sociological novel, social criticism, and
naturalism. They were also encouraged by the new age of the
best-seller, and the new vogue of the historical romances
that occurred between 1895 and 1905.

The Civil War as a subject: the causes, the passions
inspired by the causes, the soldiers, and the war itself
have inspired more novelists, historians, and readers than
any other historical era. More than two thousand Civil War
novels have been published since the 1860's. The outpouring
has been so great that these novels constitute one of the
largest sub-genres of the historical novel.

Between the years 1903 and 1917, an interest in social
problems and the new criticism began to prevail in American
fiction. The sociological novel, the novel of social
problems, and social criticism began to submerge the
romances and the naturalistic novels until America entered
World War I. Although Sir Walter Scott was still a major
influence among the romancers, their novels became

300

301
increasingly more realistic--especially in the treatment of
the soldier and the war's internecine character.

The real spirit behind the "new vogue of the
historical romances" was Robert Louis Stevenson. According
to Herbert Croly, he was one of the effective agents in the
restoration of the "intellectual respectability of the

"1

romantic and historical novel. Although. many’ of his

stories have some historical background, it was the romantic
rather than historical fiction that Stevenson preferred.2
He dedicated himself to the art of the romance and became a
master of the romantic story. His interest in the remote
captured the American imagination, and renewed feelings of
nationalism and patriotism. He elevated the romance to the
level of great literature perhaps even more than Sir Walter
Scott had at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Stevenson also rejected the theories of William Dean

Howells. He presented his argument in an essay called _A

Humble Remonstrance (1892) and Treasure Island (1883) became

 

his example.

Two works of criticism were major influences: William
Dean Howells' Criticism and Fiction (1891) and F. Marion
Crawford's The Novel—-What It Is (1893). William Dean
Howells called for minimized plots, the "truthful treatment
of material," and the ordinary even in its familiarity. F.
Marion Crawford aligned himself with the romancers when he

rejected Howells' theories of minimized plots and common-

302
place characters in favor of color, action, plot, and
character interest. He suggested that the novel was a
"pocket theatre" and its first object was to amuse the
reader.

Other factors influencing these novels were the rise of
scientific historicism, the application of historical
atmosphere, and the idea of the historical novel as a genre.
Charles Major, an American romancer, critic, and lawyer,
believed in the science of history, or the science of human
conduct. He believed history should be treated as a
science, "and not as a mere entertaining array of facts."
This could be accomplished if the historical period was
studied from the lower classes upward instead of from the
kings and generals downward.3

In 1897 Paul Leicester Ford, well known critic and
romancer, was the first to move toward a critical definition
of the historical novel. He reviewed his stance toward the
realists and wrote: "the events and characters [in a
historical novel] must be typical, not exceptional, to give
it the atmosphere which, to another generation, shall make
it seem more than a created fancy...."4

Other critics and novelists asked when does a novel get
to be historical. Professor Brander Matthews, Owen Wister,
William Dean Howells, and other realists believed the best

historical novels were the ones written during the time the

events were happening. But the romancers continued to

303
follow the time frame set by Sir Walter Scott's Waverley or:
Tis' Sixty Years Since (1814).

This decade of Civil War novels was written by the
first generation of writers at least a generation removed
from the war. Also, the country had experienced another
war, the Spanish-American War of 1898, in which both
Northerners and Southerners had fought together. With the
rise of nationalism, the martial spirit, and the increased
popularity of the historical novel, the Civil War as a
subject for the historical romance was treated in
significant numbers with more objectivity and less sectional
partisanship than the previous Civil War romances.

The Scott, Cooper, Simm's formula continued to have a
major influence on the American romancers and publishers.
The Civil War remained the most popular subject to use as
the national crisis with most of the old romantic
conventions in place. But this decade was different from
the previous ones. For the first time large numbers of
romancers began to incorporate some noticeable changes and
variations in the old formula. Most of the heroes and
heroines were still upper class and aristocratic, but they
were no longer flawless characters, or images of the ideal.
They became more than the embodiment and personification of
a quality. They began to assume more human characteristics.

The love story was still based on the courtly love

fashion, but the new romancers began to stress love,

304
manners, and costume over adventure (and 'violent. action.
Unlike the historical personages in Sir Walter Scott's
novels who always had minor roles, the new romancers varied
the size of their roles. This invited more critical
commentary from the fictional characters as well as the
novelists.

Many of the historical romancers in this study were
influenced by the new theory of scientific historicism,
sociology, and the new thoughts in naturalism and realism.
These influences are best seen in the portrayals of the two
opposing soldiers, the effects of the old caste and class
system, and in the treatment of the war--Stephen Crane and
Leo Tolstoy had provided them with the examples.

The approach to the war and its protean nature is more
realistic. War is no longer a tale of heroic adventure in
most instances. Many of the battle scenes are vivid
descriptions, especially those that treat the first battle
of the new recruit. His fear and complete disorientation
are realistic portrayals. The horrors of the battlefield:
the carnage, the waste and destruction, the aftermath of the
battle, and the soldier's realization that he is dispensable
and insignificant are educational as ‘well as revealing.
Also, the ineptness of generals, the corruptness of
governmental officials, and the conduct of the ‘war’ are
viewed with accuracy but with hindsight.

Most of the soldiers are types based on the

305
traditional romantic formula. But they always have some
distinguishing quality that sets them apart as individuals.
The aristocratic soldier is usually assigned rank, or he
will achieve it during the course of the war. But there are
a few exceptions in this decade. If he is not a spy, he
always acts according to his honor code.

The lower-class characters, usually the mountaineers
and poor whites, are still portrayed with local color and
realism. The mountaineer once characterized as the
inarticulate type begins to reveal a deeper and more
sensitive side of his personality.

Although most of the lower-class characters are still
portrayed with local color and realism, there are a few
instances where they rise, during the course of the war, to
the heroic proportions of the traditional Scottian hero.
This is achieved through the American concept of the natural
gentleman.

The slave does not become apart of the class system
until the war ends. Like the mountaineer, he is described
with local color and realism. But his character is often
romanticized along with the institution of slavery--
especially if he is the “Faithful Servant" type. Most of
the characters follow the same formula type. Only their
names are different, and they appear in different novels.

The aristocratic Southern women are also romanticized.

They demonstrate extraordinary enthusiasm and loyalty to the

306
Confederate cause. In many instances, their enthusiasm does
not take into account the death and destruction that come
with war. On several occasions they' rise above their
traditional roles for the sake of the national crisis--the
Confederate cause.

A few women, both Northern and Southern, become spies.
On occasion, they risk their lives to smuggle in medicine
and carry messages while the others engage in some form of
combat. These women are the exception. The majority of the
women are characterized as they experience the most
difficult aspect of the war--the holding of their hands
while they wait. With so many of the women assuming non-
traditional roles during the course of the war, the question
of equality and women's rights appears on occasion.

The novelists' point of view toward the Civil War are
generally depends on what section they are from. However,
both Northerners and Southerners reflected the idealistic
and patriotic traditions that prevailed in the country
before the war. But as the war drags on in the novels,
social commentary concerning the war and social criticism
concerning the generals, the government, and industry begin
to appear.

With the influences of sociology in this decade, there
are significant revelations concerning the nineteenth-
century sectional and social prejudices, class distinctions,

and the mental attitudes of these different classes.

307
Despite this form of realism, most of the Northern and
Southern romancers continued to follow the established myth
of the old South and the Southern traditions according to
the old romantic conventions.

Most of the heroes and heroines are either aristocratic
or respected leaders in their communities. However, from
the historical perspective, they are the ordinary citizens
of the nineteenth century when compared with the historical
figures like Mr. Lincoln, General Grant, General Lee, and
other prominent individuals.

The history books usually record the achievements,
experiences, heroics, and humanity of the historical
figures. But these individuals usually have minor roles in
the historical novel unless they are the subject of the
novel. Their presence in this decade of novels adds
historical atmosphere and authenticity to the Civil War
period, but these novels are primarily concerned with the
average citizen as he rises from obscurity to meet the
challenge of the national crisis.

Although the central character is the historical,
ordinary man, the nineteenth-century historical romance
formula calls for the heroic type. Because the reader will
follow his adventures and experience the national crisis
from his point of view, the hero must be able to meet the
challenge and overcome the obstacles placed in the way of

his achievement. And as he rises to meet the national

308
challenge, the American Civil War era and the social issues
confronting the period are re-created in an imaginative way.

When the hero and heroine rise above their historical
obscurity and ordinariness--perhaps for the first and only
time in their lives--they demonstrate the heroic
characteristics of the romance hero and heroine. As the
novel concludes, with the end of the war, the hero and
heroine return to their historical obscurity. But for a
brief moment in time, these fictional characters hold center
stage as they dramatize the writer's imaginative history and
renew, for the reader, the spirit of the nineteenth century
and the American Civil War experience.

The Civil War novels written from 1860 to 1925 were
patterned after the historical romance traditions of Scott,
Cooper, and Simms. Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Series had
taught the novelists how to blend the two disciplines, which
resulted in making history more readable and entertaining
for the general reader. The historian also learned from
Scott. He began to incorporate some of the literary devices
in his historical writings.

In 1846, George Henry Lewes wrote that the joining of
the two disciplines "may be excellent, provided the history
be good and the fiction good."5

In 1924, H. Butterfield suggested the marriage between
the two disciplines made the historical novel an unusual art

form. He likened it to an opera in which music, poetry, and

309
drama melt into each other to form a new art. "A historical
event is 'put to fiction' as a poem is put to music; it is
turned into a story as words are turned into a song."6

In an article entitled "Literature and History” (1904),

Professor Bury is quoted as saying: "History is a science,
no less and no more.... History is not a branch. of
literature . " 7 In 1966 Professor Russel B . Nye suggested

that "history and literature are branches of the same
tree"8 in that history re-creates and literature renews "the
universal elements of the human. experience"--ingredients
that are essential to the art of both disciplines.9

After years of debate, by the year 1925, most critics,
novelists, and historians agreed that the contemporary novel
becomes historical by the process of time, and that the
historical novel is a work of fiction set in a past age in
which the authors never lived or experienced.10 This meant
the age should be researched for the correct background and
atmosphere.

The appropriate manners, customs, religious practices,
dress, food, weapons, the arrangement of their dwellings,
methods of communications, the daily life of the different
classes that composed the society, "and the temper of the
classes towards each other" should be studied and sifted "to
get the essence of the spirit of the time" and its daily

life. But this information should not overshadow the story

or the characters. There should be an artistic balance or

310
the historical novel would either become a history book or
"a novel of the manners of the past."11

The art of these 1900-1910 Civil War novels is in the
story-telling. The Civil War as the national crisis becomes
the focus of the story or the background against which the
plot evolves. As the story unfolds, the crisis is viewed by
all the classes and members of the society. A few of the
writers focused most of their attention on the more literary
aspects of the story. Others were more involved with
scholarship and the recording of research--especially in
their descriptions of battle scenes. These scenes tended to
read more like Civil War battle histories than Civil War
historical romances.

Yet many authors achieved a balance between the
imagined and the actual. These novels have flowing
narratives, believable plots, rounded characters, accurate
details, historical atmosphere, and an entertaining story.
In these novels, the reader can participate in the past as
an objective viewer.

The best Civil War novels are the ones that achieve an
artistic balance between the fiction and the history. Only
the artist knows where one begins and the other ends. When
the authors created a good story, using the basic elements
of fiction, the novels have "artistic quality." If the
historical facts are accurate, the reader gains a feeling

for the past; if the reader gains some insight into the

311
past, the novel has value. According to Ernest E. Leisy,
the questions to .be asked concerning the
historical novel are: Is it convincing? Is it
artistically satisfactory? Does it fulfill the
requirements of its own aesthetic? If it awakens

our imagination to a lively sense oflfihe past it

has value, it enriches our experience.

Critics like Liesy, who are in favor of the historical
novel, argue that these novels educate the reader in the
human experience and stimulate his imagination while he is
being entertained. They believe the young can develop a
taste for history, the historian can be challenged on the
particulars of history, and older readers can experience the
individual in his changing characteristics from many
different centuries and as many different cultures.

The historical novel has its greatest value when the
reader is aware that he is reading a form of fiction mixed
with history. No one should expect the historical novel to
be a replacement for the history book; instead, it should
stimulate the reader to seek out the history books for more
information. At its best, the historical novel can
illuminate history and make the past come alive for its
reader» Although the best historical novelists try to
present accurate facts, the historical novel should not be
used as evidence because most novelists do not have the
trained eye of the historian. The trained historian
interprets and generalizes the facts surrounding historical

events.

The novelist studies the historical facts and uses his

312
imagination to fill in the blank spaces between the lines.
In so doing, he can particularize the historical event for

his readers.13

What he creates may or may not be true, but
what he writes is the result of his research blended with
his imagination. His work becomes an imaginative truth, or
the truth of fiction--a kind of truth that is unavailable to
the historian. Hopefully, the result of his research and
literary effort will give his readers a feeling for the past
and stimulate them to search further into the chronicles for
the hidden truths concerning the human heart and the human
experience.

The historical novel, the historical romance in
particular, like most genres or formula novels, has its
share of flaws and limitations. Imying to create a union
between the imagined and the actual is probablyone of the
most difficult tasks of this genre. It is this aspect,
along with the use of formulas to create characters and
develop plots, that most exposes the romancers to criticism.
There is also a danger that the taste for the romantic can
"be shamelessly exploited" when "the historical background
is used as an ornate stage setting, and the characters are
put into fancy dress."14

The most frequent criticism is that the use of formulas
limits the writer's imagination. According to Marjorie
Noel How,

the partisans of 'romantic' Art have always
boasted its freedom from formula and from external

313
restraint. The romantic writer is free to choose

his subject wherever he likes and to treat it in

whatever way he likes. The 'historical romance'

cannot be reduced to an abstract formula, like
that to which eighteenth-century critics tried to
reduce the epic poem; it is a fggm of narrative in
which there is endless variety.
Most of the romancers were well aware of the flaws and
limitations associated with the romance, because critics
were never shy about pointing them out.

The historical novel has been vulnerable to attacks and
adverse criticism since its creation. Although Sir Walter
Scott played a significant role in its creation, he was
never completely successful in. defending' its reason for
being. Consequently, the form that never had an Aristotle

16 or a William Dean Howells to

to explain its real nature,
defend its integrity as an art form, remains as vulnerable
at the end of the twentieth century as it was during the
nineteenth century.

For more than a century, the romancers have been
telling the critics that they are writing a different kind
of novel and that their fiction should be judged by the
standards for the romance instead of the novel. But most
critics continue to attack the romance using the same
critical standards set by William Dean Howells and Henry
James almost a century ago.

William Gilmore Simms argued that his works should not

be governed by any standard other than what had governed him

during its composition. Simms believed that critics were

314
too severe when they criticized him for not doing what he
never intended to do. In a letter to Dr. Samuel Henry
Dickson, he supported his view by quoting a verse from Pope:

In every work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend--

17

Simms always insisted upon a distinction between the romance
and the novel. He considered himself a modern romance
writer and argued that only when an author departed from his
own standard should he merit censure.

A few of the novelists, although historically accurate
in terms of events, changed the personal history of their
historical characters to advance the plot. An example of
this appears in Emily Lafayette McLaws' The Welding (1901).
McLaws has Alexander Stephens, the eloquent Senator from
Georgia, adopt David Twiggs Hamilton, a poor boy from
Georgia, to demonstrate his generosity and charity toward
others.

In actuality, Stephens had become famous for his
charity towards the slaves and the poor, but he never
adopted a son. He became the guardian of his younger half
brother, Linton Stephens. He had developed a strong and
sincere attachment for Linton and wanted to see that he was
well provided for. He also educated his brother's son and
helped others to go to college.

Although McLaws' plot is more intriguing, the critics
were beginning to frown on the distortion of historical

facts, events, and historical personages through the use of

315
poetic licence. The historical novelists were expected to
give a truthful presentation of a past age.

The 1900-1910 Civil War novel is not an intellectual
novel, but it renews the spirit and the human experience of
the times. Based on the theories of the realists, this is
not a decade of high literary quality. There is very little
analysis of character, development of motives, or themes in
these novels. But they will educate the reader about the
Civil War while he is being entertained with a story of
adventure.

These novels deserve a place in our literary history,
because without this decade of experimentation, the mature
war novel that began to appear after World War I might never
have been possible. Although most of the novelists
recounted the events of the Civil War without exploring the
meaning of the war, the novels have historical value because
they reflect the progress of historical method, the turn-of-
the-century political views, assessments, and
interpretations by ordinary Americans at least a generation
removed from the Civil War.

The popularity of these novels tells us a great deal
about the readers' taste and the society. We may safely
conclude that the general public still preferred the myths
and the romanticized versions of the events, passions, and
partisan views surrounding the Civil War. They were not

particularly interested in having their myths disturbed.

316

Although the 1900-1910 decade of Civil War novels is
experimental and in a transitional stage, the historical
romancers have collectively given us a view of the war that
we could not experience in the history books. They created
an artistic form that re-created the experiences of the
nineteenth century political turmoil, the war, and the
social issues that confronted the period.

The romancers illuminated and dramatized the historical
experience of the American Civil War through the use of
fictional adventures, characters, and plots. These literary
creations renewed the spirit of the nineteenth century and
captured the essence of the ordinary man's experiences,
sacrifices, heroics, and suffering. This was achieved as
the romancers moved beyond the historical facts, to
particularize the events by imaginatively exploring and
inventing certain possibilities for the gray areas of
history. The reader, through the suspension of disbelief,
accepts the writer's imaginative truths as a probe into the
horizontal progression of history, the human heart, and the

human experience.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.
15.

317

Endnotes

Herbert Croly, "Some Really Historical Novels," The
(ngp Vol 26 (July, 1903), p. 510.

Croly, p. 510.

Charles Major, "What is Historical Atmosphere?"
Scribner's Magazine XXVII (June, 1900), p. 752.

Paul Leicester Ford, "The American Historical Novel,"
Atlantic Monthly LXXX (1897), p. 721.

Helen Cam, Historical Havel (Great Britain: Historical
Association, 1961), p. 4.

H. Butterfield, The Historical level: An Essay
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, c1924,
Folcroft Library Edition, 1971), p. 42.

C. Litton Falkiner, "Literature and History," The
Living Age Vol 241 (June 4, 1904), pp. 622-623.

Russell B. Nye, "History and Literature: Branches of
the Same Tree." In Essays on History and Literature.

Edited by Robert H. Bremmer (Ohio: Ohio State
University Press, 1966), p. 159.

Nye, p. 141.

George Macaulay Trevelyan, "History and Literature,"
The Yale Review 14 (October, 1924), p. 119.

A. Schadé Van Westrum, "Mr. A. E. W. Mason and the

Historical level," The L552 Vol XXIX (November, 1904),
p. 284.
Ernest E. Leisy, The American Historical level

 

(Oklahoma: Oklahoma Press, c1950), p. 9.

George Macauley Trevelyan, "History' and. Fiction,"
Living Age CCCXIII (June, 1922), p. 565.

Helen Cam, p. 7.

Marjorie Noel How, p. 45.

16.

17.

318

Ernest Bernbaum, "Views of Great. Critics on the
Historical novel," XLI (PMLA, 1926), pp. 424-441.

William Gilmore Simms, The 'Yemassee (Connecticut:
College and University Press, c1964), p. 23.

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1901

Cable, George Washington. The Cavalier. New York: C.
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Kennedy, William G. True Love Wins. New York, London:
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319

320

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Benson, Blackwood Ketcham. Bayard's Courier. New York,
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King, Charles. The Iron Brigade. New York: G. W.
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1903

Benson, Blackwood Ketcham. Old Squire. New York, London:
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Fox, John William. The Little Shgpherd of Kingdom Come.
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1904

Brady, Cyrus Townsend. A Little Traitor to the South.
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Harrison, Constance Cary. The Carlyles. New York: D.
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1907

McLaws, Emily Lafayette. The Welding; Boston: Little,
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Shields, Samuel Jackson. A.Chavalier of Dixie. New York,
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Winslow, William Henry. Southern Buds and‘SOns of War.
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Wood, Lydia Cope. The Haydocks' Testimony. London:
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1908

Cable, George Washington. Kincaid's Battery. New York:
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Eggleston, George Cary. The Warrens of Virginia. New
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Travers, Libbie Miller. The Honor of a Lee. New York:
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1909

Chambers, Robert William. §pecia1 Messenger. New York:
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Coates, Joseph Hornor. The Counterpart. New York: The
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Parrish, Randall. My Lady of the South. Chicago: A. C.
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1910

Dunn, Byron Archibald. With Lyon in Missouri. Chicago:
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* McElroy, John. Si K1999, His Transformation from a Raw
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-------- . Si Klegg Thru the Stone River Campaign and in
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MacGowan, Alice. The Sword in the Mountains. New York,
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Meriwether, Elizabeth Avery. The Sowing of Swords. New

 

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Tomlinson, Everett Titsworth. The Young Blockaders.

 

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