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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1900)
H T THE Sixteenth Annual meeting of the Texas Stale Teachers’ Association, held at Dallas June 26, 27, 28 and 29, 1895, a splendid paper enti tled “Southern Literature,” by Mr. T. S. Minier, the able superintendent of public schools in Bryan City, Texas, was prepared, and was the first num ber on the programme. This magnifi cent address will repay you a hundrel times for the time spent in reading and considering the many suggestive and instructive thoughts contained in it. I know but httle about Southern literature, and l ave learne l that since 1 quit school. All the schools I at tended, and most of my teachers, w.:e i ntensely Southern, but'Southern liter ature had no place in the curriculum, and Sou’hern authors had no expoun ders. They were not mentioned ex cept, perhaps, incidentally. My read ers. histories, and in fact all my books, came from the North; they were full of Food and wholesome thought from classic Greece and Rome, from modern (ontincntal Europe, the isles of Great Britain, from the Northern States, but there was seldom a poem, a story, or an oration, from a Southern author. Why was it that the South d'd not have its ratio of representation in the fchool books and other publications in this country? Was it becau-e the South was financially unable? Fer ile soil, bounteous harvests, and v st wealth of slaves answer no. Nor was it for went of crlt :re, for the Southern gentleman was a classical scholar, th:' Southern lady a queen of grace and refinement. Was it for want of in tellectual vigor? The Gladstones and Bismarcks of this century have sa luted the vigorous thinkers of the South. Was it because the South war wanting in deeds of heroitm? The South was the first to defy England, and find bed more soldiers accorling to military population than the North; South Carolina alone furnished twice as many men as New Hampshire, though she had a smaller military pop ulation. The South was the first to cross the mounts ins and attack the In dians; she was the aggressive e ement in the war of 1812, and in the war with Mexico there were forty-five thousand volunteers from the South, and only twenty-three thousand from the Nor.h. Why was it that the South, rich in ma terials for an abundant and valuable literature, was so barren in 1 t rary production? The answer is an easy one. The South was strictly agricultural; the farms very large. There-were no liter ary centers; the cities few and far apart. The South was indifferent to popular education. Home talent was rot encouraged by the many, and those that read much preferred the classics. Authorship, before the civil war, meant poverty and self-sacrifice. Such, in brief, is the history of our literary en vironments in the ante-bellum days. But the war practically removed these obstacles, and as our social com- pict began to adjust itself to the new order of things, authors received en-