16
THK BATTALflQN
literary centers; the cities few and far apart; the South was
indifferent to popular education; home talent was not en
couraged K y the many, and those that read much preferred
the classics; authorship, before the war, meant poverty and
self-sacrifice. Such, in brief, is the history of our literary
environments in the ante-bellum days. But the war prac
tically removed these obstacles, and as our social compact
began to adjust itself to the new order of thin ;s; authors re
ceived encouragement at home. To be sure, much that is
being written, is intrinsically worthless, but the ambition and
multiplied effort to win literary fame, are producing some
good works. Southern cities are rapidly becoming literary
centers; publishing houses are paying good dividends, and
literary genius is appreciated and largely sustained by
Southern readers. One thing is lacking. The schools, pub
lic and private, are not doing their duty in teaching the his
tory and worth of our literature. Most of our literature stills
comes from the North, and is unjust to the South in many
respects. Think of the South—that section, for the first
sixty-four years of our national life, furnished the president
for fifty-two years, most of the cabinet officers, and the chief
justice from 1801 to 1890—classed as a semi - barbarous peo
ple, saved only by Northern civilization ! And we make so
few protests against these misrepresentations that the out
side world has come to believe and repeat them, to our g’reat
injury. Tin* boys and girls of the South should be taught
the true history of the South. They should become familiar
with the literature of the South; with its songs; its civiliza-