However much of ability may have been engaged upon it, the press of the South—up to the events just preceding the war—had scarcely been that great lever which it had elsewhere become. It was rather a local machine than a great engine for shaping and manufacturing public opinion.

One main cause for this, perhaps, was the decentralization of the South. Tracts of country surrounding it looked up only to their chief city, and thence drew their information, and even their ideas on the topics of the day. But there it ceased. The principal trade of the South went directly to the North; and in return were received northern manufactures, northern books and northern ideas. Northern newspapers came to the South; and except for matters of local information, or local policy, a large class of her readers drew their inspiration chiefly from journals of New York—catholic in their scope as unreliable in their principles.

These papers were far ahead of those of the South—except in very rare instances—in their machinery for collecting news and gossip; for making up a taking whole; and in the no less important knowledge of manipulating their circulation and advertising patronage. The newspaper system of the North had been reduced to a science. Its great object was to pay; and to accomplish this it must force its circulation in numbers and in radius, and must become the medium of communicating with far distant points. Great competition—application of il faut bien vivre—drove the drones from the field and only the real workers were allowed to live.

In the South the case was entirely different. Even in the large cities, newspapers were content with a local circulation; they had a little-varying clientele which looked upon them as infallible; and their object was to consider and digest ideas, rather than to propagate, or manufacture them.

The deep and universal interest in questions immediately preceding the war, somewhat changed in the scope of the southern press. People in all sections had intense anxiety to know what others, in different sections, felt on vital questions that agitated them; and papers were thus forced, as it were, into becoming the medium for interchange of sentiment.

An examination of the leading journals of the South at this period will show that—whatever their mismanagement and want of business success—there was no lack of ability in their editorial columns. Such organs as the New Orleans Delta, Mobile Advertiser, Charleston Mercury and Richmond Examiner and Whig might have taken rank alongside of the best-edited papers of the country. Their literary ability was, perhaps, greater than that of the North; their discussions of the questions of the hour were clear, strong and scholarly, and possessed, besides, the invaluable quality of honest conviction. Unlike the press of the North, the southern journals were not hampered by any business interests; they were unbiased, unbought and free to say what they thought and felt. And say it they did, in the boldest and plainest of language.

Nowhere on the globe was the freedom of the press more thoroughly vindicated than in the Southern States of America. And during the whole course of the war, criticisms of men and measures were constant and outspoken. So much so, indeed, that in many instances the operations of the Government were embarrassed, or the action of a department commander seriously hampered, by hostile criticism in a paper. In naval operations, and the workings of the Conscript Law, especially was this freedom felt to be injurious; and though it sprang from the perfectly pure motive of doing the best for the cause—though the smallest southern journal, printed on straw paper and with worn-out type, was above purchase, or hush money—still it might have been better at times had gag-law been applied.

For, with a large proportion of the population of different sections gathered in huge army communities, their different newspapers reached the camps and were eagerly devoured. Violent and hostile criticisms of Government—even expositions of glaring abuses—were worse than useless unless they could be remedied; and when these came to be the text of camp-talk, they naturally made the soldiers think somewhat as they did.

Now, the greatest difficulty with that variously-constituted army, was to make its individuals the perfect machines—unthinking, unreasoning, only obeying—to which the perfect soldier must be reduced. "Johnny Reb" would think; and not infrequently, he would talk. The newspapers gave him aid and comfort in both breaches of discipline; and in some instances, their influence against the conscription and impressments was seriously felt in the interior. Still these hostilities had their origin in honest conviction; and abuses were held up to the light, that the Government might be made to see and correct them.

The newspapers but reflected the ideas of some of the clearest thinkers in the land; and they recorded the real and true history of public opinion during the war. In their columns is to be found the only really correct and indicative "map of busy life, its fluctuations and its vast concerns" in the South, during her days of darkness and of trial.

These papers held their own bravely for a time, and fought hard against scarcity of labor, material and patronage—against the depreciation of currency and their innumerable other difficulties. Little by little their numbers decreased; then only the principal dailies of the cities were left, and these began to print upon straw paper, wall papering—on any material that could be procured. Cramped in means, curtailed in size, and dingy in appearance, their publishers still struggled bravely on for the freedom of the press and the freedom of the South.

Periodical literature—as the vast flood of illustrated and unillustrated monthlies and weeklies that swept over the North was misnamed—was unknown in the South. She had but few weeklies; and these were sturdy and heavy country papers—relating more to farming than to national matters. Else they were the weekly editions of the city papers, intended for country consumption. Few monthly magazines—save educational, religious, or statistical ventures, intended for certain limited classes, were ever born in the South; and most of those few lived weakly and not long.

De Bow's Review, the Southern Quarterly, and the Literary Messenger, were the most noteworthy exceptions. The business interests of the larger towns supported the first—which, indeed, drew part of its patronage from the North. Neither its great ability nor the taste of its clientele availed to sustain the second; and the Messenger—long the chosen medium of southern writers of all ages, sexes and conditions—dragged on a wearisome existence, with one foot in the grave for many years, only to perish miserably of starvation during the war.

But any regular and systematized periodical literature the South never had. The principal reason doubtless is, that she had not the numerous class of readers for amusement, who demand such food in the North; and of the not insignificant class who did indulge in it, nine-tenths—for one reason, or another, preferred northern periodicals. This is not altogether unnatural, when we reflect that these latter were generally better managed and superior in interest—if not in tone—to anything the South had yet attempted. They were gotten up with all the appliances of mechanical perfection; were managed with business tact, and forced and puffed into such circulation as made the heavy outlay for first-class writers in the end remunerative.

On the contrary, every magazine attempted in the South up to that time had been born with the seeds of dissolution already in it. Voluntary contributions—fatal poison to any literary enterprise—had been their universal basis. There was ever a crowd of men and women among southern populations, who would write anywhere and anything for the sake of seeing themselves in print. And while there were many able and accomplished writers available, they were driven off by these Free-Companions of the quill—preferring not to write in such company; or, if forced to do it, to send their often anonymous contributions to northern journals. These two reasons—especially the last—availed to kill the few literary ventures attempted by more enterprising southern publishers. The first of these two in a great measure influenced the scarcity of book-producers, among a people who had really very few readers among them; and even had the number of these been larger, it seems essential to the increase of authors that there should be the constant friction of contact in floating literature.

Good magazines are the nurseries and forcing houses for authors; and almost every name of prominence in modern literature may be traced back along its course, as that of magazinist, or reviewer.

The South—whether these reasons for it be just or not, the fact is patent—had had but few writers of prominence; and in fiction especially the names that were known could be numbered on one's fingers. W. Gilmore Simms was at once the father of southern literature and its most prolific exemplar. His numerous novels have been very generally read; and, if not placing him in the highest ranks of writers of fiction, at least vindicate the claims of his section to force and originality. He had been followed up the thorny path by many who stopped half-way, turned back, or sunk forgotten even before reaching that far.

Few, indeed, of their works ever went beyond their own boundaries; and those few rarely sent back a record. Exceptions there were, however, who pressed Mr. Simms hard for his position on the topmost peak; and most of these adventurous climbers were of the softer sex.

John Esten Cooke had written a very clever novel of the olden society, called "Virginia Comedians." It had promised a brilliant future, when his style and method should both ripen; a promise that had not, so far, been kept by two or three succeeding ventures launched on these doubtful waters. Hon. Jere Clemens, of Alabama, had commenced a series of strong, if somewhat convulsive, stories of western character. "Mustang Gray" and "Bernard Lile," scenting strongly of camp-fire and pine-top, yet had many advantages over the majority of successful novels, then engineered by northern publishers. Marion Harland, as her nom de plume went, was, however, the most popular of southern writers. Her stories of Virginia home-life had little pretension to the higher flights of romance; but they were pure, graphic and not unnatural scenes from every-day life. They introduced us to persons we knew, or might have known; and the people read them generally and liked them. Mrs. Ritchie (Anna Cora Mowatt) was also prolific of novels, extracted principally from her fund of stage experience. Piquant and bright, with a dash of humor and more than a dash of sentiment, Mrs. Ritchie's books had many admirers and more friends. The South-west, too, had given us the "Household of Bouverie" and "Beulah;" and it was reserved for Miss Augusta Evans, author of the latter, to furnish the only novel—almost the only book—published within the South during continuance of the war. The only others I can now recall—emanating from southern pens and entirely made in the South—were Mrs. A. de V. Chaudron's translation of Mülbach's "Joseph II.," and Dr. Wm. Sheppardson's collection of "War Poetry of the South."

This is not an imposing array of prose writers, and it may be incomplete; but it is very certain that there are not many omissions.

In poetry, the warmer clime of the South would naturally have been expected to excel; but, while the list of rhymsters was longer than Leporello's, the poets hardly exceeded in number the writers of prose. Thompson, Meek, Simms, Hayne, Timrod and McCord were the few names that had gone over the border. Up to that time, however, the South had never produced any great poem, that was to stand ?re perennius. But that there was a vast amount of latent poetry in our people was first developed by the terrible friction of war.

In the dead-winter watches of the camp, in the stricken homes of the widow and the childless, and in the very prison pens, where they were crushed under outrage and contumely—the souls of the southrons rose in song.

The varied and stirring acts of that terrible drama—its trying suspense and harrowing shocks—its constant strain and privations must have graven deep upon southern hearts a picture of that time; and there it will stand forever, distinct—indelible—etched by the mordant of sorrow!

Where does history show more stirring motives for poetry? Every rood of earth, moistened and hallowed with sacred blood, sings to-day a noble dirge, wordless, but how eloquent! No whitewashed ward in yonder hospital, but has written in letters of life its epic of heroism, of devotion, and of triumphant sacrifice!

Every breeze that swept from those ravished homes, whence peace and purity had fled before the sword, the torch and that far blacker—nameless horror!—each breeze bore upon its wing a pleading prayer for peace, mingled and drowned in the hoarse notes of a stirring cry to arms!

But not only did our people feel all this. They spoke it with universal voice—in glowing, burning words that will live so long as strength and tenderness and truth shall hold their own in literature.

For reasons thus roughly sketched, no great and connected effort had been made at the South before the war. Though there had been sudden and fitful flashes of rare warmth and promise, they had died before their fire was communicated. That the fire was there, latent and still, they bore witness; but it needed the rough and cruel friction of the war to bring it to the surface.

What the southron felt he spoke; and out of the bitterness of his trial the poetry of the South was born. It leaped at one bound from the overcharged brain of our people—full statured in its stern defiance mailed in the triple panoply of truth.

There was endless poetry written in the North on the war; and much of it came from the pens of men as eminent as Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier and Holmes. But they wrote far away from the scenes they spoke of—comfortably housed and perfectly secure. The men of the North wrote with their pens, while the men of the South wrote with their hearts!

A singular commentary upon this has been given us by Mr. Richard Grant White—himself a member of the committee. In April, 1861, a committee of thirteen New Yorkers—comprising such names as Julian Verplanck, Moses Grinnell, John A. Dix and Geo. Wm. Curtis—offered a reward of five hundred dollars for a National Hymn! What hope, feeling, patriotism and love of the cause had failed to produce—for the lineal descendants of the "Star Spangled Banner" were all in the South, fighting under the bars instead of the stripes—was to be drawn out by the application of a greenback poultice! The committee advertised generally for five hundred dollars' worth of pure patriotism, to be ground out "in not less than sixteen lines, nor more than forty."

Even with this highest incentive, Mr. White tells us that dozens of barrelfuls of manuscript were rejected; and not one patriot was found whose principles—as expressed in his poetry—were worth that much money! Were it not the least bit saddening, the contemplation of this attempt to buy up fervid sentiment would be inexpressibly funny.

Memory must bring up, in contrast, that night of 1792 in Strasbourg, when the gray dawn, struggling with the night, fell upon the pale face and burning eyes of Rouget de Lisle—as with trembling hand he wrote the last words of the Marseillaise. The mind must revert, in contrast, to those ravished hearths and stricken homes and decimated camps, where the South wrought and suffered and sang—sang words that rose from men's hearts, when the ore of genius fused and sparkled in the hot blast of their fervid patriotism!

Every poem of the South is a National Hymn!—bought not with dollars, but with five hundred wrongs and ten times five hundred precious lives!

To one who has not studied the subject, the vast number of southern war poems would be most surprising, in view of restricted means for their issue. Every magazine, album and newspaper in the South ran over with these effusions and swelled their number to an almost countless one. Many of them were written for a special time, event, or locality; many again were read and forgotten in the engrossing duties of the hour. But it was p............