Some Unpublished Letters of John R. Thompson and Augustin Louis Taveau

Abstract

Among the many contributors to The Southern Literary Messenger during the editorship of John R. Thompson, from November, 1847, to May, 1860, was Augustin Louis Taveau (1828-1886), a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and a member of a prominent family that numbered among its connections Sir Walter Scott, Hugh Swinton Legare, and Paul Hamilton Hayne. After practicing law at the Charleston bar, Taveau traveled abroad and married Miss Delphine Sprague, the daughter of Horatio Sprague, the American Consul at Gibraltar. Returning with his wife to his rice plantation near Charleston, he sold his slaves, bought Confederate bonds, and went to Richmond to join the Confederacy. After the Civil War he found his wealth, as well as his art collection and library, destroyed, and he turned to farming along the Potomac in Maryland to recoup his losses. Like that of many other Southern poets, Taveau's profession was law, but his practice was poetry. During his lifetime he contributed many fugitive verses under his pen name, Alton, to such magazines as The Southern Literary Journal, The Southern Literary Messenger, DeBow's Review, and The Southern Literary Gazette. The Vindication: A Satire (Charleston, John Russell, 1848), one of his earlier poems, attracted the attention of William Gilmore Simms: