Southern Literature

Abstract

Civilization in the United States has been diffused from two centres—New England and Virginia. In the former the starting-point was the town-meeting; in the latter, the planter's mansion. As has been well said, the germ of the whole difference between them lay in their different notions concerning the value of vicinity among the units of society. From the town-meetings of New England have come schools, manufactures and a literature; from the planters’ mansions of the Old Dominion generals, statesmen and liberty. One of the most philosophic political judgments of recent times, says Nichol—the anti-Southern historian of American literature, admits that “the honour of maintaining self-government, and making it possible for the Federation to dominate over the continent cannot be wrested from the Southern States.” The spirit of liberty, Bancroft tells us, had planted itself deep among the Virginians and elsewhere he adds, “an instinctive aversion to too much government has always been a trait of Southern character.”